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One definition of the word honeymoon states
that it is a period of unusual harmony,
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especially following the establishment of a new
relationship. Don't miss the most important
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word there, unusual, atypical,
Non Standard. What is unusual should not
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be expected usually, and the degree
to which the period is pleasurable or preferable
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to other periods does nothing at all
to change its unusualness. Does a honeymoon
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period benefit or harmony relationship? It
all hinges upon the two persons expectations.
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Take it for what it is,
a temporary, lovely window of time with
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good vibes breezing back and forth across
the frame like Crisp Autumn leaves in your
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set up well for whatever comes next. Expect that window to stay open without
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any snow, rain or barreling hot
sunlight to get through, and you're going
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to feel angry and cheated. It
all comes down to this. honeymooners.
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Do not expect the forever great at
the expense of the consistent good, or
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you will wind up with a certain
worst. Welcome back to remote a series
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on BB growth about where remote cultures
break down and how to make them stronger
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than ever. My name is Ryan
drotty. And I'm the director of culture
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and people opps sweet fish media,
which has been a fully remote team for
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the entirety of its existence. Today
I want to talk to you about planning
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and executing unexpected, frequent positive experiences
for your work team. The idea of
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the honeymoon phase is critical here.
When a new person starts at your company,
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they're likely to feel a number of
things. Excited, nervous, overwhelmed,
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but exhilarated. Every day they're meeting
new people, learning new concepts and
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challenging themselves to adapt to their new
work environment. They're being taught the values
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and ideals of your company, what
ever they may be. It's a roller
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coaster ride for them, but it's
fun. They're far more likely to convey
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their positive feelings about your organization to
their family, social media connections, etc.
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Then they will be at any point
thereafter. Why? Mostly because they're
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getting all the good and none of
the grind, as in a marriage.
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Any road blocks they face, for
example trying to keep track of a day
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luge of new tasks that they're now
responsible for, are easily overcome by their
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excitement and pride in their new workplace. But then in every yes, every
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case, the period ends and exhilaration
fades. At some point they've learned the
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basic building blocks of their new role. At some point they've met just about
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everyone they'll be interacting with. The
unknown becomes known. Your theoretical values are
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tested against the complications of real life
work. Most important, their daily experience
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with your company becomes routine. Remote
companies likely face the stage sooner than others.
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In a fit physical setting, there
are plenty of environmental factors that you
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have control over, the interior design, the setup of workspaces, small but
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consistently enjoyable perks like snacks and drinks. This control is relinquished in a remote
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environment. All you have left to
delay the routine stage is your people in
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the work itself. It took me
a long time to understand that the routine
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stage was going to come for everyone, no matter what I did, what
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we did. I never intentionally measured
the health of our company by the level
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of excitement of our team members,
but if I'm honest, I did it
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anyway. I wanted to feel that
every single person who worked at sweetfish loved
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it as much as possible, forever
and always, because it was just that
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special of a place. But by
my informal metric, we had a one
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hundred percent fail your rate. Nobody
stays in the honeymoon phase forever. It's
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never happened in any relationship with longevity. The first answer, as you've guessed,
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was adjusting my expectations. Leaving the
honeymoon phase. Isn't failure, then
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fine. But what then, except
the routine shrug your shoulders, wash your
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hands of the engagement levels of your
people? Of course not. Here's the
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good news. While you can't maintain
the honeymoon phase at your company, you
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can consistently shake them out of their
routines in a good way. You can
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do this by planning and providing regular
positive experiences to your team every single month.
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If you can make them unexpected positive
experiences, all the better, and
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I want to give you some examples
of the kinds of things I'm talking about.
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Putting on impromptu virtual happy hours,
sending gifts or messages to the employees
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significant other parent or other family member, asking someone in your company to lead
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a virtual class that lines up with
their hobbies and their expertise. In our
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case, we have a producer here
who was recently certified as a yoga teacher.
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I reached out to her and I
asked her to teach an hour long
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yoga class to our company and we
sent Yoga Mats and blocks to anybody interested.
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You could plan a slack tournament.
Ever participated in March madness? That's
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the idea here. So far it's
sweetfish. We've done two different tournaments,
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each with sixty four team brackets.
The first one I listed out sixty four
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Disney movies and we voted all the
way to the end to find out the
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best. Beauty and the beast,
my personal favorite one, of course.
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We're actually right in the middle of
our second one. Best TV shows of
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all time. As I record this. I'm holding out hope for Black Mirror,
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but I have a feeling I'll be
disappointed. It's going up against friends
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today. Reach out to me if
you want to know exactly how I prepare
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and leave these tournaments, but for
now I'll just say there are a lot
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of fun for a company and they
might be even more fun for me to
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prepare. Another idea post a secret
talent show. As I've mentioned in a
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previous episode, we have a question
of the day on slack every day here.
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One day I asked if you were
in a talent show and you wanted
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to seriously win, what would your
talent be? Then, surreptitiously, I
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messaged everyone who answered the question and
ask them to record their talent on video
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for real and not tell anybody about
it. Over the next two weeks they
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sent me their videos and then one
day I sprang the surprise on the rest
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of the company, share the talent
videos and we had an award ceremony via
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video conference at the end of the
day. or You could send thank you
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notes or emails to every team member. I save this one for last because
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I have a personal experience to share
with it. I've heard this idea for
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years from so many different sources.
Send handwritten notes thank people, Blah,
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blah, blah. It's always rolled
off me. From being honest, it
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felt small to me and I think
that I got hung up on the delivery
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method. Personally, handwritten notes,
birthday cards, that kind of thing.
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They really don't mean very much to
me at all, and so I tend
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to let that color my view of
the thank you note advice. The one
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day I decided to try it,
not handwritten notes, but one to one
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emails with everyone in our company,
or at least as many people as I
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knew, contractors included. It was
a simple, templated message with the subject
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line thank you, and in the
bottom of the email I added three bullet
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points that were unique to eat recipient. The bullet point shared why I was
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specifically grateful for that person, including
a personal interaction we shared or strength of
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theirs. I've noticed it wasn't about
the medium, it was about the message.
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Nearly everyone responded, many with comments
like wow, I really needed this
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today, or this was so nice
and unexpected. It was a good reminder
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to me that we shouldn't keep our
appreciation in our heads, no matter how
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many times we've expressed it before.
The last thing I'll say today is that
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you should plan a wide variety of
positive experiences. I've experimented with all of
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the examples I just listed and it
was important to me to have fresh ideas
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that people couldn't anticipate. As good
as a benefit. Maybe at a company,
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if it's predictable, that means it
becomes part of the routine. I
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want to break up the routine at
our company and leave as many positive impressions
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on our team in as many ways
as I can. The honeymoon may be
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over, that that doesn't mean we
can't take a few day trips to the
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coast. Hey, everybody, the
logan with sweet fish here. If you've
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been listening to the show for a
while, you know we're big proponents of
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putting out original, organic content on
linked in, but one thing that's always
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been a struggle for a team like
ours is to easily track the reach of
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that linkedin content. That's why I
was really excited when I heard about shield
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the other day from a connection on, you guessed it, linked in.
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Since our team started using shield,
I've loved how it's let us easily track
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and analyze the performance of our linkedin
content without having to manually log it ourselves.
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It automatically creates reports and generates some
dashboards that are incredibly useful to see
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things like what content has been performing
the best and what days of the week
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are we getting the most engagement and
our average views proposed. I'd highly suggest
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you guys check out this tool if
you're putting out content on Linkedin, and
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if you're not, you should be. It's been a game changer for us.
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If you go to shield APP DOT
AI and check out the ten day
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free trial. You can even use
our Promo Code B to be growth to
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get a twenty five percent discount.
Again, that's shield APP DOT AI,
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and that Promo Code is be the
number to be growth. All one word.
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All right, let's get back to
the show.