4 Ways ‘Office Hours’ Maximizes C-Suite Decision-Making and Performance
Tool Helps Executives Unblock, Educate, Connect, and Lead
When you’re the leader of a big company or team, it can be hard to quickly get to all the critical guiding and decisions you’d love to give your team on their many workstreams. Endless recurring meetings and 1:1s clog your calendar, and even your evenings may be full of emails and projects. Where can you find more time to be even more impactful? I’ve found “Office Hours” to be a fantastic tool for leaders to educate their team, drive quick decisions, get more connected, and positively guide the company culture. There are two types - “Ask Me Anything” and “Decision-Driven Office Hours” I detail below.
Ask Me Anything Office Hours
An open “Ask me anything” format can be a great start to offer a more intimate connection point than the traditional all-hands meetings and project meetings. Plus, it helps you scale your time more than skip levels and 1:1s. The Co-CEO of Atlassian, Scott Farquhar, loved doing a monthly AMA lunch open to 10-15 people. It gave him a chance to interact with employees in a personal and informal setting, to hear what was really on their minds, to connect employees to strategy, and to share examples of our culture as the team grew rapidly and globally. We also experimented with Ask Me Anything Office hours on specific trending topics. It worked better to have an opt-in group of interested people instead of elongating all-company meetings.
Several other C-suite members have mentioned to me that AMA Office Hours got more traction than all-team meetings, as employees liked the informal format and the ability to listen in on each other’s questions. Some leaders group their office hours by sub-teams, others by topics or themes they think could use more explaining. One leader said he wouldn’t even give a 1-on-1 if an employee didn’t take the initiative to show up at office hours first.
Decision-Driving Office Hours
At Atlassian, my marketing team grew massively and quickly, I had trouble looping myself into the right level of decision-making at the right time since my calendar was full. I also had the issue of managers filtering work for my visibility, creating longer time loops and “game of telephone” feedback distortion. I created a standing Office Hours block once a week, where anyone in my organization could bring time-sensitive decisions, work-in-progress for feedback, and discussions. Office hours were invaluable to me to see work before it had progressed in the wrong direction. It was fast-paced, timely, and incredibly productive. I got a chance to connect directly with individual contributors with their managers and explain the context of my feedback. And I got to get to know people within my organization more personally than my calendar would have allowed.
Hank Taylor, the former Head of Marketing at hypergrowth company Vercel, adapted my advice on Office Hours and expanded it further. He was the first marketer when Vercel and built out all of the processes, tech stack, and team. He had a close relationship with the CEO, understanding his voice and preferences. Further, he had a deep technical understanding of the product, developer audience, and marketplace. In 2021 he hired 50 people alone, 5xing his team across Developer Relations, Marketing, and Revenue Operations. He wished he could clone himself to provide more direct feedback to the throngs of new people.
Vercel’s Hyper-Productive Office Hours
Hank reserved 90- or 120-minute blocks on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the middle of the day, and anyone could reserve a 10-minute block. Vercel had an internal slogan around “Develop, Preview, Ship” that Hank used to organize the themes of his office hours
Monday: Develop - Bring ideas or projects and get approval to get started
Wednesday: Preview - Bring in progress work you need help resolving, unblocking
Friday: Ship - Bring final approval materials
With 9-12 10 min meetings, Hank achieved a fantastic velocity without the time suck of 1:1s.
“It was crazy intense, but super-efficient. We made so many decisions in such a dense period of time. People loved it. There were very clear expectations on what they needed to bring to get a decision, and they knew they could get unblocked quickly,” Hank told me.
Logistically, Hank managed the meeting with a Notion document explaining the rules, a signup spreadsheet, a Slack channel with all the docs pinned to the top, and a team member who helped cull the spreadsheet for issues, questions, and better time grouping. The whole meeting was in one Zoom room, and people filtered in and out, so Hank didn’t have to have any logistical time waste.
The rules Hank outlined:
Any managers between us have to know you’re coming and have been briefed
Be clear about the result you want - brainstorm, feedback, or final decision?
Come prepared with docs, data, and context. We’ll make every minute count.
You can’t use the meeting to undo any decisions and create drama - drama is the worst at a scaling company.
Certain people can get two blocks in a row if the topic warrants it
While making big decisions was a huge benefit, Hank used it for smaller items too. Vercel had a policy that all content had to be approved by two top marketing leaders to be published; Vercel’s technical, outspoken developer community required a high bar of excellence. The office hours gave people a vehicle to get their content quickly copy-edited and approved and gave Hank a chance to teach the employees how to write the “Vercel way.” Hank knew the company voice, processes, and systems so well; Office Hours helped him teach the team in real-world relevant scenarios.
See a template based on Hank’s Office Hours Command Center below:
Maximize your Time and Team
As leaders, our time is our most valuable asset to ourselves and our team. Our teams crave our feedback and often require our decisions to move forward. Our second most valuable asset is a team that understands our strategy, decision-making criteria, and market insights so they can use them themselves without us. Office hours help optimize both of these assets. We can make the best use of our time when there’s a structured format and a streamlined process instead of rabid Slacking, emails, or calendar hijacking. Let’s lead with purpose and structure!
Have you used Office Hours? Any suggestions or templates you think could help other leaders?
Carilu Dietrich is a former CMO, most notably the head of marketing that took Atlassian public. She currently advises CEOs and CMOs of high-growth tech companies. Carilu helps leaders operationalize the chaos of scale, see around corners, and improve marketing and company performance.