Zappos started opening its internal employee meetings. It has 1,000 people watching right now as I am writing this participating watching their “internal” all hands meeting. It’s really the extreme of opening your company, those “all hands meetings” are generally about sharing the progress but also the problems of the company to fix them. Zappos is cool and does very interesting tours which you should participate in next time you go to Vegas, part of “wow me” culture is they come and pick you up at the airport.
Why would that be good for your company?
Shows that you have nothing to hide
Opening up internal meetings to anyone interested shows you’re not scared about showing the kitchen and how things are done, it brings more trust.
Gives an opportunity for anyone from the outside to help on a problem
Opening everything you do including problems might get you someone from the outside solve the problem for you. The chances for Zappos to have someone help them as they have thousands of people participating in the meeting are pretty high.
Great marketing
It’s so unusual that people talk about it. I talk about it, I am doing a video about it and this blog post because it’s really interesting and it’s also the opposite of what everybody else does. Another wow opportunity. People talk about unusual stuff and especially when it helps them. Looking from the outside at an internal all hands meeting is, think about it, really interesting for many people as a learning opportunity, they can see how Zappos operates from the inside.
What are the threats?
Your competitors can watch it too
If I was a Zappos competitor I would obviously watch this to answer the “what are they doing next” question. I guess you can turn that into a positive to execute faster than they do. Our “public roadmap” is available to all as well.
Your problems get exposed and get lead to PR issues
That’s a really difficult one. I guess Zappos can do it because they are very successful but imagine doing a live all hands meeting with a company facing difficulties. Imagine if you start streaming people getting let go of your company or the decisions leading to that. Not really easy to manage and the press and bloggers are watching, too.
Your employees can be uncomfortable
Being on camera live leads many people to not speak the same way, not expressing problems they’re facing the same way they would do in a small group. The way Zappos is doing it is very extreme with the associated chat room in ustream of people commenting what’s happening. Backchannel chat isn’t always very nice to the speakers. I had live backchannel at my conference leweb a few years back and took it down for most of the time now, just having it during the break or panels. It bother many speakers and some just refuse to face it. It’s also being polite to the speaker to pay attention to him instead of any type of backchannel.
Would you do it if you had your own business or in your current company? I don’t think I would, I love transparency and openness but I think the risks are quite high here, I am curious to see how it goes for Zappos. In any case it’s great marketing, pay attention they ask your email address before you can watch the live. Would you try?