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Executive Business Administrators

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Intro

This page details processes and general guidelines specific to the Executive Business Administrators (EBAs) at GitLab. The page is intended to be helpful, feel free to deviate from it and update this page if you think it makes sense.

Executive Business Administrator Team

E-Group Member EBAs

All-Directs EBAs

Contact us

Please feel free to ping/hang out with us in slack at #eba-team. If you need to quickly communicate with the entire team please @ mention exec-admins in slack.

Meeting request requirements

If you would like to schedule a meeting with a Leader at GitLab, please slack the appropriate EBA in #eba-team with the following information (or DM if confidential):

  1. Must have/optional attendees
  2. Meeting type: internal prep, client facing/customer, prospective customer, etc
  3. Urgency/ Desired timeframe: in the next two days, in the next week or two, etc
  4. Duration: 25 mins, 50 mins, etc.
  5. Subject of the meeting
  6. Desired outcome of the meeting
  7. Provide context: include a link to the agenda doc and provide context in the document so that the EBA can adequately understand and prioritize your meeting with E-Group. The google doc is required to be included in the calendar invite. If you're requesting the meeting, it is your responsibility to prepare the agenda document.
  8. When scheduling an internal call with the CEO, confirm that there are attendees in non-United States time zones before requesting meetings before 10am PST.

Agenda Document Templates

  1. Agenda Document Template should be used for all meetings with members of our E-Group and provided at the time of the meeting request. Select file > make a copy to use this template. If relevant to your meeting request, the agenda document should include links relevant MRs, issues, slides, or helpful background material and information. This document is sufficient for most internal meetings.

Customer, Prospect and Partner Meetings with an E-Group Member

Please follow the instructions above for scheduling a call with your customer, prospect or partner and an E-Group member at GitLab. Instead of using the Agenda Document template, meetings with customers, partners and prospects require the following documents in order to schedule:

  1. Executive Customer Briefing Document should be used for all meetings with Customers or Prospects and provided to the EA at the time of the meeting request. This is the internal document that you will use to brief the Executive in a pre-meeting. Select file > make a copy to use this template and please make sure it is editable by everyone at GitLab. Watch Nico Ochoa in this 6.5-minute video share his best practices for completing this template (click here for Nico's template). If you have any questions related to this document, please ping Cheri Holmes in #eba-team in slack.
  2. Customer Collaboration Document. In addition to an internal Executive Customer Briefing Document, our CEO and CRO require a Customer Collaboration Document. This document is shared with the external party. Please make a copy of this document and update with Attendees and Agenda. Please ensure it's editable by everyone at GitLab. Please include both the Executive Customer Briefing Document and the Customer Collaboration doc to the EBA with your meeting request.
  3. Partner Briefing Document should be used for all meetings with Partners and provided to the EA at the time of the meeting request. Select file > make a copy to use this template and please make sure it is editable by everyone at GitLab. If you have any questions related to this document, please ping in #eba-team in slack.
  4. In addition to an internal Partner Briefing Document, our CEO and CRO require a Customer/Partner Collaboration Document. This document is shared with the external party. Please make a copy of this document and update with Attendees and Agenda. Please ensure it's editable by everyone at GitLab. Please include both the Executive Customer Briefing Document and the Customer Collaboration doc to the EBA with your meeting request.

External Events & Speaking Engagement

  1. If you have a request for a member of E-Group to attend and speak at an event (keynote, panel, fireside chat, etc.), please fill out the Executive External Event Brief with the key information and email to the EBA supporting the Executive with your request. The EBA will review, provide feedback, and gain approval accordingly and confirm directly with you. If the request involves the CEO, please follow the process outlined here. The EBA to the CEO will gain approval from the function head of the requestor on whether the CEO will attend or not. Whether a new talk needs to be prepared or an existing one can be adjusted to the audience should be a part of the decision whether or not to participate in the event.
  2. In-Person Event Meeting Template

Interview Requests with Executives

The process outlined below should be followed for requesting interviews with any executives. The Candidate Experience team and Executive Business Administrator team will adhere to a 24 hour working day SLA response time for scheduling interviews. Hiring is a top priority at GitLab and the team should prioritize interview requests.

  1. The CES team will tag the appropriate EBA in the private #eba-team-interview-requests slack channel with all the required details for the interview
    • Executive needing to be scheduled
    • Length of Interview
    • Any special timeframes
    • Candidate Greenhouse link
  2. Within the thread of the message, the CES team will include a copy and pasted view of the candidates availability with the timezone specified
  3. The EBA can either:
    • Provide the time and zoom link (if applicable) to the CES in the thread of the message to have the CES schedule within Greenhouse and send the confirmation email
    • Navigate to Greenhouse to schedule the interview and then notify the CES team in the thread that the interview has been scheduled and the confirmation is ready to be sent. CEO and CRO scheduling is the exception and handled by the EBA to the CEO and CRO. Confirmations are sent directly from the EBA.
  4. The CES team will follow up, as necessary if no response has been received from the EBA within the 24 working day business hours

EBA Team Best Practices

Suggested formats for calendar invites within Executive Group (E-Group)

When sending a calendar invite for an in-person meeting at Mission Control, please make sure to include the following items in the calendar invite:

  1. Calendar blurb
  2. Cell numbers (in case of an in-person meeting)
  3. Mission Control Access Instructions (when meeting at Mission Control)

General scheduling guidelines

Scheduling with the Executive Team

Please remember to reach out to the EBA of the executive you need to schedule for with an agenda, any time preferences, and length of the meeting.

Scheduling with the CEO

Scheduling with the E-Group

Scheduling with VPs or Directors

What to expect when joining a meeting with E-Group

Before the meeting

  1. Ask yourself or the requestor of the meeting: can this be done async?
    • If not, schedule the meeting. Please consider that synchronous meetings consume valuable time and resources, please consider conducting your meeting asynchronously whenever possible
  2. Calendar event for the meeting must include:
    • Link to the Agenda Document. Please avoid hyperlinking and paste the full URL in the invite. Consider utilizing the Share button at the top right hand corner of the Google doc and use the copy link function to make sure you get just the link to the doc itself unless you really need to link to a specific section of the document. The agenda doc should be editable by everyone in the meeting and whenever possible be editable or viewable by GitLab team members. It should also be editable for the EBA's scheduling the meeting or supporting members of E-Group involved in the meeting.
    • Link to the Zoom meeting in the location field and body of the invite
    • If the meeting is in person, include the address and any pertinent details (like how to access the building or security requirements) in the location and body of the invite. Please include the cell phone numbers of key contacts.
  3. Must be a speedy meeting
  4. Agenda for the meeting must be complete 24hrs or 1 business day before the meeting and include any links to materials and pre-recorded presentations
    • Live doc meetings provides a great overview of how we use live docs in our meetings.
    • We do not present in any of our meetings. If you wish to present your material, you can record a presentation in advance and link it in the agenda document. We use synchronous meetings for Q&A. More detail at https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/#no-presenting-in-meetings
  5. Plan to join the meeting on time. We start on time and do not wait for folks to join.
    • As most of our meetings are conducted over zoom, please join with your camera on and with a headset or dedicated microphone whenever possible
  6. The meeting may be recorded or live streamed to GitLab Unfiltered on YouTube, please determine in advance if the meeting should be live streamed or recorded
  7. Hybrid calls are horrible - remote meetings should have participants taking the meeting from their own equipment versus a shared conference room, shared device, etc.
  8. If you need to reschedule, contact the EBA team in #eba-team in slack versus contacting the E-Group directly

During the meeting

  1. The Host should start the meeting on time, if the Host is late, the participants should feel empowered to start the meeting on time
  2. We start in order of the agenda, with the person who has the first point in the numbered list
    • Unless it is a 1-1 meeting or some working group meetings, then we'd start at the bottom and work our way up
  3. If you're not actively speaking please help take notes. We prefer to document everything live.]
  4. If something is not on the agenda, we do not discuss it. However, participants can add topics during the meeting if time permits
  5. If you're not benefitting or contributing to the meeting, it is okay to leave the meeting
  6. Speak up if something is not working, i.e. a webcam is causing issues, a speakers volume is too low, there is latency.
  7. We end meetings on time. It is also okay to end meetings before time but not after time.

After the meeting

  1. Update and review the notes, if necessary.
  2. Add a link to the recording or live stream at the top of the doc
  3. Assign any action (TODO) items to stakeholders

Travel

EBAs research the best option for a flight and book it according to their executive's schedule. If the Executive requires approving the flights beforehand, please follow that process before booking. Make sure to add a calendar item for 2 hours before take off for check in and add a separate one for travel time before that in the exec's calendar. If a flight was changed or not taken due to delays or other circumstances, make sure to check with the airline for the current flight status.

Expensify

Zoom

Google Groups

To view members of Google Groups, reference the Google Workspace group member repo. A sync is run on the repository every hour, as noted in the README.md file.

Company Mail

The mail is forwarded weekly to the CFO's Sr. EBA and will be distributed accordingly.

OKRs

Performance Indicators (PI)

More information can be found here

Leadership SAT Survey

On a quarterly basis, any Executive at GitLab that has dedicated administrative support via an Executive Business Administrator will receive a survey with a series of questions and a rating scale of 1-5 (5 being excellent) to determine the performance of the EBA team.

Sample Questions:

Signature Request procedure

When requesting a wet signature for a document(s) please have the following questions answered in advance.

  1. Is there an issue? If there is more than two documents you may want to consider creating an issue to track progress
  2. What is this for?
  3. Electronic signature or physical wet signature?
  4. Who needs to sign? See Authorization Matrix
  5. Why is this person’s signature required?
  6. If a wet signature is required, is there a specific ink color that should be use?
  7. Is there a specific paper size that is required? For example, Ireland requires A4.
  8. Is Legal required to review and/or stamp approved?
  9. Is a notary required?
  10. Is an apostille required?
  11. When is this due?
  12. Where should the originals be sent? Include the recipient's name, company name, address and phone number.

Specific directions for signature request:

Directions for executed documents:

Virtual Team Building Ideas

Hosted Games

Not Hosted

Escape Rooms

Murder Mysteries

Contests

Themed

Magician

Happy Hours

Other Hosted Experiences

In-person team events and activities (by location)

Gift Ideas & Vendors

Multiple Overseas Locations:

Australia:

UK:

US:

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