Everyone offers a thirty-minute session teaching one thing they do. Not a presentation about their department — an actual hands-on piece of their job that someone else could try. The cross-team understanding this produces is worth more than any amount of org-chart explaining.
What it is good for
- Cross-team networkingConnecting people who would otherwise never share a meeting.
- CollaborationWorking a shared problem where no one person holds all the information.
- OnboardingHelping new people learn names, norms and who to ask about what.
- RecognitionMaking good work visible to people other than the manager.
What you need
- A sign-up sheet or shared document
- Rooms or breakout rooms, one per session
The run sheet
Collect offers a week ahead (prep)
Ask for a title and one line: what will someone be able to do at the end of thirty minutes? Reject anything that is a status update in disguise — the test is whether the attendee does something.
Publish the grid (prep)
Two or three rounds, several sessions in parallel. People sign up for what they want, with a cap per session.
Round one (30 min)
Sessions run in parallel. Facilitator's job is timekeeping and nothing else — ring a bell at twenty-five minutes.
Reset and round two (35 min)
Five minutes to move, then the second round. Teachers from round one become attendees.
Closing circle (10 min)
Back together. One sentence from each person: the single most useful thing you learned. No discussion, just the list.
Facilitator notes
- The quality lever is the session proposal, not the day itself. Spend your energy on rejecting vague titles a week early.
- Encourage the least obvious teachers — the person who runs payroll, the person who handles escalations at 2am. Those sessions are always the ones people talk about afterwards.
- Cap sessions at six attendees. Eight is a lecture.
Debrief questions
Ask these immediately afterwards, not next week. Fifteen minutes of these is what turns the activity into something the team refers back to — see the debrief guide.
- What does someone else's job turn out to involve that you had no idea about?
- Is there anything you now realise you have been making harder for another team without knowing it?
Variations
Onboarding week edition
Run it in a new starter's second week with sessions from each team they will work with. It replaces about four separate 'intro to our team' meetings.
Standing version
One session a fortnight at a fixed time instead of a single event. Lower drama, and it keeps going.
Access and inclusion
Ask teachers in advance about tools that need a particular input device or fast reaction, and offer an alternative task in those sessions. Publish session materials in advance for anyone who prefers to read first.
Running it remotely
One breakout room per session, with the grid in a shared document people can click into. Record sessions only with the teacher's consent, and say so on the sign-up.