To maximize the value of bringing teams together physically, focus on one of three goals. "Doing" involves collaborative work on a key project. "Learning" focuses on gaining business context. "Planning" aligns the team on strategy and roadmaps. This framework ensures gatherings are purposeful and effective.

To move beyond static playbooks, treat your team's ways of working (e.g., meetings, frameworks) as a product. Define the problem they solve, for whom, and what success looks like. This approach allows for public reflection and iterative improvement based on whether the process is achieving its goal.

To maintain a flat, hands-on engineering culture without dedicated managers, Fal replaces traditional one-on-ones. They feel 1-on-1s can force negativity and instead use small group discussions with mixed tenure and roles. This format fosters more constructive, solution-oriented conversations rather than simple complaint sessions.

The most effective product reviews eliminate all abstractions. Forbid presentations, pre-reads, and storytelling. Instead, force the entire review to occur within the actual prototype or live code. This removes narrative bias and forces an assessment of the work as the customer will actually experience it.

Jensen Huang uses the whiteboard as the primary meeting tool to compel employees to demonstrate their thought process in real-time. This practice eliminates hiding behind prepared materials and fosters rigorous, transparent thinking, revealing immediately when someone hasn't thought something through.

The V0 team dogfoods their own AI prototyping tool to define and communicate new features internally. Instead of writing specification documents, PMs build and share working prototypes. This provides immediate clarity and sparks more effective, tangible feedback from the entire team.

To keep non-technical stakeholders engaged, don't show code or API responses. Instead, have team members role-play a customer scenario (e.g., a customer service call) to demonstrate the 'before' and 'after' impact of a new platform service. This makes abstract technical progress tangible and exciting.

To prevent resentment in high-pressure teams, implement a scheduled forum for fearless feedback, like a "Sunday SmackDown." This creates a predictable, safe container for airing grievances—personal or professional. By separating critique from daily operations, it allows team members to be open and constructive without the awkwardness or fear of disrupting morale, thereby preventing small issues from escalating.

Instead of a top-down agenda, Brad Jacobs has his leadership team collaboratively create it for key meetings. Attendees submit and rank questions based on pre-read materials. Only the highest-rated topics make the final agenda. This bottom-up approach ensures the meeting focuses on what the team collectively deems most critical.