Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hey there, this is James Carberry, founder of sweet fish media and one
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of the cohosts of this show.
For the last year and a half I've
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been working on my very first book. In the book I share the three
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part framework we've used as the foundation
for our growth. Here is sweetfish.
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Now there are lots of companies that
everised a bunch of money and have grown
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insanely fast, and we featured a
lot of them here on the show.
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We've decided to bootstrap our business,
which usually equates to pretty slow growth,
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but using the strategy outlined in the
book, we are on pace to be
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one of inks fastest growing companies in
two thousand and twenty. The book is
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called content based networking, how to
instantly connect with anyone you want to know.
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If you're a fan of audio books
like me, you can find the
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book on audible, or if you
like physical books, you can also find
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it on Amazon. Just search content
based networking or James carberry CR be a
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ary in audible or Amazon and it
should pop right up. All right,
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let's get into the show. Hey, everybody, Logan with sweet fish here,
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as we've been doing all month long. We continue our countdown today of
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the top twenty episodes of two thousand
and nineteen. Coming in at number six
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is a conversation with Lisa Walker over
at fuse on building and effective work from
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anywhere culture. To get more episodes
coming up in the countdown, make sure
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you're subscribed to the show in apple
podcasts or wherever you do you're listening.
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You can also check out the full
list at Sweet Fish Mediacom blog. Just
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look for the Hashtag Best of two
thousand and nineteen in the categories on the
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right hand side of that page.
Welcome back to the BB gross show.
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I'm your host for today's episode,
Logan Lyles, with sweetfish media. I'm
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joined today by Lisa Walker. She
is the vice president of brand and corporate
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marketing at fuse. Lisa, how
you doing today? I'm good. Thanks
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so much for having me, Logan. I appreciate it. We appreciate you
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making some time to join us or
LISA. We're going to be talking about
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a topic that is near and dear
to my heart. You know, work
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is not a place anymore. The
the future of work and and running a
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remote team poses a lot of opportunities
and challenges. So we're going to be
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breaking down, you know, some
ideas about that, where things are headed
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and what we can do about it, and, as a member of a
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remote team, myself very passionate about
this topic. Before we jump straight into
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that, though, I would love
for you to share with listeners a little
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bit about yourself, your background,
your history and marketing and what you and
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your team at fuse are up to
these days. Sure, so, as
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you mentioned, I'm here at fuse
now, but I've been in B Tob
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Brand and marketing for longer than I
care to admit, both and Publishing and
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then in the tech industry. And
so before feuse I was actually at forster
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research for several years doing brand and
marketing there. I think one really important
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thing to know before we jump in
is that I'm a working mom of two
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boys, which was a huge factor
me choosing to come work for fuse and
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come help build the brand here.
Views is a cloud software company, so
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what we've built here as a communications
and collaboration platform that gives people the ability
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to call, meet, chat and
share content through one single application across any
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device they choose. Just as a
contrast to that, at my last company
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I did those things across six different
applications for voice video alogy. Yeah,
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it's a lot right, and I
mean I'm sure you have. You probably
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have four of your own as we're
talking here. And that created a ton
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of friction, frankly, for me
and lost a lot of time as I
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was trying to work. I had
a distributed team across, I think for
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different countries during my time at Forster. So it turned out that six applications
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in an organization is typical and that's
actually the average we see with the companies
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that were working with, where we're
coming in and displacing those applications and bringing
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in one unified APP for voice video
messaging. So that that's sort of the
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average situation we walk into, where
you've got six applications or more and we're
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coming in and bringing it all into
one. Absolutely. I mean I can
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totally relate to that, you know, as being part of a remote team,
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as being a millennial who's an early
adopter. You know, I can
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remember early on I had, not
necessarily talking about communication here, but file
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storage. I had I had one
drive, I had box, I had
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dropbox, I had google drive.
I'm like, hold on a second,
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I'm I'm writting myself too thin as
I try out you know, these different
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applications for different things, whether that's
communication or files sharing, those sorts of
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things. I can totally relate to
that and that's kind of eye opening there
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that, you know, the average
of six APPS for communication and collaboration is
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kind of the average for organizations these
days, and I think that leads nicely
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into the first thing that you wanted
to touch on is that, you know,
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really, when we look at communication
and we look at work, it's
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transformed from a place that we go
to what we do. Right. It
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has, and I think you know, if you think back to I can
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think back to my first couple jobs, work was a much more formal setting
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for me, starting out sort of
as an information worker. There's a set
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schedule, there was a very little
flexibility. I certain did certainly didn't feel
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like there's a culture of flexibility,
but frankly, with the tools we have
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today, that that's change. So
it's not just about the fact that you
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can work from different places, but
also you can work during different times and
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those times when you're most productive,
and we didn't have the tech to do
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that before. So we did a
survey on this. I think it was
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two years ago. Six thousand information
workers globally and fifty percent told us they
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would move to another company if it
meant more flexibility, and that was without
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a pay increase. And eighteen percent
said they would take a pay cut or
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demotion to gain that flexibility. So
that's that was really interesting to us.
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And when we dug in, flexibility
wasn't about where I work from. That
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was one factor, but the other
thing that was just as important to people
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was when I work. So that's
sort of the new frontier. It's not
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just about being able to work remotely, it's about being able to work different
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hours if those are the hours where
I'm most productive. Yeah, yeah,
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wow, those are eye opening statistics, Lisa. So as we look at
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as as leaders of teams, think
about this, Lisa, what are some
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of the things that you guys have
uncovered about how we can implement these different
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workmode policies of when and where we
work effectively? Yeah, so I think
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first I would say that having a
work from home policy or remote work policy
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is one thing, but if you
actually take back to the next level and
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have what we have at fused,
the work for anywhere policy. So are
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chief people officer Mary good put in
a work from anywhere policy which was intentionally
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flexible. So it's a flexible policy
about flexible work. So I would describe
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it. But what it allows you
to do as a manager and as an
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employee is have a conversation about what
a personal arrangement looks like for you.
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That's not you know, these are
the different options you have within the company.
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It's let's sit down as two people
and talk about how you can do
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your best work here, and that's
about when you do your best work and
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about where you can do your best
work and coming up with these personal arrangements.
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So just a couple examples. I
have a working mom who works for
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me and she's in the office three
to the week. She's at home two
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days a week and the day she's
in the office she leaves it one hundred
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and thirty four school pick up and
then she's back online in the afternoon.
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I had another woman to work for
me who decided to move to Philadelphia to
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move in with her boyfriend and we
would have lost her, but when we
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sat down and have that conversation she's
now fully remote from Philadelphia. So I
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think that having a flexible work policy
is great, but actually making that flexible
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work policy, flexible and customizable,
is sort of that next front here for
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people. Yeah, what I hear
you saying there is is don't start with
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the company's perspective and come up with
these policies of, you know, we
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allow two days from home or,
you know, whatever the standard is.
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is taken individualized approach and take it
from the employees perspective. What's going to
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work for you. And do we
see that as as a leader for our
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direct reports? Do we see that
as being, you know, acceptable,
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and do we see that as as
working? Do we see that being beneficial
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for them to be more productive and
having an open and frank conversation about it?
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So I think that's great advice for
leaders, for for us who are
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who are leaders or work on a
team. We're also then, if we
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think about it, you know,
you mentioned being being a working mom.
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We're also dealing with staying present and
active when we're working from anywhere. So
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kind of the flip side of that
is, once you're in that environment,
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what are some best practices to actually
make yourself productive, to guard your time,
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those sorts of things, because there's
benefits but there's also unique challenges to
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working from it anywhere. Right.
Well, I think that's a great point.
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I mean it's in some ways for
us that fuse. It's a little
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bit easier because it's contained within one
APP. So I actually have the ability
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to control when that APP is alerting
me and signaling me and trying to kind
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of push me into work mode.
So that that's kind of an easier thing
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for us, which is lucky for
us because we have that technology. But
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I also think that it's really important
for people to create work mode and personal
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mode. So work mode for me
is about being professional and productive outside of
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the office and it's a very specific
thing. So you need to be able
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to have the right technology, but
you also need to be able to curate
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these environments where you can kind of
go into work mode. So whether that
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for me. For me there's a
couple different environments like that that I've sort
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of curated over the years. There's
a coworking space by my kids school.
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So when I have a bunch of
school events on a given day but I
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also have a bunch of work stuff
that I can't move on that day,
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I will go in and out of
that coworking space so that when I'm in
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that coworking space I can be in
work mode and I can be productive and
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I can get those things done and
then when I'm at those assemblies, my
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phone is off, the fuse APP
is off and I am unreachable during that
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time, as it should be,
and so that's me choosing to go in
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and out of work in personal mode. But it's much more fluid now and
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I think people come in and out
of work mode very quickly. So,
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you know, you come home at
night and you want to have dinner with
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your family, you have to find
a way to put those devices away and
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switch out of work mode. But
it may be that you've created a flexible
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schedule with your manager so that you're
going to be back online from, you
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know, nine to eleven at night, because that's when you do good work
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and you should be able to switch
back into that and you should have the
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tools to do that. That's the
tech piece, but you also need to
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have the right environment to do that. So whether that's, you know,
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the Home Office environment, or whether
that's a great coffee shop or whether that's
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whatever it may be, whatever you've
curated as those environments where you can kind
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of switch into work mode and be
productive. That's what you need to do.
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But I do think it's about us, you know, if we're going
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to be more fluid and more flexible
in when and where we work, we
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have to create that work mode,
in that personal mode, and unfortunately it's
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kind of not one size fits all. I do believe that you have two
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same thing. You have to kind
of customize that to how you work best.
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Yeah, it comes down to your
environment, when your energy level is
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right for different tasks. You know, I found that, you know,
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pushing clearing out my inbox to later
in the evening when I've got some time
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once my kids are asleep is good. I can't do real high level,
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you know, a long term strategic
creative thinking, but I can plow through
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some emails at nine at night,
you know, and and replace that time
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for being able to spend a little
bit more family time at breakfast in the
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morning and not having to jump in
so early. And so I think it's
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it's kind of this this shifting pieces
around that looks different in the mosaic that
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you end up putting together, but
but there's room to move the tiles around
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a bit. So I think that's
an important point that you touched on their
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and also realizing that it is fluid
as we switch in and out of both
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modes, but it's not instantaneous.
You know, I I find myself as
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a millennial, even though I've heard
all the research and I know it all
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to be true, that we can't
multitask. Every time we switch task.
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We lose so much productivity it takes
time to regain our focus. But still
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try to do it. And so
I've heard a lot of people, you
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know, just use the technology to
keep technology from distracting us in the way
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that you're saying in times that you
either completely shut off your phone or your
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change your notification settings in fuse or
slack or whatever communication APP that you're using.
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And I think those boundaries allow us
to switch actually more fluidly than just
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every you know, thirty seconds,
Ninety seconds, whatever it is. We
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think that we can switch fluidly that
way, but it's more about the boundaries
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actually make us be able to switch
those modes more fluidly on a regular clip.
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Right. Well, that's true,
and I think that then forces you
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to kind of create some rules of
engagement for yourself, because it is so
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easy to start checking email in bed
and all of a sudden you know,
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you're deep into it and now you've
you've kind of lost that personal time of
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being able to kind of kind of
wind down and and get ready for your
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sleep, and I think that so
that's not a technology question because, like
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you said, it's all right there
and it's at your fingertips and then it's
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about you choosing to stay in personal
mode when there's some sometimes there's that drove.
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I'll just I'll just check real quick
in case something came in. And
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we're checking so many things throughout the
day and we're so kind of addicted to
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those phones that you can check that
one email and then that one email has
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a problem in it and now all
of a sudden, like you said,
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you're not just sort of winding down
to the night and going through your email,
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now you're deep into solving a problem
and it's eleven o'clock at night and
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you're then not getting the sleep you
need to wake up and be productive the
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next day. So there is a
lot of kind of personal accountability here,
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I think, but for both employees
and for manager. So if you're a
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manager and you have an employee who
you don't think is switching in and out
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of personal and work mode effectively and
you're and you're worried about burnout and those
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sorts of things. That also has
to be part of the conversation. Yeah,
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I saw a great post from Matt
Hinds the other day on linkedin talking
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about kind of guarding your your direct
reports or your colleagues time in that you
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know, we're all working different times. So there's, you know, this
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asynchronous communication that's opening and you know, I think this touches on something we're
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going to get to in a second, is culture in a remote environment.
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But you know, with our team, for instance, you know James,
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our founder, and I will,
you know, I'll get an email from
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him, you know, occasionally pretty
late at night and he's east coast time
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and I'm mountain time, so then
there's also time zone differences. But we've
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created this working relationship to where if
you get an email from me late at
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night, it's not that hey,
I expect you to respond at this time,
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it's just that's when I can get
it out. So it's either have
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her having conversations like that or going
back to where I started there and got
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off on a rabbit trail, was
with Matt's post. He was mentioning,
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you know, use the send later
function that a lot of us have and
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in our email inbox or with certain
tools to compose that email at ten o'clock
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at night when you're you're plowing through
them, but have it send it eight
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tomorrow morning when you know your colleagues
going to be there, to try and
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guard their personal space a little bit. So I think there's a lot of
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different ways that it can play out, but being conscious of those things help
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us to then customize it for for
us, for our director reports and and
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for our colleagues. So let's transition
there and talk a little bit about,
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you know, managing remote teams and
measuring engagement, because that's another challenge that
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comes with this flexibility in this new
way of working. Right sure, yeah,
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and we've actually done a bunch of
research on this, both externally but
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also, you know, within our
own company, the own experiment paition we've
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been doing with managing such a distributed
team. One of the things I think
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is really interesting is the importance of
video meetings. So we know that if
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the leader turns on video, then
then the rest of the employees on the
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call will turn on video as well. So you can you have to sort
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of lead by example there, and
the Nice thing about video is then you're
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seeing everybody and there is just there's
just a more personal connection when you're able
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to see everyone. Now what I
say to people about video, both for
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the the manager and for the for
the employees on that video call, is
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that it's all about sort of creating
the perfect frame. You don't have to
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have a clean house, but you
have to have a clean shot of yourself
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in the video. So there's kind
of a personal brand here. If you
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have a large team on a video
conference from around the country or around the
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world, everyone has that opportunity to
sort of present a personal brand. Moment.
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That sort of me putting my brand
had on. But you should be
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carating just one good frame and there
could be chaos around that frame, but
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there's an opportunity for you to be
consistent on that weekly team called that every
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time that team call happens and that
video flips on, you sort of know
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what you're getting from people and that's
that's what we're talking about. We talk
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about work mode, right, you
have to create environments where you can be
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productive and one of those important environments
is video. So I think as a
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manager. Is just really important to
have those video meetings. Now, in
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those video meetings when you when you
get that group together, start with the
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personal and start with a few of
those conversations that are more personal and then
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segue into those company updates, because
remote employees will always talk about how they
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feel disconnected from HQ and disconnected from
the company. That's just one of the
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things you always hear from people who
are remote. So you have that opportunity
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to first make the personal connection and
then second make sure that any of the
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things they may be hearing, what's
going out the company, that you're getting
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ahead of those things and giving are
as transparent as you can, giving a
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really transparent company update and then get
into the team stuff. But just do
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those those first two things off the
bat to make sure that the team is
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feeling connected. So that would be
first with be the video. Second for
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me is chat. When you talked
a little bit about chat earlier. Some
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people do it over slack. We
obviously hear do it over fews. There's
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lots of different chat tools out there, but keeping a persistent team chat going
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in that asynchronous communication is just a
great way to have the team feel bonded
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and they'll talk about personal and professional
in that chat stream and that's fine.
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And then for specific projects where it
needs to be more formal, you can
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create those project chat streams. They
are separate exactly. So having just that
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one team chat I think's a really
nice thing. And then the third thing,
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which is of course the hardest because
it costs a lot more money,
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is bringing people together in person as
often as you can. And so you
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know, for us within the marketing
team here at views, we do that
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twice a year at a minimum,
and we just did that this past week.
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It was wonderful. We had ourselves
kick off and then we stayed together
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as a marketing team you yesterday and
had that time together. But just making
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sure that you're finding those opportunities and
making that case for budget if you need
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to, to get the group together
on some sort of basis. And then
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the other thing that I think a
lot of managers don't do that the missed
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opportunity is when you're out in other
cities for other types of work, whether
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you're out meeting with customers, you're
at a conference, if you have an
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employee within striking distance, leave them, even if there's no office there.
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Go take them to coffee, take
them one, take them dinner, take
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those opportunities. Don't just fly in
and out. If you have employees in
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that region, find a way to
go, have a personal connection with them
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and meet facetoface. So those are
the things. Those are kind of the
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three big ones that we've seen as
we've been kind of experimenting here a fews,
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but also talking to our customers.
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all right, let's get back to this
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interview. M Yeah, and you
touched on something. They're infusing time for
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for personal human connections. I think
it's in, you know, Simon Senex
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conversation on millennials that went viral,
you know, a while back, and
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he was talking about, you know, even with in person meetings, you
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know how we can be glued to
our phones and there's not that interaction between
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people of you know, hey,
how's it going? How's Your Dad?
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How they you know, how are
the kids? Those sorts of conversation.
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So I think even more so,
carving out time, or at least setting
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that that standard for allowing that even
over conference calls and video meetings, is
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very important. And then the other
thing that you touched on that I really
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liked was having the allowance or even
some specific channels for for a personal stuff
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on your communication or your chat tool
that you're using. We we started a
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random channel on our slack chat where
we ask a question of the day and
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it's been a great way for people
to get to know each other on our
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team and there's a lot of funny
stuff but I can also, you know,
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snooze my notifications there to where,
you know, I'm only getting alerted
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to really pertmit matters if I'm having
a really busy day or something like that.
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So there are ways that we can
leverage technology, if we're very intentional
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about it, to allow, you
know, chat tools like feus and other
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communication tools to bring us together and
not divide us, which they can do
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if we're not careful. So I
love what you're saying there and anything else
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you'd like to add on, you
know, culture in a distributed organization.
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You know you've mentioned the power of
videos, leaders leading by example. We
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talked about, you know, infusing
personal touches in the communication and then getting
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together in person when and where you
can. Anything else you'd add to that?
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I think of the biggest thing culturally
is the idea of kind of thinking
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remote first, and that's something that
we've been talking about for a while here.
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I think that when you have a
distributed team and you have some people
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in offices, and we I mean
we have people in offices, we have
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people in coworking spaces, we have
people remote it. It's a really broad
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mix right now, that if everything
you do you think remote first on and
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that remote first employee experience, it'll
actually be a better experience for everyone.
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So, you know, if we
think about bringing a speaker into HQ who
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we love, then why are we
not thinking about the fact that we need
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to build that fuse experience and that
video experience for everyone to be able to
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join that meeting? Or if we
think about just are even our company updates,
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we now do them three times so
that every time zone where we have
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a critical massive employees can have that
experience at a rational time. And then,
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of course there's the recording afterwards.
But I think that if you can
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approach it from a culture standpoint,
tap down where you say and you make
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that that conscious decision, we're going
to be a company culture that does think
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remote first. When we think about
how we're building culture and how we're communicating
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that, a lot of those things
will sort of naturally flow. So,
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for instance, on the video calls, one of the things that will happen
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is if someone's not turning on their
video, you'll ask them why they don't
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have their video on, and it's
it's in our culture that's okay to ask
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that question. So if someone's videos
not on, will say, you know,
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hey, what's the deal? No
video today, and the response maybe
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if it's my if the colleague out
in the West Coast, it's six am,
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guys, and then we all laugh
and we have a moment about it.
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You know he's not going to.
I understand why he's not turning his
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video on at six am, but
we have permission to ask that question because
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the assumption is if we're getting together
as a team, unless there's a compelling
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reason, your video should be on
and I should not see you looking at
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your phone because there's accountability. With
my video on. It's a lot harder
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to multitask when everyone can see my
eyes darting around and looking down at my
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phone. So I think that that
culture standpoint of if everyone in the entire
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company can think remote first, that
will naturally do a lot of the right
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thing. M Yeah, I love
that. Just some very, very practical
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takeaways that I think people can can
implement here that you've been sharing. Lisa,
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I love this topic. I love
the the thoughts that you're bringing to
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this conversation. I love how you
guys are building a culture and building tools
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to help people with the way that
we're working these days. So on that
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note, the Lisa, if there's
any one listening to this that would like
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to follow up with you stay connected, learn more about what you and the
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team at fuse are doing these days, what's the best way for them to
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reach out or find you? Guys? Sure you can find me on Linkedin,
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but also fuse the email, so
it's l Walker at Fusecom and also,
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if you visit a fews website all
the day, I've been talking about
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00:24:55.910 --> 00:24:59.829
earlier is in a report that we
call workforce futures, so you can stop
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00:24:59.869 --> 00:25:03.670
by and grab a copy of that. I love it. Will Link to
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00:25:03.750 --> 00:25:06.710
that in the show notes as well. Lisa, this have been a great
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conversation. Thank you so much for
your time today. Thanks so much for
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having me. I appreciate it.
We totally get it. We publish a
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00:25:15.660 --> 00:25:18.180
ton of content on this podcast and
it can be a lot to keep up
380
00:25:18.220 --> 00:25:22.569
with. That's why we've started the
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381
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382
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