A framework for your All Hands or update meeting

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the four meetings I tend to use when I’m running an agency. I shared a little about the contents of the All Hands that happens every Friday but, since people are starting to think about their end of year updates to their own agencies, I’ve been asked what I’d include in that meeting too.

Do I have to?

Running a weekly, quarterly or annual business update for all your staff is not a requirement. As long as you’re adequately updating the team on the company’s progress towards its goals; with some kind of mechanism for holding yourself accountable to your employees; and some forum for them to ask questions; you can do without it.

That’s a lot of ifs and, in most cases, getting the team together and talking them through these things is going to be easier, so let’s assume that the vast majority of agency leadership teams are going to do a meeting like this.

How should I structure the meeting?

There are 7 major considerations that are almost applicable for any All Hands meeting, whether it’s a weekly 15-30 minutes or an annual 1-2 hours.

1. Establish a recurring agenda: in your first All Hands, tell the team what you’ll tell them in every All Hands moving forwards. Each time they turn up, they can expect to hear about X, Y and Z.Then, stick to that agenda. It’ll make creating the update easier for you (and make it easier to delegate sections that, as you grow, will need input from other people - maybe you don’t know who the new starters are next week, for example). Talk about the same X, Y and Z even if there’s nothing to update the team on; “there’s no change in Z this week and that makes us happy/we’re a bit disappointed about that”. If Z shows its face every meeting, the team knows it’s important.
2. Recap the company vision BRIEFLY. It can have a slide of its own but probably not more than one slide and, ideally, no slides at all. If you can reel it off without a reference behind you, everyone knows you think about it all the time (which you should do, if it’s real).If you have more than one slide each week/month/quarter on vision and mission, you’re training the team to switch off because they feel like they know it (think of it like an airline safety demonstration…once you’ve flown a couple of times, you zone out completely; even though you’re doing absolutely nothing other than sitting there because you don’t want to be rude; and even though you know it’s potentially life saving information).A BRIEF reminder keeps the team on board with the direction of travel and makes people feel like you’re progressing towards the goal. Remember, the most important thing is not how noble and selfless the goal is; it’s how much the team BELIEVES you’re going to get there. It’s the fire in your eyes when you say it again and again. All Hands means all eyes are on you - you don’t get that privilege too often.
3. The team wants to know the plan. What’s happening that’s helping the company to achieve its goal? When is it happening? What’s happened since the last meeting? When something hasn’t happened, but you said it would happen, you need to own up to it, otherwise the team isn't going to care whether it happens or not (and aren’t going to feel so enthusiastic about contributing to it themselves). If goals are announced and then never mentioned again, the team is less likely to help because it’s the goal that gets noted, not the effort towards it. If you announce goals (with deadlines please) and don’t follow up, then you're telling your team that a) it's not important that we achieve our goals; b) the commitment from the senior team is weakly held and you look like you're unsure where to go; and c) this presentation isn't important and neither are the people watching it.
4. Use your company values. Shout out the people who've done a thing that demonstrated a value (get people to nominate colleagues), or a single instance that you've seen which shows you're taking notice. Stories are best.
5. Open the book, show the numbers, good and bad...BUT only do this with the numbers designed to inspire action. We often want to show the team everything because we didn't see everything in our last place. But we wanted to, because we are the entrepreneurial type...not everyone is.I tend to talk about numbers on a quarterly basis with the whole team because not enough happens in a week (when you invoice monthly) and it’s easy to have a bad month for seasonal reasons and you don’t want to panic people unnecessarily.Here's an example of what "good" looks like when it comes to talking about numbers: let's say you've got a client concentration problem (one or two clients responsible for too much of your revenue). Each time, you should highlight what % of revenue that client represents; where you would like that % to be ideally; why it's a problem that it isn't there; and explain what you expect the team to do about it (upsell to other clients).
6. Resist the urge to show off. It's hard to walk back week after week of "we're amazing" when things start going wrong.It’s not a bad idea to always roll out “two stars and a wish” like you might have had in school (or a sh*t sandwich, if you’re less concerned about keeping things PG). Each meeting, highlight two things that have exceeded your expectations, or that have been delivered flawlessly; and one thing that the team can agree needs work before the next meeting. That’s an appropriate number of priorities for the team to get behind…just make sure you’re not singling anyone out.
7. Follow up on email. Sometimes people can't make it and following up shows that the All Hands was important.If you’re going to record the meeting then, by all means, share the recording, but add some context when it’s shared. Otherwise the vibe is: I’m done talking to you mortals until next time, don’t bother me again.

Peter Drucker said the purpose of information isn’t knowledge, it’s the ability to take action, and that’s what your All Hands is for: give the team the ability to do something.

We can overthink these meetings and overshare (probably because the feedback in every single staff survey since the dawn of the agency is “communication from leadership is bad” - I could probably do a whole article on what to do about that!) - so think about that “inspiring action”.

For the best All Hands meetings, just make this switch in your head (and think about what you’d do differently): this is my meeting, not theirs.