The Friday Update Template Every CEO Should Steal
A practical CEO weekly update template with real examples, the full structure, and how to make it a leadership habit.
I wrote a few months ago about why every CEO should send a Friday Update. A lot of people reached out and asked the same thing: “Okay, but what exactly goes in it?”
Here’s the template I use with my clients. Copy it. Adapt it. Make it yours.
But first, understand what this actually is.
The Friday Update is not a status report. It’s not a newsletter. It’s leadership. Every week you grab the wheel, show the company where you’re going, and drive. You’re telling a story, honestly, consistently, urgently, about what matters and why. It’s a gift of time for you to think critically about the business and communicate the most important things to your team. Done right, over time, it becomes the single most powerful communication tool you have.
Start with a real opening
One or two sentences. Your voice. How the week actually felt.
One of my clients opened last week’s update with: “I spent the weekend going deep on Claude Code and realized we need to get everyone in this company on board with this revolution, fast.” That’s not a corporate communication. That’s a CEO thinking out loud. His team read every word.
Another opened with the story of sitting next to a prospect on a four-hour flight and what she learned that she hadn’t known before, about how they were perceived, what the market actually wanted, where the competition was moving. She shared it raw. Her team felt like they were on that flight with her.
Another walked into one of his biggest customer’s offices for an onsite and realized midway through the day they were off track and at serious risk of losing the business. He wrote about it that Friday, what he saw, what it meant, what they were going to do about it. Uncomfortable to write. Unforgettable to read.
And one CEO, every now and then, opens with his actual life. His son’s 18th birthday1. What it made him think about. How it connects to what he’s building. Those are the ones people forward.
I’ve even tried opening with a Bruce Springsteen lyric to sum up the week.2 The point is to show up as a human. Don’t skip it. Don’t sanitize it. That’s the whole game.
The structure
Honest overview
Two or three paragraphs on what actually happened. Not spin. What you won, what you lost, what surprised you, what you learned.
This is also where you keep steering, every single week. The same themes, the same priorities, the same direction, said differently, connected to what just happened. You are not going to say something once and have it land. The best CEOs I work with repeat the same three or four strategic priorities consistently, woven into the story of that week. That repetition is how strategy becomes culture. That consistency is what makes people feel like there are hands on the wheel.
Priorities, what mattered, what’s next
Two things only.
What were the most important things this week, and did we do them?
What are the most important things next week?
Be specific. “Closing the Q1 pipeline gap” is a priority. “Growth” is not. “Shipping the new onboarding flow by Thursday” is a priority. “Product” is not.
This section should feel consistent week over week. Your team should be able to predict roughly what’s here because you’ve been clear and repetitive about what matters. When they can, you’ve won. That means clarity has reached the whole organization.
End of quarter approaching? This section gets urgent. Not just a list, a rally. “We have three weeks to hit the number. Here is exactly what we need. Let’s go.” Say it every week until you’re there.
Big release coming? You’re talking about it before it ships, the week it ships, and after it ships. Before: why it matters. During: this is the moment, execute. After: what happened, what we learned, who made it happen.
KPIs
Show the numbers. Weekly actuals toward monthly goals. Every week, same format. Table with current week numbers, progress to goal for month. Share them when they’re good. Share them when they’re bad. Share them.
Don’t editorialize. Just show them. Let the team see what you see. When things move, everyone feels it together. When they don’t, no one is surprised on the last day of the month.
Wins, and the people behind them
Specific people. Specific things. Not “the team did great.”
“Sarah closed Acme after six months of work.” “David found the bug at 11pm and had a fix live by midnight.” “Priya’s deck got us the intro we’d been trying to get for a year.”
Here’s the move most CEOs miss: connect the shoutout to your company values. If a value is “customer obsession,” say so. “This is what customer obsession looks like in practice.” If a value is “ownership,” name it. This is how values stop being words on a wall and start being real. Your team learns what good looks like, in context, every week.
Customer or market signal
Bring in a voice from outside. A quote from a customer call. Something a prospect said. What you saw on that onsite. What the competitor just shipped. What you heard on the plane.
Your team is heads-down executing. You’re out there. Share what you’re seeing. It keeps everyone connected to the reason the work matters and oriented to the world outside the building, where the real game is being played.
One thing worth reading
One link. Something you actually read or listened to that week. Two sentences on why it matters right now. Not a roundup. One thing.
A question for your team
One genuine question. Not rhetorical.
“Where are we moving too slow right now?” “What are we not hearing from customers that we should be?” “Where do you need more from me?”
Invite direct replies. And the next week, close the loop: here’s what I heard, here’s what I’m doing with it. Skip that last step and the answers dry up within a month.
The template
Subject: Company Update, [Date]
[Opening: your real voice. What happened to you this week. How it felt. What it made you think about.]
OVERVIEW [2-3 paragraphs: honest account of the week, wins, losses, surprises, lessons, and woven through it, the same strategic themes you come back to every single week]
PRIORITIES This week: [2-3 specific things, did we do them?] Next week: [2-3 specific things that matter most] [End of quarter / big release: make this a rally, not a list]
KPIS [Metric]: [actual] / [monthly goal] [Metric]: [actual] / [monthly goal] [Metric]: [actual] / [monthly goal]
WINS [Name] -- [specific thing they did] -- [company value it reflects] [Name] -- [specific thing they did] -- [company value it reflects]
CUSTOMER / MARKET [One real thing you heard or saw from outside the building]
WORTH READING [Link] -- [Two sentences: what it is, why it matters right now]
QUESTION FOR YOU [One genuine question, invite direct replies] [Close the loop on last week’s question]
How to run it well
Send it every Friday. No exceptions. Your team starts to count on it. Miss one and you’ve broken something that takes weeks to rebuild.
Keep it short. 400-600 words. If it runs long, cut the overview in half.
Write it yourself. The whole value is that it sounds like you. Don’t delegate the draft.
Crowdsource the inputs. Ask your EA or a direct report to send you by Thursday noon: three shoutout nominations, KPI actuals, one customer quote. You take those raw materials and write. Thirty minutes, not ninety.
Repeat yourself. This feels unnatural. Do it anyway. The same priorities, the same values, the same direction, said differently each week, connected to what just happened. That repetition is what creates alignment. That’s how you get a whole company pointed the same way.
Bring in guest authors. When you’re traveling, offsite, or want to give someone a platform, hand the update to a VP, a team lead, a voice your company doesn’t always hear from. Done occasionally, it signals trust and builds leadership. Done well, it’s often the update people remember longest. Set the template and the standard. The format stays consistent even when the author changes.
Let it evolve. The format is a starting point. Add a section that fits, drop one that doesn’t. Your update at year two should look different from week one. That’s fine. Cadence matters more than format.
Here are some other resources that might be helpful:
The CEO Weekly Note, Visible.vc (https://visible.vc/blog/ceo-weekly-note-update-template/) -- Scott Dorsey ran his Friday Note at ExactTarget for five and a half years without missing a single week, through 2,000+ employees. His words: it was one of the defining factors of their culture as they scaled.3
Visible Update Templates (https://visible.vc/templates/) -- A full library of templates. The “Weekly Wins” and “CEO Weekly Note” under Leadership are the most relevant starting points.
The Weekly CEO Update, Friday.app (https://friday.app/p/weekly-ceo-update) -- Good breakdown of each section with real examples. Key insight: if it’s full of numbers the CEO cares about and nothing the front-line needs, expect mediocre results. Always ask what’s in it for the reader.
Gokul Rajaram’s framework (https://laurenadellecoaching.medium.com/the-weekly-ceo-update-a-great-way-to-increase-your-teams-performance-404ce0cde62c) -- Gokul ran product at DoorDash, Square, Facebook, and Google. His thinking on connecting KPIs to the human story of the week is the best I’ve read on making numbers land with a team.
The Friday Update is one of the highest-leverage habits a CEO can build. It forces clarity once a week. It keeps your team aligned without meetings. It creates a living record of your company’s year, in your voice, in real time.
More than that: it’s how you lead. Consistently. Authentically. With your hands on the wheel, steering through all the stuff, week after week after week.
Start this Friday. Don’t overthink the format.
Just write.
The original post on why this habit matters: Why You Should Send Friday Updates
This was me. :-)
This was an homage to Brad Horowitz dropping knowledge on his posts. It did not last for me.
This is where I learned this skill. Scott is an incredible leader and he convinced me to start doing this.