Person of the Year
↪ Intro video from event
Key outcomes —
100%
retention
60-min all-hands
format
Tooling used —
- Internal communications
- Employee recognition programs
The challenge
A globally distributed team felt disconnected, with low engagement in meetings during a period of significant organizational and market churn. Retention was a real risk, and the usual fixes, a fun Slack channel, an optional happy hour, weren't going to be enough to counteract the kind of disconnection that comes from real uncertainty.
Strategy & execution
I designed and led a "Person of the Year" all-hands, a 60-minute format built specifically to re-energize a disconnected global team, using a structure most teams never attempt because it's a little uncomfortable to pull off.
Paired every team member with a colleague and gave them the assignment of preparing a short presentation about that person, not their own work, but someone else's. The constraint was the point: most people are reluctant to brag on themselves, but given permission and a few minutes on stage, they'll brag on someone else without hesitation.
Used that structure to force real storytelling and recognition into a meeting format that usually defaults to status updates, giving people a reason to actually know what their teammates had been working on and going through.
Leaned on recognition and storytelling as a deliberate engagement lever during a period of high external and internal change, betting that being seen by your peers does more for retention in a hard quarter than another all-hands deck ever could.
Results
The team retained its people through a high-churn period without losing staff, and the call generated measurable, immediate engagement and rave reviews from a team that had been checked out going into it.