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Remote Works with Tamara Sanderson · Humanity Working

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's really not one right way to do remote work.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's a million ways to do remote work.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so finding like what works for your team and individuals and kind of like all the different components of it is really important.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that surprised me is that the principles are all the same, but how that actually looks in your day-to-day work can be very different.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Hey everyone, welcome to the pod and the final episode of this series.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, the final episode under the making remote work name.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're gonna change your name again, but it's based on your feedback.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: You've told us that you want more content about the human skills that people need for the future of work, so we're gonna focus on that.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Now, of course, remote and hybrid work environments are absolutely a part of the future of work, so that's not gonna go away, but you will see us cover more content related to the way that work is changing and what we as individuals and organizations need to do about it.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: The new pod title is called Upskilling Humanity.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's Upskilling Humanity.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: So look for that.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: But we're already in your feed, so you should still see us anyway.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Expect the first episode of the news series is actually gonna drop in the next week or so.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: And we're pretty sure that if you like this pod, you're gonna love the direction that we're going overall.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, enough of all that.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get on to the final episode of our Making Remote Work series.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: And as if we plan this, it's with Tamra Sanderson.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now, she's the co-author of a book called Remote Works.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: See the link?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you hear me mention to Tam that she's written the book I Wish We'd Written.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's loaded with tips for those who want to manage remote work environments.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in this episode, we're going to discuss manager archetypes that struggle and thrive in remote and hybrid work environments.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: We'll look at how to do asynchronous communication really well, and we'll discuss why the right tool for the right time can make a huge difference.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: Their book is great, and the interview is a lot of fun, so I hope you enjoy it.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: Now, before we start, a quick reminder that our podcast is brought to you by Billion Minds, a company that is reskilling humanity for the future of work.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: If you'd like to learn more about how we're using experiential learning to help employees thrive in unstructured, ambiguous work environments and prepare themselves for a future of work dominated by robotics, automation, and AI, then visit our website at billionminds.com.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Alright, let's get into the conversation with Tamra Sanderson.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: Alright, today I am delighted to be joined by Tamra Sanderson, who's the co-author of a great new book called Remote Works.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think I've got it here.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: Managing for Freedom, Flexibility and Focus.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: You should definitely read this if you manage remote or hybrid teams.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Although, frankly, I'd actually encourage any manager to read it.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: Tamra's got a diverse background.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: It includes Google and Automatic, which you might not know, but is actually behind about a third of the websites on the internet.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now, she's the co-founder of Remote Works, an organizational design and consulting firm with a mission to liberate teams from the nine to five and teach them how to do their best work anytime, anywhere.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Company named after the book.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the podcast, Tim.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Paul.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me here.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's great.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, first off, I'd love to say that I'm a huge fan of the book.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually the book I I kind of wish we'd written, but we didn't, and you did.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: So congratulations on that.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very like item of praise.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And also, Paul, it takes a long time to write a book.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we're happy to do that for you.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, exactly.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: So we can at least recommend it, uh, recommend it to people.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so there is a ton that I want to go through today with you.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: So let's just dive straight in.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think I want to start with something that we've discovered in our own work, and you're clearly, clearly backing up in this book.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, managing remote or hybrid teams is different and it needs a different set of skills.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: So can you explain, based on your own experience, what is different about it beyond the blatantly obvious thing that people are either in office or out of office in the two modes?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so what I think about this is I actually became a remote worker before I knew it had a title, or that's what I was doing.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: So in 2006, I joined a consulting firm called Oliver Wyman.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was very quickly given a BlackBerry, which I think tells you a little bit about the time.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: No iPhone yet.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: I had an IBM ThinkPad, but I was traveling around all the time.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like in the movie up in the air, but there was no George Clooney.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was just me with a laptop going to different hotels.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it became very normal for me to be working with people that were not always co-located with me.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't, I just thought that was just how you do it.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: That that is what consulting is.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I later joined tech companies.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So at Google, when I worked in Singapore, I was working with lots of different offices.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: We had a thing called GBC, which is kind of like Zoom, where we all had screens that we could talk to different offices in.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but essentially you're you're putting technology in the middle of how you work.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And once you do that, you are removing the constraints that used to happen in the physical office.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: No longer do you have to work based on a commuting schedule.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no longer do you have to work with people that are located within a 20-mile radius of each other.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you can start working with people in different countries, you can work with different time zones, you can work in different styles.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And once you open up those ways of working, it's just a completely new world.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, what we've seen right now is a lot of copy and pasting, which is kind of like the first step of remote working.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's 101, yes, like you need to move from the physical office to being able to work in different locations.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: But once you really hone that technology and hone those skills, you start people to work in a completely different way where you're like a lot more efficient and effective, and you can work when you have a lot of energy, you can uh better balance your personal life.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what gets me really excited about remote work.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's funny, regular listeners to the pod will know that that what you just described as your life, you could be describing as mine.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: That was since uh since 94, I did a calculation recently, and since 94, I think I've spent 18 months in an office.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so the rest of it has all been out of there.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that's something that people forget, which is that there are categories of people that have been doing this forever.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um and what's really interesting is that that many of those people sort of don't even think about the skills that they've honed or developed over a period of time, but they are skills that they've honed and developed, and not everybody has those skills because they haven't had that that lived experience in the same way that uh that we have in our lives.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um that creates challenges, of course, when it comes to uh managing these types of teams.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that's really the main focus on your book, which is really centered around managing these types of environments.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: I want to start there with the manager archetypes that that you define.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um so can you just start by kind of walking me through what each of the manager archetypes are, and then we'll go into a little bit more detail on them.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think management, I'm glad that you brought that up.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's a reason why the subtitle of our book is managing for freedom, flexibility, and focus, because what we're seeing is people are having less control, or at least less control than they're used to in the remote world.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that I think is ultimately what scares people about remote work.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can come up with all kinds of intellectual reasons, but people are used to being able to see somebody.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're used to having somebody on kind of call for eight hours a day that they can see.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden, when you remove those things, people feel like they have less control, even if that's not necessarily true, but it feels that way.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And control is an ultimate human need.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you go into any wisdom tradition, like Buddhism is all about kind of uh not having as much control, reducing attachment.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it is completely normal to feel that way.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you can take baby steps to start feeling like, yes, I can manage for this.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: I can feel like I have a sphere of control, and I can give other people autonomy.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because by having complete control over somebody else, it means that they don't have control over their own lives.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I think remote work does, it raises the autonomy for everyone so that they feel like they have more control over kind of their own, their own worlds.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, so the way we think about the archetypes, we ended up having, like in the book, there's kind of like fun uh characters that stand for those.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so we use musicians uh just to get away from you know business jargon and business speak and have people think of a different metaphor.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but essentially it's a two by two, like any like good ex-consultant likes to put things in.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but essentially, like one um axis is thinking as a manager.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Are you more organizational or external facing, or are you team-facing?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so for example, if you were org-facing, your primary thing might be managing upward and outward.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: You may be talking on a daily basis to people that are not within your team.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: You may be very cross-functional.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you're team focused, your day-to-day is gonna be kind of looking at your team.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna know a lot of the details and the ins and outs of the content that they're working on.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's the first access.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: The second access is as a manager, are you super hands-on or are you hands-off?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so a hands-on manager might be a little bit more kind of micromanage-y, it doesn't have to be, but um you're gonna be a lot more in the weeds, you're gonna be a lot more in the details, you're gonna be in all those meetings.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you're more hands-off, you allow people different autonomy.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so with these archaeotypes, we kind of think that people naturally kind of gravitate towards one, but we recommend flexing based on the scenario.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: So let's imagine you have a very junior team, they are right out of undergrad or right out of high school, and uh this is their very first job.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: So if that is true, then you probably want to be a bit more hands-on.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna want to be more of a coach, more of a mentor.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: They don't necessarily know like what work is, right?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: But if you are managing a team of like people that have been in the industry for 20 years and maybe they're all like excellent salespeople, like give them the autonomy, be hands-off, let them do their craft, and you can manage something else.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do think you flex based on the scenarios.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: And within the book, we give tips on, you know, this is what it looks like in a remote context.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Here's, you know, here's when to flex to this type of role, et cetera.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh that's what we think about management styles.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I always think it's nice to be able to, I'm a huge Myers-Briggs fan, and I like a Neogram, I like anything youngie in psychology.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I find this stuff really fun because you can kind of take a little quiz in our book and see where you naturally lie.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I am much more of a band leader, which means I tend to be team focused and hands off.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I love to set people up, let them kind of like, I usually am often the contributor in it.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I know a lot of content that's going on, but I love for people to have autonomy and I trust people to work at their best.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so one of the things that I love about um about these archetypes, you mentioned that people fit into these uh into these different categories.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um you call them, by the way, composer, band leader, agent, or promoter.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: As you mentioned, the the musical references, which I think is I think is great.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that also allows people very instinctively to kind of understand what the um what the different archetypes are.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: When we first started working with managers, it was interesting because we were trying to figure out um how much should we prescribe what uh type of manager is the right type of manager to be uh to be in a in a remote organization.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then also what does it um what does it mean if you are naturally one type?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: And does that mean that you're more predisposed towards remote work or hybrid work than otherwise?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: And what we found I think was similar to you, which is on the second question, the answer is sort of yes, to a certain extent, in the sense that if you are a manager who typically tends towards micromanagement, then you can find managing in a remote or hybrid environment more difficult than you would in uh in an enterprise.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in most cases man micromanaging isn't a good idea anyway, yeah, right.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: That you should probably should be working on, but it can kind of expose that a little bit more if you're working in a um in a remote in a remote setting.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: So to that extent, we thought the answer was sort of yes.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: But then, as you rightly point out, people naturally gravitate towards these types of um uh these types of management styles.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: And as long as there is a match between the type of management style that you have and the way that the people that are you're managing want to be managed, there's no issue.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what I love about what you get into the second piece of this, which is effectively what you're saying is that understand what you are, right?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: The self-discovery of kind of understanding what you naturally are, but having the flexibility to be able to adjust that style according to the needs of the uh of the people that you're managing.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's I think it's really smart insight.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Paul.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it kind of brings me back.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I sent one year in private equity before leaving and joining Google.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was not the best fit for that environment.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you work 90 hours a week.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's very, very detailed.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I remember starting and we all took a Myers Briggs and they said, you need to have this very specific personality type to succeed here.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: You need to be E-N-T-J.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like, if you are not, you're not gonna be a fit.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely don't have those letters.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I remember thinking, like, wow, um, you know, that feels like a loss that you can only have one type of person succeed in an organization.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And really what it depends on fit.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so it might not be a fit within a certain team, but it could be a fit in another one.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm all about like how can you it's it's all it depends if it's going to work.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why there's a lot of um, I don't know, there's artistry to I think creating teams.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not necessarily all scientific.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go into a little bit more detail in one specific area that you talk about in the book.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think it will help people understand just how different remote and hybrid environments are to full in office environments.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: You've got a chapter you call the the ABC of Remote Communication, but you mean something specific by ABC.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: What is that?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so ABC stands for async before calls.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and async is kind of the bread and butter of remote work.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like a very technical term, but essentially asynchronous communication means later communication.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we practice async communication all the time.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: We just don't know it.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but that is how you make remote work work because you're not always going to be synchronously available.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: You're not always gonna be online at the exact same time.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to allow people to have messages so that they can complete tasks at different times of the day.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's really interesting because I think a lot of times um managers, teams, companies haven't fully yet internalized that very, very simple concept.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: And what it uh what it boils down to is that um it's it becomes one of the critical ways in which managers fail to get the best out of their remote and hybrid teams.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: So what we've seen before is um a lot of managers are trying to replicate what went before.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: So in other words, they potentially have uh some experience of managing um in a traditional office, or at the very least, they've been managed in a traditional office.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: So they've got kind of a sense as to what they feel that the management looks like.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then what they attempt to do basically is do that do that replication.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: So your in-person meeting becomes your Zoom meeting, your ad hoc collaboration becomes an ad hoc Zoom meeting.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so so it's it's really interesting to see that when it's not done well, you can you can kind of feel it inside an organization.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: You get really tired.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: You see yourself all the time in Zoom.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like people have never like looked at themselves this much in their entire lives.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: You get a lot of fatigue and you're looking at a screen all day.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that is not that's actually like part of the reason why Ali and I wanted to write this book is because when I was at Automatic, I was almost never on Zoom.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was a very primarily written communication.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: I could be anytime.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have to do a lot of calls unless they were external.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that was my experience of remote work.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember being like, oh my gosh, I have so much freedom.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was traveling around, I was working at my own time schedule.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: I have so much freedom.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went to a very cool uh in-person creative agency IDO, known for design thinking.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I was there in the Cambridge studio for about six months.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: The pandemic happens, and then we're all at home, and we were all on Zoom all the time and doing kind of creative things.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I remember being like, wow, this is really, really, really tough for me to uh stay online and just stay focused.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: It is really not how I enjoy working.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that's just the first step of remote work.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: There is kind of, I think actually Matt Mullenweg is who wrote the forward river book, who's the um founder of WordPress and Automatic, he talks about kind of like almost like a Maslow's pyramid, but of uh of autonomy.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so the first one is that you can like start working from home.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's some jobs you can't do that.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: You can't be a nanny working remotely.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Let's be honest.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like that would be a really bad thing to leave a two-year-old uh with somebody on a screen.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, once you start being able to work remotely in a different location, that's kind of phase two.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're at five, you can be working with people at any time and there's no slowing down, and you can have kind of a global workforce that is working 24 hours, they're working on different shifts, and you don't have to do all this kind of um synchronous communication all of the time.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so it really kind of opens you up to be able to live and design your best work life.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that as a model.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um we use um for those people that are regular listeners to the podcast and were familiar with our space and time concept, we did our own uh two by two.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, it's basically always the same thing, isn't it?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so we did a two by two based on basically space and time um to identify jobs that need to be co-located in space and time, ones that need to be locate, co-located in time, ones that need to be co-located in just space, and then finally ones that don't have to be co-located in either.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: But it's much the same, uh it's it's much the same principle.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: And um it really does start to help people to think that these things are different.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Your story about automatic and your story about sorry, remind me the name of the of the studio.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh IEO.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it's really, really interesting because um what you've described there is that both of them, when in their natural habitat, were thriving, right?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so so when you're at automatic, right, it's a it's uh a habitat that has been designed, a remote work environment that is designed to thrive in that setting, and then a studio whereby everything has been optimized for the fact that people are physically co-located at the same at the same time.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then you you try if you try to flip either one of those to a different uh different environment, take either of those fish out of water, then you then that's when you start to struggle.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it really highlights how different they are, doesn't it?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and just to give kind of the counterexample, when I was at Automatic, um, I was leading a partnership between WordPress and Google.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Google is a very meeting-centric culture.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so every time I would try to get like automatic engineers and be like, hey, we're gonna talk to the engineers at Google, we're gonna talk about this integration that we could do.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And like the automaticians would be like, I hate being in meetings.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Please, please stop putting this on my calendar.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so we had to come up with a way to do kind of asynchronous communication.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, where that friction happened was trying to combine two very different working cultures into a project together.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, fish out of water.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I love your two by two.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a great way to start also thinking about how you can kind of unlock some of the benefits of remote work because you can see where you actually stand.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not in that, we have to be at you know, um, aligned on time and aligned on space, then you start being able to play in that remote world.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: All right, let's get into the uh a little bit more of the detail on uh on the asynchronous piece then.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: So as you mentioned, right, this uh this idea of figuring out how to or doing asynchronous work um and the fact that we all do it might make it seem very simple.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Just switch what you do synchronously to uh to doing it asynchronously.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: But of course, as we've just described, um organizations and teams can actually uh struggle with this quite a bit.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: So let's start with um with I don't have skills that that you need.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, it sounds like, for example, you're using a lot more in the way of written communications versus real time uh uh real time verbal communications, is that right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, and is gonna be my answer to that.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, first things first, I think a lot of people confuse tools with asynchronous communication.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: So just because you're using Slack or because you're using Zoom or something.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: That is where technology is the middleman, that does not actually mean you're being asynchronous.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: If you are typing rapidly back and forth, or people are expecting you to respond immediately on Slack or immediate to email, you are synchronous.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: If we're both like we are in very different locations, but we are completely synchronous right now because we are talking at the same time.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, our spaces may be different, but our times are the same.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's the first thing.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: It can be written, but actually asynchronous communication can be also verbal.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so a way that I like to remind people is okay, stop thinking about work, start thinking about your personal life, think about social media, think about news.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you are on TikTok, whenever somebody recorded something on TikTok, unless it's live, you're watching it later.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Any type of later communication is asynchronous.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you are going on Facebook or you're going on Instagram and seeing a picture of somebody on holiday or an update on somebody's kids, whenever they posted it is usually different than when you're commenting on it.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so we actually have a lot of these asynchronous skills that we've been learning in the last 15 years through all these things that have happened with like internet technology.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're just not used to putting that at work.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, I worked at WordPress.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's a blogging culture.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Matt, our the founder, loved writing.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: He loved blogging.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote a book.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, I love writing too.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was a very natural fit.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was a fish in my water.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh my gosh, I love this.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Please let me just write everything.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that might not be the same.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually talking to a friend that does a lot of remote consulting and she used to actually work at Automatic and she moved to another company and they hated written communication.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so everything was in kind of short loom videos.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: So they would do one or two-minute videos and they would share those.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the key thing is that later communication.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that is what kind of asynchronous means.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And just also keeping a whole, you know, uh you want to document as much as possible.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I think about the old world, people used to kind of mention, like, oh, knowledge is king, or we care a lot about our intellectual capital.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: But if you really go into any organization, usually like only a few people were in the meeting room, people were not taking notes, everybody forgot about it, and it just kind of like disappeared.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is how people were managing their intellectual capital.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: When you do remote work, you should be kind of de facto documenting.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if you are writing as the same time that you're communicating, that means you're kind of two birds, one stone.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, or if you're making kind of loom videos, et cetera.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's a really valuable process because you're automatically creating an artifact.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but when we think about asynchronous communication, we really like to focus on this thing called the four W's.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that is how you can make asynchronous communication really robust.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, you're being incredibly intentional, you're thinking about the deliverables, it's all these things that are just like good 101 effective communication, regardless if you're remote or not.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we tried to do everything as simple as possible.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: So ABCs, uh, we'll talk about the only um asynchronous lesson you need to learn.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but with these four W's, it's basically who.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're writing or you're talking, you need to address your communication to somebody.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've ever been on Slack or email when it's like, hey guys, uh, hey y'all, and it's like uh who's all, especially if you have like 30 people CC'd on an email.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: You need to like who is the directly responsible individual?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Who are you expecting a um a message back from?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because without that, there's a lot of kind of confusion.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh second is what that is giving context.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you are working in an environment that's good at documentation, maybe you create different links and you're like, hey, you can read the background of this decision, it's documented here, or you can say, like, um, in our book, we have TLDRs for every chapter, but that's too long, didn't read.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, just give like a two or three sentence summary of what you've been up to, and then people can, you know, dig in deeper if they want to.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: But you want to get people up to date and have that context because we're context switching all the time.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like to, it's like not that great for my mind.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: I have um ADHD, so context switching is not, I guess I'm naturally probably doing it all the time, anyways, but doing it even more is actually like a real struggle.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, we are context switching.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to get people to get up to date as soon as possible.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want people to have to do all this guesswork of like, what is this person talking about?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Why do they need me?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Who, what is this?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's the what, then the when.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like, when do you need a response by?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: When do you need somebody to read this information?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so make sure you use time zones when we're working in this like new environment.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Don't say like end of day ASAP, because like what does that mean?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: When is your end of day, especially if you're working non-linearly?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: ASAP, like really let's think about what is super critical.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like we work, most of us work in some type of like corporate business world.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: We are not ER physicians.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's be real.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's some things that are ASAP, but the majority of things are not, especially if they're planned correctly.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Usually ASAP is almost a bug, not a feature.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: It means that you were not very intentional earlier.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the the fourth W is it's um, I guess this would be kind of in the urban dictionary, but the way you would say it is like, wah wah.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what do you do if like nobody responds back?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think this is actually the biggest holdup in why people don't like to do asynchronous communication, because you don't, you can't make somebody read it immediately.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: You can't say like, I need your answer right now.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's what's nice about synchronous communication is you kind of have that forcing function.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but with asynchronous, if you say, okay, uh, I need this response by 5 p.m.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Eastern Standard Time on Friday from uh Allie, who's my co-writer, who's the directly responsible individual, um, if I do not hear back from Allie, this is how I'm moving forward, even without her response.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of gives you the room to continue doing your work and continue to um, you know, move forward without trying to hurt all these cats or feeling like you're blocked all the time.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so we really recommend if you just keep those four W's in mind, you're gonna start having much better communication.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds really simple, but if you actually look at most of your communication, I would guess that a lot of those are missing on a pretty regular basis.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can just be a lot more effective that way.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh there's so much in that in that answer you gave us there.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think that um one of the more one of the more interesting ones is that when it really boils down to it, you're encouraging people to be um much more deliberate in their communication, um, much more precise in their communication, whatever the mechanism is.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's really important that you called out those distinctions because when we've worked with um both individuals and managers, um, some of them, frankly, are a little bit afraid because they don't think of the of, for example, of written communication as being their strongest suit, right?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And they're and they're super worried about the fact that you know they've always been able to thrive in an environment where they've been able to uh uh use other forms of communication.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um and now it appears as though that's really the only commitment form of communication they have left.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: But it's it's that that's not the case at all.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, you know, previously on the pod, we had uh uh Phil Libben, who is the CEO of Mm-mm.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you know them as a as an organization, but they're basically uh specialists in in um video communication that is um, I would say like high uh sort of uh allows you to make your own mini movies really well in a very, very engaging way.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it would be it would be wrong to sort of call it Loom Plus because it's not really that, um, but it allows you to be able to use it synchronously and asynchronously um in and create really, really efficiently these uh forms of communication and integrate those forms of communication with other tech uh with other technologies.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that you'll now it's now starting to see, for example, even in LinkedIn, people leave quick uh audio messages for each other in uh inside inside LinkedIn.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: So people are starting to realize that there's asynchronous and synchronous, and then there's written and verbal and video and all kinds of things, and those both exist and you can use whatever works for you well.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: But the key is you must be uh you need to be more deliberate in your communication.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then I wanted to touch on another piece because I think it's super important as well.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um you mentioned how um you know it can be frustrating because you don't have like the person right there next to you that you're that you're asking to do something about.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: And what we've seen though is that that's an illusion of security, it's not actually security because what happens in real life when you're in person with somebody, they're not generally doing the work in the moment.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: All they're doing is saying yes in the moment.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: And whether they actually do the work or not is is something that is entirely different.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so this kind of deliberate communication actually allows you to be able to insert a level of accountability.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: As somebody put it to us recently, it's like if you said to us, if you were sat right opposite somebody and you said um can you do this for me?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I need it by you know 305 Pacific on Thursday, and it needs to look like this, and it needs to be in this way, etc.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: etc.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: etc.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: People are like, whoa, that that feels like a huge amount of when it's in person, feels like a huge amount of inquiry uh of micromanaging.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas in reality, what you're doing is just being precise about your communications.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: But when you write it down, the thing that was something that just felt intrusive and and and over the top is now clarity, right?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's now allowing me to be able to prioritize appropriately and move things around and have a conversation about reprioritization if I'm not able to get it done by the particular time that I was able to.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of it's about like perspective, but that clarity of communication can be easier in a situation where you're where you are uh where you're async and can actually result in getting things done more effectively over time once you're used to it, but you have to get used to it.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I love that you mentioned that's an illusion because I think that's true.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: So much of this is about emotions and behavior change, which is tricky and has to do a lot with our human psychology.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I also often like to use this kind of model of thinking about high school versus college.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so in high school, at least in American high schools, it's like butts and seats, 40 hours a week.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: You go from one class to the other and you have uh somebody watching you, right?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: And like they're you're the teacher's there and you you have to do certain things, right?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then when you go to university for the most part, you start working on a much more asynchronous level.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's much more deliberate.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: You have like you're given a syllabi, like the first day of school, these are the books we're gonna read.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the dates, the five exams that we're gonna have.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: You have to write this one paper.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: They set those expectations, but you're not having a professor call you all the time being like, hey, are you working right now?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, what are you doing?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, hey, hey.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like that would be very annoying.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's weird that we regress to a high school mode after we graduate.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I really encourage people to think of themselves as their manager more kind of like a professor, and how can you lay those out?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you mentioned sometimes it can feel like when you're usually like the asynchronous communication is going to be longer.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: It can kind of see, feel like, oh, this is feels too formal or it feels like too micromanage-y, but by giving those expectations and those that clarity up front, you remove having to have all of those other conversations later.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like instead, you can have it all at once and they you can give them kind of the deliverable and then let them work versus like giving them little updates every like every day or every hour, every 30 minutes, which actually ends up to be a lot more communication.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: And as you were speaking, I wanted to kind of bring up this is one of my favorite quotes, and it came from I had an awesome coach who I got to interview for a book that he is the head of coaching at Automatic Aukshay.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And his quote is from Victor Frankel, and this really helped me start thinking about how to allow that space to happen for remote communication.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he says, between stimulus and response, there is a space.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: In that space is our power to choose our response.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: And our response lies our growth and our freedom.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so often we can feel very triggered.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: You get like a notification, a message, your Slack turns green, like stuff like that.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you feel like, oh, I've got to respond, I gotta respond, I gotta respond.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: But by feeling like you always have to respond, you're always on.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're not necessarily being deliberate and you're not making a choice anymore.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: By like allowing that space to happen and allowing to choose your response, and all then instead of always feeling stimulated, you you just have a lot more control and a lot more power over your own workflow, which I think is really important and that actually is in the sphere of your control.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: Very, very important.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: Very important.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: That was really, really interesting and thought-provoking.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's a nuance that you get into into the book, and and this is gonna seem like like way down in the weeds, but hopefully our audience will figure out why, because we've talked about some of these issues before.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um You mentioned the the only asynchronous lesson you'll ever need that is in the book.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I would recommend people go through that in a little bit of detail because it almost like acts like a worked example of a lot of the uh of a lot of the concepts that you're that you're outlining in the rest of that chapter, and to a certain extent the rest of the book as well.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: But in there, um you talk about um a specific example where somebody is um where somebody is communicating information and it goes into the um the the W's that you mentioned before.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: But you also alluded to the tool.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought this was really interesting, right?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: So in this fictional company that you're you're describing, they have Asana, which some of our listeners, I'm sure, will be quite familiar with, and they have Slack.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: And in the in the in the example initially where the where the abuser's doing it wrong, they mention it in uh they they issue their communication in Slack.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then ostensibly you kind of correct them and show that they should they should have been using it in a Sana.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now I think for many people listen to that, they'll be like, well, hang on, how can a how can a choice of tool make a make much of a difference, especially as these concepts are ostensibly tool agnostic?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: So can you go into just a little bit of a reason why a choice of tool in a scenario when you're communicating with others can make can make a difference in terms of the effectiveness of the communication?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think there's two parts of this.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: One actually relates to our earlier chapter on setting up a digital house, and it is to have kind of a place.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when you're in an office, you're like, okay, cool, I go to this meeting room and I have this meeting, I go to my desk, I write emails, I go to the kitchen, I gassip, like whatever it is, you know, face and spaces.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Then you go to your computer and we're in this remote world, and everything is now on a 13-inch screen.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, oh, where is everything?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why it's really important to use location tools or cues.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so even if you look, there's a reason it's called the desktop.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's a reason why you like remove files in a little thing that looks like a trash can, right?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we're talking about like, you know, being very specific on should it be in Slack or Asana, a lot of it has to do with location.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: It would be almost like if you didn't tell them where to communicate, it would be almost like having a meeting in in a large office building and just saying, like, hey, we're gonna meet uh in five minutes and not telling anybody where it's at.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that would be you would have people show up at all different places, and then all of a sudden everything gets really untidy.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm doing a Marie Kondo, a really extreme one in my apartment right now.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I own like honestly, thousands of books.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: I have basically my apartment is a library meets an art studio.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but like without that categorization, everything gets really confusing.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is a part of like why we added it there.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of that context of like when you do, if you're the directly responsible individual, when you have communicated this, where should it be and where can you find it?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so part of that is just based on being able to locate that information.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but then I do think certain tools are better for certain types of communication.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, Asana is primarily a project management tool.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's great for documentation, it is great for complexity.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Slack, on the other hand, is good for kind of like quick conversations, et cetera.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so within an organization, you usually want to create some type of simple rule on when to use what tool.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so let's take an example.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: When I was at Automatic, you definitely had Slack and you also had WordPress blogs.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so Slack was for kind of casual conversation where anything that needed to be documented or should live on or would be kind of almost determined in the real world as like, let's call a big meeting about this.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Then it had to be on a blog post.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to enforce those rules.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, as an example, um, I came from Google.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: I love Google Docs.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: I would have sneaky Google Docs sometimes when I was at WordPress.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um then the CEO found out I had these sneaky docs and he pinged me and was like, hey, you're not allowed to do that.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: You have to put it in the Google in a blog post.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we don't have sneaky random documents.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh, you know, when the CEO tells you that, you usually like nod and agree.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden I, you know, got rid of those sneaky Google docs and I had everything posted immediately on WordPress blogs.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: But that is because, you know, people would not be able to easily search for my Google Docs.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that was something where I was like falling outside of the lines of the communication and what tool to use.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so you do, it sounds really prescriptive, but if you don't just follow those very simple rules, things become incredibly chaotic of not being able to find any information in a remote world.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's super interesting because I think you you highlight something that a lot of people won't necessarily have internalized quite yet, which is the relationship between um transparency and um an almost like completeness of of IP inside an organization and the uh and then the opportunity that exists to use this technology in such a way that you are actually building up a true reflection of all of the work that people are doing.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we talk about transparency, we often talk about it in two realms, right?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: Number one, transparency um can suffer inside remote-centric organizations because the natural uh sort of uh communication mechanisms like that and that that oh I can just wander over or I can grab a group of people and bring them together in a room ad hoc, those things are just a little bit more difficult um inside inside a remote environment.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: And when transparency suffers, often trust suffers.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: But the flip of that is that if you fully embrace these technologies and you stay out of communicating or or out of documenting in a closed environment and start communicating in an open environment, now you have the ability to be able to unlock all of this creativity that's happening inside people's brains.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you're able to do things like look at half completed things and collaborate on half-completed things together and not just do too much work in your own head before anybody else does a sanity check on it.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um what we find, and this is a personal thing for me, right?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: Grabbing a Google Doc is super easy, right?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so you just you don't have to think about where to put it.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: You're just like, oh, I've got a thought, create doc, start writing.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so this can be a really difficult habit to get out of.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: You have to kind of train yourself out of that habit.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm I'm guessing you had to as well, right?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it probably wasn't in the boss said I shouldn't do this.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Even now, like um, I run my own business with Allie, and I even notice I still have a propensity to use Google Docs with her.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, let's you need to document that in Asana, put that in the description section.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like Google Docs we use for these certain things.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: We wrote our book in Google Docs, but when we're doing more business-oriented things, it needs to be an Asana.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and by following those simple rules and keeping ourselves accountable, it makes it much easier to find later because you can use the search function and you can be like, Oh yeah, I had that conversation like five months ago.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad I have the notes to like remember what we were talking about.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, you have to kind of follow those things or else it's just gonna be information overload.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like it you'll you'll never be able to find anything if you don't have some type of system in order.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it it actually came up on one of our previous episodes, and uh we were talking about this idea of balancing me versus we.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and really when you're when you're grabbing that dog for yourself, right, you're focusing on your own needs to be able to get things done super, super fast, but you're doing it at the expense of the need for the the need for the broader organization.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so sometimes you have to catch yourself around that.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: All right, let's wrap up here.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so writing a book, I know because I've written I've written a few.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's always a journey.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'd love to know as you were researching this topic more deeply, what uh has changed in uh for you and what what was the most what was the most surprising thing for you?
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: What was the thing that that when you started this, you kind of felt that one thing was true, and then coming out of it in terms of the research of your book, you thought, oh no, I had that wrong.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: So what changed in your own behavior and or what was a uh what was a a thing that just really surprised the heck out of you?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, ooh, uh this is a good question, and very fun that you've also written books.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's like such a such a process.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I would love to talk about that second.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: Another time, not not not here, but um so one thing is we interviewed about 35 other.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Remote experts and got their stories.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: What was nice is you never know when you go through that process, but they actually synthesize towards very similar principles.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: So that was actually really nice to see that even if you work for very different organizations, that a lot of those kind of ladder up together.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: The thing I would say though is you can have two really great remote cultures and they can operate very differently.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: So there's really not one right way to do remote work.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's a million ways to do remote work.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so finding like what works for your team and the individuals and kind of like all the different components of it is really important.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that surprised me is that the principles are all the same, but how that actually looks in your day-to-day work can be very different.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: That would be number one.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, I had a lot of thoughts on how a remote works.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: But again, like until you make it transparent or visible or verbalize it, you don't even know.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so by coming up with a whole structure for a book, uh, it was really nice to be like, oh yeah, this is this is what I've been doing these like last 15 or 17 years.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I just didn't really realize it until I put it in written form that these this is how remote work actually works.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that was really nice.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it actually required kind of a partnership because uh Ali and I have very complementary skill sets.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so being able to um there, you have to kind of diverge and converge on a lot of ideas.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: So diverging would be like interviewing 35 different people and all of these different inputs on like what makes remote work interesting and all these possible stories and all these concepts.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have to synthesize it so it actually makes sense and it ladders up to a structure.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Ali, I would say, is probably a better synthesizer, and I'm very divergent and thinking.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that was just a really helpful process because it allowed us to really solidify all these things that we innately knew, but hadn't necessarily made external before.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that surprised me.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then a very, very personal note um going through this process, we interviewed this awesome professor at Berkeley.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: She does a lot on chronotypes, but we actually have different biological rhythms.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so she has a quiz that we took, and I think somebody won the Nobel Prize for um for chronotypes in like 2017.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it is kind of a scientific uh concept that has gained popularity recently.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: But there's essentially three types.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: You have somebody that might be AM shifted, that's about 25%.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: You have PM shifted, that's about 20%.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then the majority of people, about 50%, are biphasics.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: They have two humps throughout the day.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: And what I realized, and I always innately knew this, but I always felt kind of bad about it, is I don't know, uh, hopefully you don't ask me this on this podcast, but people are always like, what's your morning routine?
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do you wake up at 5 a.m.?
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: Are you having coffee and doing your run and then meditating?
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: And like, that is not me at all.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: I like love sleeping, I love a late wake up, I am not a morning person.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if I look back at a lot of my work life, is that I was on a 6 a.m.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: red eye flight every Monday when I was in consulting.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: When I worked at Google in San Francisco, I was on a 6 a.m.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: bus down to Mountain View and I felt horrible all the time.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I felt literally sick both from commuting and I get car sick, but also just from like it not being aligned to my rhythm.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: I am PM shifted, which actually means that the first like peak that I have when I'm the most productive is actually 5 to 7 p.m.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's actually the end of people's natural work day.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then I get another peak at about 11 p.m.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: to about one in the morning.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so once I realize that, I actually like further shifted into my biological rhythm.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I wake up a lot later, I go to bed a lot later, and I work at very different times.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just, I just feel better.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like more energized, but also just healthier.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't feel kind of tired and run down like I used to.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so that personally surprised me because there was like a scientific basis for this thing that I had felt, but that complaining about like having to wake up felt like not an adult thing to do.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like my parents were like, oh, whatever.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, ooh, you have to wake up.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but now I realize why it is important to work at when you're most productive.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's a McKinse study that said if you work at your peak hours, you can finish things five times as fast.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that is a huge key to unlocking your productivity.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: If in one hour at your peak time, it would take you five hours to do the same task at another time.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so that really opened my eyes to redesigning the way I work.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we will leave it there from one PM shifted person to another.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate that.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and once again, the book is called Remote Works Managing for Freedom, Flexibility, and Focus.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, as I mentioned, definitely do go ahead and buy this.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it is a great uh synopsis of all of the things that we've covered on this entire series of the uh of the podcast.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it also gives you a really, really, really good understanding if you're a manager of uh of how to do this, and even if you're not a manager, how to manage it in the context of your own life.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think is uh there's some really, really useful information there.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks once again, Tam.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_02: Really appreciate it.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 49:27
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• 49:30
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• 49:34
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• 49:40
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