Are your all-hands meetings falling flat?

Most CEO’s and executives have regular All Hands meetings of the whole company, sales meetings, or functional groups. These are vital opportunities for powerful communication and I’m constantly amazed that executives don’t often structure or plan them. Time is short, simply doing All Hands meetings seems to be the standard, rather than actually doing them well!

A simple way of thinking through the flow, whether an event with one speaker or the whole executive team, is to focus upon the Three C’s: ‘Customers, Company and Competition’.

‘Customers’ should be common ground for all and gives a visionary executive the chance to provide insight into how the company is positively changing their customer’s world - by implication this also clarifies which customers the company wants. It’s extremely effective to reiterate the company goals for it’s customers, how it’s doing towards them and future initiatives. If you can showcase, or describe a particular customer success, this is a great time. Good stories are remembered.

‘Competition’ can be specific or broad. I dislike the ‘there is no competition’ mantra, which always feels disingenuous to me. There is always competition, if not directly, it will be for the money that people may be spending elsewhere rather than on your product. Being aware of it and how to handle it shows the business is in good hands. Importantly, speaking about the market gives many sound bites your people will use internally and externally after the meeting with customers, when hiring and in many other situations.

‘Company’ is about the people in your business, starting with the overall goal. A former boss I had used to refer to a high level goal every time he spoke - “our goal is to double the size of the business within 3 years”. Then talk about how this was being achieved, what was vitally important, and how everyone in the company had their part to play. This is a good time to recognize specific people, and for the executive to show depth of understanding of what their people do. If times are tough, empathy for the challenge may be the most important aspect of the whole talk.

Remembering the 3 C’s for every talk will help, even if it’s just a checklist in your mind as you speak. Of course practice is key and having stories planned, rehearsed and ready to be delivered is ideal. Don’t worry about telling the same stories many times - only 7% of in-person communication is verbal…but tonality is 38%. How you say it is vital.

As Churchill said, “it usually takes me three weeks to practice an ‘off the cuff remark”.

And, by the way, this stuff works with customers too….

Tagged: All Hands Meetings, Management, Business Communication, Executive Coaching, Leadership