WLP293: Crafting the Role of Head of Remote
In this episode, Pilar speaks to Chase Warrington, Head of Remote at Doist. Chase shares how he is challenging the way in which remote work is approached at his organisation, and what he has learnt in his new position that can be used to improve the business and its people. Below are some show notes to give you a flavour of today’s content, and you can also read the transcript below.
Chase discusses his new position as Head of Remote and talks about how as a community we can help each other learn and grow, and figure out what is the best way to overcome the challenges remote teams face.
24.36 mins
Chase discusses the importance of bringing a team of people from different departments together to socialise and work on a new project, to help overcome feelings of isolation, loneliness, disconnection and disengagement.
Working remotely does have its own set of challenges to overcome, not in the way of changing the entire system, more so that we have systems in place to implement when facing these challenges. For example, having a social calendar can benefit remote work as there can be a time set at the end of each month for people to come together and connect. However there are ways to make these gatherings more impactful and Chase is looking at how best to do that.
(You can read Chase’s article “How to Build Human Connections in an Async Workplace” from Doist’s website.)
Chase has created a “social crew” to have these gatherings be more structured, create innovative ideas and have a sense of leadership. Having a place where individuals can come together to connect can be beneficial not only to the members involved, but to the business as a whole. With these social crews there has to be intention behind the crews and the intention has to come from being connected at work, but not in the sense of being in the same departments. There are other factors that can connect people in the workplace, even when it is remotely.
Connecting members from different departments to work on a project each month can help prevent feelings of isolation and disconnection. The most important aspect of the crews is to create this feeling of connection and get members of the business outside of their “bubbles'', to make them get to know each other under a common goal.
Chase Warrington - the podcaster!
45.45 mins
Chase hosts the About Abroad podcast separately from his work at Doist, and it’s the result of him being an American expat in Spain. During his travels he’s met many other expats and digital nomads facing similar challenges to him. So he’s created the About Abroad podcast to discuss these various challenges, help other expats, or people travelling outside of their country for the first time.
The podcast was originally set up to discuss living, travelling and working abroad, but as his travels and discussions with people grew, the topic of remote work came into the discussion as well, as many expats do work remotely. There are a multitude of people from around the world who come on to the podcast and tell their own amazing stories, from building a community of nomads, to what it is like living in the South Pole.
42.57 mins
As for Twist: Future of Work, this is a video series that promotes the use of various products and services exploring the future of work. Twist is one of the products that Chase encourages listeners to use (it’s created by Doist, of course!) but there are numerous products and services out there that seek to benefit businesses.There are creators behind those products and services - and Chase is keen to feature them. Another aspect of this series is to bring in founders of companies and discuss the ethics of the company, why they chose to start their own companies and any personal stories they want to share about the company and product.
51.55 mins
As host and guest start wrapping up the conversation, Chase talks about the Estonia E-residency, which gives entrepreneurs and freelancers an opportunity to set up their own business in Estonia, and do business with other EU companies as well.
Working remotely does have its own set of challenges, however there are advantages to it as well and ways to overcome these challenges. If there are any questions that remote workers, entrepreneurs, and freelancers have regarding remote work there are ways to find the answers to them.
You can connect with Chase on LinkedIn, and listen to About Abroad on all podcast apps, or from the show’s website.
Looking for the transcript? You can find it further down…
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Transcript for WLP293: Crafting the Role of Head of Remote
WLP293 Crafting the Role of Head of Remote
Pilar Orti 0:40
Hello and welcome to episode 293 of the 21st Century Work Life podcast. If we haven’t met before my name is Pilar Orti, lovely to have you here. I hope you enjoy your time with us today and that you subscribe to the show and continue listening to us. And if you are a regular listener, wow, thank you very much for still being here. It’s delightful to have you here with us today. Who is “us” today? Well, I am going to be talking to Chase Warrington, who is the head of remote at Doist. Of course, when I say I am going to be talking to him, I’ve already recorded this is the nice time shift that we have in podcasting. But we’re going to take a look at this new role that Chase has within Doist, which is the head of remote. And I love how he is crafting it as he goes along, how he is really seeing how other people are doing things just to expand his points of reference.I love that, in his words, he is challenging not changing. I think for me the eye-opener from this was, it seems like Dosit were an established, distributed company, fully distributed with a strong asynchronous culture.They're taking the fact that everyone has embraced remoted so many different ways of taking that to actually go, okay, what can we learn from all this mass adoption. So I love that, that for me was really important to hear. I actually talk to Chase about, not their asynchronous culture, because we’ve talked about this before. I do refer to our conversation during our previous episode with Gonzalo Silva, from Doist on all about asynchronous episode 246. But today actually, Chase talks more about some of the things that they're now doing in real-time and even in person in a colocated setting. So these are some of the things he is doing as head of remote. He is actually bringing people together in the physical space. So that‘s also an interesting angle. He also talks a little bit about his own podcast About Abroad, which I recommend to you listeners. So that’s it. I would love to hear what you think of the conversation, anything you want to add, anything you might want to ask Chase, maybe we can bring him back in a synchronous or asynchronous manner. So if you want to get in touch my email address is pilar at virtual not distant.com and over at virtualnotdistant.com we also have a contact form. I’ll be right back straight after the conversation but for now well, I hope you enjoy it.
Pilar Orti 3:32
I've been waiting for a while to meet with our next guest whom I met, I think it was even before the pandemic in a meet up Chase, you probably don't remember, it's been quite a while. So I'm delighted to have here Chase Warrington, who I know firstly as the head of remote Doist. But of course is also the host of the About Abroad podcast, which I encourage listeners to go and check out. You're also a remote work advisor and also Chase has got this, I got this from your LinkedIn, you're also a Forbes Business Council official member. So welcome Chase. And what does that mean?
Chase Warrington 4:08
I'm trying to figure it out by myself. I'm trying to figure out a lot of things like what do I do with my new job with the Forbes Business Council? So yeah, let's let's dive into it. Maybe you can help me. It's great to be here. I'm also a fan of your show and have also been waiting for the opportunity to come on board and have this chat with you. So thank you so much for having me.
Pilar Orti 4:29
And I love it. I love it when listeners come on to the show. So listeners if you want to say hello on the show, I think for me it's a yes. Yeah, I find it very, very joyful. So let's just dive right into it. I'm just curious about the forest Business Council official member and then we'll move on to the other so what do you do there?
Chase Warrington 4:46
Yeah, so this is a totally new thing for me as well. So I was half joking when I said I'm trying to figure it out because this is all very very new. But essentially the Forbes Business Council is a fairly tight closed network of business advisors from various sectors around the world and different industries, different perspectives, I guess you'd say it's fairly competitive to get selected. And there's an application process and interview process, and all of that. So I was very humbled and very excited to be accepted into it. I sort of thought it was a long shot, but figured someone said, You should give it a shot. I did. And so now I'm there. And it's, it's really great. It's been amazing for me to connect with people all over the world who are contributing their thought leadership in different ways. It's not just about remote work, my sector, I guess you'd say is remote work. And that's what I'm advising on. But we're collaborating with each other to offer insights, creating content. I'm working on some articles to create for Forbes as we speak. And, yeah, it's just an opportunity to it's kind of like LinkedIn in a very, very small tight room.
Pilar Orti 6:01
Oh, nice. Nice, really good. So when did you start?
Chase Warrington 6:04
Just a couple weeks ago, literally, less than one maybe one month ago, or even less?
Pilar Orti 6:11
Okay, well, maybe you can come back at some point to continue our conversation from today. And you can update us on it, I didn't realise it was so new. Well, congratulations. Sounds really, really, like a great opportunity to be able to impart your, I was gonna say wisdom, but it's such, a bit condescending, or your knowledge. And also it sounds like you're going to get a lot from it. So congratulations. That's really great. Solet's go back to something that I know you've been doing for a while, however, I know you even within Doist, I think you did change roles. So tell us about your role as head of remote at Doist. I'm very curious. When did you start? Because that's, I mean, you've been in the company for a while? Yeah, okay. Yes. About that.
Chase Warrington 6:56
So, yeah, so I'll, I'll back up a little bit. So for anybody that's unfamiliar with Doist, we're a totally remote first organisation, we have about 100 people in 35 different countries, and that spans all time zones. So we've been operating that way since our inception, 15 years ago. And have never been anything except remote first. We also create SAS products, for productivity and team communication, specifically designed for remote teams. So it's sort of like building products that work for us. And hopefully, they work for other remote teams. Remote work was just a little niche until the pandemic, and now there's a lot more remote teams. And we've always seen it as part of our, I guess, sort of like a duty, but also an opportunity to share what we've learned about making remote work, work. So that's always sort of been a thing for us. And previously, I was the head of business development at Doist. And one of the functions of Business Development at Doist was to take on those projects that just didn't really fit into any one area very well. Remote work advocacy was one of those projects that I was very passionate about and wanted to get involved with. So business development absorbed that. And so it was sort of always a side project for me. When I was working in business development, how do we be? How do we use what we've learned at Doist, to project that out into the world and say, Hey, here's how we do remote work. Let's see if it works for other teams. Of course, on the flip side, the selfish side of that is like it serves our products, well we get to, ,, position our products as leaders in that space as well. And it's great for employee branding. So there are some selfish benefits, but I can honestly say at the root of it, it was ,, let's pay it forward, we learned a lot from teams that shared their knowledge. Base Camp was writing books about this and GitLab sharing their stories and the buffers of the world. So there were all these companies sharing and we wanted to be a part of that and share our learnings as well. So fast forward to today. There's tons of opportunities to talk about remote work, and we see it as an opportunity to really level up the way that we do things. It's sort of like a building that's been under its works, it's functioning, all the walls are in place, the foundation's there, but we want to put some fresh paint on there and really level up the way we're doing remote work. So we thought we needed somebody to lead both of those charges, ,, internally to level up the way we're doing remote work, and externally to continue to be that megaphone for how remote works do us. So that's the core of my work. And I've been doing that since October. So, not that long.
Pilar Orti 9:45
Yeah, so we are recording in June, not June, in January 2022. So yeah, not that long. So let me just pick up on a few things you were saying. One of which is listeners. Well, any listener that has also followed us maybe on LinkedIn or that have subscribed to our newsletter will have come across your blog posts, because I think that the content that Doist put out on remote work particularly on asynchronous, of course, is really high quality. And it's just like, Well, why do we bother blogging? When people like you are their libraries, they're not, ,, they're not blog posts that tell you something really quickly, they go into depth, and they are guides. So I thoroughly recommend that we did have Gonzalo Silva on the show on Episode 246, back in August 2020. And he also joined us for a panel discussion. So Doist is a company to follow. And you say you're remote first, but you don't have an office? Do you, and you're fully distributed? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. That's great. Great. Great. So that's, that's also for any new listeners to know, and bear in mind. So that makes a lot of sense. So the head of remote is basically it's also an outward facing, but also inward facing. So. Okay,
Chase Warrington 11:05
So yeah, pick something interesting on that pillar, if you don't mind, is like, something that I did early on, when I started evaluating, if this was a move I wanted to make, I was pretty sure it was. But I wanted to talk to the other people in similar roles. So whether it be head of remote or director of remote, or, whoever it was at different organisations leading this similar charge. And the like, common thing that I found was that there was no common thing. Like everybody, every person in this role, it's so new and so cross functional and sits in so many different spaces, that everybody had a different way of describing it. And Darrin Murphy, who's like the face of this role at GitLab, he told me, and one of our first conversations that I had with him was like, it's going to change at every person that you talk to, it's going to change a little bit. And so I think that's what's really exciting about it. And one of the things that Darren mentioned to me that we've really latched on to, is this whole thing about levelling up your remote work best practises. So at Doist, we're a remote first company already, and we kind of already have the pieces in place to operate remotely, but we want to just take it to the next level. And so for us, that's the focus for somebody that's brand new and hiring this this person, they may see it as somebody that needs to be completely building the remote infrastructure from the ground up a company transitioning to remote or hybrid might want a strong change agent, somebody to really transition all the best practices, the tools, all of that, so it can change from from company to company. And I find that really, really fascinating.
Pilar Orti 12:43
Yeah and that's a really good point. Thank you. Because a lot of us are wondering, so what does that mean? And like you say, look at what the company is and where the company is coming from, and that, of course, informs the role. Excellent. So what are some of the things you mentioned, you've been talking about, maybe other heads of remotes. I've also seen embracing this role. You've been asking questions on LinkedIn? And how I'm just really curious, because I can't keep up on the social media side. What are some of the things that you've been finding that have been? What are some of the things you've been finding? I'll ask you more later.
Chase Warrington 13:23
So it's one thing that's been really fun. I mean, I mentioned that this has sort of always been like a side project for me, this remote, the remote infrastructure of the company, the remote advocacy has constituted 10% of my time before. And there were all these things that I wanted to dive into, and learn and discover, and implement, and test and all these things. But it just wasn't the… I couldn't divest myself from other things to be able to do that. So now I can do all those things. And that's what's most exciting for me about this change. And one of those things is learning from this amazing community of remote people, remote leaders like yourself, and so many others who are in this world and see it from different angles, and sort of getting outside of our echo chamber of the way that we do things that Dosit because if we are going to level up, it takes some outside perspective, and I'm a bit on the inside. So I've been really enjoying having the time to interact with people online. Asking questions, how do you guys do this at your companies? What are the best tools you use for x? Or what are the up and coming companies that you're following? And really diving into those and just reading a lot, having lots of conversations, taking meetings and hearing what people have to say, and so I'm learning a ton, like I could spend hours just saying, talking about all the great people that I'm meeting and the articles that I'm reading, but the common thing that I'm finding again, is that there is no common thing. Everybody's approaching this from so many different ways and we tend to be very asynchronous in the way that we work at Doist. It's very core to how we work. And at the same time, we recognize there's an opportunity to connect more on a human level and to implement more use cases for connecting outside of work, whether that be in real life in person at co-located events, or virtually. So I'm learning a ton about those two areas, and how we can really take that to the next level of Doist.
Pilar Orti 15:32
I’m really glad that that's what you're finding. And before I forget, kudos to Doist because this is, of course, an example of somebody, I imagine crafting the role and developing the role to suit their needs, like you say, this used to be like something I used to do on this side, and now it's my full time job. Yeah, we often think about this, like with artists. I come across a lot of this in the podcast world, in the writer's world, people were doing something on the side, and eventually, but it's really nice to hear it happening within a company. So kudos to that. And also really good role modelling for any kind of talent retention as well, in an organisation, are you making the space for people to discover what they really want to do, and to see what the company needs or might benefit from as well, at one point. So kudos to that. And really interesting, and I think really important for people who are still figuring it out how to work online, because of course, people were pushed to work online, but haven't had time to figure it out still, because it's just completely mad. And also, some of us have been going on for a while and thinking this is the way, but there's so many different ways of collaborating online. And that is really important to hear, to hear this, that there's just so many ways so that we don't get fixated on best practises or on what some of the companies are doing. Please listen to us continue to understand where we're coming from, but there's not one way of doing remote. So can I ask you, then what are some of the ways then? Is there anything specific that you're working on? Or suggestion that you're bringing into Doist, to evolve how you're working, or that you're planning to do or any thoughts around that?
Chase Warrington 17:18
Some of the things that I'm challenging are not totally unique to me, it's not like I'm coming in with a battering ram and breaking down walls and saying, “we're doing things wrong”, I love the way that we work, we have a very strong emphasis on connecting to work and disconnecting to live outside of work. And that served us really well. So, there's, again, not a ton to change. But there are some things to challenge, and to make sure that we're not getting sort of stuck in our ways. And I referenced this a little bit ago, but a lot of that has to do with how we connect and how we spend time together. And so for instance, just implementing, for instance, a social calendar, like we've never really had scheduled social events and things that take place on certain days and certain activities. We've done that on a very light level, we have some ad hoc games that we will play together, we've had some of these things we call casual Hangouts, where we allow people to just kind of connect for an hour, once a month, with a few random teammates. But we can do these in a more impactful way. And a bit more structured. And so we're looking at things like bringing in guest speakers, actually using professional platforms to host games. I've created what I call a “social crew”. We have crews internally, which are like, committees sort of, but committees is sort of a bad word, in the remote space, so we call it a crew, and it sounds better. But we have these crews. So I've created a social crew to kind of lead this charge and implement tools and structure and ideas and we're democratising that and giving it some leadership. So these are some areas, another is our in real life events were for the first time since 2019, we are starting to bring people back together again, for in real life to co-locate places, we usually do this two weeks per year in the past, and that's what we're starting again. So interestingly, this lives under my department, which is where the co-located stuff lives under the remote lead, which is kind of interesting. Yeah. And something I'm spending a lot of time on. And the reason for that is because we think it's so vital to our remote infrastructure to have really high quality co-located time together. It's not the core of how we work, but it is a piece of the puzzle. And so yeah, I'm spending a lot of time on that and again, learning from some of the best out there. , how to do these events at a very high level.
Pilar Orti 19:54
I love that. I love that you're looking after the co-location as a key experience of the remote first experience, as well.
Chase Warrington 20:01
This is so important. It's so important, I would compare it to something like, if you look at the office, like the old way of working in an office, there are certain things that were very core to that experience. But then there were certain things that were sort of on the periphery, or that were almost as important, but you need them, they're like chairs on a table, you need all four of them to make the table stand. And so I think this gets left behind, sometimes you think, “oh it's remote, the colocated part isn't that important”. But it makes the table stand. I think, in the end, it's a piece of the pie. So for us we want to do these at a really high level and have somebody kind of lead that and along with the social crew that I have supporting me. We're gonna make it really, really fun and really collaborative and really productive. And, I'm super excited about that.
Pilar Orti 20:53
And you're taking that mindset, which is so important in remote, which is being deliberate about everything we do. Because if not, it doesn't happen now it should. So yeah, for me, you're also taking that into the mindset of how we use the time when we're co located as well. So it's really interesting. And just so going back, in case, it's a question I had ready for you. But also listeners might be interested in this crew that you mentioned, what are they? And how are they different from the teams in Doist? Or is there a difference?
Chase Warrington 21:23
Oh, that's an awesome question. So I think this is so important on distributed teams. Also, you mentioned the word deliberate just a second ago, and I throw this word around all the time, when talking about remote work intentionality. And you have, you have to be very deliberate or very intentional, with creating serendipitous ways for people to connect, right? So we're going to connect around our work. That's the core of how we connect, and we're very okay with subscribing to the mentality that we're a team, not a family, we're united by our work. And that's what brings us together 80% of the time, but there's these other things that can connect us as well. And if you don't provide those other things intentionally, work gets very stale very quickly. And I think that's why you see these really high numbers of people, remote workers, that report being lonely, report feeling isolated, depressed, disconnected, disengaged, it's because there's not that level of intentionality thrown into how do we make this work on multiple levels, not just the work level. So a long time ago, we recognised the need for getting people to cross collaborate, and build what we call the do system, internally, which is how we handle projects, basically every month is a cycle. And every cycle is made up of four weeks. And every cycle has a couple projects, or dues, which are run by cross functional teams, which we call squads. So you have somebody who works on the Apple team, and the marketing team, and the finance team. But maybe they all come together on a squad in the month of January, and work on this given project. And so that gives people the opportunity to work with people across the company, people outside their little bubble of their team while they're simultaneously working with their team on other projects in their day to day work. So this is happening every month, we have a new set of initiatives. And this has been great for cross collaboration and building team unity. But the piece of the pie that was missing was, What's the other stuff right there outside of work? What has an impact on the way that we work together, but maybe isn't directly connected to our work? Diversity and Inclusion is a great example of this. So, we have a DNI crew of people who are all passionate about D&I and the way that we approach this will impact the employee experience in the way we work as a team, but it's just not like core to their day to day. It's not what they were hired to do. But it gives us some structure for people to connect. So we have like a DNI crew, a group of people who manage our D&I approach, and they suggest different initiatives and things like that. And the same with like a social crew, for instance. So we're building social events and social calendars and getting really creative. And it gives us a group of people that are passionate about this. So it gives us something, just a small group of us something to unite around, and then also deliver something really great for the team
Pilar Orti 24:36
Yeah, that's great. I really hope and I mean, people who've been in distributed companies for a while will probably be nodding with you, and I think this is a missing piece that I've noticed when I'm talking with managers who have only experienced being fully distributed during the pandemic that this is something that we have discovered early on, that we found ways to Keep team members together and connected but how the people within the organisation stayed connected was becoming more difficult. And, it's finding ways where people can add value and get value in all sorts of different ways. So yeah, you can have the meetup, the colocated meetups, you can have social stuff when you mix people together, but how can you get people who really enjoy doing something with others? And that's how they like to connect throughout the organisation. So finding ways of maybe things that traditionally would be done by one person in one department, is this something that we could actually rally some people around and give that I like to say, and maybe for? And without feeling like, we're just adding to people's workloads? What are some of those things that people are missing? And how can we create something around it? So I think that's just great. Yeah.
Chase Warrington 25:51
Something you mentioned there that I think is so important is like, wrapping that up into the workday. So it takes leadership buying in to recognize these things are important. And that, ,, adding this on top of somebody's already really full workplace, is not gonna make for a great outcome for anybody, it's just going to add to stress levels and things like that. But if we see DNI, for instance, as really important to the long term mission of the company, and we're able to give people the space to add that into their day, and to, to actually make an impact on the company. They unite with some others that they share a common bond around, there's so many little positive spin offs that come from this. And so it does take buy-in from leadership to make space for it. I'm lucky we have that Doist and it would encourage other team leads out there to try to make that space as well and see it as part of the long term mission and how it serves those in need.
Pilar Orti 26:54
And make it explicit if we need to make a case for higher leadership, also, that because the workload I've just seen has so increased, and yeah, and also if we're doing and we've got to be careful, because if what we're offering to our people is the opportunity to do something that they really care about or passionate about for whatever, they might be more likely to do it. It's not their work time. And that's really dangerous.
Pilar Orti 27:19
So even if we're not forcing anyone to do that, that's actually where the and that's the thing with remote as well is that especially if people are working from home, or if they're attached to their devices, it can spill out, it's really easy for it to spill out. And if we care, and we love it, it's even easier. So I think that yeah, really, really good point. So you wrote an article called How to Build Human connections in an asynchronous workplace. And I love that tagline. A team culture is primarily built by how you work together, not how you socialise together. So we've seen that it's a bit of both. But I think that just going back so much emphasis has been put on the fact that we're social animals, therefore, we have to be doing what we would call social events. But actually, there's all kinds of, I mean, culture, it's not just about that. So I love that tagline. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna make sure I mean, regular listeners will know what asynchronous communication is. But if someone's listening to us for the first time, I'm just gonna do it very quickly. It's communication that doesn't take place in real time. So if you think of email, a long time ago, when I sent you an email, and you weren't expected to reply later on all things like, I mean, the products that you've got, Chase, like Doist. Sorry, Twist. This was built primarily for that. So we were looking at that. So how to build human connections in an async workplace, what was the impulse for that? I mean, we can see where you're coming from. But why, why is that?
Chase Warrington 28:52
So really interesting. I was attending a Running Remote. It's like for anybody that might not be familiar with that online event. Well, now it'll be coming back to real life. But it’s considered the largest remote work event conference in the world. And I was attending this event and doing an AMA asked me anything there. And I approached this ama assuming that the whole conversation was about asynchronous communication, that's what it was going to be focused on and how to make async work. And I just kind of approached it thinking it was going to be all work. That was the mentality I had going into it. And for some reason, and I guess I would say, because I had had that done that kind of thing before and pretty much always had a similar line of questioning, and it almost always had to do with work. And what was really interesting was like this is a little over a year and a half or so into the pandemic. The narrative totally switched. The line of questioning from the audience was all about like, connection and building, relationships and team building and what does On me during and after that was the conversation switched from like, how do we make this work to how do we make how do we thrive as a team in an async world going forward. And that really resonated with me because first of all, it's something I'm personally really interested in. I'm more of an extroverted person, I'm social, I like to, I like to build those relationships with my co-workers. And at the same time, I really love working asynchronously, I really love having my location independent, not having to go to an office. And so marrying these two things together is just on a personal level. Very, very exciting for me, how do we figure this out? How do I have the best of both worlds? And, and so anyway, I started thinking about the ways that we do this at duelist. And sharing those in this ask me anything, and just was amazed by the follow up the feedback, running remote, asked me to come back and do a follow up webinar on it. And those two events ended up being really highly attended. And there were more questions. So I was like, I'm just gonna write this out and list every single thing that we do. And, as you'll see in that article, I mean, a lot of it's really, it's not very savvy, like, a lot of it's really hacked together. By us internally,it's not, it's not rocket science. But it works. And like I said earlier, these are the things I'm hoping that we can do at an even higher level. Now that we have someone leading that and in a crew dedicated to make it even better, but but it takes that intentionality, it takes some creativity, it's not as easy as just sitting everybody in a Zoom Room at for a happy hour and seeing how it goes, you have to put some some effort into these things. So that's the story of that article. And it's been great to hear the feedback on it. And I'm glad it's helped other teams find some ways to connect. Yeah,
Pilar Orti 31:54
Excellent. And you were talking in the article as well on all of this about also being about building culture, and strengthening the culture, and how do we do that in an asynchronous way? And I really liked that, that you, you mentioned that called again, that culture was not about just socialising. So what, how do we approach culture in an async way? Organisation, then what does it mean anyway? What do we mean by culture?
Chase Warrington 32:28
Yeah, that's such a great question. I think we're probably all trying to figure it out. For us, we really do believe that it is, in fact, the work that unites us. So every decision that we make around both work and play is building culture. When we hire someone, when we fire someone, when we, when we build out the do system, and the way that we approach work, and for weeks cycles, when we build in parental leave policies and change up the way we approach holidays, because people in different parts of the world have different numbers of holidays, this is all building culture. And those are all different slices of that pie. But then there is also this slice that's, how do we connect with each other? And how do we spend time with each other outside of work? And, so I think it's important to distinguish between the two and not say they're synonymous, but say that one piece is part of the greater puzzle and is worth putting some intentionality behind. So for us, that's, that's how we see it. And I would say, we were broadening our scope in that way, seeing it is even more important than ever, really, especially after having no co-located time together for over two years. We're really looking at, how do we make this virtual connection fun, something people look forward to, not corny, not not forced. And some of the elements of that are like making everything optional. We don't force anyone to show up to a work meeting, actually, if it's not convenient for them, much less, to a social event. So we don't want these to become obligations for people where they feel like they need to be there to advance their career or something like that. That's it that doesn't jive with the way that we work. So it's, it's marrying those things. It's blending in the way that we approach work with the way that we approach social life and going for a very selected high quality, number of activities that serve people in all parts of the world in different time zones.
Pilar Orti 34:40
I love that because we often talk about flexibility to do with how , with the work when we do the work where we do the work and stuff but actually if you look back to traditional ways of working and what happens in traditional workplaces, we don't have much flexibility in the ways that we organise connection for people. And this is so in And as well that you're saying, it's optional and that we it really is optional that not turning up because , how the traditional workplace work if you didn't like in the UK going to the pub at five o'clock you're gonna miss out on a lot of connection and, and a lot of stuff and and a lot of information, especially in the companies where work is workplace play and we don't mix the two. So I think that it's very important. And I've seen this already transferred into the online space, this is how we connect, this is how we socialise whereas some of us, myself, I don't like socialising with a big S. I love socialising around the work. That's really important this this optional, yeah,
Chase Warrington 35:41
yeah. So, so crucial. So crucial. I mean, the reason I will just say like, The reason that's so important is not just because, like, you don't want to force people to be social when they don't want to be social. But also, it's hard to spend this narrative that this is the way that we work, and then totally switch that up for this is the way that we socialise. We don't for instance, like we have very few meetings, we're hyper asynchronous at Doist. And that's because we have people in all time zones. So if we want to be inclusive, and we want people we want all stakeholders present, it doesn't make sense to have a lot of meetings where only certain people can be there. So we do everything in Twists, we, we, it's all written down. And that's the way we work. If we suddenly start switching that and saying, Hey, we need to have lots of zoom happy hours. That's how you connect, that doesn't really work well with how we tell those two tails? They're so different. So there's a balance to strike. And, and then, that's part of the dance that we're trying to figure out. I think and I know a lot of leaders and remote organisations are also trying to figure this out.
Pilar Orti 36:50
And as we move to hybrid, I think everything you're bringing up and all the questions and all the reflections around okay, what kind of organisation are we what have we been saying that's important to us? How does this work now in maybe remote First, if we've gone that way? Or maybe hybrid? If we've gone that way? What, how does it match let's just make sure that our values are still there. And the way that we really want to be working is still there. And so maybe people want some examples. I love what are some of your favourite things that you've done that you want to do maybe or that you're looking forward to or that you've done, what are some of your favourite activities or projects, whatever, however you want to call them?
Chase Warrington 37:36
Well, my absolute favourites are the co-locations in real life events. So just touching on those quickly, we have a couple different ways we actually bring people together in real life. So we have a company-wide retreat, which I'm talking about normal, non COVID times, and hopefully here in 2022, that's what we're planning for at least. But we bring the whole team together to one single location. So we've been to Iceland, we've been to the south of GLA, Menorca, Athens, Greece, all over and we get together for a week. And that's really just an excellent time for us to bond and build friendships. And there's a little bit of work, but it's mostly play. We also do what we call mini retreats, which are the individual teams getting together in a similar fashion in some co-located place once per year. And that's usually around six months after the team retreat. So we have those two weeks every year to look forward to. And then we also send people to when they're first hired and onboarded we send people on a mentorship trip. So if I hire somebody, I might send them to work with somebody else on my team for a week at that mentor's location. So these are the ways we kind of connect in person and I think there's so much to be said about how you can make those times together very valuable and both fun and productive. And, and, and full of a lot of life, something that people really look forward to. And then there's the other 50 weeks of the year where there's there's tons of activities that you can do some some things that we've experimented with are we have two different talks, we have one called newest talks, which is sort of like a TED talk, where once a month somebody on the team will share a skill tool that they really are they really know well or some some thing that they've learned that they want to share with the team. It usually has something to do with work. And it's a one hour event with q&a and anybody's it's all optional. That's the underlying principle for all these things. There's zero pressure to attend any of them. But if you do, we see it as baked into the work day, not on top of the work day. So you can put that in your snippets for the week. This is something that I'm doing as part of work this week. I am attending a Doist talk, for example. So we've had people present on, here's how I use figma to do this, or here's how we built the back end code for this part of our operating system, whatever, lots of lots of work related things. And then we have what we call Dewas presents, which is more of like, the fun version of duas talks, which is where somebody presents something that they're really passionate about outside of work. This could be doing a group workout together, we've had people lead us in workouts or yoga sessions. We've had people lead us in Udaan, noodle cooking classes, things, things along these lines. So we're also looking at bringing in guest speakers and presenters and professional coaches and trainers, things like that. So we also have something we call casual Hangouts, where we match people up with a few other teammates randomly, and you get a one hour block to just have a casual chat. And as far as some things that we're looking at doing, there's actual, like gaming platforms out there now that facilitate asynchronous and synchronous gaming. To give people something to unite around, we've built some ad hoc games ourselves internally. But these take it to another level. And I'm also looking at things like, virtual coworking spaces, virtual offices. There's some really fun things in the metaverse that could be explored. So there's no shortage of things to explore. It's just a matter of what we decide to implement.
Pilar Orti 41:35
Aren't you glad that you're now doing this under your official title? Loading? Isn't it like head over mode means like, there's so much to play with?
Chase Warrington 41:45
Oh, there's, there's no shortage of tools to play with that is for sure.
Pilar Orti 41:49
No, I know, the ideas like before it was like, oh, it'd be great. If, well, we probably can do it in some shape, or form, if we only put our heads down to it.
Chase Warrington 41:56
Yeah, this was something else that's kind of interesting. I've talked a lot about some of the social fun aspects of work and what we're trying to do there. But there's also the other side of the coin, which is all the work tools, and the things that actually, support a better, more productive way of working together. And those are, those are evolving also. So there's all forms of new ways to, to communicate asynchronously, and, and new documentation tools. And so there's all there's, there's a lot to explore on that side, as well. And, yeah, as you said, Pilar, there's no, there's no shortage of things to explore. So great.
Pilar Orti 42:38
Now, building on that you've, and before we get on to your About Abroad podcast, you've started the Twist: Future of Work series, which is, I think, connected to what you're saying. Now, there's a lot of truth, what is that about? Just in case listeners are interested?
Chase Warrington 42:57
Yeah. So this is sort of like a podcast blog series, focused on tools and products and services that are supporting the future of work. So we would think Twist is in that, in that realm Twist was designed to support remote teams actually designed to support us as a remote team, we built it because we couldn't find another product that would do exactly what we wanted to do and facilitate a sink the way we wanted to. So we just built it for ourselves. And so we see Twist is one of those tools, but we're also really adamant we sit back and we admire other tools that are trying to do the same. So, I'm interviewing people who have founded companies or leading services that support the future of work and sharing their story. And, and what their products and services do. And it's been a lot of fun. It's, it's been so cool to know, they're long form discussions. So we're not just talking about the high level features of the tool we try to dig into the why, what's the what what was the ethos behind the company? Why did you guys decide to go down this path and it's pretty amazing to hear some of the personal stories behind these products and tools. They're pretty interesting and inspiring. So that's what the whole series is about is really highlighting those products and services that are facilitating remote work at the highest level.
Pilar Orti 44:27
And is this mainly YouTube? Or are you also releasing audio mainly YouTube now?
Chase Warrington 44:31
Yeah, so basically, what we do is we record the interview similar to what you and I are doing with video, and we then we transcribe that video and audio into a blog post and then we make it look nice. We embed the video into the blog post, and the video lives on YouTube but it also lives on the blog post, which is also distributed through our newsletter and so it lives in multiple places. And you can consume the reading, listening or watching.
Pilar Orti 45:06
Excellent, excellent. That's what we like. Wonderful. So something else to check out now listeners, they're never gonna come back to this podcast we are giving, there's so much other stuff to check out. So let's talk about something else that you're doing, which I don't know that I saw, I remember when you started but I don't know if I know why the About Abroad podcast, which is it's your thing? If I'm right, it's outside of us, isn't it? Yes. And what's the story for that? Why did you decide to do that? It's not an easy no time investment thing. So what was your reason Chase?
Chase Warrington 45:45
What's, what's wrong with us? Why are we putting this on top of even more work? This so About Abroad? Yes, you're correct. It's a side project, separate from my work at do us but it's so interesting how, when you're really doing what you love, there is a very fuzzy line between the two. So that line blurs for me as I'm an expat American living in Spain right now, I've lived in a handful of other countries around the world, I really thrive living in exploring new places. And just enjoy that on a personal level. But also on a professional level, I get a lot out of collaborating with people from different backgrounds, who approach things from different perspectives, and just really enjoy learning that way and working that way, and living that way. So after, living in a bunch of different places, and always coming across a lot of the same challenges personally and meeting lots of expats and digital nomads, and people who are trying to explore the world. There are always a lot of common challenges, visas, taxes, residency permits, passports, and then just like the, how do I make money while I'm living in these different places, both access to opportunity, but also legally and all this stuff. So I was constantly having these conversations. I'm also a podcast junkie, I'm pretty much always listening to a podcast throughout my days, and I thought I'd really love to learn how to do one of these. And in my free time, I'm having these conversations anyway. I'm also with the explosion of remote work, my inbox is filling up with Hey, how do I work in this country? How do you move here? So I thought, why don't I give this a shot and see if I can answer some of these questions via podcast and interact with some fun people along the way. And so that was the genesis of it all, and it's been a blast. I've just absolutely loved it. It doesn't feel like work at all. And yeah, I'd like your podcast, I've the people that interact with me make it very much worth the while and the energy that I put into it.
Pilar Orti 48:00
Yeah, nice. And who are some of I don't know, what are some of the core some of the people you've talked with that maybe have come up with something that was surprising or something that you thought, oh, I would have never thought of that if I hadn't talked to this person either. And it's a bit of a strange question, but I don't know if there's anything that comes to mind.
Chase Warrington 48:19
There's so many I mean, the interesting thing is, it's like it wasn't designed to be a remote work podcast, it was distinctly designed to be more focused on living abroad. But remote work facilitates that a lot. So I inevitably talk to a lot of people who are working remotely, not exclusively, but a lot of people who are working remotely or leaders in the remote workspace. The first episode that I did was with my friend Evu, who's the CEO and founder of remote how and he was living in Vietnam at the time. And so we talked about remote, how we talked about remote work, we talked about how he kind of got stranded because of the pandemic in Vietnam and he had built a life for himself there. And so from conversations like that, to a guy who's living in the South Pole, like living down in Antarctica and in what it's like living in Antarctica,through the winter to people who are, doing amazing things with philanthropy and giving back and islands living and living in Bali. For instance, Gonzalo Hall is a, someone who's been on the show, talking about building Nomad communities and Macaronesia. So many, so many people that have inspiring stories. And one of the things one of the themes that sort of emerged is and I don't know if this will resonate with you, Pilar. But like, there's a lot of people who backpacking and nomads and moving abroad used to be a young person's game that you thought you had to kind of get out of your system. And this theme emerged of I get tons of questions about Yeah, that's great. I now have remote work. I'm 42 with a couple kids and I want to go back to living in time land again? How do I do that? And there's and there's platforms and services and communities and people who are doing that and sharing their stories. So a lot of what I end up talking about is like how people can facilitate this at any stage of their life, if they have the desire to go live abroad somewhere. So it's been really fun to learn from them and share their stories.
Pilar Orti 50:24
I think that the realisation that it is possible to work remotely, of course, where everyone knows the challenges, I think has made many people reassess where they want to live and the kind of life they want to have. So I think you're completely right, that before we used to think of, yeah, the young person travelling around, but actually, it doesn't even need to be about that. nomadism as well. It's also about well, do I really need to be here to do my job? And is this where I really want to be? And I really am so glad you brought that up. Because I think in all of this, mainly work in forced working from home, we've lost that that is actually at the core, is that remote work should give us flexibility? And if that flexibility is about where we live, and not always having to follow our jobs. Basically, also, no, I just some time ago, I heard about a company that was bringing in 50 people from another continent, with their families and everything and is this, if we can look at whether there is a need to uproot people from where they're more comfortable, then I think that that's that's where remote thrives. So yeah. And and also, yes, this, there's not one time in your life when you can do that. So yeah, really, really interesting. And just one last point on the show, and it's really interesting, you're saying, this is about being abroad. And it just happens, because remote work has facilitated that we've ended up with lots of discussions around that. But did I see correctly that you're sponsored by the Estonia e residency? Is that right?
Chase Warrington 51:55
Yeah, they're one of the one of my sponsors, insured nomads is another and an E residency of Estonia is one of the other ones.
Pilar Orti 52:05
Yeah. And how interesting and why I mean, I can see the Insure nomads, why they Estonia e residency.
Chase Warrington 52:12
So a lot of the people that listen to the show are aspiring entrepreneurs or freelancers. And often they're coming from countries that don't have the best infrastructure for facilitating business. And that's exactly what E residency does is basically give you the possibility to set up and structure your business in Estonia, which gives you access to invoicing clients in the EU and, and having a safe home base for your business without ever even having to go there. So people who are world travellers constant nomads, people who are just living in maybe they're from Argentina, but they're living in Portugal and they need to have a business in the EU, but it's difficult for them with their visa status or something so they can set one up in in Estonia and never even have to go there. Of course they can go there and there's a wonderful episode on Estonia About Abroad from the residency people Excellent. Which it sounds like a great place so yeah, that's the overlap there.
Pilar Orti 53:16
Yeah, really interesting. We've got an episode from quite a while ago with Maya talking about when she sets up her business. She's obviously resident in Spain but she set up her business in Estonia. Excellent well there's been a blog we've covered so much oh my god if this were a workshop, I think we covered we covered how you remember we started talking about that Forbes new new job that you've got and then you talk us through the whole head of remote and we've ended up with your About Abroad podcast. Is there anything that you would like to share with me or our listeners before we wrap up and before I ask you just to remind us how we can get hold of you.
Chase Warrington 53:58
I think there we are, right, we did cover a lot so thank you for the opportunity and the great conversation. I really enjoyed it and I think it's just fun to connect with other people who are really excited about what remote work can do for individuals, teams, societies as a whole if done correctly, and I think listening to you talk to people who are helping make that happen is a lot of fun. And so I hope I've been able to add a little something to that conversation and yeah, anybody can reach out to me if they want to talk about remote work or expat stuff for digital nomadism or whatever. I'm available both on LinkedIn and newly on Twitter again and so you can connect with me DC Warrington is my as my handle and chase Warrington on LinkedIn. You can find me that way. So yeah, happy to have a conversation in more depth. Anytime.
Pilar Orti 54:58
Listeners. There you go. He said opening up the floodgates. Thank you very, very much. And listeners do check out the About Abroad podcast. Thank you, Chase. Thank you. Well, I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Thank you very much Chase, Chase Warrington for your time. Listeners, all I have to say now is I have a whole list of things to rattle off where you can find us where you can connect with myself and with virtual not distant. If you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. And if you have anything you'd like to add to the conversation, drop me a line, maybe we can talk on the show. Or maybe you can send some asynchronous audio, or you can send some written text and I can share it with listeners. There's lots of different ways of doing this. So if you're listening to this on our website, then maybe you prefer to subscribe to the show on any podcast app, wherever you can listen to podcasts, we should be there to look for us. 21st century work life. If you want to stay in touch, we have a newsletter that we send out every month with reading and listening recommendations around the world of remote work and online leadership. And sometimes we just can't get broader. And you can sign up to that over at virtual not distant.com. In the Resources tab, look for a newsletter. You can follow us on LinkedIn, virtual not distant, we have a Twitter account virtual teamwork with a zero instead of an o. And finally, if you prefer good old fashioned email, we've got that as well. Pilar, pilar at virtual not distant.com Thank you very much for listening. And big thank you for listening to the 21st century work life podcasts produced by virtual not distant. If you have something to add to the conversation, let us know through the contact form over at virtual not distant.com I have been your host Pilar Orti and I'm signing off now. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, enjoy.