2024 Year In Review: Looking Forward to 2025
Your “Best Of” Cheat Sheet of Posts So Far…
As we start 2025, it’s appropriate to look back at 2024 while also looking forward. To borrow from one of my favorite frameworks I coach: “Where We Were,” “Where We Are,” and “Where We Are Going.”
I also know as a reader of other blogs and newsletters, it’s helpful to have a “summary cheat sheet” of posts. This post will be just that. A year in review for 2024 as well as a look forward to upcoming posts for 2025 that I plan on posting in the 1st Half of 2025.
2024 Year in Review: Cook’s Playbooks
I launched this newsletter in June 2024 with a post on why I started it and with one of my favorite life lessons of “Learn It, Do It, Coach It”. I also touched on what makes a great coach exemplified by this graphic:
Since another of my favorite frameworks is “Communicate It 7 Times 7 Different Ways,” I’ll repeat my Mission with this newsletter:
Pay It Forward: To share back my own personal “Best Of” lessons learned to the next generation of financial and operational leaders at venture-backed startups.
10x Leverage: To coach others in one year what it took me 10+ years to learn while scaling companies from Series A all the way through IPO.
Modern Day Coach (ode to Bill Campbell): I worked directly with Bill for several years and also hung out with Bill’s crew at the Old Pro on game day Saturdays for several years. Bill was known to connect deeply with people through his authenticity, directness, and his extremely humble wisdom. He coached Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and so many others during the last stage of his career. We need more Coaches like Bill in this world.
Community: Create a knowledge sharing community “Best Ofs” where we can all Learn, Do, and Coach each other and continue to pay it forward to the next generation.
Since this is a newsletter largely centered around my coaching frameworks and playbooks, my 2nd post went deep on how I developed and evolved my current coaching top level anchor, “Cook’s Coaching Framework,” over the last 20 years:
I also extended the evolution of the CFO Role and introduced my own personal “Best Of” with my Top 20 Frameworks.
STRATEGY
Communicating the Vision
Defining the Roadmap
Setting Milestones on the Roadmap
DECISION MAKING
Thinking in Bets
Chalking the Field
Leading with Powerful Questions
Documenting Key Assumptions
Calling Key Plays (making agile decisions)
Course Correcting
LEADERSHIP CULTURE
Creating an Ownership Culture
How to Lead with Why?
Leading with 1st Principles
Connecting the Why, What, and How
Everyone is the CEO of their Product
1st 100 Days
Listening Tours
COMMUNICATION & INFLUENCE
Becoming a Better Storyteller
7 Times 7 Different Ways
SECS Talk
Reimagining Your Role As Chief Alignment Officer
The rest of my 2024 posts began to unpack these frameworks and playbooks in each of my Cook’s Coaching Corners:
STRATEGY
LEADERSHIP CULTURE
DECISION MAKING
Decision Audits and Scorecards: Touching on Decision Quality, Velocity, One-Way/Two-Way Doors, Auditing and Scorecarding Templates, Urgent vs Important, Risk Scorecards, and Priority Equations. (This post was jam packed and could have been several posts quite frankly.)
Decision Timing and Course Correcting; Great Decisions Require Alignment; 1st Principles Thinking;
COMMUNICATION & INFLUENCE
Islands of Safety (a Critical Communication Framework)
It’s Time For a SECS Talk (Statement, Evidence, Conclusion, Shut Up!)
I ended 2024 with my “Leading Your Board - 3 Part Series” - knowing many of you were prepping for your late December or January Board Meetings.
LOOKING FORWARD TO 2025:
My goal is to post weekly which means roughly 50 posts this year. I was able to post “24 for ‘24” (starting in June and highlighted above). Here’s a sneak preview of the first half of 2025 (the next 6 months)… “25 for ‘25.”
Key 1st Half 2025 Themes (25 for 1st Half of ‘25)
Leading with Why, Leading With Powerful Questions, Listening Tour (another 3 part series) - I’ll be kicking off the year with this next series over the rest of January and the first week of February. Focus will be on Leading with Powerful Questions; Leading with Why; Performing a Listening Tour.
Great CFOs: I get asked a lot about whether this CFO is good or that one is great. The answer is “it depends” and “the nuances are critical.” So, it’s time to better define “great” by stage, how to “Scorecard Your CFO,” and highlight the CEO-CFO partnership. I’m planning on launching into this during February 2025.
CFO as Key Company Leader, Exec Partner, Board Leader: For March, I’ll unpack some of the best practices of great CFOs including a post of “Time & Money,” “Great CFO Investment Philosophies,” the 3R’s of Product-Engineering-Revenue, and finally my Best Of M&A Framework.
4 Engines of Business; 5 Systems of Business; 4 Key Elements of Leadership - scheduling this for April 2025.
All Things Leadership Culture: In May 2025, my goal is to dive into the 7 Cs of Company Culture, the 6 Critical Culture Practices of a CFO, and the 4 Cs of Leadership Learning.
Congratulations New CFO! - As we enter the end of the second quarter (June), I’ll be going in depth at landing the new CFO role and how to establish leadership from day one kicking this series off with your “1st 100 Days” followed by creating and aligning the CFO’s strategy to the Company’s strategy, scorecarding your finance team’s maturity, and finally creating and communicating the Finance Team’s Roadmap.
Thank you for making 2024 a standout year for Cook’s Playbooks. Let’s keep scaling leadership and operations together in 2025!
