It’s time to write the traditional “Year-In-Review” Email to your team, reflecting on the year behind us and your vision for the one ahead.

In 2023, it’s a little different, because now there’s a good chance when you send this email your most valuable employees will think you are AI.

There are plenty of times when it’s okay to sound like you’re being ghostwritten by a bot, but this is NOT one of them.  Meanwhile, the year-end letter (which can feel like a distracting chore as you wrap up the most important quarter of the year), is also a fun reflection for you personally and good opportunity to let your leadership skills shine.

So how do you write a great end-of-year email, NOT sound like a bot, and make a meaningful personal connection with your team that boosts engagement enough to make all of your 2024 goals much easier to achieve?

I’ve been writing these emails for F10 executives, startup founders, and venture investors for 18 years.  They’re a permanent part of my yearly planning, and December is a 24/7month for us—much to the chagrin of my family.

Why?  Great executives know how much of a massive impact these notes can have on getting better outcomes, faster, in the new year.

This year, at the dawn of the age of AI, it’s even more important than ever to get it right—the damage to your credibility from a bad year end note is worse than not writing one.  And depending on bots can be costly in the C-suite.   The good news is these are easy to write, all follow a simple formula, and they bring fast results upward with a board or boss, and downward with your teams.

That’s why I’ve finally decided to create a template making it even easier to write your own. It’s at the bottom of this page.

First, a story.

Many (many) years ago, as a young writer, I was helping an executive write the traditional end-of-year wrap up note to her team, when she said something that has stuck with me ever since.

She said, “I want this note to make everyone feel proud that they work for this company and proud of themselves for the work they’ve done here.  More importantly, she said, I want it to be so simple and meaningful that they could share it with their parents, because I want them to get to see their parents be proud of them.” (In 2009, working at a social network and having respect from your parents was slightly oxymoronic.)

The real lesson from this is that she considered a good note to be more than just a rote obligation of leadership, but instead, she saw it as a chance to provide an intangible gift to everyone in her org--even if she would never get credit for it as a gift.  This mindset is powerful—what can your words do for your team? The good news is it’s actually very easy.

Back then, writing for executives was different than it is today.  We wrote with a certain kind of corporate-speak that was polished yet flowed readably, was smart yet accessible, was articulate yet personable.

Today, all of these traits now describe the most common outputs of anyone’s latest bot.

Good emails of the past are just GPT today. You have to be human.

Thus, in the cat and mouse game of always sounding better than your audience expects, and delighting them with a personal and meaningful connection, today we craft executive emails to sound explicitly human.  We allow mistakes.  We spend more time creating an authentic impression of the executive.

One of the easiest and newest twists to a good executive email is leaving in a few grammatical errors in organic locations. The kind of errors a dedicated chief of staff or internal comms team has trained their scalpel on cutting for decades.  This is honestly a great development—because it removes the pressure to be perfect and massively reduces the editing and production time.  You can be as fast as AI, and better than AI, by avoiding the perfection of AI.

Unfortunately, imperfect copy alone won’t get you to a meaningful connection.  Your workplace teams today include:

• A skeptical Gen Z.

• A seen-some-stuff cohort of Millennials knocking on your C-suite door.

• A deeply experienced bunch of Gen-X’ers debating whether they still find enough personal fulfillment in working for you to not just call it a good career and cash out the 401K that’s grown 660% over one of the longest bull markets in history.

Every single generational cohort in your company is an engagement risk right now, which directly affects your ability to get things done on January 1.  

Add in some industry cavitation on return-to-work, plus a year of layoffs-like-the-weather, and every executive with a team of any size is worried about engagement.  Because engagement = outcomes. Your people are how you get things done.

One of the most unique opportunities you have each year to turn up engagement is the year-end letter.  Plus, these emails are fun, good for your clarity of mind, and a polite way to informally showcase the accomplishments of your teams upward to your board, investors, or fellow executives. Remember, imperfection is now becoming an advantage over AI, so it’s faster and easier than ever to draft your own.

So this year, I am sharing our winning formula from 18 years of successful year-end letters. It’s already loaded in a Google Doc below, sort of like an Executive Comms Mad Libs. It’s linked below—just fill it out, send, and enjoy your holiday.

If you’d still like Publera’s humans to give it personal attention, you can apply here. To do it, we will need 30 minutes of your time, plus a few informational items beforehand, and an NDA. I really don’t think you’ll need us though.

However you do your holiday email, I only ask one thing: think of it as a gift.  

If you can give your teams a great feeling about themselves and your company, you are a true leader. I think you’ll also find it’s a gift to yourself and your goals for 2024.