Creating Artificial Collisions in a Remote Workplace with David Wald of Aclaimant

A big push for people to return to the office is the argument that spontaneous interaction is critical to the growth of the business. The fear is that people are not communicating and it has hindered innovation.

However, let’s look at the number of fully remote companies who have been thriving throughout the past few years. The big differentiator is the structure and setting up interaction channels to foster communication.

Mastering the interview has been more challenging as it is often difficult to read nonverbal cues and interactions. As we have grown more comfortable with this method of interviewing, the structure of consistent interview questions has been the single most important element in hiring success.

Guest Bio:

David Wald is cofounder and CEO of Aclaimant, an insight driven workflow solution for safety and risk management. As CEO, David’s primary focus is driving the company’s vision, identifying and executing strategic partner and customer relationships, and growing the Aclaimant team and investor base. The company has been remote first for the past 8 years!

Prior to Aclaimant, David spent time with the Lightbank Venture Capital fund in Chicago on both the investment team, and as an operator and EIR. He was also a management consultant at Bain and Company. David graduated from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and currently resides in Chicago with his wife and three kids.

Today we discuss:

What's critical in a remote work/interviewing environment

How to fuel communication away from the watercooler

Hiring Story:

Intro to our top candidate's brother's high school friend… 

Series of comedic events

Got drenched on the way to the meeting

He took the job anyway, now is their department head

Challenges today?

Artificial collisions- bumping into people in the hall, watercooler conversation across departments

In a remote environment there are no collisions that aren’t preplanned

Creating a knowledge transfer in a remote environment

Zoom is not good for rapid collaboration

More than 4 people in a meeting

Create feedback loops 

People feel disconnected

Why is this important to the company?

Cant have passive actors in a remote environment

I was waiting for….

Proactive collaborators

Remote vs scaling

Onboarding is challenging remotely 

A lot of time spent 

Rick’s Nuggets

Communication must be fueled by leadership

Daily huddles (connection)Not mandatory, but everyone shows up

How do we solve the problem? 

Tooling:

Slack- internal connectivity tool

Every team, project & customer have their own room 

Sole service purpose in every room- avoid the noise

Zoom 

candidates , customers & internal

Zoom interviews

Scientific method

Each person testing on different topics

Prep the candidates

Notion - collaboration tool

Documenting every process and keeping it clean

True information source & driving everyone to that location

Dedicated team connected hours

Office hours for every team (meeting) once a week

Happy hour, game day, trivia, 

Informally stop and chat

Team members end up city hopping! 

Deliberate information distribution pathways

Information needs to get out 

Surveying tools, function specific data, 

all hands meetings (4-6 weeks)

Daily standups

Feedback Channel

Every manager & director is plugged into the right sequence of events to gather feedback

All very deliberate

Everyone in the know

Rick’s Nuggets

Remote (Zoom, Teams) interview 

Rules of engagementStart on time, end on time

Interviewer questions assignedMust gain evidence to support decision

Must take objective notes

Clear decision to move forward or releaseNo scorecard

Feedback

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

Very deliberate about how you create connectivity

Proper tools in place to facilitate

Right set of people who want to connect 

Guest Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidawald/

Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aclaimant/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin