August 25, 2026

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Hi Everyone,

A packed agenda is how most all-hands go wrong. Every team gets a slot, nothing gets removed, and the company leaves with more information but no clearer idea of what to do differently next week.

Michael Lopp, who led engineering teams at Apple and Slack, estimates that at least half of any company considers its all-hands a waste of time.

Today we're breaking down the fix, which is mostly subtraction, and one test for deciding what earns the room.

One test for every agenda item

Antoine Buteau, who runs business operations at the Canadian fintech Shakepay, wrote a ten-part series on all-hands meetings this year.

His point is that a comprehensive agenda teaches the wrong thing. When every team reports activity, "the company learns that many things happened." It doesn’t learn what should change.

So before any item goes on the agenda, ask:

Does the whole company need to hear this at the same time?

That's true for very few things. A missed goal the CEO explains in person and takes questions on. A change in priorities that every team needs to plan around. A decision people would otherwise hear secondhand.

Most other items don't pass the test. Status updates, launch recaps, and metrics reviews work the same as a written update, and reading takes less time than watching someone present.

How to cut the all-hands agenda

Take the draft agenda for your next all-hands and sort every item into three groups.

Needs the whole company, live: Decisions, priority changes, missed goals that change how teams should act, and anything you want people to question you on.

Belongs in writing: Status updates, launch recaps, and numbers that were already visible in a dashboard. These go into a written update that ships the same day as the meeting.

Belongs to a smaller group: Topics that concern one or two teams. Send them back to the teams they concern.

Put only the first group in the meeting. Everything else moves to writing or a team meeting.

Once the agenda is sorted, protect two things:

1. Org changes get one slide. Anything more and the reorganization takes over the meeting, so announce the change, name who's affected, and handle the detail in team meetings afterward.
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2. Q&A keeps its time slot even when the meeting runs long. In most all-hands, when a section runs over, the time comes out of the questions at the end, and questions are the only part of the meeting a written update can't replace. If something has to give, cut a presentation.

Won't teams feel the cut?

Some will, at first. Presenting to the whole company feels like recognition, and losing the slot can look like a demotion. Two things soften it. The update still goes out to everyone, in writing, on the same day. And recognition stays in the meeting — celebrating people is one of the best uses of a live audience. What goes away is the status presentation, not the visibility.

Try this before your next all-hands

Block 30 minutes with whoever builds the agenda and run the three-bucket sort on the next meeting's draft. Move everything in bucket two into a written update, and if the meeting comes out 20 minutes shorter, end it 20 minutes early.

Then open the meeting with one sentence about the change: "We moved the updates into writing so this hour can go to decisions and your questions."

Go deeper

👉 Rands in Repose: So You Want to Fix Your All Hands — read this before you redesign anything; Lopp walks through the full format, from the one-slide rule to why consistency beats novelty.

👉 Antoine Buteau: The All-Hands Is Not a Broadcast — start here if you want the full argument behind the sort, then follow the series for Q&A and scale.

👉 Harvard Business Review: How to Lead an All-Hands After Delivering Bad News — keep this one for the quarter when the news is heavier than a normal miss.

👉 Fast Company: Why leaders need to stop confusing transparency with clarity — read this if your instinct after a hard quarter is to share more dashboards.

Coming up tomorrow

Tomorrow, we're breaking down why sales forecast misses come from incentives rather than data, and what to change.

See you tomorrow!