In Praise of Internal AMAs

Employee engagement has long been a metric companies try to keep an eye on and improve, especially during this period of remote work. Our team has found that AMAs or Ask Me Anything sessions are a great way to drive technical employee engagement at Xandr. Our Tech Community team (Erica Starr, Sun Park, and I) rolled out a leadership AMA called Snack Time in early 2019 to help our 700+ person organization get to know our technology leaders after an acquisition. We went through several iterations before we got it right, but now we have a monthly event that we swear by.

Why we love AMAs:

• Employees get to know the members of our leadership team in a casual setting.
• It takes less effort to stand up than a fireside chat or a panel, making it easier for VP, SVP, and C-Level employees to get involved.
• Attendees drive the entire conversation, which supports engagement.

The Evolution

Inspired by Reddit’s AMA sessions, our team implemented the concept, but tweaked it to fit our needs. The structure we eventually decided on would be an in-person event with a Webex option. Our guests would have 3–5 minutes to introduce themselves an then our host would open it up to the attendees who would have 40 minutes to ask their questions.

As we tested our AMA structure month after month, there were two specific details of the event that weren’t working as well as we hoped. The in-person session didn’t feel as accessible to the attendees who joined remotely via Webex. Then, the pressure of verbally asking questions live seemed daunting for some of our attendees.

To make our sessions more inclusive, we decided to go virtual in February 2020. The primary thing we changed was that all attendees would participate via Webex. The second change was that all participants would ask their questions over Slack in a designated channel (instead of live during the session).

With these two structural tweaks in place, the first session we ran virtually (in February 2020) was a huge success. Using Slack as a tool to facilitate our session, the questions led to fun threads and a more casual and playful environment. Plus, having all folks join remotely no longer gave the in-person guests the upper hand.

Fast forward to March 2020, our virtual event experiment proved to be an easy transition for our team as we began operating from home. We stood up a few more programs with different objectives, but still using the same operating model and helped other groups to do the same. It eased us all into our new normal while keeping engagement high.

Suggestions and lessons learned

If you are interested in piloting an AMA at your organization, here are some tips for success:

• Keep it moving

Avoid awkward silence. Our host, Sun Park, has become an expert at watching the questions roll in on Slack, grouping similar ones into themes, and then weaving it all together to keep the narrative going. Any unanswered questions at the end of the session, are answered over Slack by our guests.

• Keep it intriguing

Our most recent guest called out that they didn’t have a traditional career path and had quit college. We added that to the invite. Ensure the email copy or invites share a few fun facts about your guest, which will garner interest.

• Keep it inclusive

Use whatever tools your organization has to keep the experience the same for everyone. Also, be mindful of time zones and be sure to record the sessions to share with those who could not attend.

• Keep it live

Live questions have proved to be more fun than pre-submitted questions. It gives it an authentic feel.

• Keep it casual

Don’t advocate for a lot of business-specific related questions. There are other formats for that. Most people just want to know about personal strategies, likes, dislikes, and family recipes for things like homemade kimchi.

• Keep it an AMA

Don’t do this fireside chat-style with rehearsed questions/discussions followed by audience Q&A. Give the attendees the power to drive the entire conversation.

• Keep it flexible

Know that each conversation will be completely different, so relish the variations.

Thanks for reading!