Remote Work Productivity & Lifestyle

@AllanCaeg chats with Jason Dydynski of WeekDone, team software for driving change.

Show notes:

• WeekDone helps teams see how their daily activities connect with their bigger work
• The platform helps teams with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and PPP status reporting (Progress, plans, problems)
• Jason's team always enabled flexibility
• They believe that your work and your life should fit together
• Teams bring in new Objectives (OKRs style) when they want to achieve beyond business as usual
• WeekDone's Remote Team Management features
• Jason's team relies on asynchronous communication
• Empower your team members to achieve goals their way

Allan of RemoteCompass.com chats with Bretton Putter, CEO of CultureGene.ai

Brett is author of Culture Decks Decoded and Own Your Culture.

Show notes:

• Brett's team helps clients define, embed, and manage their culture
• Companies in rapid growth find that it's time to invest in company culture
• Brett's research suggests that only one out of 10 companies has done anything about their company culture
• Social distancing measures made organizations more aware of the importance of company culture
• The leadership team allowed the four walls of the office to develop and maintain the culture
• Companies that tend to grow rapidly invest in their culture early
• When an organization is smaller (e.g. 3-person company) and doesn't expect to grow beyond that, they can get away without being too systematic about their culture
• It's important for co-founders to understand your culture and values as they prepare to hire aggressively
• Being systematic about your culture has a lot to do with how much and how fast your headcount will change
• Start thinking about your culture when you're a team of 15 to 20 as it's difficult to connect with everyone everyday
• The first 15 team members are likely hired from the founder's network
• Brett suggests there is no such thing as a "good culture". It's about whether one is a good fit for a company or not
• A culture could be strong yet dysfunctional
• A culture is strong when expectations are well-defined and lived by the company on a daily basis
• You could have a well-defined culture that doesn't drive the business forward
• The companies with the strongest culture, based on Brett's research, started working remotely from day one, because they didn't have the option to do otherwise
• Culture is "the way we do things around here"
• "Culture and brand are two sides of the same coin, but culture comes first"
• As teams switch from co-located work to remote work, the glue that kept them together is weakening
• A well-defined culture brings stability and agility
• Companies that are smart about culture explain what values mean to the organization
• Values should be translated to 'expected behaviors'
• The team should define 3 to 6 behaviors that reflect each company value
• If a company values 'openness', an example behavior is "we don't talk about people behind their backs"
• Your values should inform who you recognize as employee of the month, hire, promote, etc
• If a team member joins a company remotely (e.g. from their own bedroom), they need to hear stories about what's acceptable or not
• You must keep repeating your culture's message. You know you're winning when your team's eyes are starting to roll

Allan of RemoteCompass chats with Pragmatic Thinking CEO Alison Hill.

Pragmatic Thinking is an AFR Fast 100 company that works with large organizations that are going through change. Alison’s work has made its way into businesses such as PepsiCo, McDonalds, Virgin Australia, Siemens, and more. 

Show notes:

• Ali's clients were already crafting much greater flexibility for their staff even before the pandemic
• Covid accelerated existing plans to find ways to connect differently (i.e. when there's no office space or watercooler)
• Leaders had to communicate the focus on performance more clearly 
• Introducing location flexibility means both 1) sourcing talent from different locations and 2) enabling existing team members to connect differently
• Strategic decisions that are typically made within the two- to three-year cycle are now being made at the three- to six-month cycle
• Organizations that will succeed through the next phase are those that balance a sense of calm and flexibility
• Pre-pandemic, innovative leaders would have imagined a hybrid (remote) setup for 10% to 20% of their workforce. COVID has shown that this affects more like 90% to 95%
• Succeeding with a hybrid team starts with the belief that this way of working is worth pursuing in the first place
• Their team has a "seize the midday" ritual where they're encouraged to go outside to move, generally at 12 pm
•  The blurring of boundaries between work and life also came with positive effects like meeting some of your coworkers' kids by virtue of doing video conferences
• Ali wraps up her workday by writing down three things she achieved today, three things she'll let go of today, and three things she needs to do tomorrow
• Teammates not only ought to communicate clearly. They also need to connect with each other as humans
• It's important to remember tangible ways to connect, like sending a care package
• As folks work from anywhere, they need three elements: 1) performance, 2) culture, and 3) autonomy

Allan of RemoteCompass chats with David Amselem of BIGVU.

Show notes:

• it's important to make your videos concise
• minimize rambling with short scripts and teleprompters
• video captions strengthen the impact
• it helps when your script can be easily converted into captions
• when you send a video for sales outreach purposes, you'd want to include a call-to-action on the page where the video is hosted
• David is a big believer in having the whole team together in one room
• amid lockdowns, the BIGVU team has been able to hire new team members over Zoom calls
• moving forward, BIGVU will give their team members the freedom to either work from home or in their office
• to stand out, salespeople send personalized videos to their prospects
• there are two parts to a message: 1) who you are/your personality and 2) the actual content you're trying to communicate

Allan of RemoteCompass.com chats with Nachum Kligman of Book Like A Boss, a popular product for booking services.

Show notes:

• Nachum faced the challenging back and forth describing his consulting services — if a session is paid, its benefits, how much it costs, what's included, when, and more
• His experiences inspired him to build an e-commerce platform for services in 2017
• People buy from people. They want to understand who they're booking
• The BLAB team is composed of team members in various countries
• They use WhatsApp, Trello, and Slack to coordinate
• Nachum likes to empower people, allowing them to own their jobs
• As a result, he rarely needs to hop on the phone with his partners
• They find that team meetings are unnecessary
• BLAB team members don't have to be micromanaged and are empowered to take their own risks
• 90% of the time, Nachum communicates with the team via WhatsApp voice messages
• BLAB's numbers doubled since March, growing alongside Zoom's rising popularity
• Nachum reckons that business should not be too formal — focused on hierarchies, ceremonies, sounding smart, etc
• Find Nachum on Book Like A Boss, Linkedin, and Twitter