This Week's Discussion
Nailing Your Most Expensive Meeting
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THE COMMONS SPOTLIGHT
Nailing Your Most Expensive Meeting
All Hands means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Some leaders view it as a podium to speak to the entire company, some see it as a showcase for newly launched initiatives, and others view it as a state-of-the-business address. In my opinion, it's none of the above.
What is All Hands?
All Hands is not just any regular meeting. In fact, it's not even a meeting - it's an event! It's in a completely different class.
All Hands is your company-wide EVENT to get everyone on board with the current direction of the company. It's meant to transparently share the TL;DR (too long, didn't read) and create alignment across and within every team. But above all else, it's about building and maintaining a connected workforce and strong remote culture. By nature, it's supposed to be special.
Let's pause
Okay, wait. Before you continue, if you haven't checked out my previous post on The Most Expensive Meeting You've Ever Had, you'll want to take a look. Even Pre-Seed Startups are spending upwards of $50k per year to host these events.
Understanding the cost of All Hands fuels the motivation to make it your most efficient and engaging company-wide meeting.
Okay, let's continue
Every minute MUST drive consistent, high-value, because every 60 seconds can easily cost well over $100. So, the question is, how do you make every dollar count?
To make every dollar count means creating incredible impact. And to have impact, you need a highly-intentional, structured, engaging event that goes far beyond a well-designed presentation. Beautiful slides aren't enough, and a voiceover from a well-respected executive just doesn't cut it.
It's the collective efforts across the entire business that make an All Hands... All Hands.
Building an Impactful Event
So what does this 'impactful All Hands event' look like? How do we create something that justifies the costs we undertake to run All Hands?
Share the deets from the beginning
An 'agenda' sounds a little formal, but it's a fantastic quality-assurance checkpoint for you, and an even better indicator to the audience that you've got a show prepared for them. All agenda items should also be time-bound, and here's what I'd recommend;
- Welcome (5 mins)
- Health Checkin (5 mins)
- Wins & Learnings (10 mins)
- Team Spotlight (10 mins)
- Customer Story (5 mins)
- Internal Comms (5 mins)
- Q & A (10 mins)
- Cultural Norms (5 mins)
We'll get into the details of each in the article below ⬇️
Learn How To Host A Good All-Hands
What’s happening at The Commons
Upcoming events
Automating Workflows: Part 3
Alexis Lopez, Business Operations Tech & Automation Manager at Spotify, is back with the final instalment of the automating workflows series. Part 3 will be centered around building Slackbots to aid in workflow automation.
Wednesday, February 21st at 7PM ET
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Mentor Office Hours are a chance to connect with two senior voices of our community and ask them questions on anything you're currently tackling: whether that be your job search, pivoting into a new function, or a challenge you're facing on-the-job. Panelists include: Milda (Strategy & Operations @ HelloFresh) and Madhav (Payments Operations Manager @ GlossGenius).
Wednesday, February 22nd at 7PM ET
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Past events
ICYMI we recently hosted these events. Members can find recordings on our platform.
- Speaker Series: Evaluate a Startup like a VC ft. Banana Capital: This week we hosted Turner Novak, founder/GP at Banana Capital! Turner gave the community insight into what a VC looks for in a startup, enabling members to better evaluate startups they're looking to join!
- Go-to-Market Workshop: Community members Liam (Director of Operations - Canada, RenoRun), Luis (GM at Alto, ex-GM at Shef), and Rachel (Strategy & Operations at Google) covered the basics of developing a go-to-market strategy including Market Sizing, GTM strategy & adaptability "on the ground".
- Speaker Series; Matt Hammel from AirOps. Matt Hammel is the Co-Founder and COO of AirOps, which aims to make technical work easier for less or non-technical people using AI such as converting plain english into a SQL query or scanning SQL queries for errors. He joined us to share more about his career experience, as well as walk through a demo of AirOps, and how it can help you as an operator.
- Open House: Our mentors provided an overview of The Commons Sprints, and critical skills to succeed in generalist roles in today's tech landscape. Missed it? Check out the recording here.
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HOT TOPIC
Advice for Launching on Product Hunt
There's nothing better than having an entire community to rely on, when you're tackling something new at work. ⚡️Here's one of the many topics the community tackled together this week...
Big thanks to Haley, Wendy, Carla, and Jeff for sharing your advice! 💚
Some thoughts:
- Timing is everything! "Make sure you get your timing right (when you go live with your launch) so that it comes to the top! I forgot the exact time but it’s typically 11pm-1am PT."
- Bug your network! "Other than that it’s getting a lot of folks to upvote you and being pretty obnoxious about getting everyone you know to help with that."
- Learn form others! Here's a summary of Air's learnings from when they secured a top spot!
Community members, you can also reach out to Carla C. for her advice! Check it Out + Add To The Thread
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CFJs (cool f'ing job) 🔥🌶
There's no better way to get your foot in the door than by being referred directly to the hiring manager (or meeting the hiring manager yourself!). Our job board has been filled with tons of exciting roles lately, with the opportunity to be referred directly to the hiring manager.Non-community members can apply directly via the links below. Community members - be sure to reach out to the individual listed in Slack so that you can learn more about the role and secure that referral! Not sure how to make an intro? Check our our outreach template at the bottom of this post.And now, onto the roles ⬇️
And the other awesome opportunities...
- Uber is hiring for their Uber for Business team | NYC or SF | Community members, there are tons of folks who work at Uber at The Commons. Search for them in #wins or #intros!
- Head of Business Operations, Sales at Webflow (Series C) | Remote or SF | You'll be community member, Raza's, new manager! Check out his post here.
- Loblaw Digital is hiring a Product Manager for their Digital Pharmacy vertical | Hybrid Toronto | Community members, there are a few folks who work at Loblaw in the community!
- CertClean is hiring for an Operations Manager | Remote - hourly | Great for process-oriented Notion experts looking for a flexible side-hustle
- Senior Associate, New Verticals Partnerships at DoorDash (Public) | Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver | Community, ping Patrick (he works there!)!
- Uber is hiring for a Strategy & Ops role on the Canada Rides team | Toronto, hybrid | Community, DM Alex
- roserocket, transportation management software for trucking and logistics, is hiring across a number of roles, including Senior Product Manager (Series A) | Toronto, hybrid | Community, ping Mia for an intro!
- Fondue, a Shopify app that is helping ecommerce brands grow profitably, is hiring for an Ops Associate | Remote - eastern US | Community, ping Abraham (he's the Founder + CEO and a member of The Commons!)
- Anthropic, a competitor of OpenAI, is hiring on their BizOps team | SF, hybrid
- Strategic Finance Associate at FabFitFun | LA | Community, ping Wilford - his friend is the hiring manager
- BizOps at Figma | SF, NYC, Remote | 2+ years of relevant experience in investment banking, management consulting, private equity, corporate planning, business finance, analytics, or related fields + SQL
- Uber is hiring for a Senior Central Operations Manager, Growth Bets and Multi-Product Use role and Central Operations Manager, Premium Products | Amsterdam | Community, DM Praveen R. - this role is on his team!
- Vessi is hiring a Program Manager, Retail Operations on the Business Excellence team | Likely hybrid, Vancouver-based | Community, DM Justin C. to get connected with the hiring manager
- HiMama is hiring for a Revenue Operations Coordinator | Toronto or Remote | Community, check out this thread
Looking for more opportunities? Head to the community job board!
Comparing B2B Software 🔎
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Moving to the US for work? 🇨🇦 vs 🇺🇸
See what other community members had to say and add your thoughts to the thread here.
A man stands on one side of a river, his dog on the other. The man calls his dog, who immediately crosses the river without getting wet and without using a bridge or a boat. How did the dog do it?
Check out the answer here.
Sharing the 💚
On Valentine's Day, community members shared their gratitude with one another via custom Valentine's Day cards. Here's a small snapshot of what they had to say ⬇️
Want to share the 💚? Pop into the #gratitude channel!
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