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The last company I worked at did an "all-hands" meeting every day, for 9 minutes just before lunch. It actually worked incredibly well - 9 minutes out of every
by ryanbrunner 10y ago
The last company I worked at did an "all-hands" meeting every day, for 9 minutes just before lunch. It actually worked incredibly well - 9 minutes out of every day is nothing, comparatively speaking, and the insanely compressed format puts pressure on everyone to not waste time with anything. It scaled really well from 20 - 150 people. It was great for hiring too - we could bring candidates in and give them a quick 9 minute overview of what was happening around the company and what the culture was like.
A couple of things that I think differentiate good all-hands from bad ones (daily or otherwise)
- As much as possible, rank-and-file employees should drive the show. Having management up there talking the whole time increases the mandatory boring meeting feeling.
- If you're running all hands, your number one priority is to eliminate any feeling of big company corporate "rah-rah" culture. It's really easy for all-hands to feel fake with lots of imposed cheery "culture" things (someone else in the comments mentioned a singalong.. Really? It's cool to have unique things that you guys as a company do, but they have to be organic. Coming up with them as a manager basically guarantees that everyone laughs at them behind your back.
- Your priority should be providing useful information to employees, not pushing things on them. If the all-hands becomes the "yell about sales targets" meeting everyone will hate them.
- test1235 10y ago>- If you're running all hands, your number one priority is to eliminate any feeling of big company corporate "rah-rah" culture. It's really easy for all-hands to feel fake with lots of imposed cheery "culture" things (someone else in the comments mentioned a singalong.. Really? It's cool to have unique things that you guys as a company do, but they have to be organic. Coming up with them as a manager basically guarantees that everyone laughs at them behind your back. This is precisely where I work at the moment. I always suspected it might've been a US/UK contrast. In UK we like to laugh at ourselves and not take anything too seriously, but being a US company, we get a lot of the "YOU'RE NUMBER 1, WE'RE NUMBER 1, WE'RE THE BEST TEAM WE CAN BE TOGETHER" and to be honest, it's rather cringey. We're a megacorp who answers to shareholders - they don't give a crap about me and the guy talking most certainly doesn't know who I am, so let's stop the pretense. I've no problem with the pecking order, but don't make out like the company is looking out for my interest.
- dagw 10y agoI always suspected it might've been a US/UK contrast. Probably the biggest management clusterfuck I've ever experience involved a manager from California trying to manage a bunch of Norwegians in Oslo like he was still in San Francisco.
- aedron 10y agoIt's also because the starry-eyed loudmouths in HR always gets to set the agenda, since the introverted engineers don't say anything. So you get chants, 'funny' party games, etc. And of course if you at any point seem like you are not 100% supportive of this you might as well have stomped on their kitten.
- chris_7 10y agoDoes this mean that everyone has to eat lunch at the same time?
- ryanbrunner 10y agoI suppose you didn't have to, but most people did. They had catered lunches 3x / week, so that was already establishing a time for lunch.
- pc86 10y agoWere these meetings electronic/telephonic? I'm trying to imagine how many minutes it takes 100-150 people to gather in a single room for a 9-minute meeting.
- ryanbrunner 10y agoIn person at every office, over a GotoMeeting for people out of offices. It definitely gets packed and standing room only, but for 9 minutes that's not a huge deal. Assembling people isn't too bad if everyone knows it's a "thing" every single day. Music pipes through the offices at 3 minutes before the meeting, and the meeting starts regardless of who's there.
- JBlue42 10y agoWe're 100+ people and have one first thing every Monday morning. There's a set agenda that is usually speedily read through by a random "rank and file" member with executives usually only chiming in to a) clarify a point or b) have something important for the entire company to hear. I think all your points are excellent for companies that do want to do this and I actually find it a good way to kick off the week. I would definitely be skipping it (and possibly getting in trouble) were it to happen around lunch instead of the start of the first day of the workweek. Sounds lame but I consider my lunch time 'sacred' and helps me clear my head for the afternoon.
- ryanbrunner 10y agoIt's "just before" lunch (starts at 11:51 and goes to 12). There's not a mandated lunch hour, but the catered stuff gets there at noon and most people take it then. Absolutely the meeting is not considered part of your lunch time at all.
- JBlue42 10y agoThat's cool if they're very strict about the end time. The one I mentioned for our Mondays can be anywhere from 15 min to much much longer if there is a lot of programming (presentations by different departments, partner speeches).
- ryanbrunner 10y agoYeah, being insanely strict about the time was probably the biggest challenge at first but something that we got down to a science after some practice. Everything is scheduled to the minute and there's zero appetite for anything going over (to the point of forcibly taking the mic from someone).