If your company is 15 people or larger, you probably need to implement an All Hands Meeting. This is because the CEO is no longer talking consistently with every person on the team, but you still need to ensure everyone in the org is aligned.
By implementing an All Hands and running it effectively, you’re able to gather alignment across your startup to ensure your team is set up for success and on the same page, marching towards the same goal.
There are many different ways to run them, and you have to figure out what is best for your company and its culture. Pick and choose what works for you and what resonates.
Cause everyone to do pre-work. They write down the following:
It helps to create a database in your Notion workspace (or similar) to have a template everyone can use each week. In this template, consider adding the company goals for the quarter to the very top of the page. This helps everyone remember to tie their actions for this week to one of the company goals, so they feel like they’re advancing the company towards something very important.
<aside> <img src="/icons/new-alert_purple.svg" alt="/icons/new-alert_purple.svg" width="40px" /> For example: If a company goal is: “Close $2M in sales by end of 4Q22”, a teammate’s actions for the week might be: “Take ___ # of sales calls by the end of the week both inbound and outbound” because it ties directly to that goal.
Another example might be: “Improve ___ feature as an engineer to help sales team meet their quota for the quarter.” As you can see, this encourages teammates to think about their peers, work together towards a common goal, and support/uplift one another.
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This might be a more appropriate time to bring in representatives for each department (what you might refer to as “team leads.”).
This is to reduce the amount of reading someone has to do to grok what each department is up to; one representative outlining their team’s work is easier to digest than reading ten engineers’ updates individually.
The representative is responsible for filling out their team’s accomplishments for the previous week and what their team collectively will accomplish in the following week, so that everyone has clarity on how the department is advancing the company’s goals and which departments they are working with. They also write challenges their department is facing to solicit help from other department heads and ICs.
Not only do “challenges” part of each department is beneficial, but it helps on multiple fronts: soliciting asks per department also helps when it comes to seeing which departments might be overstretched and under-resourced. The more asks there are of specific departments and the more things they’re accomplishing to advance the company towards milestones, the better understanding you have on how much resourcing is appropriate for each department. Your hiring will therefore improve if you implement this tactic.
I knew a company who tracked how many cross-department asks there were per team, and used that info to determine forecast numbers on approximate number of hires in each department for the following quarter. The company IPOed this year, and they attributed much of their success to this habit when I spoke with the leadership team.
Finally, when soliciting department updates, it helps to have department goals tie back to company goals pasted at the top of the document. For example, in the Sales Team, what are their goals for the quarter, and how do they tie back those goals to one or more of the larger company goals? That way, the representative can keep in mind what their larger goals are, and how they can motivate their direct reports to tackle those department goals and move collectively towards measured success.
When a company grows beyond 20 people, it can become difficult for everyone to know their teammates deeply - but this is so important because you can hardly expect people to do great work if they don’t know each other well or trust each other.
Facilitate this trust and connection by doing Good Things. Start by opening Breakout Rooms on Zoom by splitting everyone up into pairs. Most people in a team, especially as the size grows, usually feel a strong desire to know people from other departments better. It helps create unity and understanding across different department lines, and unites everyone under the common umbrella of the larger company.
Therefore, it is helpful if the Logistics person is able to determine which departments each person is in, and connect them cross-department.
Allocate five minutes for the breakout room time for people to share one good thing in their personal life and their work life.
Once good things are done and everyone is back, you can cover company-wide announcements next. This includes, but is not limited to:
<aside> <img src="/icons/new-alert_purple.svg" alt="/icons/new-alert_purple.svg" width="40px" /> Always judge performance based on actual feedback, not on shiny presentations.
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Next, if you wish, you might choose to do a Deep Dive into topics relevant to the whole company. Some examples of this include:
Written brainstorming sessions around things that need full company buy-in, such as Mission, Vision, and Values (determining what they are and how they apply to the company)
Larger company-wide strategy: the CEO can present what direction the company is going and why; how different departments interact with each other; goal setting for upcoming quarters; how the company is doing overall, and so on.
Company-wide finances: you will want to update your company on a regular cadence on how the financials of the org are doing. This means informing them how much runway is left, how much revenue has been generated, forecasting sales in the future, and any other pertinent points of information.
Showcasing a specific department: hopefully, each department in your company is mission-critical or will be (if it isn’t, you might have bloated headcount!) It can be helpful to invite department heads to showcase the work they’re doing (even better if it’s cross-functional to promote cross-department collaborations) and how it’s leading to the company’s goal.
<aside> <img src="/icons/new-alert_purple.svg" alt="/icons/new-alert_purple.svg" width="40px" /> Note: you should be very careful to not let this segment turn into a “political” segment, where talkers say lots of amazing things they want to do, but they don’t actually execute on any of it. Sometimes, this section can be hijacked by performative people on your team, where they want to curry favor and influence from the rest of the team, but they actually end up not doing very much. It’s even worse if you allow these talkers to claim credit for the work of other people on your team.
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