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Guests, Technology

Collaboration and File Sharing with Ian Parkes

Wayne Turmel talks with Ian Parkes from Stockpress.co about document management, workflow control, and generally collaborating over distance. Stockpress is a file management platform for teams who want to spend less time looking for their files and more time using them. Stockpress allows teams to organize, manage, collaborate and share - any file type, from anywhere in the world.

Question of the Week:

What is the problem with the way people share information on remote and hybrid teams?

Additional Resources:

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Transcript

Wayne Turmel: Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Long-Distance Worklife Podcast. My name is Wayne Turmel. I'm your humble host today. We are Marisa-Free because we are going to talk to Ian Parkes, who is one of the muck-a-mucks at a company called Stockpress. Here on the podcast, we talk about remote work, technology, leadership, and generally just surviving this remote work thing.

And I had a really interesting conversation with Ian about document management and workflow control and generally collaborating over distance. I think you're really going to enjoy it. So have a listen. Hey, everybody. This week on the Long-Distance Worklife Podcast, we are talking to Ian Parkes from Stockpress.co and our topic today is workflow and collaboration getting stuff done.

Ian happens to head up a software company that tackles that problem. Why don't you tell me a little bit about you and Stockpress and then we'll get to the guts of this conversation.

Ian Parkes: Sure sounds good, Wayne. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, we run a company called Stockpress. We're a cloud file sharing and management platform for teams. We created the platform off the back of a need that we had ourselves, and I think probably to explain the story of stock press in the best possible way. It requires to go back a couple of steps, and I will try and give you the Reader's Digest version of this, as opposed to the lengthy one.

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Ian: But for a long time now, I've been running an agency with my colleague, Jess. Jessica story. We've also got a couple of co-founders who we've run that business with as well, Bart and Camilla. We have worked together probably collectively for about 12 years. In that period of time, Jessica has met Bart and Camilla twice. They live and work in Poland.

Jessica grew up in New York. And moved to Florida a couple of years ago. And myself, I grew up in the UK, lived in the U.K., and kind of got to know Jess through an old friend of mine. So we all came from very different backgrounds. We all do very different things. We like to say collectively that between us, we kind of make one good person and one kind of make a person, as it were, and kind of bring different skills to the table with the agency we do in a lot of digital development for people, lot designed for people, but it was always remote.

And I think the biggest thing for us was that it wasn't just our team that was remote, it was our clients that were remote and very much scattered around the world. So I think what we found is an agency was that the biggest challenge we had was that we were in the delivery business, and as an agency we were very focused on delivering to the brief of the client and actually giving them the things that they needed.

So the client relationships very interesting when you're in an agency because you do the dance to try and win the business of the client. Then when you get the client on board, really all they want to know is where are the things that we've requested? Where are the things that we've asked for? And we got involved in this kind of consistent battle between 1,000,001 platforms to be able to share the deliverables with the clients or for the clients to be able to share the deliverables with us and to deliver.

Wayne: So I will stop you there because there's a couple of things that I want to show in that, right? One is that you are living proof, as are we. Kevin Eikenberry Group, Remote Leadership Institute, that it is possible to build really solid working relationships when you are not kind of in the same place at the same time. Is there a long period of time?

It's entirely possible. The second thing that I'm hearing is it's this idea of and I'm going through this with several clients at the moment where we use this platform, we use this platform, we're using this over here and there isn't one ring to rule them all. And so, I mean, you have to solve the problem yourself. And that's where this software came from.

Can you, you know, very briefly tell us what exactly the problem was you were solving for and what was the solution.

Ian: Certainly.

So the problem that we had was that because clients because clients were using different platforms to share things with us and were running different platforms themselves, we kept getting road blocked by things like file size limits, being able to transfer site files of particularly large sizes through the platforms that they were using. A lot of the platforms that the clients had were kind of like per user license based, which presents a problem in the first place because you have to then decide who you're going to add into your platform.

And do you want to do that because there's extra cost involved? And I think the single biggest problem above and beyond all of that was the duplication of files, unnecessary duplication of files, which effectively means that in any platform the storage increases and actually the cost increases So we have those three kind of central things that we wanted to look at to make it easier to bring people together.

So actually, rather than send the files out to the people, a key tenant of what we thought is actually let's bring the people to the files, a much better way of doing it, a more centralized approach. And I think the third thing was taking from some of the industry players that we look at and we've got this term respect our elders look up to and our this just happened to be Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive from the kind of file management end of the market.

And then when it goes to the kind of enterprise level you're looking at kind of a brownfield. But now those guys do something very clever, which is you have one file that can live in multiple locations without ever being duplicated. On the file management side of things. Dropbox Box, Google Drive, that doesn't tend to be the case. If you want to share things with people, you have to duplicate the file, put it in a new folder that means there are then two versions or more versions of the same file.

So they with the kind of the big things that we want it to to solve.

Wayne: Okay. So let's. That sounds fascinating. Of course, we urge folks to go to stockpress.co if they are in fact, you know, interested in that. But let's talk about the nuts and bolts. You work with organizations all the time. What are the biggest challenges in collaboration and information sharing that you see on remote and hybrid teams?

Ian: Yeah, absolutely. I think there are some really interesting trends that we're seeing at the moment. I think one of the key trends is around people's routine. I think what we've seen with people going more remote, more hybrid, is that their daily routine and the times at which they like to be able to work are actually becoming more and more important now than ever before.

So if you were going into an office, you were there in 95. Everyone was kind of on the same page to begin with. But I think what actually has happened is the kind of boundaries have been blurred between working from home, working kind of anywhere and not going into an office is that people are trying to work better around their own schedule.

For instance, I know that I work much better in the morning than I do in the afternoon. So I try and get certain tasks done in the AM rather than the PM. And I think why that's important is that it's about making information available to everyone on their schedule, and that means making it centralized. It means basically being able to get everyone in and around that information and being able to work on with within on that information in their own time, but in a way that everyone can kind of touch it, see what's happening.

And I don't all get on the same page. And I think fundamentally what we're doing with remote work and we are a part of the tech stack, this is the way that we view ourselves is that we're trying to recreate an office, albeit we're doing it remotely from everywhere in the world and give people all of that technology that allows them to feel like they're experiencing the office environment, being very close to people, but to achieve it in a more efficient way, that suits these new routines that they're trying to create and live by.

Wayne: Well, let's use your example. I mean, you've got people in Europe, you've got people in the U.K., you've got people on the East Coast of the U.S.. Yeah, those of us who live on the West Coast. No, the business day was not designed for the likes of us.

Ian: Absolutely.

Wayne: It's Europe in the East Coast can co-exist. It gets really ugly when you dial us all in. If that's to that point of flexible work, how do you as a company decide here is information that we need to share and work on asynchronously. Here is when we need to get together. How do you guys make that that call?

Ian: It's a very interesting question. And actually, I think it comes back to something that you said early on about the fact that we've worked in a remote organization now for the best part of ten years. Obviously, COVID very much changed that situation. I think, you know, in business, you have to have that moment where you get lucky and I put massive inverted commas around getting lucky.

I would 100% wish the pandemic hadn't happened. It just so happened that we were in a really interesting spot for our software to become more kind of important at the time.

Wayne: But we're in the same boat at Remote Leadership Institute. People go, Oh boy, you guys are really lucky you were in the right place at the right time. Yeah. I go, Yeah, okay.

Ian: And and here's, here's a very human example of that. I haven't seen my parents for three years because of the situation, because of that that kind of, you know, with everything that's going on with a trade that in to be able to go and see them versus the luck that we had at this moment in time. 100%. But you know, we'll roll with it and and actually, you know, I think we we look at our business in a very different way now.

But to come back to the question, I think it's about creating trust and the one thing that working remotely has done is it's brought each everyone into each other's homes in a very strange way that accelerates. Well, certainly what we found is that accelerates two things, accelerates trust between people because I think actually you feel like you get to know someone a little bit more because you can see a background, you can kind of get a sense of life going on around people.

I think the other thing is it does is it accelerates relationships because actually when you're speaking one to one in a video call, there isn't that kind of distraction around you. You know, you tend to get to the heart of the matter much more quickly because, you know, you've got no one around you that's chipping in to a conversation or you know, you tend to talk one on one and be very honest about each other.

So I think what we take from that into our working practices that streamline nature of it and and actually we try and reduce the amount of meetings that we do. And I think this is a key trend that we're going to see going forward since fewer meetings more action based kind of collaboration. So like not talking about the task, working on the task together.

And I think that's really where we're trying to fit into this landscape is to be a tool that allows people to have everything they need to be able to use to work on a task together much more efficiently. So fewer meetings, everyone being able to access the information according to the role that they play within the organization. But just making it very easy to have arbiters of the information that can allow people in.

So that's the central tenet of it, is how can we support actionable collaboration as opposed to having meeting go away, do something, then come back to another meeting and hope that it's right.

Wayne: You just said something that is super critical and sent a shiver up my spine and that is this idea that somebody needs to be the arbiter of who has access, where it is stuff set, that kind of thing. And I know that one of the hardest things on team collaboration is where is this, who's in charge, who has access, who doesn't Can you give us a very short kind of description of how do you decide who that arbiter is and what are the guidelines that they have to put in place?

Ian: So we have a saying Stockpress, which is configuration, not customization. And I think this is a big thing that hopefully answers that question is that within an organization there is always going to be someone that plays the role of traffic cop, the person that's moving things around and facilitating the way that people work. So we understand that within an organization so certainly the way that we did that would stop presses is we try to make as much of the kind of toolkit for managing and sharing those files as flexible as possible.

So we have unlimited users in all of our packages, which means that you can get everyone into a platform to begin with when those people come into the platform, they can be assigned a certain role and the administrator of the platform can choose what that role looks like. They can make it as flexible as they want and according to the access that people needs and the capabilities that people need, they can also be assigned to a team.

So what we're trying to do with that with file management is bring in some of these kind of themes from kind of Slack, where you can be in a wider channel with people. You can do one too many communication of something. Not a lot of our management platforms have that, if any. So again, I think that's how you organize the people in the first place.

Then it's about being able to be flexible around what they can see in the first place. And then the third part of that element is what can they do with those files? Because for us and this is a live example, bearing in mind we kind of run our agency for three years while we're building and then using stock press to make sure that it did exactly what we hoped it would do is to actually, you know, those roles kind of play out.

They do change that very fluid and the ability to be able to change them kind of on the move because actually someone needs to be able to have additional responsibility or, you know, additional kind of role to play within a task or a project. You want to be able to change that yourself and on the go rather than be limited by either limited roles in the first place or having to reach out to the software platform and say, hey, could you customize this for us?

Because actually it doesn't quite fit our needs. So the only reason that we could build the platform in this way and look at configuration in the first place was that we knew what it was like to work in this kind of agile way. And actually we didn't really realize it at the time when we're building it. But the agile nature of our business, I think, is something that a lot of people are kind of coached around it's just the default was to be job as opposed to, you know, have these kind of stringent kind of parameters set around us.

Wayne: So we are at the end of our time. But there's one thing you and I in our pre recorded conversation talked about something real quick naming conventions.

What is the biggest mistake people make with naming conventions? And what's one thing that we'll hear is the problem right now?

Ian: Such a pertinent question? So we've just written an article about this, actually. So number one thing is, is actually having the capability to be able to apply naming conventions to the files in the first place. And this is where we hope to straddle and we think we do this this kind of line between traditional file management platforms and digital asset management platforms at the enterprise level, it's the ability for people to apply you data to those assets.

Whether it's through manual tagging or whether it's through AI, we have so many tools in the platform to be able to do that. But the main thing that we see is that people get very excited about the ability to apply extra data to things to make them searchable. The tendency is that they go too far so they're going to tag everything.

They're going to have a million custom categories. And actually what we find is that keep it simple, work out who the people are that are going to be searching for it, and think about the kind of behaviors within the company and the kind of language of the people that are using the technology, because then you can really help refine that search as you go along.

And I think the key with it as well is it's a living and breathing thing. Return to it, see what people are searching for see what people are finding and refine the language and the naming conventions that are around files to make it more refined as you go along.

Wayne: Thank you so much. That's so important. I'm afraid we're at the end of our time. All right. Thank you so much. Ian Parkes from Stock Press. I really appreciate that. For those of you listening, I hope you heard what he said, which is you don't just set up a naming convention and thus is it. So for the rest of time, you have to keep going back and asking, does this work and what could work better?

And all all of that good stuff. Ian, thank you so much. We will have links to your bio and Stockpress and all of that good stuff in the show notes. For those of you looking for a solution like this, come visit us at longdistanceworklife.com. The show notes will have links to all those things Ian thanks for being with me now that.

Ian: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Wayne: That's it. Thank you to Ian Parkes from Stockpress.co. Thank you for listening. If you would like to find links to stock press or anything that we've talked about along with transcription and show notes, join us at longdistanceworklife.com. Of course, if you want help keeping the weasels at bay, we urge you to subscribe.

And like you guys, listen to podcasts you know how this works as well as tell your friends. Word of mouth is really what spreads these things. So thank you for listening. My name is Wayne Turmel. Thank you for listening to the Long-Distance Worklife. Have a great week.

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Guests, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

What are the Long Term Implications of Work From Home with Laurel Farrer

Laurel Farrer, the brains behind Distribute Consulting, joins Wayne to discuss the long-term effects of working from home, the impact this has had on communities all over the country, and even how some of the current tax laws don't support a "work from anywhere" concept. Distribute Consulting is an internationally renowned management consulting form that specializes in workplace mobility. 

Question of the Week:

What are the long-term impacts of working from home?

Additional Resources:

Transcript

Wayne Turmel: Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Long-Distance Worklife, where we take a look at remote work, technology, leadership and generally just surviving the virtual and hybrid workplace. My name is Wayne Turmel. I'm with The Kevin Eikenberry Group and Marisa is not with us today because we have another interview episode and I'm really looking forward to this one. 

Things have changed in the last two years, certainly when it comes to remote work. We've moved across the Rubicon and one of the questions that we get asked most often is what do we do now and what's next?

And the truth of the matter is, nobody knows. There are short term things that we know we have to figure out, like what's the return to office policy? But there are long term effects of both the pandemic and just the kind of critical mass around remote work that we've hit that we can't begin to really understand what the long term effects of this are going to be for a while. But somebody whose job it is to keep an eye on this stuff and who I've known for a very long time and she's a very smart lady, is Laurel Farrer from Distribute Consulting.

Without further ado, here's my conversation with her. I think you'll find it very, very thought provoking.

Everybody, I am really, really lucky today. We are going to have some good conversation with Laurel Farrer. She is the brains behind Distribute Consulting.

She is a well-known entity in the remote work space, particularly in government interactions with planning and thinking about this stuff and I'm going to be completely honest. We started a conversation, started a bunch of conversations, but we started a conversation on LinkedIn that I thought would be worthy of recording.

So we're going to talk about the good news. What's going on with remote work? What is the good news? What's the rosy picture? And you'll be shocked to discover I have some concerns that it's not all rosy as we think.

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Wayne: And this is the best human that I know of to talk to about this. So how are you?

Laurel Farrer: I'm so good. And I don't think anybody is going to be surprised about you having a controversial opinion, right?

Wayne: Maybe not. I'm trying to shake this whole grumpy old man thing, and it's not working really well at the moment, to tell you the truth. So you'll give us a really quick what have you been working on that started this particular LinkedIn post and we'll link to the post in the show notes.

Laurel: Yeah, well, what we're talking about here is the impact of workplace flexibility in virtual jobs, on economic development, specifically on rural economic development. So it doesn't really take a rocket scientist to figure out that many, many, many people are moving out of urban centers or the decentralization of urban centers and then moving to various scenic destinations in order to work. That was a trend of the pandemic. And now that people are out there, they're tending to stay. And so we have seen this as a really exciting trend for the idea of stimulating dying economies in Midwestern United States and in national parks areas.

So this is actually what we were trying to do before the pandemic. We were working very closely with lots of governments and grants and nonprofit organizations to try to do this, and now it's just happening organically. So ultimately, the conversation is about how virtual jobs can positively or negatively impact economic development.

Wayne: So let's start with the kind of why do we want to do this? Give us the short version. What are the benefits? We'll start with the humans and then we'll go to the communities and the broader conversations. I mean, other than you can be somewhere nice.

What are the human needs that are driving this migration?

Laurel: Yeah. I mean, let's actually look at it from the the community side. So traditional economic development is a very expensive investment for a company or I should say a municipality. So first they have to attract companies, so they have to invest in their infrastructure, in their community programs in order to make it a place that a community
would want to offer to employees.

And then the company comes and they build the building and they bring the jobs, and then the people come. So there's billions of dollars that need to go into even preparing for a company to attract higher income tax.

So what this does is it turns the entire economic development cycle around and attracts the individuals first, and then the individuals bring their jobs with them and then eventually the companies come. So what it does is it really lowers that threshold of of investment that is required for a municipality, a city or a state or a county in order to attract new income taxes.

So what they really want to showcase and that's this is the indirect answer to your question, what people are going towards are opportunities like low cost of living, more affordable housing, outdoor recreation, community opportunities to be involved in city councils and Little League and stuff like that.

They're just looking for more involvement in that small town lifestyle.

Wayne: Well, and so there's a couple of things that I want to come back to. There's another reason that you haven't mentioned, which surprises me a little bit, which is the traditional brain drain that in North America at least has been the story of the last hundred years.

You grow up in a small town, you graduate high school, you've got about a three year window where you're either there forever or you go away to school and never come back. And so a lot of particularly rural towns are, as we used to say, the newlywed and the nearly dead.

And families are separated. One of the things that happened during the pandemic. My daughter manages a bar in Chicago and she's saying we can't find people because everybody went home to be with Mom and Dad. And so there are all these positive impacts and the on the family dynamic and in possibly saving small towns.

What do what do these places need in order to other than. You know, just being pretty. I mean, what do these towns need to do in order to have people come back?

Laurel: Yeah, this is really where we need to see the rise of municipal marketing, which is literally marketing your city and showing off what you have that is different than other cities. So exact same concepts and principles as marketing for a company is now moving into the public sector, which is really exciting.

This is, you know, how company firms are, how cities market themselves to like bring the Olympics to their city. Same concept just on a micro scale. So whatever it is that a company has to offer, they should show it off.

Like, do you have great restaurants? Do you have lots of parks? Do you have a great transportation infrastructure? Are you close to the airport? Are you, you know, whatever. Like every single city has something to brag about. And so it's just a matter of showcasing that.

At a minimum, though, they really need to invest in that digital infrastructure. So we obviously remote workers need Internet and they need strong, fast, consistent, reliable Internet. So that's going to be the one thing that holds any city or county back.

And unfortunately, that's a long and expensive process. So luckily, we've got the U.S. government that's involved in and in impacting that and improving that as much as possible. But that's going to be the biggest barrier to success for any small town.

Wayne: And when people are deciding to go somewhere else and for lots of reasons, I moved and this was not my primary motivation, but I moved from Illinois to Nevada and Nevada has no state income tax. I essentially got a raise.

Laurel: Yeah, exactly.

Wayne: And better weather and that. Means that federally we need to look at, what does it take if you, if the company is in one state and somebody else is in another? There's a lot of paperwork.

Laurel: There are so many laws that don't exist yet. Like, essentially, every company right now is operating illegally. So, like, there's a lot of laws about tourism, about, you know, nexus tax structures, about operational liability for employment laws on a local as well as federal level.

Like there are so many laws that will eventually need to be changed and that will change in order to accommodate more mobility. But right now, they don't exist yet. And so it's kind of a wave for the patterns of migration to help influence those laws before they are formed.

Wayne: Yeah, it's definitely I mean, in its worst case scenario, it's going to be Grapes of Wrath. And people are just loading up trucks and and moving somewhere else, which. It's funny you said people need to market their city.

But I think the cities are the ones that are in trouble. And as we are a increasingly urbanized civilization that is going to be an issue. I mean, one of the things just The New York Times today had an article on how the five biggest cities in America have actually lost population.

And if you are one of those people who's able to pack up and move to Idaho or Nevada or wherever. That's probably nothing you care about. If you are the approximately 3 million people in the city of Chicago who support all the people that come in to work every day.

Laurel: Hmm.

Wayne: And I don't see small town Utah sending Utah U-Hauls to the south side of Chicago saying, come live here.

Laurel: Mm hmm.

Wayne: I think there is a fundamental upheaval that is going to happen that isn't as smooth as just, oh, everybody move where they want to go.

Laurel: Yeah. Well, and we've also seen that as well because like Seattle's mayor just had a big article and called to the community for the major employers in the area to bring their employees back because they're dealing with such a problem of homelessness.

And so the city centers, especially in those hyper urbanized areas, are definitely going to shift because their entire economy has been built, built on the concept of centralized work locations. I mean, that was, you know, commercial districts for the past 200 years have been built on this concept.

So, yes, we are definitely going to have some growing pains and some shock factors. But we also have to think about the pros and cons here of, yes, those those hypergrowth areas are going to decline. However, let's look at the entire Rust Belt that we've been trying to rescue for all of these states and cities for the past hundred years, since since the last major industrial revolution. And now we have a solution that is viable and and inexpensive. So this is a big step in the in the direction of wealth distribution and, you know, disparity between all of our different regions in the country.

Wayne: One of the things that. I ponder is if we look at how businesses have developed, how industries have developed, physical proximity has been a factor, whether it's Silicon Valley, whether it's Detroit at the beginning of the last century, whether it's the financial districts in London and New York, the fact that people are in physical proximity, the fact that they mingle socially, the fact that they interbreed, and they also sit in bars hatching plans and doing things. And you get this critical mass of people with knowledge in a certain industry. What are we seeing or do we have any idea?

How you replace that brain synergy thing that happens in physical locations?

Laurel: Yeah. You know, what's interesting about this is the cities that we've worked with and consulted on projects with are actually coming to us to find a solution to prevent that from happening, because these cycles of similar talent attracting itself and just, you know, becoming more and more and more saturated as a talent pool really affected the diversification of industries in that region.

And so suddenly they only have this very specific demographic and it's very problematic for the sustainability of their economy. So they come to us to say we need to bring other industries towards us so that we can have more diversified industries, a wider range of professional demographics in our in our residents and citizens. And so that's what we try to help them do.

Wayne: I get that. And I think that there is still a there is still a value. I mean, I would not want to be a professional violinist 20 years from now when there is no such thing as a city big enough to have a philharmonic orchestra.

What happens to, you know, because people are going to spend their money and their philanthropy in their own community because that's what happens. And so there's a lot of stuff, but and none of which is going to cure the problem.

And if I'm the one who's getting the chance to move. There's a lot of "It's not my problem" involved in that. So let's take a look at kind of going forward.

Laurel: Mm hmm.

Wayne: What if I'm thinking of ditching the city? I'm bailing San Francisco, I'm bailing New York and bailing whatever. How do I go home to Mom and not lose my mind? I'm serious. People that are used to living, I mean people in red states right now, "All these people from California are coming and screwing up our demographic."

Well, guess what? They are going to vote the way they want to vote and there are going to be changes. So what happens? How do if I'm a migrant, if I'm a digital migrant, and that's the term I've been using these days, again, going back to The Grapes of Wrath and the back of grandma's truck.

If I'm a digital migrant, what do I need to do not to lose my darn mind?

Laurel: Yeah, well, I think it's important to say that. I mean, we don't have to go back to our roots. Right. That for me, I also made the same decision about five years ago. Like, hey, we can live anywhere.

And so where do we want to go? Our decisions were based on whether on education for our kids, as well as how do we get as far away from our families as possible. So I think that's what we get to see is like we get to choose whatever is and is not important to us.

So I think what we're going to see more as opposed to like selecting where we want to live based on industry, it's going to be more of a shift on where do we want to live based on culture.

So what we're seeing right now is a big rise in outdoor recreation and artistic communities, right? So we're seeing like Austin and Denver are just exploding because people are like, oh, that's great, I get to be outside and have a great job.

So I think we're going to continue to see a snowballing effect of something like that, that people are going to create these cultural hubs of things that they are all interested in together, like skiing communities and and, you know, beach communities and things that you can't change like the weather.

And then they're going to migrate to those more often and start to build more similarities based on those. That's my projection. I'm not sure about that. But that's that's where I see us headed as people are that it's like the Great Lake relocation and the Great Resignation are marrying each other.

People are going to other employers because of their culture. And I think people are going to go to a different city because of the culture as well.

Wayne: Well, very quickly, because as fully expected, we are out of time. But let's talk about the employers for a minute.

Laurel: Mm hmm.

Wayne: What are some of the structural things inside organizations that they need to think about if they're going to be an employer of choice for these digital nomads?

What are the things they need to think about because we've got time zones and we've got people who aren't really good at guiding their time. And it's really easy to spend all your time glued to your computer and like that.

So what are some of the things the employers need to think about?

Laurel: Yeah, I think asynchronous communication is massive because of the reason that you just said that. We need to make sure that we are able to operate in a way that is not dependent on sharing time and location. So obviously that's a really big first step.

But more on the compliance side, they really need to be aware of the fact that there is not really such thing as work from anywhere. So these companies that are touting like you could be anywhere and, you know, move around as much as you like and that's fine with us.

Like that is going to spin the company into bankruptcy faster than they can blink. Like it is not sustainable, it is not legal and is not scalable. So while that might work for a very small organization of independent contractors only like that's one thing and that's what we hear about in the media.

But for large organizations, over a hundred employees that and that are employees, not independent contractors, it's a much more serious decision. And there needs to be very careful consideration of where they allow their employees to live and whether or not the employer of records in those particular regions are a good match for the company.

Wayne: So much to unpack and well, thank you so much, because there is a lot of things that we need to think about, right? We need to think about our own individual wants and needs as organizations. We need to think about our wants and needs and staying in business and staying out of jail and all of those things.

And there are large scale seismic changes going on that is more than just I get to avoid my commute every day. So these conversations are going to be going on for a very long time, and I am delighted that you are part of this conversation.

Laurel, thank you so much. We will have links to Distribute Consulting and some other stuff in our show notes at longdistanceworklife.com. Thanks for being with us.

Laurel: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Wayne: There you have it. I hope you enjoyed the interview with Laurel Farrer. I hope that you have gotten a lot out of it and you're asking the right questions, which at this stage is all we can do. Show notes and links to some of the things that we've talked about are at longdistanceworklife.com.

If you have questions for me and Marisa, we will be taking those. We love audience questions. And of course, if you are a podcast listener of any time span, you know that we'd really love you to like and subscribe and of course tell other people about this.

My name is Wayne Turmel from The Kevin Eikenberry Group and The Remote Leadership Institute. If you have not read The Long-Distance Leader and The Long-Distance Teammate, we recommend that you do. And, you know, we really hope that we're helping you keep the weasels at bay.

Have a good week. We will talk to you next week on The Long-Distance Worklife.

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Guests, Leadership, Technology

How to Be Virtual Not Distant with Pilar Orti

Pilar Orti, founder and director of Virtual Not Distant, meets with Wayne to discuss tips for new managers on a remote team, having conversations around how to use tools effectively, thinking about "remote-first", and how silence doesn't necessarily mean things are okay.

Virtual Not Distant works with leaders, managers, and HR professionals to create a "remote-first" environment whether you're planning to stay remote or becoming a hybrid organization.

Question of the Week:

What is one pitfall that managers need to be aware of?

Additional Resources:

Transcript

Wayne Turmel: Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Long-Distance Worklife, the podcast where we talk about remote work, technology, leadership, and generally just navigating and surviving this crazy world of virtual and hybrid work. My name is Wayne Turmel. Marisa will not be joining us today because I have an interview with a very smart person named Pilar Orti. Pilar is the founder and director of Virtual Not Distant.

Most of her work is done in England and the European Union and I think she brings a really interesting perspective to remote work. And so I wanted you to experience that. Of course, you know the drill. Listen up, take good notes. We will, of course, capture and transcribe that in our show notes. And for right now, I want you to enjoy the conversation with Pilar Orti.

I am really excited today to be with Pilar Orti. Our trails have crossed a couple of times over the last couple of years. She does really good work. Her company is VirtualNotDistant.com, of which she is the founder and director. Really quick, Pilar. What do you guys do?

Pilar Orti: Well, mainly we help managers of remote teams through either training or by providing a listening ear sometimes. And we have the 21st Century Work Life Podcast, which aims to support anyone who is interested in leading teams and working online.

Wayne: So obviously she's a direct competitor and must be destroyed, but she does really good work is the point. And I wanted to introduce all of you to her because you cannot have enough smart people in your orbit. Pilar, you've been in this space a long time. Let me ask you this. When a manager is taking on a new position, especially if there's a remote component and they have never done that before.

What kind of is Job One? What is the first thing that they need to do?

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Pilar: I've actually got two answers to that. So I think that there's always two elements for me in leading a team. One is what we do as individuals and how we connect to the team members individually. And the other one is how we look after the team and how we support the team to continue all the time building that team and and supporting them.

So I think that the first thing when we are new, either we might even be in our team and become the team leader or we might come in for a new team is to communicate our availability and how we communicate, how available we are to people because especially we are remote, we sometimes we assume that if we say, "Oh, I'm available all the time," that people are going to look for us when they need us.

And actually there's when you can't see whether someone is busy, working, etc. you more reluctant normally to interrupt them.

Wayne: I think that's a really, really important point, which is one of the things that the people on the team struggle with is I don't want to bug the boss I don't want to bother them. And what that means is the manager is saying, "Hey, I've got an open door policy, come talk to me" and nobody's coming to talk to me.

So I think that's a really interesting point.

Pilar: And the equivalent of having an open door policy as well could be if setting hours, setting open door hours during which you sit behind your computer. If you're if you're at that time and you open a meeting and everyone has the link to that meeting, are you just there? And people can literally drop in? That's one, one thing that you could do.

So communicating availability. And the other thing I think is to be aware of and this takes a bit more time, is to be aware of the team's rhythm of communication and how that fits with the tasks we're doing and the need to connect. So, for example, our experience working remotely might be of being in a team where everyone pretty much gets on with their work because that's the best way of doing it.

And suddenly we might land in a team who are used to being available a lot, sending lots of messages backwards and forwards during the day. So it's this awareness and then making sure that that rhythm fits the task and also the need for connection. So one is something very immediate, and I think looking at the team takes a little bit more time.

Wayne: There's two things that you said there. One is the idea of creating office hours, for lack of a better term.

Pilar: Yeah.

Wayne: Where regardless of where you are in the world, you know that at this time it's okay to bug your manager.

Pilar: Yes.

Wayne: And I think that's a really simple and yet effective tool. The second thing is this idea of the rhythm that the team works. Generally speaking, we are not starting from a blank sheet of paper, right? That the team already exists, the boat is in the water and we need to adjust to it.

What is what are some of the things that managers bump their nose against when they take over an existing team like that?

Pilar: I think it's sometimes it's an assumption that we are using technology in the same way. So it could be that. And if we are a remote team, we're using technology to communicate. So it could be that we use a platform that we've used before, but we're used to using it in a certain way and the team is using it in another one.

And not having that conversation at the beginning of how we're going to use the technology. I think this can be one of the biggest things and one of the biggest differences assuming back to that.

Wayne: We'll come back to that question for those of you listening. The reason Pilar stopped talking is because I got this look on my face and she realized my head was about to explode. Um, I want to talk about that notion of using tools differently because you work with teams and primarily you're on the eastern side of the Atlantic with your clients, with tools like Microsoft Teams, like Slack, with these kinds of tools.

What are you seeing in terms of how well people use them and actually do what the darn things can do.

Pilar: Yeah.

So there's there's lots of things. And I think that we cannot ignore the pandemic, which meant that everyone started using the the tools.

Wayne: Well, and also, yeah, Microsoft threw Teams out in the world two years too early.

Pilar: Yeah.

Wayne: Isn't this a-

Pilar: Good.

Wayne: Win?

Pilar: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That it is also true that when you go for it and very interestingly. So I started using Teams with a client before the pandemic and we rarely met on it on Teams. We used it mainly for asynchronous communication. We used all the other tools. So I think that one of the things that we're seeing is that tools that can be used for asynchronous communication, like Teams are only being used in the video function and they're being used mainly to communicate in real time.

So I think that that is the main thing I'm seeing is that there's not the tools haven't been embraced as a space to give us a bit more breathing space and to be able to communicate in a slower pace. And so that being used to communicate quite rapidly as though we were in the office next to each other.

Wayne: I'm glad you went there because this is actually a question that I've been struggling with and why I'm looking to very smart people who can look at this. A lot of what we're dealing with it seems to me too many meetings, too much email, all of that is because we're trying to recreate the office environment.

Pilar: Yeah.

Wayne: And as especially as we start to think about return to the office, and most of that is going to be some hybrid mix.

Pilar: Hmm.

Wayne: Right. People in the office and people not. And some people in on Tuesdays and not on Wednesdays. What what do we need to think about differently instead of just trying to recreate the office or worse going back to defaulting to the office?

Pilar: Yeah.

Wayne: Right? Where everything, you know, the sun revolves around the Statue of Liberty. And so everything has to be done on New York time regardless.

Pilar: Yeah. Yeah.

Wayne: What does this new as we're thinking about creating something new, what needs to be new and different?

Pilar: I think I'll start with two things. One, which leads from the use of tools that we were just talking about. So we need to have some kind of conversation. And this is very difficult because we need to have some conversation about how are we going to communicate. And this means maybe setting some agreements and we might not be used to this because communication, why do we need to, to, to set so many parameters?

But for example, if you look at how email has been used, some people use it as almost instant message. Some people think it's okay to wait three days to reply to an email. Some people are like, "Why didn't you reply to my email that I sent 2 hours ago?" Because email was introduced without having a conversation around it in most organizations.

And so now everyone uses it differently and sometimes it causes some chaos. So some stress, rather. So I think that first of all, is we need to talk about how we are using these tools and have some agreement, some parameters. Even if it sounds easy and even if it sounds like we are removing all spontaneity from human contact, we need that.

And then the other thing specifically to hybrid work, which involves maybe some people being in the office, others not or people using the office at different times, is that if we think of hybrid as a subset of remote, it means that essentially the office becomes one more tool, one more space where we do the work it becomes one more place where we communicate because we also have the video tools.

We also have asynchronous platforms and if we think about it like that, then we have a chance of creating some kind of cohesive way of working rather than ending up where, well, if you're in the office, you work like this. If you're online, you work like this. Lots of us are in the office all the time, so we work in this way.

A lot of us are remote all the time, so we work in that way. So I think that mindset of hybrid is a subset of remote, because in the end, the space that is common to every knowledge worker is not the office, it's the online space regardless of where you are. So initially that mindset shift and then the practicalities, of course, that are harder.

Also, you know, nothing is easy, but you need that mindset initially rather than thinking, well, we are office based and some people work from home some time.

Wayne: And wow, I'm really glad that you stated that so succinctly that the default is no longer in the office. Right. It used to be in the before time's the blessed before times when most people were in the office and we let some people work from home. And so basically the office is how this works. And now the default is the kind of cyber space as opposed to the office.

And that changes how we meet when we meet and yeah, who works on things and. Yeah. And like that. The second thing you said, by the way, and I don't think there are enough icky conversations, icky being the highly technical term for slightly uncomfortable and weird and I don't know why they're uncomfortable. Over 70% of our workplace communication happens in writing.

People that have been listening to this podcast are already tired of me saying that my business career ties perfectly to the intro from the introduction of email to wherever we are now. So I've watched this thing occur. Well, if there is something that we spend 70% of our time doing and it's already existed when most people are in the workplace, why do we not talk about it?

Like, how can we not give people better training how do we not have the conversations about when do we use what? And no, you know, when you're on your eighth thing in an email thread, pick up the phone.

Pilar: Yes.

And I think it's because it's assumed that, of course, everyone knows how to do it. This is one of the resistances I used to get and maybe but everyone has preferences and everyone has a legacy from another time and everyone and everyone thinks that something is the common sense to do. I think maybe that said is that it is common sense, but our way of saying common sense is different.

So we need to agree, agree on that. And especially as you were mentioning earlier, especially if there are different cultures than our points of reference, we're working across the globe. Our points of reference are going to be different as well because we've grown up in different contexts we've worked in different contexts. So we can't really assume that we all think that common sense means the same thing.

Wayne: Wow. That is absolutely true. So, okay, we are almost at the end of our time because I knew that this would happen and- One pitfall that managers should be wary of. Just what if you could give one warning if you could yell out, stop to the managers out there, what is one thing that you think they need to be aware of today's warning.

Pilar: I would say that don't assume that silence means everything's okay.

So I'll leave it at that and everyone can. Can I leave it at that?

Wayne: No, it's absolutely true. I mean, there are a couple of things associated with that. One is we tend to, as managers, default to spending most of our time on our problem children. And so we assume that if we don't hear anything, no news is good news. And that creates some interesting dynamics changes. But the other thing and it goes back to setting those office hours or making yourself available as people are not as willing to be proactive about reaching out as they could or should be.

Pilar: Yeah. And in the end, all you all some people need is how is everything going? That's all they need. And then they'll open up. But actually, they might not think that the time is ever right to bring anything up if they don't ask. So I think that's especially when you're working at a distance with different kinds of people.

I think that the interpretation of silence you've got to be very careful with.

Wayne: And the way you ask that question, how's everything going is very different question than is everything okay?

Pilar: Oh, yeah. Yes. Because is everywhere. Is everything okay? It's really easy to answer regardless. It's very difficult well, it's very difficult sometimes to say no. You know, it is there with you. No, it isn't. Yeah. Yeah.

Wayne: Excellent. Thank you so much, Pilar Orti who is the founder and director of Virtual Not Distant. So good to talk to you again. Lovely to talk to you. And thank you for being on the Long-Distance Worklife.

Pilar: Thank you very much.

Wayne: Thank you so much for joining us on the Long-Distance Worklife today. I trust that you enjoyed that conversation. You will find links to Virtual Not Distant and Pilar's work on our show notes. Those, of course, are on longdistanceworklife.com. Join us next week when I will be joined by Marisa. We will be doing one of our Q&A issues.

We really, really want your questions and your comments to guide where our conversations go. So please visit longdistanceworklife.com. Drop us a comment. You know, if you listen to podcasts that it's really important that you like and subscribe so other people can find us. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope that we are helping keep the weasels at bay and we will see you next episode.

Thanks so much. 

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Guests, Leadership

Attracting and Retaining International Talent with Lona Alia

In this episode of Long-Distance Worklife, Wayne sits down with Lona Alia, head of revenue at SafetyWing, a social impact entrepreneur, Y Combinator founder, mentor at 500 Startups, Advisor at EU for Innovation, and an international nomad. 

SafetyWing is building the first global safety net for remote companies, remote workers, and nomads worldwide. It offers medical insurance for nomads and remote companies around the world. It is also developing other insurance products such as pension savings and income insurance. Its products are built and designed by a fully remote team of nomads distributed across three continents.

Question of the Week:

What do organizations need to take into account when recruiting people outside the United States?

Additional Resources:

Transcript

Wayne Turmel: Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week's edition of the Long-Distance Worklife podcast, where we look at what it's like to work on remote and hybrid teams. We are examining remote work, technology, leadership, everything it takes to thrive and survive in the new long-distance workplace. Today, I am alone. Marisa's not with me, but I am not flying solo.

We have a really, really good interview with Lona Alia. Lona is the chief revenue officer at SafetyWing, and we are talking about recruiting and retaining employees internationally. And this is not just hiring people in different countries, but digital nomads. And the whole idea of creating a truly international and dispersed workplace. You're really going to enjoy the interview.

We go all over the place and it's really, really good stuff. So here is my interview with Lona Alia.

Hi everybody, this week on the Long-Distance Worklife, we are talking to Lona Alia, who is with SafetyWing. First of all, welcome, but also two sentences quick. What is SafetyWing? What do you do? Why do we care?

Lona Alia: Thank you. Thank you so much, Wayne. Really excited to be here. SafetyWing. We're building this global social safety net. And what that means is that we offer global benefits for remote workers, remote teams and nomads living around the world. The idea is that now we're hiring people from all over the world and they need to be covered somehow.

With remote health insurance, with retirement, with life and disability if something were to happen to them. So how do we cover these team members that are all over the world? So SafetyWing does that. I'm the head of revenue there. I'm also a Y Combinator founder. I'm an advisor to many different startups, and I'm also an original remote worker.

So I just love talking about remote work, hybrid, all of these fun things.

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Wayne: Well, that's why you're here. I mean, SafetyWing is lovely. And there's probably a three beer conversation that you could have about what are the benefits, you know, in different parts of the world, because American companies go, "Hey, we can give you health insurance and we can give you maternity leave." And people in the rest of the world goes, "Yeah."

And so the world is a very diverse place, but you are kind of uniquely positioned to help. So let's start with as we're thinking about digital nomad and hiring people in other countries, if you are thinking about doing that. What are the top three things that employers need to consider in recruiting and just as importantly, keeping people?

Lona: Sure. Absolutely. So I would recommend from my experience, I've grown a team from zero to 14 people in the last year or so, built the B2B sales team from scratch, and I hired people from all over the world. We have also 100% retention. So that tells you that what we're doing maybe is right. So a couple of things that I would say.

One is compensation. Think about that. Are you offering a flat compensation across all countries and cities, or are you doing a location based kind of like salary range? This is a very hot topic right now. Many people don't agree with one or the other. There's really no right way to do this.

Wayne: You can get a sense compensation and stuff is what you do. Very briefly, what we're talking about is if I have a company in New York and so I pay New York salary. But you're in the Philippines, and of course, the cost of living is lower and everything. Do I pay you a good salary from the Philippines or do I pay you a New York salary regardless of where you live?

I mean, that's what we're talking about. Yes. What are the pros and cons?

Lona: So, yeah, last week, I hosted this webinar with 300 people that showed up. So amazing. Like so many people were interested. We had about 70 questions live, and we had companies like Remote that help you hire people all over the world. Carta that which handles your equity does a few different hybrid companies. And we were talking about just this topic, right?

And it's like, what is the right way of doing it? So for example, GitLab, which is a great remote-first company, but also a public company. What they have chosen is to do location-based salary so they will tie your compensation based on what's best in that location that you're in. I'm not sure what happens as you move locations from place to place, which is a problem now as people want to be more free, they want to live all over the world.

Do they do you say like, "Okay, well, because it started in Bali and now you're coming to San Francisco, you're not going to be making $200,000 a year. You're actually going to be making, you know, I don't know, $30,000." I'm not sure what the price is in Bali. Right? So we had this conversation at Safety. We offer flat salaries across the board.

We take a salary that's maybe like in an average city in the US not in San Francisco and not in New York, but something that's in the middle. And we offer that across the board. So we feel but that makes it the, the most kind of competitive but also the fairest.

Do you think it's the right way to do it? We don't know. This is all an experiment that everybody is doing at this time.

Wayne: So and it's happening in the US as well. I mean, I hire you and you're living in San Jose, so I'm paying you commensurate with San Jose and then you decided during COVID that you're going to go move to Montana. Well, am I still paying you what I was paying you in San Jose, or do I pay you the average salary for Bozeman, Montana, which is very different.

Yes. So this is something all organizations are dealing with as people become more mobile.

Lona: Yes. The good thing to keep in mind about that is to stay flexible, to stay flexible with your team, with the best people that you have because you don't want to be in a situation where you lose that talent in the great era of great resignation. So that's because you decided that they moved around. Now they're going to get a lower salary, right?

You don't want to lose a great engineer, that head of people or that head of something just because they would like to be more mobile. And global mobility is the next thing, right? Like people want to be more mobile globally so that they can take advantage of things like a geo arbitrage, like what is geo arbitrage? It's like you can live in a lower cost country and keep that extra money that you will be spending on rent and insurance and all those things to yourself.

So a lot of people are waking up and saying like, "Wait a second, I don't have to live in the most expensive city in the world. I can go live in Colombia, pay $400 a month in rent, and then save the rest and invest it are like retire early." You know, things like that.

Wayne: Yeah. Oh man. The possibilities are so endless, as are the challenges associated with it, right? Yes. This is great. Unless you're trying to hire people in New York or San Francisco. Yes, you know that as well as anybody. So compensation is the first thing. A couple of other things that.

Lona: Yes, benefits is the other. So benefits is huge. What are you bringing to the table for the best talent in the world to join your company? Are you offering great benefits starting with health insurance, obviously, which is great in the US, but also worldwide. They do want to have some type of private health insurance, even though some countries do have good health care.

It's nice to have a private health insurance they can get in front of the line. So, for example, in the UK, there's the public health system has long lines if you want to get a surgery. But if you have private insurance, you don't have to go to the public hospital. You can go get that surgery done sooner. So things like that are great.

Some great benefits that I love that we offer where we're at doing location. Independence is a big one. So a lot of companies are trying to figure out what do they do with a young generation that wants to live and work abroad? Do they allow them to be location independent, which means that they don't have to be based in, you know, New York, if that's where the job is, can they be based in, you know, Bali for three months in Italy for another four, in Paris for another five?

How could they be living this life that they want to live? And this is huge. I think a lot of young people want this benefits. So when they look at a company that is hiring, they will ask like, okay, is this remote? But also is it location independent means do I have freedom to live wherever I want? Or are you going to take me down to a location?

Wayne: Well, and what's interesting is more and more, because we're remote location really means time zone. Yeah, right. You can live in a village in Spain somewhere, right? Or you can live it in Hamburg because it's the same time zone. It makes no difference. 9:00 in the morning. It's 9:00 in the morning. Right. If you're trying to do work between Thailand and Spain, that's a different set of challenges.

Lona: Yes. But also I want to mention there are tax implications and a few things that you have to consider there to make sure that you're fully compliant. But there is a lot of companies solving for these things, though, not to worry. So if there's a heads of operations or heads of people person listening to this, like, "Oh my God, this is a problem I have, how do I solve this?"

And if you want to give your people this global mobility policy, there are solutions out there to help you give people what they want. Therefore, they can stay in your companies.

Wayne: Okay, so we've recruited people. We've somehow lured them into our evil trap, and they're now working with us as somebody who's done this multiple times yourself, what are the biggest mistakes people make when onboarding international team members do you think?

Lona: So, the biggest mistakes that I see that I've seen actually lately we've been talking about this is like the onboarding kind of wave of you on board people. A lot of new hires are falling off after onboarding because many companies are not taking this seriously. So, for example, when you're being onboarded in a company that's physical or you have an office, you might have like a body that helps you show you around you might have someone that's checking in day in and day out with you and you might have a training program in place.

So now that everything is remote, that onboarding has kind of went back to the back burner and not in the front lines so that people are not really paying that much attention, but we should pay a lot of attention to that because we want to make sure that if I hire women, I want the way to succeed. And for when to succeed is for him to understand my organization, to know the mission and values the culture, and to see it's firsthand to have this body that is assigned once a week.

You have a check in and you talk for an hour and answer any questions. Maybe you have notion as an internal knowledge database so that everything is written on there. So very good communication. Having someone to kind of like hold your hand for the first month or so is very important in the onboarding.

Wayne: And there's a couple of things about onboarding that you just said there. One is, you know, in the old days you would have a mentor or a buddy when you're working dispersed. What we might want to do is take that job of mentor and break it up between multiple people so that you're hearing multiple voices in your learning different parts of the organization rather than just following Bob around the office for a couple of days.

Lona: Well, I'm very thankful because I had one of the co-founders be my buddy, and basically we had weekly calls, and I cannot tell you how helpful that it was to parlay the culture of the company to me. And I was able to build the team with the culture that we want. And that's another thing. It's culture I like.

Mistakes that people make, especially in remote, is letting culture kind of take its own shape versus making an effort to really set the culture that you want and then making sure that steps are taken to, to to ensure that that culture is the one that you want.

Wayne: Yeah, just as a really simple example, and I'd love to hear something specific that you do at Safety, but what we do when somebody joins the team is their very first assignment is they have to set up a half hour face-to-face video call with every member of the team. It's not like, "Hey, everybody, joined the team."

Everybody says, "Hi, John," and then you never talk to John for a month, right? It jumpstarts that getting to know people and creating relationships and something as simple as that can make a big difference. What are some of the things maybe that you do very specifically that people can steal shamelessly?

Lona: Sure. Absolutely. So one thing is exactly what you said. Having this maybe half an hour or one hour, one on ones that you book with everybody in the team to get to know them. We do give a stipend of you know, you can do a lunch for free at each month so you get $30 per month to spend and have lunch with anybody that you want on the team continuously.

So that's nice that you can get a free lunch, you know, once a month. We have an internal NPS score that the CEO actually reports on each month. So there you can find out that NPS is Net Promoter Score, which is a very specific terminology, but it's basically a way of keeping track.

You can call it friends all you want, but you're monitoring the stuff you're monitoring to seeing. Are your people happy? Is the culture something that they love being in? And also, are they speaking their mind and being taken seriously? So this is something that we place a lot of effort in is being authentic, speaking your mind? That's a big part of our culture. Another great thing that the founders do is that they lead by example.

So for example, they take four days off like every quarter. They will take a week off. They will be off of Slack, off of email, off of everything. So you cannot reach them. Now, this sends a great signal to the rest of the team that, "Hey, this is our culture. You are it's okay to take days off because we want you to be healthy and we want you to be creative and we don't want you to burnout."

So these are signals that company leaders can give to their employees so that they can create the culture that they want.

Wayne: I love what you just said. And if you listen carefully, you can hear heads exploding all over North America at the notion of the management taking a week, a quarter and just disappearing. Yeah, people are having aneurysms listening to us right now. We have created a health crisis I think that that's important. And I, I love that you're taking your experience elsewhere and bringing it here as well as us just importing our dysfunction.

Lona: And something I mean, I grew up in, you know, New York and San Francisco. I saw my working years were in Silicon Valley, right? So I was distilled with this toxic culture of working 12 to 16 hours a day, of sleeping 4 hours a day. And that was heroic. And this is the culture that I grew up with. And I'm just like this is wrong.

And this this cannot be healthy. People are going to die. They're going to get cancer by being, you know, worked to death. And then who profits is the companies that are making millions and billions and trillions. Right. See, the Googles, the Apples, the Facebooks and the people, if they get cancer, who looks after them? Like what happens to them?

So this is serious stuff. This is, you know, the whole population waking up and the consciousness, the rising and now the new generation wants to have a life that is better than their previous ancestors has. So we need to wake up and people that are having an aneurysm need to wake up and say, okay, Gen Z is not going to work 14 hour days or 12 hour days.

They need work life integration. They need that balance. They don't want to be just working and not doing anything else. So what we have is.

Wayne: That is so, so important. And we're already coming up on the end of our time, which I knew would happen. And the giant list of questions that I provided are kind of irrelevant because this has been a great conversation. If there is one thing that if I'm a manager and I've got people in different countries and, you know, I'm trying to herd the cats and keep things organized, if there is one piece of advice that you would give them from your own experience, one practical tip or something that they can do, what should we leave them with, won't it?

Lona: Sure. That's something very simple. I as a founder, we are told, especially at the Y Combinator, that you should build things that people want. And when it comes to management, you should do things that people want. So you should listen to your people who are your people, your team members, your employees, your contractors? They are your people. What do they want?

Just ask them if they're leaving and they're getting another job. Please have an exit interview. Why are they leaving? Is it the benefits? Is it the working hours? Is it the burning out? Is it I don't know. Something else. What is it like? Just ask your people. It's that simple. Keep track. Make sure that they're healthy and they're doing well.

Lona: Be empathetic, take steps. But really just ask their people, is that simple and keep tabs on it.

Wayne: Thank you so, so much. I knew that you were the right person to ask about this. We will have links to SafetyWing in the show notes. Thank you so much. I so enjoyed our time together.

Lona: Thank you. I really appreciate you doing all the best.

Wayne: I had such a good time talking to her today. I hope that you enjoyed and got great value from the conversation. If you are enjoying the Long-Distance Worklife, you've listened to podcasts before, here's where I beg and plead for you to like and subscribe. And please, for heaven's sake, tell your friends.

If you would like links to much of what we discuss today very thorough show notes you can find those at longdistanceworklife.com, and if you have read Long-Distance Leader or Long-Distance Teammate and you want more information on how to develop long-distance work skills for either yourself or your organization, reach out to us at KevinEikenberry.com or RemoteLeadershipInstitute.com.

We will talk to you next week. My name is Wayne Turmel. Thank you for joining us. Hope we've helped kept the weasels at bay and I look forward to seeing you next time. On the Long-Distance Worklife.

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Guests, Surviving Remote Work, Technology

Do We Really Need More Webmeeting Tools? with Hoyin Cheung

Hoyin Cheung from Remo joins Wayne Turmel to discuss webmeeting tools and leading remote meetings. Remo is an interactive virtual event platform that humanizes the online event experience, and brings people together worldwide. 

Question of the Week:

Is it the tools we have for webmeetings that make them suck, or the way we lead meetings?

Additional Resources:

Transcript

Wayne Turmel: Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Long-Distance Worklife podcast brought to you by The Kevin Eikenberry Group. My name is Wayne Turmel. I am glad to be with you today. We are going to look at a subject that is the bane of every Long-Distance Leader's life meetings and events, and how do we do those when we are all in the same place?

We are going to have a really interesting conversation with a young man named Hoyin Cheung, who runs a web platform called Remo. It's an interesting platform check it out. But also we talk about what's wrong with the way we meet online and how we can use it to build culture and create stronger team. So I hope you enjoy.

I am very happy to reconnect with Hoyin Cheung. He is the founder and kind of guiding light behind Remo, which is an online web meeting web event portal. He'll tell us all about that in a second. But really, we're here to talk about meetings and building culture and how do you do that in a remote and a hybrid way?

So again, how are you, man?

Hoyin Cheung: I'm doing awesome, Wayne. And we haven't talked we haven't spoken for a while. So I was super excited that you messaged me and thank you for inviting me on the podcast.

Wayne: We're delighted to have you. And you need to lower the bar on what excites you. But that's okay. I'm glad that you're here. And when I first saw Remo, I thought, "Wow, this is really cool." And it is. I mean, there's some very cool things, but nobody goes into software just to do cool things, right? There's a problem you're trying to solve for.

So, you know, in a world of WebEx and Teams and Zoom everything else. What were you trying to solve? Or what was the problem with humans getting together that you were trying to fix when you created Remo?

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Hoyin: Yeah, so when I originally created like I crafted this mission, which is like, how do we create authentic conversations that drive meaningful relationships? And one of the problems that we saw was that you've got great tools like WebEx and all that kind of stuff, but they are mostly designed more for like kind of like like a click, like a call conference, like a phone conference, and so a video conference to emerge from a normal conference call. And so that dynamic is more focused more on meetings.

But when you think about how humans interact, like at a happy hour or at a workshop or whatever, it's not just one person speaking at one time. Like there's multiple conversations happening at the same time. And that kind of human behavior dynamic is actually what we as humans are more used to. And there was no real easy way to create that type of dynamic with the current tools that you mentioned.

And so that's why when we created, we know we really laser focused on making it super easy to have conversations, have intimate conversations, and make have this sort of serendipity and feeling that you can meet people just like you could in real life.

Wayne: Yeah. And so what do you think? Before we began, we were talking about the difference between meetings and events. And maybe you could give me like a short description of how they're different and what when you're trying to build a culture, how do meetings not necessarily fit everything they need to do?

Hoyin: Yeah, that's a great question. So how to find like a meeting is something where like people are having in meetings for productivity reasons, like you're trying to productively discuss or make decisions about something. Right. It's typically a group of anywhere between two and maybe eight or ten people, and it's one person speaking out at a time. There's a very clear objective for that meeting and an agenda you're trying to get to some decisions or, you know, brains or whatever.

But when it comes to an event, event is more casual, more fluid. Like there's many small conversations happening and an event. It also serves like a different purpose, whereas like a larger group and it's not necessarily like productivity like maybe it's training, maybe it's a workshop, maybe it's a job fair, like the the event objective is a little bit I want I don't want to say it's less corporate, but not as productivity focused.

Wayne: And so that's an important visual because one of the things that we're running up against, especially as we begin to go back to work in kind of a hybrid environment where you've got people in the office and people not, it's all about creating the culture itself, of creating the corporate culture. And I know, yeah, I like the way one of the ways that your clients are using this and I found this fascinating was onboarding because I know that onboarding new people on a hybrid or remote team is a real challenge. Can you share what some of your clients are doing around that?

Hoyin: Yeah, sure. So we have we have a client and what they do is they create. So our platform is a map. Just imagine that it's like Google map. You're looking at Google Maps and you're represented by the circle and then imagine you zooming in to the Google map so far that you can see the outline of the building and the individual chairs and tables on there and your circle sits on one chair in one little chair.

And when you double click on a different table, your blue circle then moves that table, except that blue circle has your face in it. So it's like a like an avatar. And so what what what enterprises do is that they create custom a custom floor plan. They can change the background to match their branding so that there's like different table sections.

And each section has a person from a different department or different a different a different sort of station where each person will then go to that station, do the things they need to do in that station and then go to the next table and do this. So it becomes this kind of like little assembly line of people or they go through and try to get go through the onboarding process with them.

There's also what people do is they do like a workshop where they will sit at each person's table and walk through the whole process with them one at a time or or go through that or to even invite other people to come in from the rest of the company. And those people will have conversations with them to kind of get them started to get to know that kind of stuff. So it's it's a very, like, natural and organic way of giving new employee ease a more human experience.

Wayne: I'm curious, as you were laying this out and kind of working with this I'm a crusty old cis hat white guy, basically. Yeah, I am. I know what I am. And whenever I look at new technology, even when it's really cool, I always go, yeah, here's something else. You know, here's something else we got to learn. What have you experienced in trying to introduce this to organizations and to our listeners who are trying to introduce new tech or new tools into the organization.

What advice can you give people when they go, you know, can't we just Zoom this or, you know, can't we just do this on Microsoft Teams? How do you encourage them to adopt a new technology?

Hoyin: Yeah, so what we focus on is creating a human experience, and we create these amazing custom pull plans. Most of the time when people see the custom floor plan or these floor plans, they're like, Wow, what is that? It piques interest. It's visual. So there's no one. You have the peak interest, something that looks different. The second is, is that when creating these events, like we we teach like our our customers when they create the events, is that you're creating an interactive experience.

A lot of people, when they think, I'm just creating an event or I'm creating a meeting, it's just like kind of the physical world. What we do and how we differentiate ourselves is that we can teach you how to facilitate and make the event truly interactive that makes people jump off or simply like, "Oh, wow, this is not something I've attended before."

This is different. And all of the feedback in terms of how Remo has been successful to date is that people have a great experience inside Remo. They tell their friends and they come back to us and say, "I had a great experience that I can actually have a proper conversation with someone," and that's when that just starts to spread.

People just say, "Well, I heard about this and I want to join."

Wayne: That's one of the things that fascinates me because what we're discovering, as you know, people try to figure out what this is going to look like in a post-COVID world is a lot of what we call hybrid is just recreating the existing physical offices as best we can. Right, right? The meeting that we've always had, but with webcams and what you're talking about is thinking differently about what these events need to look like.

Right. It's not a glorified conference call, and it's not being in-person. It's this new thing. How is that received? Because you work all over the world. I mean, you're sitting in Hong Kong today and I'm in Las Vegas.

How does that get received across different cultures?

Hoyin: Well, what's interesting is that a lot of our customers are in the United States, but we also have Europe across Japan. What's interesting is, like, each what's funny about all the different cultures is that human interaction is actually really universal. I mean, if you think about it makes sense. Are we all one interaction to some degree, but how they interact and the agenda and that's different.

But the interaction system and also the floor plans are very different, like Japanese, like more cartoony type for plants and they love it. Western audiences like this 3D kind of asymmetric 3D floor plan and they love that. And so the differences isn't so much on like how the core function remote, but it's more of like how they dress it up.

You know what I mean? And those are kind of like where the key to is, is it really highlights the fact that we're not really that different from a cultural standpoint, like they, they do. There are some differences like the we how like the event is run, for example, but they are aiming for the same thing. Like if you're in Japan, you still want engagement from your employees and you're having breakouts and many employees kind of talk to each other, have these one on one networking speed, networking style.

That's something that works for them. And then they they love that. And so I think it's just it's just some slight differences how they know how to run the event.

Wayne: You know, it does get to an interesting question in this I think we had this conversation when you first introduced me to this a couple of years ago, which is it's easy to think about the technology, but there is a part of me that goes you can use, you know, to smoke sticks and smoke signals and communicate or you can have the greatest technology in the world and not communicate it.

All right. So what do you find? Is it really that we need new tools or do we need to be more intentional about how we communicate?

Hoyin: Yeah. So so the way I see it is, is like you can be intentional, but you will also you can be intentional. And also achieve your goal. You could have a tool, but if you're not intentional enough, the tool may not be can only help you so much. But if you were intentional and you had the tool, one plus one is not too one.

Plus one is like three or four like that. The benefits you get stack on actively, way worse things.

Wayne: I completely agree with you. What do you think? This is a chance to plug Remo now? What do you think is? If I'm intentional about events and you said this is not, you know, for one on one meetings, this is team meetings town halls, you can use it for culture building events like onboarding and others. What do you think is the intentionality piece that would really help somebody use this tool effect?

Hoyin: Intentionality is like really being focused on what? How do you encourage each like the right types of interactions. I'll give you a good example. So in Rio, we have this map view, which I kind of explain. We also have this webinar mode is called presentation but it looks like every other webinar mode out there and that was unique about remote is that you can bounce back and forth between this map and this presentation.

When you enter the presentation. This is an example of really great intentionality.

Like, we have this rule which is like the 10/20/10 rule, which is like you spend the first 10 minutes allowing people to network, and then you spend only 20 minutes talking about a topic which is short and sweet. And at the end of the 20 minutes, you then say, "Hey, everyone, I just spoke about this topic. I'm going to give each other you guys 5 minutes to talk about what challenges have you guys had."

And I want you to share that challenge with each person on the table. And then after that will come back up after 5 minutes and each person kind of shares that. Now, this is a very heavy facilitator, you know, style of of running a meeting. Like typically people don't really, really do that. But I see the next level of hybrid work is being able to have the more people learn how to learn and use these facilitation techniques.

So that they can structure and guide and intentionally guide the conversation and then bring that up forward so that it can become a lot more fruitful. And people can have can have that because it's hard to make these real connections virtually. And it's hard to know what to do sometimes. So you have to provide a little bit more guidance.

Wayne: Yeah. That Venn diagram of, you know, intentionality, human need and technology that enables that is really the sweet spot. Hoyin Cheung, thank you so much for being with us. We will make sure that there is a link to a chance for people to check out Remo. We'll put that in the show notes so that folks can do that.

Thank you so much. For helping us rethink about what we're doing with the technology. And it's just good to see you again.

Hoyin: Thank you so much. I really I'm so happy to be on. Thank you for inviting me.

Wayne: So some interesting stuff there, particularly the 10/20/10 formula that he mentioned. We will have links to that in the show notes which are at longdistanceworklife.com. Hope you enjoyed it if you did, please like and subscribe vibe. I know that's weasely podcast language, but it's important for us to help find an audience and we hope that you will join us again next time.

Until then, I'm Wayne Turmel. You can find us at kevineikenberry.com or at remoteleadershipinstitute.com. Have a great, great day. Don't let the weasels get you down. We'll see you next week. 

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