Podcast Ep 95 | The CEO Update

The CEO Update is the miss­ing piece in the meet­ing rhythm puz­zle. It’s the ​‘glue’ that aligns the entire busi­ness around the meet­ing rhythm of dai­ly, week­ly, month­ly, quar­ter­ly and annu­al meetings.

The lit­tle seeds you plant in peo­ple’s minds can grow into mas­sive old oak trees. The short week­ly CEO Update should have the same impact.

In this week’s pod­cast, Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence dis­cuss dif­fer­ent ways to deliv­er a CEO update, and explain why it’s so impor­tant and pro­vide a sam­ple agenda.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Brad Giles 00:13

Hi there. This week on the Growth Whis­per­ers, we’ve had a prob­lem with our video. Our apolo­gies on this. So on the YouTube ver­sion, you’re only going to see Kevin, and you’re going to not see me. But trust me, my audio is there you can fol­low along. It’s just that you get to enjoy Kev­in’s face a lit­tle bit more than usu­al, some of us that might be a ben­e­fit. Hope you enjoy this week’s episode on Youtube.

Kevin Lawrence 00:39

Wel­come to the Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast where every­thing we talk about is about build­ing endur­ing, great com­pa­nies, com­pa­nies that last for decades, com­pa­nies that you can look at and be proud of for hope­ful­ly gen­er­a­tions to come, or at least gen­er­a­tions of future lead­ers to come. I’m Kevin Lawrence. I’m here as always with Brad Giles, my co host on the show, Brad, how you doing today?

Brad Giles 01:01

I’m great, very good at this end, beau­ti­ful sum­mer, every­thing is good.

Kevin Lawrence 01:07

And we’ve got a beau­ti­ful win­ter at our end, too. So we’ve got a great, inter­est­ing top­ic today the miss­ing meet­ing that most peo­ple for­get about. And it’s a mas­sive oppor­tu­ni­ty. We’ll dig into that in a sec­ond. But before we do that quick­ly, what’s your Word of the Day? Brad?

Brad Giles 01:25

Some­thing that’s on my mind is when you’re going to engage with a per­son about a busi­ness sub­ject, are they enter­tain­ing you? Or are they teach­ing you? I feel that there are some peo­ple who are enter­tain­ers. And there are oth­ers who were teach­ers, and there are oth­ers who are actu­al­ly work­ing on things and pro­vid­ing tools. So yeah, I don’t know how I can I could spend an hour explain­ing that. But that’s as good as I can do today. Kevin — teach­ers or entertainers.

Kevin Lawrence 02:05

Well, mine is actu­al­ly ​“fol­low­ing the pas­sion”. And I was talk­ing to some­one the oth­er day, and it was a some­one, a younger teenag­er try­ing to fig­ure out what to do in their career. And peo­ple are giv­ing them all kinds of dif­fer­ent advice. And mine was just like, fol­low what you’re pas­sion­ate about. Fol­low what it is that you like doing. And you’re will­ing to work hard at it because it feeds you or fuels you in some way. Yeah. And the work itself out. But real­ly, what are you pas­sion­ate about a will­ing to put the ener­gy into? So we could weave those togeth­er? You know, are you pas­sion­ate about teach­ing? Are you pas­sion­ate about enter­tain­ing? Are you pas­sion­ate about some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent? But yeah, fol­low­ing what you’re pas­sion­ate about, which gen­er­al­ly means it gives you energy.

Brad Giles 03:02

So over the last few over the last five episodes or so we’ve been talk­ing about the meet­ing rhythm that is the annu­al today strat­e­gy meet­ing, the quar­ter­ly exe­cu­tion plan­ning meet­ing, the month­ly lead­er­ship team meet­ing, the week­ly meet­ing, the dai­ly hud­dle. But there’s some­thing that’s miss­ing through our this, there’s some­thing that once you’re doing it, once you start to apply this, it begins to kind of fill a gap that’s not there for the orga­ni­za­tion. And so that’s what we’re talk­ing about today, which is the CEO update that forms a crit­i­cal part of the meet­ing rhythm to help every­body in the orga­ni­za­tion align, because the dai­ly hud­dle does a great job of align­ing, but this helps it even more. It helps every­body in the orga­ni­za­tion to under­stand what the pri­or­i­ties are, and also to build the pride in the orga­ni­za­tion and it helps the CEO in their ambas­sado­r­i­al role.

Kevin Lawrence 04:18

It was inter­est­ing as we were prepar­ing for and talk­ing about this Brad I was remem­bered back in the 90s when I start­ed my career my gosh that’s for­ev­er ago, start­ed my career in adver­tis­ing. There was a gen­tle­man by the name of Peter Lake and I believe he’s still around won­der­ful man. He start­ed a com­pa­ny called Cana­da Wide mag­a­zines. They were big into the print mag­a­zine space, got a great mag­a­zine called BC busi­ness based out of Van­cou­ver and we were con­nect­ed to that orga­ni­za­tion through some char­i­ta­ble work I was doing which Peter was big into char­i­ty MC tons of events in Van­cou­ver. Awe­some guy, and he had a dai­ly update. I’m sure it was dai­ly now it might have been week­ly or bi week­ly. wrong, but I think it was a thought of the day that he would send out to his peo­ple back then. And I think back in the 90s, it might have been print­ed. Yeah, cuz now they’re in a mag­a­zine con­tent space. But and I saw some of these updates, and they were amaz­ing it was a quote of the day was some thoughts and every­thing. And it was par­tial­ly what inspired me when I start­ed the dai­ly newslet­ter that I used to have back then back in the late 90s, when I start­ed my prac­tice, and what the point of it is, is he was get­ting his peo­ple in sync and up to date con­tin­u­al­ly with what’s going on. And it was a real­ly pow­er­ful mech­a­nism he used as a form of his lead­er­ship. And that’s kind of what we’re talk­ing about here.

Brad Giles 05:45

Yeah, yeah. It’s a form of lead­er­ship. It’s a form of remind­ing peo­ple. The quar­ter­ly, the annu­al, the month­ly, the week­ly, that’s the lead­er­ship team. And that’s impor­tant. And maybe you’re even doing that in a form in the depart­ment that you work in. Cer­tain­ly, dai­ly, hud­dles are there. But this is a sim­ple five minute update from the leader. Now, I’d advo­cate once per week, and I know that you would say that, per­haps once per month is appro­pri­ate. But what we’re going to say is week­ly or fort­night­ly or month­ly, you’ve got to fig­ure out if this is an exam­ple of best prac­tice, how do you get this prac­tice to work best in your orga­ni­za­tion to tai­lor it to suit your­self. But the point is that there is a reg­u­lar rhyth­mic update from the leader that explains some of the sim­ple mech­a­nisms that are occur­ring in this sphere, some of the updates some of the pri­or­i­ties that are happening.

Kevin Lawrence 06:58

And in many ways, it’s be being able to hear direct­ly from the leader, you know, and to hear their thoughts because there’s this thing called the tele­phone game, where you know, a CEO has a dis­cus­sion with exec­u­tives, exec­u­tives, talk to direc­tors, direc­tors, talk to man­agers, man­agers, talk to assis­tant man­agers, assis­tant man­agers, talk to team leads, team leads, talk to team mem­bers. And the sto­ries don’t make it all the way there to begin with, they don’t flow all the way always. And they also get changed as they should, as the man­agers put their own stamp onto this. This is a direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the world of mas­sive, easy com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it’s a no brain­er. We have one of our clients right now that does a month­ly ver­sion. And he has a great month­ly ver­sion he does by video. And one of these he does, he’s got his head of mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions was an awe­some guy, who the CEO and him sit and talk for a cou­ple min­utes about the mes­sages. The CEO makes us notes that the head of the mar­ket­ing group turns on the cam­era with just using their phone. Because the iPhone is an incred­i­ble media device. Yeah, records it. And then the mar­ket­ing per­son hands it off to some­one on the team, they do some quick edits, and then away they go post it up and away they go. And there’s the CEOs month­ly mes­sage. It’s just it’s, you know, it’s real­ly pow­er­ful. I mean, you could make an argu­ment for a dai­ly poten­tial­ly at some point that might be a bit much, but it’s just reg­u­lar­ly doing it because it’s, it’s almost like there’s no rea­son not to peo­ple just for­get to and don’t have a mech­a­nism to get it done.

Brad Giles 08:29

Yeah, it’s, it can be real­ly easy. And as a byprod­uct, one of the things that I’ve noticed the lead­ers that I work with, who do it but notice, it kind of con­sol­i­dates all of their thoughts, and it’s a great way to round out a week by pro­vid­ing an update. Now, this should­n’t be real­ly, I’d advo­cate for it should take five min­utes to write. So this is a short, sharp, sim­ple email. You know, most of the time when I’ve been coach­ing lead­ers who are doing this, my my, my reg­u­lar thing is make it short­er, make it short­er, make it short­er, we always want to put too much, espe­cial­ly at the begin­ning put too much in but set the rhythm that is it’s a hand­ful of dot points, a cou­ple of quick updates, what’s on my mind, maybe a met­ric or two, maybe a shout out some of those kinds of things. It should take real­ly five min­utes, but no more than 10 to write. And it should take no more than five min­utes to read because then it’s digestible. And you know, if you get an if you’re an employ­ee who’s dis­con­nect­ed from the lead­er­ship team, let’s say so you’re one or two or three lev­els away, and you get an email from the leader about, let’s say, the state of the nation or what’s hap­pen­ing. That’s a pret­ty inter­est­ing if it’s quick, a pret­ty inter­est­ing email.

Kevin Lawrence 10:02

If it’s rel­e­vant to all peo­ple in the com­pa­ny, which can be chal­leng­ing, so yeah, my rec­om­men­da­tion for some­thing like this exam­ple, the head of mar­ket­ing comes in and records for the CEO, the CEO pre­pares for less than a minute. And they’ve been think­ing about it dur­ing the week some­times if they have had time, and it takes a cou­ple min­utes to record. And if you’re gonna write it, some CEOs are excel­lent at writ­ing, they can sit down and do that stuff. And most are so damn busy. So that’s like, get their EA or get some­body else mak­ing it is to make it some­body else’s job to get it out. You just hap­pen to be the per­son pro­vid­ing the con­tent, and you can be on your way to your kids soc­cer game. And your key per­son can con­tact you to get the key points if it’s writ­ten in a writ­ten form that is and to pull the con­tent from but the key is, make it some­body else’s account­abil­i­ty that it hap­pens. It should­n’t be yours.

Brad Giles 10:57

Yeah, but it’s your thoughts. It’s cor­rect. What’s hap­pen­ing. You know, what are you feel­ing sens­ing you what is your spidey sense, tell you is a good way to think about it.

Kevin Lawrence 11:11

It is one of the traps to avoid, as you know, the trap of the com­pa­ny newslet­ters try­ing to pull con­tent from every­body know, try­ing to get the sto­ries and the end and they start off strong. And then they often fall on their face. And the real­i­ty is in this, it should­n’t depend on any­one, if your exec­u­tives hap­pen to share stuff with you, you know, great if you you know, if you want to do shoutouts to peo­ple and talk about good stuff hap­pen­ing, it’s won­der­ful. But you need to be able to have access to it and not be stuck get­ting stuck on it because peo­ple aren’t telling you what you need to know. Yeah, by the way, it’s kind of an inter­est­ing insight as if you’re out of touch and don’t know some of that stuff that might indi­cate that maybe you’re not con­nect­ed enough to the busi­ness. But the point of it is make it sim­ple, and some­thing that can be effec­tive, with­out a whole bunch of oth­er things to get in this way.

Brad Giles 12:01

I’ve got a client that I work with. And they are big into two net pro­mot­er and big into mea­sur­ing employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion. And so when we start­ed with them, they’ve done one or two or three runs that the leader had. And then they sur­veyed their staff. And it was over­whelm­ing­ly decid­ed that this was some­thing that was real­ly val­ued by peo­ple, because they got to, you know, they got a bit of an excit­ing update as to what’s going on. And there was it was short and sharp and sweet. And that’s what real­ly matters.

Kevin Lawrence 12:42

Yeah, and right to the point. So we talked about, you know, some things that it, I think, as you men­tioned, it can align peo­ple to the objec­tives, you can be updat­ed on objec­tives, you can do things in there to rein­force the cul­ture, you can cov­er off things that will maybe even help peo­ple to per­form or be on top of real­ly crit­i­cal things. And as we talked about, we’re prepar­ing is that the agen­da can start off a lot like a dai­ly meet­ing, Hey, what’s up? Hey, here’s the met­rics, the first two points of the dai­ly meet­ing, to share. But the idea here is it’s not just to your direct team that’s cas­cad­ing to every­one. But then you might have some impor­tant mes­sages or themes. Some com­pa­nies run reg­u­lar themes, or there’s a major focus that every­one’s aligned around, you might pro­vide some updates on that, here’s some things that have hap­pened. Here’s some high­lights. Here’s the divi­sion that’s doing the best or some show notes to new ideas around that theme. But as an out­put, ide­al­ly, peo­ple come away with some­thing to feel proud about. Proud to be on this team and what’s hap­pen­ing in this team. And then also some­thing to look for­ward to. Right, you know, that’s, that’s part of, of lead­er­ship is leav­ing their thoughts and, and hav­ing them think about where they’re going to go or how it’s going to be.

Brad Giles 14:04

Yeah, so I at a per­son­al lev­el, there’s this sim­ple phi­los­o­phy I heard about 20 years ago. And that was every­body needs some­thing to do some­one to love and some­thing to look for­ward to. And it’s real­ly play­ing on that mech­a­nism in the way that you’ve just said. So, you know, we want to acti­vate the pride, which is some­thing to love, you know, acti­vate the pride about our team, our prod­uct, our com­pa­ny, our lead­ers, what­ev­er it might be, we want to try to use that mech­a­nism, some­thing to do you know, we want to make sure that peo­ple are aware that we’re pro­gress­ing and that there’s still work to be done and then some­thing to look for­ward to. So that we’re able to It could be, it could be an expan­sion, it could be an acqui­si­tion, it could be a com­pa­ny pic­nic, it could be, you know, a whole range of dif­fer­ent things that are com­ing up could be next week’s update. But we’re real­ly, you know, we’re think­ing about it through that lens is that what’s on your mind? How are we pro­gress­ing on our com­pa­ny pri­or­i­ties, those types of things, any key met­rics, and we don’t want to see rev­enue met­rics every sin­gle week, we don’t want to say, imag­ine 15 weeks in a row where the only met­ric was, yes, we achieved bud­get this week, like make it a bit var­ied, make some inter­est­ing things.

Kevin Lawrence 15:49

You could break it up in one week report­ing on some­thing that has to do with cul­ture, some­thing else it has to do with effi­cien­cy, some­thing else it has to do with one of the com­pa­ny goals, who knows, you can find ways to make it and if you’re gonna break it up and do dif­fer­ent met­rics at dif­fer­ent times, again, who­ev­er you make account­able for it, have them to have a cal­en­dar. Okay, today report­ing on this met­ric, and have them come with a data so you can you know, speak to it. But the point of it is you want to be rein­forc­ing the things that mat­ter most.

Brad Giles 16:18

And, and what’s on your mind, like, it’s real­ly sim­ple. It’s a way to be authen­tic, vul­ner­a­ble to build trust, if you like, yeah, this to some CEOs.

Kevin Lawrence 16:31

And by the way, this could apply to team lead­ers as well and have big teams. But you know, some, some CEOs are very open about what’s going on in their world per­son­al­ly. And then some art. So that’s a per­son­al thing of what you’re will­ing to share what you’re not, some are very, you know, almost more secre­tive, and not open about it. But what­ev­er your style is, share what’s com­fort­able, and then what’s going to align the team and help peo­ple to be able to be on board with the stuff that mat­ters most again, feel proud and have some look for­ward to.

Brad Giles 17:09

Your update could be ​“I was real­ly hap­py that we achieved our num­ber two com­pa­ny pri­or­i­ty this week”. Yes. And con­grat­u­la­tions to Shawn for his hard work in that area. So if every­one got that, first of all, Shawn is going to be pret­ty proud. But the Sean’s team will be, there’ll be a whole range of things that come of that. So you, it does­n’t need to be like you said, she adapt­ed to suit your per­son­al­i­ty style.

Kevin Lawrence 17:37

It could be, what’s up a lit­tle bit of com­pa­ny news, a cou­ple of key met­rics that relate to your most impor­tant com­pa­ny goals, you could review progress on the com­pa­ny goals, and cel­e­brate a few things that have actu­al­ly hap­pened. And then tell peo­ple but a cou­ple things that are hap­pen­ing next week, you could be doing it every time you do it. And you could talk a lit­tle bit about one of the com­pa­ny val­ues for a minute and rein­force one of the val­ues and the sto­ry about it. Like it’s, it’s things to just keep ground­ing peo­ple in what mat­ters most. Our cul­ture, you know, you might have a big safe­ty, focus in the orga­ni­za­tion, and maybe it’s some­thing around safe­ty, our goals, um, and where we’re win­ning, or any­thing else that they need to know. Again, it’s, it’s basic, but it’s the dis­ci­pline of a CEO to do it on a reg­u­lar basis. Or team lead­ers lead­ing big teams, just a very sim­ple thing. And it’s basi­cal­ly it’s almost like the, it’s the miss­ing meet­ing rhythm that many peo­ple for­get about, and the abil­i­ty to impact the entire orga­ni­za­tion and have them think about the same thing.

Brad Giles 18:45

Yeah, peo­ple know what’s going on. It’s an amaz­ing align­ment tool. Okay. Yep. So. So just as a quick sum­ma­ry, then why does it mat­ter? It helps to align the team to the com­pa­ny objec­tives, the per­for­mance, and also the cul­ture. It’s this kind of, in the same way that the dai­ly hud­dle is a bit of a drum­beat. This is a sec­ondary drum­beat. But from the leader, and it helps. It’s it, the struc­ture, it should be like the dai­ly, again, what’s up any met­rics, impor­tant mes­sages, some­thing about the cul­ture, don’t make it too long. We want to have no more than five, maybe 10 min­utes to write it and pre­pare for it. And it should take no more than five min­utes to read it or watch it if you’re using videos. And final­ly, you know, it can be a bit about think­ing about the last week so some updates and a lit­tle bit about think­ing about next week as well or next month depend­ing on what you’re doing. And final­ly, one last point, make it an inter­est­ing title. So you want it to stand out Add a lit­tle bit, or use the same title of the email sub­ject, assum­ing you’re using email each week. And that does­n’t mean that you need to change the email title every week, it more means you just want to have some­thing that when peo­ple see it if they’re get­ting 100 emails a day it’s going to stand out.

Kevin Lawrence 20:22

Yeah, well, that’s the idea of the show. So we chal­lenge you to what if, what if you were to do it week­ly, great, bi week­ly, month­ly, what­ev­er it is, what’s the rhythm that you’re going to com­mu­ni­cate to every per­son and make your basic agen­da like we talked about and get it start­ed? Find some­one on your team to sup­port you and get it done. Anoth­er great tool, and it’ll be well worth the time. So thanks for lis­ten­ing. This has been the Growth Whis­per­ers Pod­cast. I’m Kevin Lawrence as always the Brad Giles for the YouTube ver­sion go to the growth whis­pers on youtube​.com to reach us to sub­scribe to our newslet­ters or reach out to us. Brad is ever lar FLR evo­lu­tion part​ners​.com​.au and Kevin is Lawrence and co​.com. Hope you have an awe­some week. And just remem­ber the lit­tle bits of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and lit­tle seeds you plant in peo­ple’s mind can grow into mas­sive mas­sive old oak trees and that’s a won­der­ful thing. Have a great week.