00;00;08;01 - 00;00;50;02
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Long Distance It's Work Life podcast where we try to make sense of the crazy emerging, constantly changing world of remote and hybrid work. And today I'm really excited. This is an important topic and we haven't really addressed it before. But one of the most important things in anyone's career is the ability to manage projects and and you don't have to be an official PMI blast project manager because there's all kinds of projects and we have an excellent, excellent guest today we are going to introduce you to.

00;00;50;05 - 00;01;07;14
Wayne Turmel
And here she is now, Cory Cogan, who is the coauthor along with Suzette Blakemore of Program Manager, Project management for the unofficial project manager. Tara Corey, who are you in? What the heck is the book about?

00;01;07;16 - 00;01;37;03
Kory Kogon
High range. First of all, thanks for having me. And I serve as a vice president of content development for Franklin Covey is familiar with God organization, hailing from the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as the where it all started. And I am the lead author on our work around project management. I tend to be what they call the subject matter expert, although I'm not an expert on many things productivity and leadership.

00;01;37;03 - 00;01;49;02
Kory Kogon
So having run many projects in my life as an unofficial project manager on the scarred, unofficial project manager and just delighted that this book is so popular for people like me and others.

00;01;49;04 - 00;01;59;26
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I think a lot of us did our first project management before we knew that's what we were doing.

00;01;59;28 - 00;02;32;06
Wayne Turmel
I kind of explained it to somebody. Once the projects run the range from cooking dinner for your spouse to, you know, putting on a high society wedding and there while they are essentially the same thing, there are levels of complexity and craziness that go along with it. Why do you think people find themselves in unofficial project management? How does that how does one find oneself in that space?

00;02;32;08 - 00;03;08;23
Kory Kogon
Well, first of all, you're exactly right. So since the beginning of time, if you were cooking dinner at the hearth for your family or having a family reunion or whatever, everything that has a beginning and an end, you know, is a project personally and professionally. So it's always been that way. But in the work force in particular, over the years as we've moved from, you know, sort of the factory, the the assembly line process kind of work and we slipped into the roles of being knowledge workers where we're paid to think in a very create and execute.

00;03;08;25 - 00;03;37;02
Kory Kogon
We are tasked today with working on things that have a beginning and an end. And I think the pandemic really helped solidify that as we had to be very innovative very quickly and create new things to be able to adjust to the new world. And whether you are creating a marketing campaign, a learning program, a new system, whatever it all is projects and we think about them, we innovate them.

00;03;37;02 - 00;03;55;21
Kory Kogon
And so like you said, when we've been doing it for a long time and I said, I'm scarred. Everybody's very good at what they do, but never had the benefit of, you know, real training or learning around processes and systems. And we just pushed our way through to the best of our ability.

00;03;55;23 - 00;04;36;29
Wayne Turmel
I think a lot of people, when they hear project management, their brain immediately goes to the very complex, you know, project management, institute, PMI, Gantt charts and stuff, and there's, you know, software and things that I need to know. What are the things that you I don't think you've ever been asked this question this way before. When you start doing projects, what are the things that you absolutely need to know and what are the things that especially early on, you shouldn't worry your pretty little head about?

00;04;37;02 - 00;05;06;23
Kory Kogon
Well, that's an interesting question. I'm going to reverse it on you because I think the first thing you need to look at is some of the trends around why projects fail and the things that we hear. And I you know, data shows this. Whenever I ask an audience, I could be in the UK, in Africa, anywhere, and I get the same list that is, you know, a lack of clear goals or outcomes, lack of communication.

00;05;06;23 - 00;05;40;17
Kory Kogon
People are in the wrong roles, you know, all of those kinds of things. And when you hear that, what comes clear and cutting through the noise, like you said, and you know, PMI certainly has they've done some amazing work out there as well, particularly with their new additions of the pimp office, their new standard. But what's really required upfront is to get a good scope on the project that everybody really understands what the project is and the value that it's providing, whether to your family or the organization.

00;05;40;20 - 00;06;02;24
Kory Kogon
And this comes out of the Agile movement that is so popular now where we had to be a little more flexible about things and get feedback and build value because a lot of projects end up getting done and learned don't even look like what they were to start with. So scoping the project is really important. Planning is next.

00;06;03;02 - 00;06;39;25
Kory Kogon
You mentioned the end chart. Yes, it gets complicated, but honestly and you know, with us we said, you know, you don't have to become an expert. It again chart. But understanding some project management principles like dependencies duration is really helpful to take some of the pressure off of somebody that's managing six or seven different projects. But I'll tell you that the most important part of project management, whether you're official or unofficial, I mentioned value and it's people management and leadership.

00;06;40;01 - 00;06;48;11
Kory Kogon
And the interesting thing is that there are many project managers out there that never wanted to be people leaders.

00;06;48;13 - 00;07;06;03
Wayne Turmel
If like you, how many? I can't tell you how many PMI meetings I've been to where people say, Well, all these soft skills are great, Wayne, but I, I'm not a people manager and I want to grab them by the lapels and go, You better be.

00;07;06;05 - 00;07;31;04
Kory Kogon
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And because really, I mean, if you think about it, you know, I mentioned the failure list before, so you see this list of lack of communication, lack of clear goals, lack of, you know, whatever feedback. And then you're like, Hey, we're going to do this project, let's go get them. And so the people, because of these trends, go into most projects pretty darn disengaged to start.

00;07;31;04 - 00;07;49;09
Kory Kogon
So that's one problem. But again, a lot of people never planned on being people, leaders. And so it's really important that they learn a little bit about informal authority and the principles around You're not going to get this project done well without people. And so the.

00;07;49;09 - 00;08;11;21
Wayne Turmel
Informal, the informal authority, I think is is so critical because I know that most of the projects I've worked on are ad hoc teams, right? They've been put together with a person from this group and a person from this group, and more than once as a project manager, I've had somebody look at me and go, You're not my real boss.

00;08;11;24 - 00;08;18;14
Kory Kogon
Right? Right. Sorry. Did you want to finish that? I interrupted you.

00;08;18;17 - 00;08;35;03
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, well, no, I mean, you just. You know exactly what I'm talking about. This idea of responsibility without formal authority is one of the hardest things when organizing a project.

00;08;35;06 - 00;08;59;23
Kory Kogon
Right? And it is interesting because people know what informal authority you know really is, because, you know, a lot of people it's like, I wish I could report, you know, to that manager, to that person. They're not even a leader, but they're so, you know, good at what they do and they respect people and all that kind of stuff.

00;08;59;23 - 00;09;34;00
Kory Kogon
So that's what informal leadership really is about. It's, you know, do people want to play on your team and do they want to win with you? And if you can do that, that's great. And you know, you know this better than most. There's a million leadership courses out there that people can take and leadership development. And honestly, what we say is that if we can just master five, you know, behaviors, leadership behaviors, you know, and they're your parents probably taught you this, but it's hard when you're under pressure.

00;09;34;03 - 00;10;03;02
Kory Kogon
But if people could manage, project managers can really demonstrate, demonstrate respect. They listen to people, they clarify expectations for the people on the team and really important they extend trust to the team versus I can do it all myself or I don't trust them. And finally, practice accountability both of themselves. First, am I accountable to this and their people?

00;10;03;02 - 00;10;26;11
Kory Kogon
And I think you know this. I'll tell you. I mean, it's tough because first of all, demonstrating respect under pressure can be I'm from New York City originally, not to brand New Yorkers, but I know, you know, I've got a New York kind of way. And when I'm under pressure, it's like, let's just get it done. And I have to remember, I need to just remember that not everybody moves the way I move or thinks the way I do.

00;10;26;13 - 00;10;35;08
Kory Kogon
So what does respect look like? So these five behaviors are really helpful to help people become informal leaders.

00;10;35;10 - 00;11;06;23
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, they absolutely are. And and that's that's a mindset kind of thing, right? As a leader, this is the mindset that we need. But let's talk about let's take that mindset now and move it to the world that we're in where a lot of us cut our teeth on our first project, but we were safely in the womb of the office or the headquarters, and the boss was there to help run under us with a net if we needed it and that kind of thing.

00;11;06;23 - 00;11;23;24
Wayne Turmel
And now we are working in a dispersed workplace, like maybe some of your folks are in one place, maybe not. I mean, whether it's hybrid or completely remote, how does that complicate the situation?

00;11;23;26 - 00;11;32;12
Kory Kogon
I don't know if complicated is the right word in our organization. First of all, I've been remote for a long time, really before I was even.

00;11;32;14 - 00;11;35;03
Wayne Turmel
Neither of us needs to do the math.

00;11;35;05 - 00;12;05;06
Kory Kogon
Right. Right. And our organization has also for the last probably decade now has been mostly remote, I guess we call it hybrid today. And I said, I don't know if the word is is complicated, but again, the experience of some of these people that are managing projects, they don't have you know, they don't they don't come ready with the skills.

00;12;05;09 - 00;12;35;01
Kory Kogon
Well, I can't see them, so how do I manage them? And the principles behind unofficial project management and people management and value management are sound or are correct. And I will use the word complicated. I think it does get you know, it is more complicated because these leaders obviously need to do this when people aren't around them having said that, I'll go back to what I said.

00;12;35;04 - 00;13;08;27
Kory Kogon
Even if we're doing this by Zoom or teams or whatever, really key, if you are if you are scoping, planning the project, using some tools in a way that is real clarity for everybody on the project team to know what's going on. And with that in mind, when you have like a visual scoreboard, we call it of the project and you're able to sort and help and with your team together assign resources appropriately.

00;13;09;00 - 00;13;40;11
Kory Kogon
And so to use a sports analogy, but even create a cadence of team meetings, that's not about the leader telling people what to do, but everybody having visibility into what's going on with the project and people stepping up and saying, you know what, we're crazy busy this week, but here's the one thing I'm going to get done this week that's going to make sure that the project is in play and the leader steps back and only does what we call clear the path, meaning I'm just going to get Wayne's going to do this thing.

00;13;40;13 - 00;14;02;22
Kory Kogon
Facilities isn't responding to him. I'm going to make sure that they respond so he can continue that task. The last thing I'll say on that, So if the team is engaged in that kind of way and you're leading in that kind of way, all of this is around extending trust to the team. So if I've got the right team together and by the way, we don't always get to choose that as we know.

00;14;02;25 - 00;14;27;21
Kory Kogon
But if I generally have the right team and I'm inspiring them to want to play on the team and when I extend trust to them and I make sure I'm practicing accountability with myself as the model, then even, you know, you can cut through remote and hybrid. Yeah, and nothing's perfect. So you're going to have issues along the way, but it shouldn't be that complicated.

00;14;27;24 - 00;14;55;26
Wayne Turmel
One of the things that I that you said, and I want to drill down in it to the very practical level because a lot of people listening to this, maybe, you know, they think that they need Microsoft teams and they need Basecamp and all these fabulous tools. But you said you need a visual dashboard, that people need to be able to see where they are at any given time.

00;14;55;28 - 00;15;08;17
Wayne Turmel
What are the kind of absolute basic tools that will enable a new unofficial project manager to do that?

00;15;08;19 - 00;15;31;03
Kory Kogon
Really whatever you want. But I mean, so in all of our research and every time we, you know, we do polls on this and we say, you know what you go to? And the answer is Excel. Excel always comes out, number one. And again, I want to be careful about the can chart if you don't want to use it, don't you know, I'm not about telling people what tools you have to use.

00;15;31;06 - 00;15;53;06
Kory Kogon
If Excel works for you, fine. You can organize it and then you can put that up. People can see that. I do think that using some of the other programs out there like and there's a lot of new ones out there, but that has Gantt chart capabilities in it and really very simplified. I call it demystifying the game chart.

00;15;53;06 - 00;16;06;02
Kory Kogon
In just a couple of minutes. This idea of tying dependance these together, I think, and and duration, those two things are modern life time management principles.

00;16;06;04 - 00;16;29;16
Wayne Turmel
That I can share with you. What what solve this for me because I use it. I heard the word Gantt chart and I thought this was incredibly complicated and I suddenly realized we use one almost every day of our lives, which is the TV guide. You look at the TV guide and though this show runs till 7:00, but this one starts at 630, that how do I do this?

00;16;29;21 - 00;16;32;16
Wayne Turmel
And you look at that and that's a Gantt chart.

00;16;32;18 - 00;16;38;04
Kory Kogon
That's again, I'm going to take I'm going to steal that one away from my next conversation. That was great.

00;16;38;05 - 00;16;39;13
Wayne Turmel
My gift to you.

00;16;39;16 - 00;17;05;29
Kory Kogon
Thank you. But that's exactly right that we are that a lot of these are principles that we do in real life that are just being raised up to institutionalize, to be able to have repeatable success. So, you know, giving it a shot. And then, like you said, having this visible scoreboard and it's easier than ever, particularly in a hybrid environment because people can just go on the cloud and pull it up and we're all looking at it.

00;17;06;02 - 00;17;33;05
Wayne Turmel
Absolutely as I knew we would. I mean, we have filled lots of our time with really good stuff. If you are about to undertake your first project and this is a critical thing for a lot of people because this is how we make our bones as leaders, right? Is we very often before we are actually managers, we head up a project or we head up a team.

00;17;33;07 - 00;17;57;18
Wayne Turmel
And this is our first kind of foray into leadership. So if somebody is about to undertake their first unofficial project, what are other than take a deep breath and know it's going to be okay, what are a couple of key things that they need to do to arm themselves to get really prepared.

00;17;57;21 - 00;18;02;16
Kory Kogon
For leading a project? We people both.

00;18;02;18 - 00;18;06;12
Wayne Turmel
Well, the one's a subset of the other, right?

00;18;06;14 - 00;18;43;03
Kory Kogon
So I think, you know what what I said earlier that you do have to realize that it's the people that are going to get the project done, not you, not the I mean, you know, we have a great process scoping and planning and engaging and tracking and adapting and closing a project. The process is fine, but it means nothing unless they realize that people are the ones that are going to get this done for you.

00;18;43;05 - 00;19;17;01
Kory Kogon
So as a leader, are you prepared back to informal leadership to help inspire your team to do that and I'm going to go back to what I said before about the failure list. You have to be prepared to help yourself and the team scope this project in a way. I mean, there's so many things to talk about. Scope this project in a way that people have a clear line of sight because of all the things we can talk about from failure.

00;19;17;03 - 00;19;42;20
Kory Kogon
Once somebody says, Well, I don't know, maybe we'll go this way, or maybe we'll go that way, I'm in the middle of this right now with one of my own things, and it's like, you know what? We're not moving on until somebody comes clear on what the outcome is. And so I think for a leader, just knowing you got to get two clear outcomes and not having anything wishy washy in the project but know where we're going because for you that's satisfying.

00;19;42;20 - 00;19;51;03
Kory Kogon
And few people, they'll be totally frustrated if you don't. So people first scoping clarity on end in mind.

00;19;51;05 - 00;20;20;11
Wayne Turmel
Sam Absolutely terrific. Thank you so much. Corey. That's great stuff. If you are interested in learning more, First of all, the transcript from this conversation is available on Long Work Life dot com. We will have links to Corey and Suzanne's book and to their work and all of that good stuff, as we always do. Corey, thank you so much for being with us.

00;20;20;11 - 00;20;25;10
Wayne Turmel
This has been really terrific and thanks for being with us on the long distance work life.

00;20;25;13 - 00;20;28;01
Kory Kogon
Thanks for having me, Wayne. It's been a pleasure.

00;20;28;04 - 00;20;58;17
Wayne Turmel
Well, as always, thank you for being head and for those of you who are listening, thank you for being here as well. This was a merciless episode. She will be with us in future episodes if you want to contact my self or her questions, comments. Vicious personal attacks, ideas for episodes, by all means, reach out to us. We are available at long distance work life dot com.

00;20;58;19 - 00;21;25;18
Wayne Turmel
You know the drill. You listen to podcasts. If you enjoy this and want others to find us, please like and subscribe. We enjoy the heck out of hearing from you. And if you are interested in learning a little bit more about leading at a distance, check out our open enrollment public programs for Long Distance Leadership series. The U.

00;21;25;18 - 00;21;50;02
Wayne Turmel
R L is here and it will also be in the show notes. Thank you so, so much. Again, my name is Wayne Turmel. Thank you for being with us on the long distance work life. Don't let the weasels get you down, do you?

00;00;08;28 - 00;00;40;15
Wayne Turmel
Hello, everybody. Welcome once again to the Long-Distance Work Life podcast, the show where we aim to help you work, thrive, survive, get through, keep the weasels at bay in the constantly changing world of remote and hybrid work. My name is Wayne Turmel. Marissa is not with us today, which means that we are joined by a very, very smart person who's going to talk to us about some factor of their business.

00;00;40;18 - 00;01;00;12
Wayne Turmel
And I am particularly happy today to welcome. Here she comes. Jan Barrett, who is the founder and chief remote officer of a company called First Paid Strategy. All her information will be on the show notes, as you would expect. Jana. How are you?

00;01;00;14 - 00;01;03;06
Jeanna Barrett
I'm great, Wayne. Thanks for having me.

00;01;03;09 - 00;01;12;15
Wayne Turmel
Thank you for being had. What what should people know about you and first page before we jump into.

00;01;12;18 - 00;01;33;10
Jeanna Barrett
Yeah. So I started first page eight years ago, 2016, before the pandemic, because I wanted to travel and work and build a company that fit how I wanted to work. And I wasn't finding those companies any more when I was living in San Francisco. So I left. I've been building this growth marketing agency for the last eight years.

00;01;33;10 - 00;01;44;12
Jeanna Barrett
We are fully distributed. We had 30 to 40 teammates across the globe and we're constantly perfecting being a remote first company.

00;01;44;15 - 00;01;51;13
Wayne Turmel
And I know you walk it like you talk it because you are in Yucatan today.

00;01;51;15 - 00;01;53;03
Jeanna Barrett
Yeah.

00;01;53;06 - 00;01;57;07
Wayne Turmel
And yet you live on a little island in Honduras.

00;01;57;10 - 00;01;57;21
Jeanna Barrett
Yes.

00;01;57;21 - 00;01;59;23
Wayne Turmel
And I am insanely jealous.

00;01;59;25 - 00;02;28;13
Jeanna Barrett
Yeah. I actually started my company right when I left San Francisco. I moved to build these islands in Ambergris Quay, an island in Belize for six years. And then the last two years, I relocated to Roatan, Honduras, which is another Caribbean island on the west coast of the Caribbean. And yeah, and I often travel. I mean, I've shared with people that I've worked remote from a sailboat, from an RV, from a golf cart, like we drove golf carts on Fergus Quay.

00;02;28;15 - 00;02;36;02
Jeanna Barrett
So I definitely walk the walk and am a big proponent of like how you do remote work, right?

00;02;36;04 - 00;03;07;17
Wayne Turmel
Well, that's what I want to talk about, because as we talked about before, the cameras started rolling. I mean, companies have to thrive and they have to work. And, you know, people have to make money in order to be employed. But what I'm really fascinated by is you started creating your company intending to be fully remote pre-pandemic. And I'm curious as to let's start with what you knew had to happen and what you set up.

00;03;07;19 - 00;03;10;15
Wayne Turmel
Right. In order for that to.

00;03;10;17 - 00;03;11;05
Jeanna Barrett
You.

00;03;11;10 - 00;03;12;05
Wayne Turmel
Start.

00;03;12;07 - 00;03;35;11
Jeanna Barrett
So the biggest thing that for a company is I don't have offices. You still have to have an office and that is your tech stock. So how people come together, how people communicate, how you get jobs done, all happen now in tech, in technology, instead of in an office. So it was really important for us to really choose the right tech sector.

00;03;35;11 - 00;03;59;00
Jeanna Barrett
You want to have all the right tools, not too many tools, and that is was also like an interesting experience for me as a founder, because it's not so easy as just like setting up these remote tools. It now has become a full time job. You have to have an operations person running these tools to keep up with renewals and access and training.

00;03;59;00 - 00;04;07;23
Jeanna Barrett
And it's basically it's not the price of an office, but it does require some investment to make sure that you're getting your tech stack right as a remote company.

00;04;07;25 - 00;04;27;05
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And so what was your what did you need like in your head? Okay, you need an email and you got to have some kind of chat function and some kind of web meeting function like. How did you go about? Let's start with what you started with and then we'll figure out where you are now. Right.

00;04;27;08 - 00;04;54;04
Jeanna Barrett
Yeah. Actually, the most important thing is a project management platform. So we actually believe that like email is dead in some ways, like not in a marketing way. People still read their emails, but in terms of collaborating, email is not a good tool for that. There's siloed conversations. You can't find anything they live in die only in the inbox that whoever was copied on the email, people get to forget to copy people in the email.

00;04;54;07 - 00;05;20;15
Jeanna Barrett
So a lot of companies now are working in these massive project management tools. Are this click up. We first started out in a sauna, there's a sauna click up Monday kind of tend to be the three that most companies are deciding between and that we we implemented that, I believe, in year two or three. And that really transformed our business because that is like one place where every conversation can be searched and seen.

00;05;20;15 - 00;05;44;03
Jeanna Barrett
There's transparency across all projects and people. You can search for conversations no matter who you are. It really breaks down silos and barriers, which is what you need in remote work, right for it, really, in any work, you don't have to be remote to need to get rid of barriers. But yeah, so project management platform access and collaboration is the big key pillars of remote work, right?

00;05;44;03 - 00;06;04;16
Jeanna Barrett
So you got to make sure everybody has access in a versioning control place. So like Google Docs is usually what everybody uses. Google Drive, making sure you have shared drives, everybody can open and access them at the right time. You can see different versions. There's not like old school versions of an old Excel that someone emailed each other and then chat function.

00;06;04;17 - 00;06;21;03
Jeanna Barrett
Slack is like the best in class choice at this point. So and then yeah, Zoom. So that's a lot of our core tech stack right there. But then there's just there's a lot there's probably 5 to 10 more tools that we have that are important as well, but those are the core ones.

00;06;21;05 - 00;06;36;12
Wayne Turmel
Where did you bump your nose when you were starting? I mean, we always start with assumptions about this is what this is going to look like and this is how it's going to work. And then, you know, yeah, it's yeah, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. Right?

00;06;36;14 - 00;06;57;28
Jeanna Barrett
Right, exactly. Well, the tech stock has been like a stumble, right? It's it's taken us a long time to perfect it in terms of like what I didn't realize because I've always been tech savvy. I mean, someone that just loves technology, I buy everything that comes out. I was a native working in tech scene in my early twenties in Seattle, in San Francisco.

00;06;58;00 - 00;07;19;11
Jeanna Barrett
So what I didn't realize is like how complicated this way of working actually is. And we hire people that have wonderful resumes, but they come into our company and they just struggle with the tech stock. They're not comfortable. They don't you know, they're not comfortable figuring it out on their own. They're overwhelmed by it. They push it away.

00;07;19;11 - 00;07;39;23
Jeanna Barrett
And those people ultimately are not going to be successful at our company. So it requires a lot of tech savviness to work async and remote first, and you have to really be willing to be an expert in these tools. You have to have someone within your company that's an expert at these tools. And so that was one stumble.

00;07;39;26 - 00;08;01;08
Wayne Turmel
Let me ask again, let me ask you a question about that before you go any further, because as somebody who knows technology but doesn't particularly love it, my problem is less which button do I push and why should I bother? So when people are coming in and they don't have your tech background, is it just they don't know which button to push?

00;08;01;12 - 00;08;10;07
Wayne Turmel
Or is it a mindset that you need to either inculcate or hire for?

00;08;10;10 - 00;08;27;14
Jeanna Barrett
It's both. It requires you to like take ownership in terms of how are you training your team, or if you're a manager or a founder, like what are the tool sets and how are you setting people up for success? So that's a lot of stuff we didn't have in place at first because I kind of just always had figured things out on my own.

00;08;27;14 - 00;09;00;04
Jeanna Barrett
So I didn't realize that we needed to have really in-depth video training and modules and stuff for our tech stock that can close some gaps. But ultimately, like if you don't hire the right person, that's going to be comfortable really digging in. We've had people that have avoided it. They're really uncomfortable. These tools can be super complicated and then speaking to that, how you specifically work in these tools is very prescribed, like how you tag each other, exactly What you do when a task is over, do like how you figure out what your start date and and dates are like.

00;09;00;04 - 00;09;29;13
Jeanna Barrett
There's an ecosystem to it. And so if you're not willing to teach your self something new, then you're not going to succeed no matter how many trainings we give you. Right? So it's also how do we hire the right people? So we've spent a lot of time figuring out like what are the right questions or project tasks or what are we doing to really get to the crux of like if people are able to figure out a new complex technology, if they're comfortable?

00;09;29;21 - 00;09;43;09
Wayne Turmel
And right now, ears perked up just all over the pod versus So talk to us about what some of those tests are like just nuts and bolts. What are how would you test for that?

00;09;43;11 - 00;10;05;06
Jeanna Barrett
Yeah, we actually have like we have core values at our company. And one of our core values is being tech savvy and remote first. So we've just started to just put in place like questions like spit, prescribe questions, and what we're asking people about our core values to get to the crux of if they're going to fit in our core values.

00;10;05;06 - 00;10;26;15
Jeanna Barrett
So we do have a set of questions that we ask, and every candidate is going to get them in the in the hiring round and the and the tech savvy questions are part of that. We are we haven't implemented this yet, but I'm just now in the middle of conversations of taking it one step further. We do a project round because we're remote.

00;10;26;15 - 00;10;54;01
Jeanna Barrett
We want to see how people work. We also want to see how you present. We want to see how you show up to a video call. So we do a project test run. We pay people for this, but we ask people to put together strategies and all that. And we're now talking about, well, how do we take this one step further and like have them do a test that is going to also figure out if they can work with any clip And working with and click upward requires you to be your own project manager.

00;10;54;01 - 00;11;13;15
Jeanna Barrett
We do not hire project managers. You need to know how to scope your entire project from start to finish all the steps you need to put those steps in, click up. And so we're starting to think about how we build a test for our candidates there, because that's where we see people fail. The most really is understanding that.

00;11;13;17 - 00;11;46;26
Wayne Turmel
You said something a minute ago that I don't want to let go by, and that is this notion of people needing to kind of take ownership of their own tech stuff. Right. And I know that I have gotten lost in the weeds. I tend to do that right. And where I get lost in the weeds in particular is not which button do I push, it's how do I name files remembering to tag things.

00;11;46;27 - 00;11;48;04
Jeanna Barrett
Yeah.

00;11;48;06 - 00;12;12;21
Wayne Turmel
Right. Because I just cause chaos. I don't intend to. I mean, well, but I am a chaos agent when it comes to things like and I know it's gumming up the works. So how, you know, how do you prescribe and kind of manage the tagging and the language in the internal logic?

00;12;12;24 - 00;12;36;06
Jeanna Barrett
Yeah, So that's exactly what I'm talking about in terms of like it is a wild, wild West and can be very chaotic and actually the antithesis of productivity and efficiency. If everybody is working within these tools and whatever way they think is best for them, because you need everybody working together all in the same way for it really to be efficient and not slow people down.

00;12;36;09 - 00;13;02;14
Jeanna Barrett
And so ourselves and some other companies I've talked to have taken the approach of like documentation really is like a simple step and it's a big thing in teams as well. But just having us, this is how we work, document a very specific communication guidelines and guidelines for how, what, how and what you do everything in a text and have that be in a central location that people can always go back to.

00;13;02;16 - 00;13;29;28
Jeanna Barrett
So we have a documentation center. You might think of it as like the old school employee handbook that might have been paper like binder that you got when you got hired forever ago. But now it's like all remote documentation and a place that we do it inside a click of a lot of teams use notion. It's a very popular tool right now where you can search any topic and you can find the document that you needed.

00;13;30;00 - 00;13;49;13
Jeanna Barrett
And so we just spend a lot of time making sure that all of our processes, all of our communication guidelines and everything is documented in that one place for anybody to access at any time to kind of go back and figure out if you were at our company way, you would need to go back and figure out how use to be tagging things like what's the guideline that we've set.

00;13;49;13 - 00;13;59;20
Jeanna Barrett
But like setting those guidelines is the first step in thinking through all those specific guidelines. As a company, obviously.

00;13;59;22 - 00;14;14;15
Wayne Turmel
You know, and you've mentioned async a couple of times, like it's just, well, yeah, of course, duh. But, but there are a lot of organizations and a lot of people who have fled those organizations, But we live the way we were raised, right?

00;14;14;20 - 00;14;15;19
Jeanna Barrett
Yeah, right.

00;14;15;21 - 00;14;29;10
Wayne Turmel
What is the key to winning people off of everything needs to be a meeting and still meeting their need for access and contact and that kind of stuff.

00;14;29;12 - 00;14;47;13
Jeanna Barrett
So this is the biggest problem going on in remote work right now. And I think this is why companies are failing and saying like remote work isn't working. And so like, well, you can't just take everybody working in your office and stick them at home and then expect that emailing everybody all day and getting on Zoom for 8 hours a day is what remote work is.

00;14;47;13 - 00;15;08;06
Jeanna Barrett
That's truly not like remote first operations and remote first operations is really thinking about how do you peel back meetings from your calendar? Like I myself have had moments in my business where I was doing six or seven zooms a day. It absolutely makes you feel like your brain is melted. I was so exhausted. It's just a terrible experience, right?

00;15;08;06 - 00;15;26;22
Jeanna Barrett
So like we put in a lot of guidelines about how and when to use Zoom calls and not to use Zoom calls, when to put like we have to put video at the end of every call that's going to be a video. Otherwise, we don't need to show up on video because defaulting to video can be really exhausting for people too.

00;15;26;24 - 00;15;49;15
Jeanna Barrett
So we have like three zooms maximum a day. We have no meeting Fridays. We're constantly probably every quarter looking at our meeting calendar and talking about like what can be reduced, what can be a sync. We think a lot about like team meetings, regular meetings, how do we run those async, How do we do part of that? Like we do biweekly sync meetings and async meetings.

00;15;49;15 - 00;15;57;21
Jeanna Barrett
So every other week you'll meet with your manager. But then the other week that you're not meeting with the manager, you do an async update and click ups kind of saying, Okay.

00;15;57;21 - 00;16;02;11
Wayne Turmel
So let me just let me put a thing in that because async.

00;16;02;11 - 00;16;02;27
Jeanna Barrett
Wrangling.

00;16;03;03 - 00;16;22;19
Wayne Turmel
Is, you know, kind of freaks people out. What I'm hearing is, okay, we need every week, we need to check in and see what you're doing. But if we do a zoom call, whatever, this week. Yeah, next week, a clear, honest report will suffice.

00;16;22;21 - 00;16;48;24
Jeanna Barrett
Yeah. Yeah. And I do want to say, like, you know, I think we need to all kind of get rid of this feeling Native baby sitting right Like remote work does come with a lot of trust that we're all adults and we're going to do our work. And if you flip the switch to looking at like, what the deliverables are like, if you're doing your work, why does it and getting the deliverables done, like why does it matter how, where, when you're doing your work?

00;16;48;24 - 00;17;13;27
Jeanna Barrett
So that's one thing. So it's less about like, you know, needing to check in as a manager, but we think of one on one more like as a person, that's your access to your team lead. If you need support, there's something you're blocked on. And yeah, you don't need to meet every week on those things. Like there's other ways to get a hold of each other.

00;17;13;29 - 00;17;37;25
Jeanna Barrett
You know, we put everything in click up, so I still read it in it. And the beauty of this, right, and this is where like if you're an operations or business founder, but I don't know if this matters to many on the call, but if I read the async meeting and respond and they read it and respond and we solve something that usually takes ten or 15 minutes, now a meeting on your calendar is going to be 50 minutes, right?

00;17;38;02 - 00;17;59;03
Jeanna Barrett
Two people, 50 minutes of their time, like that's a lot of wasted time. And so there's a lot of conversation around my productivity in remote work, but you're working async. There's more time for you to spend actually doing your work, right? Like we call it deep work where you're uninterrupted because you're not on a call or you're not.

00;17;59;06 - 00;18;19;19
Jeanna Barrett
People aren't talking to you, so you have more time and you're more efficient and more productive when you have more deep work, right? And like, you can just get a meeting done in 15 minutes over a chat, kind of a situation, or you can send video clips, right? Like I'm going to send you a five minute video clip and we don't need to sit on a phone and talk for 50, 60 minutes about something.

00;18;19;19 - 00;18;22;00
Jeanna Barrett
So, yeah.

00;18;22;03 - 00;18;44;09
Wayne Turmel
That's great stuff. One week, just because we are as I knew, we were running out of time. Yeah, so much so much to talk about. What is the one async best practice that you have learned along the way that you kind of didn't know going in?

00;18;44;12 - 00;19;12;14
Jeanna Barrett
But yeah, it's really relearning your work habits and it takes a long time and I'm guilty of it too. But you can't default to just sending people Slack chats all day because that's a sink tool, right? You can't default to setting up a meeting because that's a sync tool. So you have to constantly be working with yourself to always default to your async tool, which is like a project management platform.

00;19;12;14 - 00;19;25;27
Jeanna Barrett
So I need somebody do something, put it in, click up, I need to ask somebody something, put it and click that. Don't set up a meeting, don't go on Slack and check them. So it's just like reworking what your what your habits are basically.

00;19;25;29 - 00;19;53;20
Wayne Turmel
That's great. That's really, really good stuff. Thank you so much. Jana Barrett. We will have links to all your good stuff on the long distance work life dot com on the page. Those of you who listen to podcasts, you know the drill. Like subscribe, smash that button, whatever you're supposed to say in these circumstances. You can reach out to Marissa and I at any time.

00;19;53;24 - 00;20;19;00
Wayne Turmel
We are available by email or available by LinkedIn comments, questions, vicious personal attacks, anything that you would like to share with us. Topics. Cool people like Jana that we want to talk to and if you are interested in rethinking how your team comes together. Kevin In my new book, Long Distance Team Designing Your Team for everyone's success is out in the world.

00;20;19;00 - 00;20;27;17
Wayne Turmel
You can find that and some special resources at long distance Team Booking.com. Jana, thank you so much for being us.

00;20;27;17 - 00;20;29;26
Jeanna Barrett
I appreciate you taking your time.

00;20;29;29 - 00;20;36;17
Wayne Turmel
And for the rest of you, thanks for listening. Come visit again and don't let the weasels get you down.