Transcript
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You can live your whole life without
being found. As a newborn, you
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can speak without being understood. As
a child, you have confounding pictures in
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your mind without the language to express
them. For some teenagers, the most
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truthful label is the word private.
Desires hidden from parents, fears hidden from
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peers, perspective, hidden from themselves. It takes a dedicated, stubborn person
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to see and understand a child.
Then there are the rest of us.
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We have the ability to learn and
never unlearn self censorship. We can stand
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in a group of people disparaging some
core part of our identity and say nothing.
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We can mirror the next person we
see. We can want things and
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never ask for them. You can
live your whole life without being found.
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This is the truth. You can
play Solitaire every night from age twenty to
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ninety, and let this be a
passing comment to your closest friends. You
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can love someone who won't love you
back. You can hate the hand your
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dealt and never complain. To be
found is to be discovered and not tossed
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back to the dirt. To be
found is to be worth asking questions of.
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To be found is to complete the
mission. Welcome back to remote a
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somewhat new series on B tob growth
about where remote cultures break down and how
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to make them stronger than ever.
My name is Ryan Drotty and I'm the
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director of culture and people ops a
sweet fish media, which has been a
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fully remote team for the entirety of
its existence. Today I want to tell
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you about the one thing that helps
our own remote culture stay connected more than
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anything else, asking a question of
the day. At sweet fish we ask
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a question of the day on slack. We're big slack users. Every business
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day on our random channel, one
person asked the question in bold letters,
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then usually answers it themselves. After
that, the rest of the team drops
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in throughout the day to answer it
as well and to respond to other answers.
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It's an extremely simple practice that a
lot of remote teams used to have
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fun together and get to know each
other. I can't imagine what work at
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our company would be like if we
didn't have these virtual conversations every day.
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It all comes back to engagement,
which is, of course, the end
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goal of any company culture, but
it's especially challenging in a remote environment and
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remote companies. There's no break room, there are no halls, no watercoolers,
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no chance encounters. You don't accidentally
enter the same virtual conference room as
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someone else. This means the interaction
that team members do have must be entirely
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intentional and or designed. Sure,
individual people can reach out to each other
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to talk at any time, but
leader should also create spaces where more organic
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conversation can happen. That's where the
question of the day, and really the
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random slack channel in general, come
in. Communication platforms like slack or virtual
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break rooms, among other things.
But the question of the day is more
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than a space, it's an invitation
for everyone to enliven that space. My
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goal each week is to make sure
between three and five questions of the day
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are asked. At first, I
intentionally didn't ask questions on a couple of
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specific days each week, usually Monday
and Friday. Monday, I reason,
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was a day for reacclimating and catching
up on any weekend messages. On Friday,
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people have one foot out the door. Recently, though, I've started
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asking questions every business day, even
if the engagement is slightly lower on certain
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days. It seems best to consider
each work day as a single unit and
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to provide what team members need for
that day. That includes socialization and a
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place to take a break from work. I don't feel particularly strong about doing
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it every day, though. For
some companies, skipping a particularly stressful or
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important day might make sense, and
sometimess it's nice to not rush answers to
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a particular question. Sometimes you might
want to stretch the question out for two
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days instead of one so more people
will answer. As for where to ask
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the questions, you already know I
use slack. If you're a slack user.
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That's my recommendation, but I assume
there are many other viable options.
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As long as the platform has the
following three things, it should work just
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fine. One, visibility to the
entire team, to a good amount of
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traffic. Three, and easy way
to reply to other people rather than to
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simply drop your answer in and leave. What types of question should you ask?
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Like any other get to know you
conversations, questions of the day should
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range from highly entertaining to highly meaningful. I've asked the question what's the Best
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Wi fi name you've seen? Pretty
fly for a Wifi is the answer,
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in case you're wondering. But I've
also asked, on a scale of one
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to ten, how strict were your
parents and what makes you really angry.
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That last question received a nice hybrid
of silly and serious answers. Social Justice
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issues and abuses made people angry,
but so did mouse sounds and disingenuous instagram
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influencers in general. I think you
should keep questions on the lighter side.
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Questions of the day should be attractive, fun and engaging, but I don't
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think you should be scared away from
asking the hard things. A few months
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back I sent a survey to our
team about how they felt working here and
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got responses like these. I think
sweetfish does a great job of creating a
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comfortable work environment, especially compared to
the American normal. Sweet fish media has
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a great culture of belonging. I
feel like part of the sweet fish family
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because of the culture that was built
in this company. I have felt extremely
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welcomed. I personally feel I hold
the values that sweet fish and bodies and
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truly enjoy supporting my coworkers in any
way I can. I feel confident that
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we would never get our people to
say those kinds of things if we didn't
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lean into the hard stuff in their
personal lives, both on slack and in
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one off conversations. In the last
episode of remote I talked about trust,
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and I don't think trust can happen
if you don't prove to someone that you
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welcome every part of them into your
organization. Here's a list of possible questions
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you could ask to get your wheel
spinning, although simple Google searches will give
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you more than enough ideas for questions. And, by the way, I
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use an APP I recently heard about
called party queues, to get a lot
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of ideas for our questions. What's
your secret to not getting sick? Is
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a hot dog a sandwich? What
are your for favorite ways to exercise?
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Would you rather have the ability to
read twice as fast or to activate slow
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motion in life? What's your favorite
food? What TV show are you watching
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right now? What Book Are you
reading? What's the best movie you've seen
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in the last month? Caffeine is
now an illegal drug. How Does Society
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Change? Share a video of your
crib so we can see where you work.
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What is your most embarrassing moment from
high school? What's the most interesting
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thing you've read or seen this week? If you were given a one minute
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add slot during the super bowl that
you couldn't sell, what would you fill
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it with? Another thing to consider
is who asks the question of the day.
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That's sweet fish. This is usually
me about ninety percent of the time,
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but I have to be honest,
I think that percentage is way too
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high. I felt the need for
a while to ask other team members to
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come up with questions more regularly.
In theory, anyone can jump in any
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day and ask the question. In
practice, I find myself asking it first
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thing every morning, before most people
have time to get going, and I'm
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on the east coast, so it's
before anyone else that's fur their west.
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I'd like to be more proactive about
scheduling question askers. I just haven't yet.
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If any sweetfish people are listening,
I'm sorry about that. I want
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to get a better system in place
in the next month. You have my
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permission to hold me accountable. What
else can the answers to the question of
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the day be used for? A
Lot. I use them for our,
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in case you missed it, document
at the end of the week and then
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later at the end of the year. In case you missed it, is
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basically an internal newsletter that I put
out every Friday, capturing all of the
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big announcements from the week in one
place. Any exciting news about sweet fish,
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and it's also where I capture a
lot of the fun, hilarious random
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stuff that happened on slack and put
it into one document. I also use
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the answers to capture people's unique personalities
and interests, secret agent style. We
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like to give gifts around here for
things like awarding a personalized gift to the
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person who lives out our values the
most each month and call it values champ.
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But we also like to give gifts
at random intervals, just because to
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really make a gift while someone you
have to know them really well, and
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what better way to know them than
to pay close attention when they talk about
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themselves? Question of the day helps
you do that. For all his secrecy
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and fear of being seen, he
was touched that we had observed him so
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closely and with such love. He
loved that we knew him. This is
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one reason people need to believe in
God, because we want someone to know
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US truly all the way through,
even the worst of us, Tim Crider,
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from we learn nothing. Questions in
work and in life are an invitation
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for others to show themselves unfiltered and
uncompromised. The right questions add layers.
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Two answers from previous questions. No
one wants to bury themselves for half the
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day at work, so don't make
them. Tell them you want them to
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bring every bit of who they are
to bear in their work. Tell them
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you care about them.