David Sunra, Founders Podcast
Run the Top Five Email System
Ask your team for five tagged, action worded updates on their work and market observations, and read them daily.
David Sunra says
Jensen asked employees at every level of the organization to send an email that detailed the top five things they were working on and what they had recently observed in their markets. That includes customer pain points, competitor activities, technology developments, and the potential for project delays. The ideal top five email is five bullet points where the first word is an action word, something like finalize, build, or secure. Jensen had each department tag their emails by topic in the subject line so he could search them easily. Every day he would read about a hundred of these emails to get a snapshot of what was happening within the company, saying it is easy to pick up on strong signals but he wants to intercept them when they are weak.
Try this
Ask your team to email you their top five priorities plus one market observation, action verb first, department tagged in the subject line, and read every reply yourself.