i run a media company. 15 youtube channels, about 26 people total.
about 6 months ago i noticed a problem that was getting worse every month. teams were working in silos. the content team had no idea what deals we were closing. the dev team didn't know why certain production workflows existed. people were making decisions based on outdated information because nobody had told them things had changed.
so i started doing monthly town halls. nothing fancy. everyone in the room (remote people join via slack huddle), i share the screen, we talk about where the company is going, what each team is working on, what's not working.
the first few were awkward. people just sat there nodding. nobody wanted to ask anything.
then in the second one i basically said look, you can ask literally anything. i don't care how random it is. someone tested that immediately and asked "can we get a playstation in the office?" which honestly made everyone laugh but it actually led to something. we started a welfare pilot program in the next town hall because that question opened up a real conversation about what people actually want from their workplace.
now 5 sessions in, people actually bring stuff up. complaints, suggestions, things that bug them. its still a work in progress but the information gap has gotten noticeably smaller.
the AI part came later. i realized most of my team knew AI existed but nobody was actually using it in their daily work. so i started running hands-on workshops where everyone opens up claude on their laptop and we go through real workflows together. not theory. actual stuff like "here's how you can use this to draft a brief in 10 minutes instead of 2 hours."
we've done 2 sessions so far. the first one was about 30 minutes, second one was almost an hour because people kept asking questions. thats when i knew it was working.
the thing nobody tells you about running a small company is that your team only knows what you actively share with them. they don't magically absorb context. you have to create systems for it. town halls and workshops are the simplest version of that.
anyone else doing something similar? curious how other small teams handle internal knowledge sharing.
I started running monthly town halls and AI workshops for my 26-person team. here's what actually changed.
byu/Longjumping-Hope5941 inEntrepreneur
Posted by Longjumping-Hope5941
1 Comment
“Your team only knows what you actively share with them” is one of those obvious truths that most founders learn way too late. The information gap you described – teams making decisions on outdated context – is probably the most expensive invisible problem in a 20-30 person company.
The progression from awkward silence to people actually bringing complaints is the part that takes patience. Most founders try a town hall once, get the nodding silence, and never do it again.
Curious how much time the town halls + workshops actually take you per month when you factor in prep, the session itself, and follow-up. That overhead is real but it sounds like the ROI is already visible.