Transcript
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Welcome back to BEDB growth. I'm
Logan lyles with sweet fish media. Today
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I'm joined by Laur Sullivan. She's
the director of marketing over at Fleeteo.
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Lori, welcome to the show.
How's it going today? Going well,
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I mean, thanks for having me. Absolutely you and I connected recently and
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just checking out some of the content
you'vein sharing. I was really excited to
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have you on the show today.
We're going to be talking about managing a
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remote marketing team. You've got really
five tips for success. To give us
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a little bit of context, what
are you guys dealing with right now?
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Why is this something that's top of
mine for you in the FLEETEO marketing team?
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Yeah, absolutely so. At fleeteo
we are a remote friendly company.
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About thirty five percent or so of
our of our entire company, is remote.
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My marketing team is about half and
half, so half of us are
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at HQ and half of us are
remote. But of course, in the
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COVID nineteen environment we are all working
remotely and as a marketing team. I
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think it's really interesting compared to other
teams like sales, where everyone is kind
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of serving one function. They're all
kind of doing similar things. A marketing
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team is made up of so many
different diverse roles, personalities and me you
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have everyone from designers to content marketers
to analytic mind collaboration is so key because
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of that diversity, and so that's
definitely something that we are, you know,
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getting through at the moment. Going
fully remote. One of the big
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projects we're working on right now and
the covid nineteen, is revisiting and kind
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of shifting our ideal customer profile,
or ICP, and that is a full
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team effort and often involves other teams
within our company. And so that type
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of projects, from the strategic to
the tactical, really takes a lot of
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collaboration, and so being really good
remote managers and workers is is super top
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of mine right now. Yeah,
absolutely, a said. I think it
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is for a lot of other marketing
leaders. So with that, let's jump
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right into some of the how as
we like to hear on be to be
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growth. The first tip you had
was really optimizing your tools and making sure
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everybody's kind of on the same page
when it comes to zoom etiquette or video
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conferencing etiquette. Those sorts of things
tell us a little bit about some of
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the the learnings you guys have had
in recent weeks going from thirty thirty five
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percent remote to a fully remote marketing
team. On this point, absolutely so
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I think it's about laying the foundation
for success, and that is your tools.
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It's documenting processes and making sure that
managers are also good remote managers.
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So it's really up to leadership to
create a remote culture that will thrive.
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I think we did that well before
being a hundred percent that remote, but
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we've really had to double down on
that moving forward. So, you know,
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before even setting the tools in place, I think it's about documenting expectations.
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So we use a tool called notion
to pretty much to all of our
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internal documentation and there, you know, we have remote work guides. You
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know, we have guides that show
how to match your message to the channel.
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What should you put in a project
management tool versus a quick communication tool
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like slack? When is it easier
to do a video sink rather than writing
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feedback and a sauna? You know, how can you be understanding of different
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time zones? I mean you're collaborating
with people across different times as well,
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and remote work also, you know, brings a lot of flexibility, and
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so what are kind of expectations that
the company has or your manager has around
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that flexibility that remote work offers.
So I think setting those expectations a lot
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of times through process documentation is really
helpful. And then the tools are,
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of course, as you mentioned,
are incredibly key to success. I mean
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we use everything from slack to zoom
to a Sauna for project management. Are
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creatives on the marketing side use a
tool called pigma. We also use a
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tool called envision, which allows us
to really collaborate and give quick feedback in
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a design file rather than pulling that
into a project eachment tool like a sauna,
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which is super helpful. And then
we also integrated tool called status hero
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into slack where we do daily stand
ups for each team. So every morning
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I see what each member of my
team is hoping to focus on that day
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and what they're hoping to achieve.
That really helps us all stay on the
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same page and I know if I'm
expecting feedback or, you know, a
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certain piece of a project from someone
that day, I can kind of set
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my own expectations right you know,
and understand what you know they're hoping to
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tackle that day. So the tools
are incredibly important. And I think a
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couple more kind of foundational elements of
working remote. You know, are really
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encouraging the team and studying your own
focus time. So uninterrupted blocks of time.
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We all need this. When we're
working a synchronous Lee with tools like
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slack and a sauna, we it
can kind of feel like a lot of
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information always coming into you, right, and so setting those uninterrupted blocks of
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focused on I think is really important. Actually use a tool called at clockwise
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to integrate into just integrates into Google
will calendar and it actually will find the
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larger blocks of time that I have
open and automatically set focus time and that,
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yeah, I like that. That's
very cool. Yeah, and that
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notification will actually populate as my status
in slack, so my team members can
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see if I'm heads down in my
focus time as so that has been really
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interesting. And then I think when
it comes to foundational elements, meetings and
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zoom or, you know, the
teleconference tool of your choice. It's really
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important to set the foundation there as
well. You know, have the right
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meetings, not a lot of meetings. We, for instance, have a
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weekly team marketing meeting on Mondays where
we get together. We talked about metrics
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from the previous week or the month
has closed out the month and then we
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pretty much run that meeting on an
Okur framework or we look at our objectives
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and key results for that quarter or
month and we see how we're tracking against
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those. It's also a great opportunity
for collaboration. But we have that standing
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meeting and then we have weekly thirty
minute one on one with managers and direct
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reports, which will get into a
little more and a little while. But
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I would say when it comes to
meetings, don't be afraid to cancel meetings
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that are no longer needed and if
it's not worth everyone's time, get it
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off the calendar. Yeah, and
then, obviously, working remotely, meetings
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are going to be facilitated using zoom
or another teleconference tool, and I think
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the for me, the kind of
etiquette that I would suggest is more around
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making sure you don't waste people's time. So someone should always run the meeting
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most of the time, not to
whoever called the meeting, but they should
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really be in charge of the agenda
time keeping, involving everyone that's there as
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well. You know what, we're
remote. It's easy to kind of just
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sit and listen on a zoom call
instead of participating. So when someone kind
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of heads that meeting they can really
grab that participation from everyone. And this
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thing is really obvious, but not
everyone does this well, and I think
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in zoom as well, anytime you
can share your screen, especially if you're
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talking about data or some sort of
workflow or on the marketing side, you
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know, design projects, show rather
than tell when you can. You know
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that functionality is there in zoom and
it really just helps everyone understand, come
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together and map out next steps as
best I can. Yeah, absolutely,
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man, Lori you covered a lot
of just good ideas as well as tools.
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Will have to go through and make
sure we'd linked to a lot of
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those in the show notes as well. You know, it's hard for me
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not to chime in and kind of
layer on to what you've just said.
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They're because, you know, amidst
all of this and everybody kind of talking
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about work from home and remote work
content, it's like, should we share
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some of this stuff where it's kind
of you know, I don't want the
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it to be just noise right now, but the truth of the matter is
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I've been on the sweet fish team
for two years, for a half a
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decade we've been a fully remote team. We have never had a physical office
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of physical HQ. So some of
the things that you were saying we're just
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kind of reminding me of some of
the things that we've been doing. You
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know, those expectation settings. I
would just encourage people to just set an
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expectation to have your camera on.
That doesn't mean that like you're going to
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get your wrist lap or you're like
hey, if your cameras off, but
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that that's the default and it's not
the exception. There to every rule or
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policy. We call him blueprints because
we hate the word policy over here at
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sweet fish. We're just too casual
for that. But set the default for
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cameras. On the other thing that
I've found we've recently switched a lot of
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our internal calls from Google meet or
Google hangouts to zoom strictly because of gallery
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view. Speaker of you just doesn't
when you have more than two people on
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a call, like a one to
one podcast recording like we're doing right now,
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it's tough to kind of read the
room and see, oh, they
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might have had something to say on
that. So to your point of WHO's
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leading the meeting and making sure that
people are engaged. So like when you
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and I are talking right now,
Laury, I'm able to kind of simulate
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eye contact and I can still kind
of read your reactions while I'm making eye
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contact. The other thing you talked
about I love, whether you're a fully
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remote team, a remote team for
now or whatever, the case, is
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setting kind of a hierarchy of channels, and what I mean by that is
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kind of similar to what you said, matching the message to the medium.
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Right. Is this a slack message? Is this and a Sun a notification?
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And so there are some nuance things
there. But also, you know,
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I've turned all of my notifications off
on my phone except for texts and
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phone calls it, so I'm not
getting where. We use Strello, we're
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moving over to a sauna. We
obviously use slack like everybody else. Email
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linkedin all that sort of stuff.
It merging that with time blocking like you've
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talked about, and I really want
to look into clockwise now, because we've
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been big on on time blocking,
but then letting people know, hey,
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if you send me a slack message, I'm not going to get them notification
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right away. Kind of my hierarchy
is like if you need it this week,
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email me if you need it today, slack me, if you need
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it right now, text me and
just just kind of talking about that.
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And it might be different from person
to person. It's definitely going to be
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different from team to team, but
having a conversation about what sort of message
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goes in which medium and which one
is kind of viewed as an expected kind
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of response. Time again, not
to just set up policy because you need
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more policies. I don't think any
of US need that. But but you
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can work without distraction and not feeling
like with all this digital communication coming at
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you from eight different tools, everything
feels urgent right, and so setting your
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team up for success there. The
other thing I know you wanted to talk
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about that I'm really big on is
not just relying on written communication in remote
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environment. Tell us a little bit
about how you guys manage this as a
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team. Yeah, so I think
when you are working remotely you're naturally going
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to do a lot of communication in
written form, in a project management tool,
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email and in a tool like flat. That's just naturally what's going to
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happen because you are at a distance. But I really try on my team
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to focus on making sure that we
don't only communicate in written form. Again,
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I mean it's really difficult, like
you said earlier, to pick up
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on nonverbal cues when things are just
written and it can often cause issues.
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You know, if someone sends you
feed back through a project management tool,
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it could be taken the wrong way. And so not to say that everything
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should be a video call, but
I think quick flat calls or zoom video
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stand ups can be really helpful,
especially when you're collaborating on a project or
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giving some sort of feedback other ways. This would be really helpful, as
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if you're talking about data or analytics, to walk someone through that, to
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screen there and be able to point
at certain things. That's crucial communicating bigger
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picture ideas like vision or strategy.
If I'm a kind of setting up a
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project to my content marketing manager and
I have this vision of the outcome,
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it's going to be a lot easier
for me to look him in the face
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and communicate that and for him to
understand and really just go back and forth
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with questions and thoughts and idea sharing. So any type of conversation like that
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were I find a lot of creative
conversations happen better in a visual medium.
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You know, no surprise. They're
my the two designers on my team.
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One is so gus, more on
content, once more focused on Web,
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but they actually do a working session
together each week through zoom where they'll share
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some of the progress on some of
their individual projects and actually work on some
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of those design tasks in that zoom
session, and that's really helpful for them.
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But that being said, we're naturally
going to do a lot of writing,
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you know, and we're communicating with
remote workers. So my biggest piece
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of advice there would just be to
be more intentional than ever and overcommunicate at
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all times. That would be to
be the biggest take away, especially when
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it comes to giving feedback to direct
reports. Yep, absolutely, which is
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going to lead us into our next
conversation, or next part of the conversation,
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around one on one's. Before we
move there, just a couple of
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things I wanted to to share.
You know, you make a really good
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point about written communication and when it
needs to be facetoface, synchronous video.
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The big medium that we found to
be really effective that you can use kind
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of in between those two is asynchronous
video. So I send you a video,
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you watch it when you need to
and then you can reply. And
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so the two tools. I know
any regular listener of this show knows that
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I'm a big advocate for bombomb,
who also happens to be a customer of
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ours. But I would I use
their tool daily as well as loom for
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screenshare recording. And so it might
be something like this, like we use
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Strello, we're moving to US aunt. But Hey, you've got some feedback.
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It makes sense to not have a
meeting about it, but you need
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to deliver some feedback with some nuance. Maybe it's going to take a while
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to type that out and you also
want to be careful that you don't just
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like come down and say your work
is crap. Right, if you've read
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radical candor, you know why I'm
saying you're crap. I'm tweaking that quote
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from Steve Jobs just a little bit. But you could record a video in
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loom or bombomb, put the link
there in a sauna and have them watch
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that three minute video without saying we
need to schedule a meeting three days and
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then it delays things, or just
relying on written communication, which is going
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to take you a long time to
write as well, and you miss it,
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you might have some issues with misscommunication. Our design team does a lot
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of that. I'm working on projects
together. Let's set some coworking time.
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Another thing you can do is,
you know, some of our team has
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been saying like the word overcommunicate is
being overused right now, but it's so
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true, because when you are fully
remote, there's no watercool or conversation,
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there's no Laura, you and I
passing each other in the hall and saying
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Hey, where we at with that
right, and so you have to find
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a way to replace that. One
interesting way we actually got from Patrick Lindsay
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one is to simulate and open office
with zoom or another conferencing tool, and
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so away. This might work.
It could work for like a design team
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or a content team or a specific
team work, or it might just be
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hey, I'm going to be on
this zoom line for the next two hours
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doing kind of some heads down work, probably not super deep work because you're
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going to be more distracted, but
we can all hop on here and be
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working on our own thing and that
way, if we have hey, I
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want to ask a question, or
hey, did you guys know that you
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know this, Dada, Da Dada. You have some opportunity there. So
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we actually recorded an episode on how
you could simulate and open office environment via
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zoom. Will Link to that in
the show notes. Let's go to that
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next thing you wanted to talk about, Lorie, and talk about one on
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ones. These are just so crucial, especially when you're working remote right now.
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Yeah, absolute really. I mean
I think they are. They're always
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important, but with everyone being a
hundred percent or bote there, they're more
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important than ever. So ours are
weekly thirty minute meetings and obviously that's not
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a long time, but I think
it makes such a difference and it's most
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likely that people are doing some version
of this. But I would say just
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my my recommendations would be that that
is the time to pick up on those
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nonverbal cues. If someone is,
you know, having you know issues or
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they're not sharing something personally and professionally, I think that's the time to pick
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up on it, to really have
those real conversations. It's a great time
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to give feedback. It is the
safest time to give feedback and making sure
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that those meetings are facetoface is very
important. I would say one of the
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things that was a game changer for
me is this sounds simple, but I
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guarantee you a lot of managers don't
do it because these meetings are weekly,
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they're short, they're often really tactical. I about a year ago really made
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a dedicated effort to spend more time
preparing for my oneonones, carving out some
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time earlier in the day or the
day before to prep for the topics of
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that meeting. What I wanted to
cover, maybe the things that were more
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personal. All that I wanted to
check in on if the person has kids
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or, especially during covid nineteen,
you know, if people have kids at
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home and they're, you know,
having to take on that role of teacher
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as well, this is the time
to check in on people's head space and
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really understand how they're doing. And
so when I started to dedicate preparation time
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for one on one, so that
was a game changer for me. Again,
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these are quick saints are often really
tactical, but I would challenge people
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just to get outside of that tactical
and dig into personal things. Talk About
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Strategic Vision. We fall into that
tactical because we're trying to get things done
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and it we're trying to be efficient, but it's one of those things where
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oneonone to have, I think really
taught me to be a good listener as
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well. Make sure you're getting out
of the tactical and make sure you're listening.
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See you know how to react.
Yeah, a couple of things there
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that you know might be useful for
folks, but at least it's something that
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we're doing. Is Abel, our
director of customer experience, kind of started
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this with our producer team and literally
created a trelloboard for everyoneonone, and so
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you have different lists. You could
do this in a sunner or even Google
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keep or note or something like that, but basically like hey, here's some
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urgent things, here are some questions
I have, and so manager and direct
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report can add stuff the air,
which also eliminates that hey, Lorie,
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I got to ask you a question
and it's a slack message that you've got
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to switch look at. No,
that's for our one on one, right,
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and so you're both kind of trained
to add to what some people have
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called like your yellow list for a
person, which comes from like if you
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have a legal pad and like Oh, I've got my sheet for Lori.
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This is something we need to talk
about but it's not urgent. I can
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put it on our one on one
list. So add that to your yellow
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list on your one on one board, if you use Trello or a sun
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or something like that. So it
can kind of clear your head space and
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also add some structure to those one
on ones to make sure you're not losing
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things. The other thing I'd recommend, I love your your point about adding
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the personal touch. It might feel
like, Hey, if I'm going to
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do this, then I need to
open up with it. I need to
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show hey, how are the kids
doing? It might seem counterintuitive, but
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I talked about this via email.
When we get emails saying Lori Hope you're
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staying safe and well in the family's
great. By the way, when are
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we going to schedule that next meeting? It feels like a pleasantry. It
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feels like you're just doing it to
do it right. But if I say
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hey, here's the things we need
to do or we need to talk about.
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By the way, how are you
doing or how are the kids or
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whatever, when you save that to
the end, it's showing that you're investing
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the time even when you don't have
to. So feel out the situation.
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It's definitely more art than science,
but it might be something worth kind of
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flipping the script on to see if
it changes the feel with your director reports
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and your one on ones. Yeah, absolutely, and I I definitely echo
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setting up a project or a place
in your project management tool to be able
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to throw things during the week until
you meet again. We do that as
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sauna and it is hugely helpful.
Yeah, absolutely. So the four and
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five on your your five tips for
managing a remote marketing team, Laura,
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kind of want to group together for
the sake of time and have you touch
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on avoid the tendency to micromanage and
set up the opportunities for Social Connections Amongst
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your team? They both kind of
speak to, I think, the softer
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skills, although the softer skills,
I think, get a bit of a
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misnomer being called soft skills. As
a manager they're often the most important things.
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But can you touch on these as
we kind of wrap the conversation today?
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Absolutely, I mean I think it
makes sense to group these together because
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ultimately it results in employee happiness.
So when it comes to micromanaging, you
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know, remote work brings flexibility and
so managers can often, you know,
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feel the desire to micrimanage. But
you know, if you hired the right
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people you shouldn't have a problem.
I mean not everyone is built to work
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remotely. So I would say just
really dig into that and that people in
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the interview process. You know,
have they worked a hundred percent remotely before?
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What was their experience? Did they
struggle in any areas? But of
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course in the current situation many people
are working remotely who didn't choose too.
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So as a manager you have to
build and give them the tools to succeed
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and really help them through that if
you know if they if they are struggling.
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But I think ultimately I'm definitely a
manager who likes to give as much
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autonomy as possible. I think that
foster's trust, builds rapport and ultimately makes
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people happier in their job and feel
the ability and encouragement to innovate as well.
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And I think creating social connections on
your team and throughout the company as
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a whole is really similar. It
creates better retention among employees, better productivity.
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You know, people feel more comfortable
collaborating if they do foster those social
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connections and fostering connections between remote team
members. Is Super Hard, but it
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can be done. And so a
few things that we do. I think
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one you mentioned earlier making it the
norm to put your video on if you're
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on a zoom call. See each
other's spaces. You know, I feel
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like one of the things that I
know so well about my team is their
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pets. You know, if someone's
dog is into the background, I'm wondering
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where he is. And so,
you know, we get to know each
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other's settings and and kind of environments. Create Non Work Related Slack Channels.
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I'm sure a ton of people do
this, but if you haven't, definitely
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do. It. Fosters conversation and
connection among different people. One of the
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other flat integrated APPs that we use
is called donut and it actually matches random
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people in our company up to do
one on one quick fifteen minute coffee chats.
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So I might get matched up with
an engineer or someone on the product
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team, someone on the sales team. That has really fostered social connection among
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our company. We've done that for
a long time. It has really allowed
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me to get to know some of
our fully remote people. We've recently been
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holding zoom happy hours. We've been
doing zoom trivia during covid nineteen and really
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trying to kind of amp up that
social connection. And then since the the
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covid nineteen situation has started, I
also have been doing a quick fifteen minute
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zoom stand up on Friday mornings with
my team, just a time to see
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each other spaces while we're having coffee. We often don't talk about work.
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We often talk about the current state
of the world, what our plans are
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for the weekend. But again it's
an extra time that we now have to
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build that connection now that we're fully
remote. So again, it really just
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results in better collaboration, better productivity, happier employees. Yeah, absolutely.
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I cannot stress enough just how important
that different tactics that you were just talking
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about, Lori, have been for
us, in our own mental sanity,
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in our own productivity as a remote
team, doing it for half a decade
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now here at Sweet Fish I.
I want to encourage anybody who's listening to
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this who wants some ideas on kind
of structuring those those structuring those unstructured times
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to get together. We've done remote
baby showers in the last few weeks.
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We've done remote parties, remote happy
hours. Our director of culture and people
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ops. Ryan draughty is just fantastic
at doing this. If you have any
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questions about tools he's using, different
ideas he's had, email him, Ryan
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at Sweet Fish Mediacom. Sorry,
Ryan, I just offered you up as
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tribute. Lori I. I love
your ideas here. It goes back to
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what we were talking about earlier.
There are things that naturally happen in a
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physical office that you need to be
intentional about trying to replicate in a different
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way in a remote environment, because
those things were important right, knowing,
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knowing your co workers, dogs and
kids names and those sorts of things.
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We have a random channel where we
ask a question of the day on slack
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and we've had people come on and
say, man, the culture here in
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the connectedness is greater than any culture
I've been a part of in person.
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There are things that you can do. Being remote is not just this death
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sentence to every extrovert you have on
the team, but you have to be
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intentional about it and Laura, you've
given some great tools that will try to
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link to as many as we can
here in the show notes. Definitely some
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great ideas. I encourage people,
however many times you need to hit the
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back button to go back to some
of Lori's tips today differently. Do that,
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00:27:38.680 --> 00:27:42.519
Lori, if anybody listening to this
has become a fast fan and fast
368
00:27:42.599 --> 00:27:47.230
friend of yours with all the value
you've been adding today, with the best
369
00:27:47.230 --> 00:27:49.150
way for them to stay in touch
with you. Last connect with me on
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00:27:49.230 --> 00:27:53.190
Linkedin. It's Lori Sullivan and if
you want to check out more about fleetio,
371
00:27:53.309 --> 00:27:57.269
go to fleteocom. Awesome, Lori, thank you so much for being
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our guests on the show today.
I really appreciate it. Thanks so much
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for having me Logan. Awesome.
And just for listeners, before we sign
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off today, we did a previous
episode on replicating an open office on zoom.
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Will Link to that episode in the
show notes, and also James and
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00:28:12.289 --> 00:28:17.569
I did one talking about how we've
tweaked our okay, our structure, because
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we're not only a fullame remote team, we're a very fast growing team,
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and so we've kind of done annual
objectives and monthly four by fours, just
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going into how we do that remotely
in those sorts of things. That might
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be a couple of follow up resources
in the show notes for everybody listening.
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00:28:33.079 --> 00:28:36.400
As always, thank you so much
for listening. We really appreciate it.
382
00:28:37.759 --> 00:28:41.190
I hate it when podcasts incessantly ask
their listeners for reviews, but I get
383
00:28:41.190 --> 00:28:45.829
why they do it, because reviews
are enormously helpful when you're trying to grow
384
00:28:45.869 --> 00:28:48.269
a podcast audience. So here's what
we decided to do. If you leave
385
00:28:48.309 --> 00:28:52.109
a review for me to be growth
and apple podcasts and email me a screenshot
386
00:28:52.230 --> 00:28:56.140
of the review to James at Sweet
Fish Mediacom, I'll send you a signed
387
00:28:56.220 --> 00:29:00.900
copy of my new book, content
based networking, how to instantly connect with
388
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anyone you want to know. We
get a review, you get a free
389
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book. We both win.