How to host a high-impact all-hands
Create alignment, build trust, and motivate your team with this town hall agenda
When done right, the all-hands becomes the centerpiece of your operating rhythm. It’s a moment of shared awareness, alignment, motivation, and momentum. The sooner you treat it as a ritual instead of a routine, the sooner your team will follow your lead, and your entire organization will feel more aligned and unified.
The most common issue I see across companies I work with is a lack of alignment. Even those companies with great products and top-tier teams might think they’re rowing in the same direction, but in reality, they aren’t. The all-hands meeting is the most powerful tool at a CEO’s disposal to fix that.
For many CEOs, company all-hands meetings feel like a chore on an already overwhelming calendar. It’s easy to deprioritize in the early days, when you don’t have an EA, a head of people, or anyone else to delegate the coordination of these meetings. Later on, it’s tempting to fully offload the responsibilities to others. But in both cases, that’s a mistake. Whatever time and investment you make as CEO in your all-hands will pay back multiple times over.
In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of all-hands meetings for driving alignment and momentum, regardless of a company's size, and share best practices for hosting all-hands meetings that your staff will be eager to attend. This includes:
What is an all-hands meeting?
An all-hands is a shared ritual that reminds people what they’re building together. It’s a company-wide, recurring gathering where leaders and staff share important updates and announcements.
Sometimes called a “town hall,” these meetings are a deliberate moment of connection and an opportunity for the CEO to ensure everyone knows where the company is headed, how it’s performing, and why their work matters.
The all-hands is the place to repeat the mission, the vision, and the current “rallying cry,” as Todd Olsen, Co-Founder and CEO of Pendo, puts it. At Pendo, they remind their team of “core values every single meeting.”
When done consistently, with the same structure and tone, the all-hands becomes part of the company’s identity. As Daniel Chait, co-founder and CEO of Greenhouse, shared with me, “I like to say that my job is CRO, which is Chief Repetition Officer. You need to say the same things over and over again, and you need to focus people on the few priorities that matter.”
Why every company needs all-hands meetings
If you want loyalty, trust, and culture, you need a shared operating rhythm. And that starts with your all-hands. It’s the only meeting that touches the entire organization with a singular purpose: to create alignment, build trust and motivation, and reinforce shared direction.
Here’s what a well-run all-hands delivers:
Awareness: Who’s doing what and why it matters
Even at 10+ employees, you’ve already lost full visibility. Teams start to operate in silos, and context gets scattered. A consistent all-hands restores that awareness across the org.
Alignment: Are we all rowing in the same direction?
By the time you hit 30+ people, alignment starts to fracture. It gets exponentially worse as the company scales: at 100+ people, team members will not have even met each other. The all-hands meeting is your best opportunity to ensure that every team understands the company’s goals and their role in achieving them.
Transparency: Share the real picture
A great all-hands creates space for honest updates. It builds trust when you show how the company is doing, even if that means sharing tough news. Your team wants to hear the good and the bad.
Loyalty: People stay where they feel connected
When you treat it like a ritual, it creates consistency, exclusivity, and even a sense of pride. It becomes a part of your culture. People know when the next one is happening. They show up expecting to learn something, to get recognized, and to feel connected to the bigger picture.
What makes a great all-hands?
An all-hands isn’t a status update; those can be delivered asynchronously with little effort. Instead, an all-hands is a designed experience. When it’s done well, people walk away with a sense of clarity, motivation, and pride. When it’s done poorly, people tune out or stop showing up entirely.
If you’re a small startup without a CEO support system (EA, Head of People, etc), you won’t have the time or resources to produce a flawless show, and that’s okay. In the early days, the most important thing is to build the habit with consistent updates and diverse contributors.
But as your company grows, these four elements are what make a great all-hands meeting:
Planning
Don’t wing it. The worst all-hands feel like a CEO monologue with no clear goal. The best ones are structured and intentional. Everyone knows the agenda, presenters are prepped, and transitions are smooth. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to feel like someone cared enough to plan it ahead of time.
Tip: Create a shared agenda doc at the start of each month and assign owners for each topic or section. Lock in the content a couple of days before the all-hands.
Certainty
Certainty in the workplace is a huge part of mental well-being. When people feel uncertain, they don’t feel safe. People want to know when they’ll get answers. That’s why your all-hands needs a regular cadence. Not quarterly, not “when we have something important,” but monthly or even weekly at an early stage. Keep the rhythm and structure consistent.
When people know what to expect, they can show up ready to engage.
Tip: Pick a fixed day and time (e.g., 3rd Thursday at noon) and never cancel it. Even if you have less to share, keep the rhythm.
Production
I was attending a CEO event years ago with the CEO of the 76ers. He said, “Our all-hands were so produced… we’d have smoke machines.” At the time, mine were just me rambling off updates. After that conversation, we started treating our all-hands like a show. We had a deck, music, and practiced transitions. It became a real production.
For most companies, smoke machines are overkill. However, you should treat it like a production. Play music as people join. Have a clean, branded deck, and create smooth transitions. The polish doesn’t need to be theatrical, it just needs to communicate that this thing matters. Show your organization you’re invested and prepared.
Tip: Use the same high-energy song to start every all-hands meeting, whether it's over Zoom or in person. This sets the same tone for each meeting before you say a word.
Multiple voices
The best all-hands are collaborative. It’s not a CEO show. Bring in multiple voices, such as department leads, customer-facing teams, and even customers themselves. When people beyond the CEO or other executives present, it reinforces that everyone contributes to the company’s success, not just leadership.
This also means creating a safe space for feedback, addressing anonymous questions, and providing opportunities for other people to contribute.
Tip: Rotate presenters each month. Assign different leaders or ICs to share wins, customer stories, or demos. Collect anonymous questions in advance via a simple Google Form (and then answer those questions in front of everyone).
The ultimate all-hands format
Below is a proven structure for running an all-hands meeting, based on my experience hosting over 200 all-hands meetings and helping dozens of CEOs do the same. You can adapt the lengths and sections to fit your team’s size and stage, but the flow should stay somewhat the same:
Total duration: 60 minutes is the sweet spot. Long enough to deliver real value and cover everything, and short enough to keep people engaged.
Before you begin: Reinforce confidentiality. You might share sensitive information. Remind the team that this stays in the room.
Make it mandatory: Optional attendance kills momentum. If this is your most important ritual, treat it that way. Your all-hands should be non-negotiable.
Now, let’s get into the agenda. Follow the steps below to create and run a high-impact all-hands that creates alignment, builds culture, and respects your team’s time.
1. Welcome
Duration: 2 minutes
How you kick off every all-hands will set the tone for the duration of the meeting. Start with energy, and show that you care. If you’re just casually easing into it, you’re already losing them.
Start on time, every time.
Play high-energy music as people join – the same song every time.
Celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and new hires with names and photos.
2. Company vision and rallying cry
Duration: 3 minutes
This section reminds the team about the mission they’re on, creating alignment and unifying the company’s direction. Clarity and repetition are your goals here. You’re going to be tired of saying things, but that’s the job. People need to hear it over and over again before it starts to sink in.
Repeat the company’s mission and vision.
Remind staff of the current key focus areas.
Use visually compelling slides to help instill what matters.
3. State of the business
Duration: 5 minutes
This is the CEO’s unfiltered read on how the business is doing. The goal is to provide the entire company with a transparent view of what is going well and what is not. This is also the time to discuss tradeoffs or challenges that are in play.
Share context. What’s working? What’s not? Where are we focused?
Use consistent framing so people can track progress over time.
Focus on the narrative here. This is your qualitative update. The metrics will come next as an extension of this part. Consider this the qualitative update.
4. Key metrics
Duration: 5 minutes
This is your company’s scoreboard; the quantitative update. Bring in your head of finance or CFO for this section to show how you’re tracking on key business goals and KPIs. The goal is transparency, not perfection. Consistency matters. If you constantly swap out metrics to paint a rosier picture, your team won’t have the clarity they need to course-correct.
Walk through the same 3-5 core metrics every time (revenue, churn, NPS, etc.).
Always show results versus goals so it’s extremely clear how the company is performing.
Don’t hide misses. Explain what happened and what’s next.
Define acronyms and any “code words” to give context for new team members.
5. Celebrate wins
Duration: 10 minutes
This section is about celebrating progress, including product launches, customer feedback, revenue milestones, and team achievements. This is where momentum comes from. They need to hear that what we’re building is working.
Rotate presenters to share wins from different parts of the business.
Highlight the “why” behind the win: what problem was solved or what impact was there?
Include customer stories, screenshots, demos, reviews, or data if available.
Give managers space to spotlight their teams.
6. Strategic topics
Duration: 20 minutes
This is the meat of the all-hands meeting. Reserve this part for the most important conversations shaping the business. It doesn’t need to be 20 minutes of you, the CEO, speaking to the company. Rotate topics and presenters to keep it fresh and inclusive.
Focus on 1-2 key topics that are relevant across the company (roadmap previews, competitive landscape, equity 101, upcoming offsite, customer Q&A, changing sales dynamics, etc).
Give team leads and ICs space to contribute.
Use visuals or demos to reinforce clarity and enhance understanding.
7. Hiring updates
Duration: 3 minutes
Use this time to highlight open roles and referral programs. If you have a head of people or an HR leader, this is a good section for them to own. Keep it simple, consistent, and upbeat. Don’t assume people know, make it clear, and make it easy.
Share important open roles across departments.
Remind people how to refer candidates.
Mention any referral bonus incentives.
8. Q&A
Duration: 7 minutes
This is your opportunity to surface concerns from employees, clarify strategy, and establish trust. It’s about making a safe space for questions and demonstrating transparency and inclusivity.
As the CEO, you should moderate and route answers to the right execs or leaders.
Use a Google Form, Slack, or an audience interaction tool like Slido to collect questions anonymously.
Mix answering pre-submitted and live questions if you’re comfortable doing so.
Be honest, direct, and respectful, even if the question is tough.
9. Top performer shoutouts
Duration: 5 minutes
Close the meeting by spotlighting the people who went above and beyond. It reinforces values and leaves the team on a high note. I’ve had people tell me they sent these slides to their parents. That stuff sticks, and it matters more than you think.
Call out the person by name and be specific about what they did.
Tie the recognition to a company value, goal, or customer outcome.
Avoid generic praise; make it meaningful.
Deliver it personally, ideally from the CEO.
Important: Wrap on time, every time. You don’t want the all-hands to be a burden or a reason people are late to their next meeting.
Who owns the all-hands?
The CEO sets the tone, but they shouldn’t run the entire show. All-hands meetings require real planning, not just winging it the night before. If the CEO owns everything, it becomes a bottleneck. If no one owns it, it becomes a mess.
Delegate the coordination, not the voice
Assign ownership to someone who can make it run smoothly. Maybe your Head of People, your EA, or an Operations Lead. That person is responsible for pulling together the slides, coordinating with presenters, confirming the agenda, and ensuring the meeting happens.
The CEO’s role
Deliver the narrative, reinforce the mission, and show up with energy and clarity. However, the meeting itself should be a team production with voices from across the org and content that’s crowd-sourced, not just CEO-driven.
From scrappy to polished
If your company is growing, you will need an all-hands rhythm eventually, so you might as well start now. The format doesn’t have to be perfect from the start. What matters most is building the habit early and maintaining consistency as you scale. Here’s how the all-hands meeting typically evolves:
Stage 1: Scrappy but essential (10 - 50 people)
In this early stage, you probably don’t have an EA, a Head of People, or even much of a deck. That’s okay. That all-hands is still critical, just keep it lightweight and focused.
Start once you have employees beyond the founding team.
Aim for a bi-weekly or monthly cadence.
Keep it short (30 minutes is plenty).
Focus on the top needle-movers (product milestones, usage, and acquisition).
Use it for product demos and team presentations to share context across roles.
Prioritize consistency over polish. The ritual is what matters most.
I’ve seen early-stage teams run great all-hands with just demos and context sharing. It was informal, but it created real alignment. If your team is remote, this becomes even more important. You need rituals that bring people together, build culture, and reinforce shared focus.
Stage 2: Polished and produced (50 - 100+ people)
As your team grows, the stakes (and complexity) grow with it. Informal no longer scales. It’s time for a more structured and polished experience.
Shift to a monthly cadence with a fixed day and time.
Build a repeatable agenda structure (like the one we shared above).
Delegate coordination to an EA, Head of People, or someone else.
Involve multiple contributors, not just execs.
Include slide decks, transitions, and light production (music, visuals, branded templates).
Treat it like a show to convey that this meeting is important.
The most important thing across both stages is consistency. A monthly, predictable all-hands (whether scrappy or refined) beats an ad hoc, last-minute version every time.
Ritual, not routine
A great all-hands is a leadership tool. It drives alignment, builds trust, and reinforces the company culture. You need consistency, clarity, and energy.
Start now, even if you’re just ten people and building slides yourself. Select a cadence, assign an owner, follow a repeatable format, and solicit input from others. Over time, you can refine your all-hands into a core part of your company’s operating rhythm.
When done right, the all-hands becomes the heartbeat of your business. Here’s what other CEOs have had to say about the importance of a company all-hands:
Told Olsen, co-founder and CEO of Pendo, emphasizes the importance of repeating critical things such as company values and key initiatives. They hold bi-weekly all-hands meetings and recognize individuals who embody the company’s values.
Craig Walker, Founder and CEO of DialPad, holds two all-hands meeting twice (once in the morning, once at night) so that it’s live for his globally dispersed team. He emphasizes the importance of investing in travel to host the all-hands meetings at various locations, ensuring that all locations feel like they’re truly part of the company.
Dane Atkinson, founder and CEO of Odeko, discusses the power of bi-weekly AMAs to enable others to ask questions and contribute their ideas. He also emphasizes the importance of educating the audience and providing context when presenting metrics.
Nick Cromydas, co-founder and CEO of Hunt Club, shares how his all-hands format evolved as the company has grown to hundreds of employees. He also emphasizes the importance of transparency during the all-hands meeting.
Zac Smith, Co-Founder and former CEO of Packet, held a weekly 25-minute all-hands meeting designed to reinforce company culture and alignment. Each session began with a five-minute creative segment, such as music, followed by company updates including new hires, scorecard reviews, and customer stories.
Tom Buiocchi, former CEO of ServiceChannel, describes using an “over-communication” strategy to navigate COVID. He sent daily company-wide emails or Slack messages sharing updates on wins, losses, and milestones, and held monthly all-hands to maintain transparency and cohesion as new executives joined and the business direction shifted.
Sean Griffey, Co-Founder and former CEO of Industry Dive, held a weekly 30-minute all-hands meeting to share business updates and introduce new hires, alongside triannual deep-dive “state of the company” sessions. These longer meetings included 20–30 minutes of financial and strategic updates, followed by live Q&A.
Daniel Chait, Co-Founder and CEO of Greenhouse, evolved his communication strategy as the company scaled. While early “Ask Me Anything” sessions worked well with 30–50 employees, they became less effective with over 100 staff, requiring pre-submitted questions and coordination with leaders to provide the right information.
Alan Masarek, former CEO of Avaya, emphasizes the importance of simple, consistent, and repetitive communication across all channels to align a large organization. He argues that effective leadership communication must be authentic, brand-like in clarity, and supported by consistent metrics.