Company cadence
This section details all of the different ways the company communicates and at what cadence
We have a number of different ways we communicate. Use the right side bar to jump to a specific area:
Customer Obsession Meetings (COM)
Surveys
CEO Listening Tours
Customer Obsession Meeting (aka "COM")
This is a bi-weekly all-staff meeting focused on increasing alignment and awareness of how the company, departments, teams and individuals serve our customers.
Customer Obsession is a key leadership principle and we emphasize its priority when we bring the company together. Colleagues who come from companies that aren't obsessed with customers have suggested we refer to this meeting as "All Hands" and not expect everything we announce - from spending company money to recruiting new talent - to be framed in the context of serving customers. Such expectations are typical and common, and therefore we don't have "All Hands" meetings and instead have "Customer Obsession Meetings" to continually remind us that our focus on customers is atypical and uncommon.
Attendees:
All Mattermost Staff
Chair: Amy Nicol
Co-Chairs: Co-founders
Objectives:
Reach alignment on near and long term goals
Reinforce our obsession with making customers safer and more productive
Bring awareness through key company updates and news
Celebrate team achievements and patterns of success
Time:
Bi-weekly meeting on Wednesdays from 8:00am to 8:25am Palo Alto time and once per quarter at 6:00pm Palo Alto time to allow APAC team members to participate.
Chair works 1-1 with presenters to prepare for them.
Team members can share meeting agenda topics with Chair via direct message. Must be shared at least 24 hours prior to meeting start and be aligned with the meeting objectives above.
2 - T-8: Chair and Vice Chair meet to review agenda. Vice Chair works with approriate presenters of agenda topics to develope slides for presentation
3 - T-1: COM prep meeting held with Chair, Co-Chairs, and Vice Chair and review the following items:
Meeting starts with thematic goal, including the theme statement, defining objectives, and actions the company is taking towards the goal.
Introductions for each Week 2 Welcome are confirmed by PeopleOps.
If new hire or manager is away, introduction is postponed to the following meeting.
New team members are introduced on their second week by their manager, including name, role, what they're working on, timezone, additional info as appropriate (max 2 minutes).
New hire can opt-in to introduce themselves if they choose (default is not to require public speaking).
Material for each agenda item is reviewed, and contains a link for more information such as a post to a channel, documentation or a blog post.
Each link shared in meeting notes should be publicly accessible to everyone in Mattermost.
If computer sound is shared during the call, test it prior to the meeting and install libraries or tools as required.
During meeting
(Vice Chair) At 7:58am Palo Alto time on the day meeting is held, post a reminder in Customer Obsession Meeting channel. See here for an example.
(Chair & Vice Chair) Sign into their Zoom account to access recording and screenshare during the meeting.
(Team) Join the Zoom link in the header of the Customer Obsession Meeting channel, and open the Meeting Notes link in the header to see the agenda.
(Vice Chair) Start Zoom recording at 8:00am Palo Alto time.
(Chair and Co-Chairs) Run through the agenda, which comprises one or more of the following items:
Introduction: One of the founders does an introduction to the meeting. Usually to align company on short and long term objectives, to reiterate larger vision for the company, or to emphasize leadership principles.
Good News: News or updates shared by team members.
Week 2 Welcomes: New team members introduced on their second week by their manager, or optionally by the new team member themselves.
Main Topics: Align and educate team around challenges faced by Enterprise customers and around department near-term goals. Examples include: FOSDEM event highlights and learnings; Enterprise customer's path from pilot to production; department VPMOM share; key updates, use cases or stories from customers.
Links to publicly shared documents or slides may be included in meeting notes.
Feedback: At end of meeting, conclude meeting with a reminder to share feedback via survey.
After meeting
(Chair) Share meeting recording (viewable only by signed-in users and non-downloadable) and link to feedback survey. See an example here. Note: Include the hashtag
#com-recordingsomewhere in the post.(Chair) Post a link to the meeting recording in the header of the Customer Obsession Meeting channel and in the meeting notes.
(Chair) Collect feedback from survey and add to next meeting's draft agenda for Chair and Co-Chairs to review.
(Presenter) Any presenter that introduces a new acronym needs to include this in the Mattermost Acronyms Focalboard.
Staff enablement survey
Every 6 months we'll be asking staff to spend around 3 minutes completing a staff enablement survey of 12 engagement questions, plus identifying their organizational leader.
The enablement survey will be announced in COM one week before the survey goes live.
The survey link will be shared at the beginning of COM.
The link will be posted in the COM channel with "Thumbs Up" emoji reaction.
All staff are asked to complete the survey and signal completion by clicking on "Thumbs Up".
Ideally, the meeting will conclude after "Thumbs Up" count reaches attendee count but this is not a requirement.
An analysis of the results should be prepared and presented within the next 2 - 4 weeks in COM.
Links to previous staff enablement surveys:
CEO Listening Tours
Listening to feedback is vital to iteration and to continually improve everything we do.
Feedback and listening is at the core of our self-awareness leadership principle. We have 1-1s with managers, regular pulse and engagement surveys, People team outreach and conversations, and annonymous feedback available in every weekly Customer Obsession/All-Hands Meeting. CEO Listening Tours are another way we listen.
CEO Listening Tours happen over Zoom in meetings around 25-30 minutes with different groups of 5-8 staff, typically within the same department or in a related function. Managers of the team members in the group are typically not included in the meeting.
Some notes about Listening Tours:
It's an opportunity to hear from staff about their likes and wishes, which could be about their team, their department, the company in general, or on any topic. These could be likes and wishes off the top of your head, or maybe something you've been thinking about for a while. This simulates an open feedback session at MatterCon where we would ask people to share their thoughts and feelings.
The priority of the meeting is listening. During these sessions the CEO takes notes and refrains from commentary, though may ask follow-up questions. Notes are "default open" to be shared with managers, executives, and anyone in the company.
At the end of the session the CEO reads back what they heard. The notes are shared with the management team/s of the group.
It's then up to managers to decide how to process and address the feedback at the team level. The CEO can also incorporate the information at the company level.
In the past, participants and managers of listening tours have found the meetings productive for uncovering blindspots at the company and within departments.
If you're not able to make a particular listening meeting, please ping @amy.nicol to add you to a different slot.
How to participate in Listening Tours:
Join us: Attend the scheduled meeting, or if it's not convenient, ping @amy.nicol to join a different meeting slot.
Share about yourself: Please introduce yourself with the group (even if we all know each other), with your name, your role, the city and country you're in, and what time it is there.
Share a like and a wish: If you'd like to share feedback, in the form of a like and a wish, please share it when you feel appropriate. Your feedback can be about anything, something recent ("Wish Zoom was more stable") or something you've been thinking about or talking about for a while ("Really like the Social Coffee channel and meeting people across the company").
Confirm you've been heard: As feedback is read back, share if what you had to say has been accurately captured to be shared with our leadership team, execs, and managers.
Listening tours are just another way we gather feedback so we can iterate and improve everything we do. Thank you for helping speed us on our journey of continual improvement.
GNN Updates
A GNN Update is a concise way to share out what's "Going Well", "Not Going Well", and "Next Actions" on a specific initiative or goal.
Going Well: What's going well, and what would we want to amplify or repeat?
Not Going Well: What's moving slower than expected? What's in our way?
Next Actions: Based on what's going well (things we want to amplify or repeat) and Not Going Well (problems we need to solve), what are the next actions we want to take in the next 1-2 weeks? Next actions should include who is responsible for them, a due date and what the expected outcomes and imapct of the next actions.
If a GNN has been shared previously, the Business owner should share the following in their next update:
Outcomes of previous Next Actions: Share what happened after the last set of Next Actions were shared out, good and bad. If the Next Action wasn't completed, explain why, and then what we'll do next time to complete the action.
Link to previous GNN Update: Add a link back to the previous GNN update as a reference.
Monthly Business Review ("MBR")
Each month we review our progress against our company-level standard operating metrics.
The GNN Updates are prepared by business owners with input from the data owners.
In the MBR we align on the most important opportunities to accelerate the company, and supporting the DRI with Next Actions across the company to bring a goal back to success.
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