All-hands prep

All-hands prep

Invocation: user only. Preps the CEO for the room; doesn't produce a script to read aloud.

Principles

• Narrative over inventory. A good all-hands has a through-line — a "here's what's happening and here's why it matters." A bad one is a list of updates bolted together.
• The hardest 2 minutes is first. Start with the bad news or the hard truth, because that's what the room is actually wondering about. Open with that and the rest lands differently.
• One big thing, not five medium things. Pick the single most important message and build the deck/meeting around it. The other stuff is supporting context.
• Anticipate questions. The CEO who doesn't prep for the obvious question gets blindsided by it in the room.

Workflow

1. Scope the window

Based on $ARGUMENTS (default: last month if monthly cadence):

• Determine what's covered — the window the team expects this all-hands to report on
• Pull last all-hands prep from Notion if one exists (mirror the structure so the team knows what to expect)

2. Pull context

In parallel:

• Metrics: key company metrics from whichever dashboard is canonical. If unavailable, ask user for numbers.
• Shipped work: Notion shipped page, #ship Slack, GitHub merged PRs in the window
• People news: hires, departures, internal moves, promotions (confirm with user what's announceable)
• Customer signals: major wins, losses, meaningful churn, big contracts
• Open concerns / risks: risk log high-severity items, anything bubbling in team channels
• Last all-hands recap: what the CEO committed to last time — did it happen?

3. Identify the one big thing

Before drafting, ask the user: "What's the single most important message for this all-hands?"

If the user isn't sure, offer 2-3 candidates based on what you pulled and ask them to pick. Don't proceed without a clear through-line.

4. Draft the prep doc

# All-hands prep — <date>

## The one big thing
<1-2 sentences. What should every person in the room walk away remembering?>

## Open with
<The hard truth, the big news, or the direct answer to what the team is wondering about. If there's bad news, this is where it goes. 2-3 sentences max.>

## Agenda (target time)
1. Open with (2 min)
2. Business update — metrics + shipped (5 min)
3. <the one big thing — its deeper treatment> (8 min)
4. People + org (3 min)
5. Q&A (15 min)
(Adjust times to total the allotted slot. Longer Q&A beats longer monologue.)

## Business update
**Metrics:**
- <metric>: <current> (prev: <last>, <delta>)
<...3-5 lines max. Leading indicators + trailing outcomes.>

**Shipped this window:**
- <1-3 bullets — the things that most matter to the team, not everything>

## The one big thing (deeper)
<3-5 sentences explaining the context, the decision, the ask (if any). Anticipate: what's the "but what about..." question someone will raise?>

## People + org
- <hires, departures, moves — only what's announceable>
- <key open roles if this is a hiring push>

## What I committed to last time
<From prior prep: what was promised. Check each one: delivered, in flight, or missed. If missed, be direct about why.>

## Anticipated questions (and my answers)
Q: <question the CEO knows will come — or should>
A: <1-2 sentence answer, with the nuance the CEO wants to convey>

Q: ...
A: ...
(Aim for 3-5 anticipated questions. Include the ones the CEO is dreading, not just the comfortable ones.)

## Slide outline (optional — only if slides are needed)
1. Title
2. The one big thing (one slide, one sentence)
3. Metrics (one slide, max 4 numbers)
4. Shipped (one slide, max 5 bullets)
5. <deeper on the big thing — 2-3 slides>
6. People (one slide)
7. Q&A (title slide)

5. Review and deliver

Show the draft. Common edits:

• Tone of the Open With section
• Which of the anticipated questions to drop / add
• Metric numbers correction

Offer to:

• Save the prep doc to Notion under the all-hands path
• Export the slide outline to a Google Slides draft (via Google Workspace MCP) — doesn't populate slides, just creates the structure

Never publish or broadcast the deck — the CEO shares it themselves during the meeting.

Don't

• Don't bury bad news. If there's hard truth, it goes in the Open With.
• Don't pretend missed commitments didn't happen. The team noticed; pretending otherwise erodes trust.
• Don't write the CEO's script. This is prep, not a teleprompter. Bullets, not sentences.
• Don't pad anticipated questions with softballs. Include the one the CEO is dreading.