Why do they call it an 'all hands' meeting?

Last time I checked, no one was raising their hand to speak. It's more like, 'all ears, occasionally nodding.'

How to Run All Hands Meetings

• Why Read: 

  • This article provides a comprehensive playbook for running effective all-hands meetings that foster alignment, culture, and transparency as a company scales.

• Featuring:

  • Amelia (Lerutte) Ibarra (@miadia), General Manager and Senior Vice President at SaaStr

  • Nick Nucci, Founder at Guru (@ricknucci)

• Link: 

  • “How to Run All Hands Meetings the Right Way with Guru Founder and CEO Rick Nucci”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

1. Purpose of All-Hands Meetings

   • Alignment: "Reinforcement is a huge part of alignment; town halls are one technique to achieve that."

   • Culture: "One of the core ways a culture manifests in a company is by writing down and defining those core values that will become the personality or behavior of your organization. What are the characteristics and traits you want in all employees? This only works by finding systemic rituals that reinforce and celebrate those core values." 

   • Transparency: "Talking about good and bad news, changes, and strategy should all be rooted in context and transparency. People should go on the roller coaster with you instead of wondering what's happening. If you don't give your team a narrative, they'll write their own."

2. Structure of Guru's All-Hands Meetings

   • Monthly, 90-minute meetings (usually under 45 minutes)

   • Combination of recurring and one-time segments

   • CEO hosts, but brings in other speakers

   • Allows for live employee questions, including anonymous ones

3. Key Lessons Learned

   • Lesson 1: Set the mood and energy through music and virtual format

   • Lesson 2: Establish context at the beginning to ground people

   • Lesson 3: Highlight "values in action" by recognizing employees living the company's core values

   • Lesson 4: Share "voice of the customer" by playing real customer conversation clips

   • Lesson 5: Avoid heavy focus on financials, provide context instead

   • Lesson 6: Allow for anonymous questions to surface the hard issues

   • Lesson 7: Don't sugarcoat the reality, practice radical candor

The Hidden Power of Surprises

Why Read: 

• This article emphasizes the critical importance of embracing both positive and negative customer surprises to uncover breakthrough ideas, a vital skill for startup success.

Featuring:

• Mike Maples (@m2jr), Founding Partner at FLOODGATE

Link: 

• “Embrace the Unexpected: The Hidden Power of Surprises”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• The Temptation to Seek Validation

  • "It's tempting to seek validation for our ideas when we engage with early customers and potential co-conspirators."

  • "Seeking out those who merely echo your beliefs narrows your opportunity to find breakthroughs."

• The Value of Surprises

  • "Surprises > validation. Positive and negative surprises are both valuable in your pursuit of breakthroughs."

  • "Breakthroughs are always a discovery of something new by definition—and that means they must have an element of surprise when they are encountered."

• Twitch's Origin Story

  • "Emmett Shear began losing faith. He decided to dial back for a couple months, not work as hard, hang out with friends, and play more video games. Paradoxically, the act of letting go opened his mind and brought him closer to a breakthrough idea."

  • "Emmett's insight that sparked Twitch perfectly illustrates the value of savoring surprises."

• Seeking Surprises When Engaging Customers

  • "When I heard him say this, it connected a bunch of disparate dots in my mind, yielding a new level of understanding about the value of surprises for the start-up process."

  • "Breakthroughs are always a discovery of something new by definition—and that means they must have an element of surprise when they are encountered."

• Positive vs. Negative Surprises

  • "Positive surprises are awesome. They show that your idea might be right and non-consensus."

  • "Negative surprises inform your understanding in one of three ways: 

    1. your implementation is wrong

    2. you are talking to the wrong people

    3. or your fundamental insight was wrong in the first place."

• Embracing Surprises

  • "Always look for surprises. Make it your instinct."

  • "Fundamentally, if your insight is correct, you should always be able to find specific people who are desperate for you to build a well-conceived product implementation of that insight."

Subscribe to Tactician

Tactics and strategies for building tech startups from industry-leading Founders, Operators and Investors.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.