One of the ways and reasons that a remote initiative can fail is not addressing those fears and those obstacles head on. You know, sometimes you’ll hear, “Okay, well, it’ll just work out just trust us, since…” You know, then you have people who aren’t being heard and when their fears are valid.
This week on Outside The Valley we have Tammy Bjelland, CEO and Founder of Workplaceless, a company that helps remote professionals, managers, and organizations to thrive in a remote setting.
Tammy shares about how she got into advocating for remote work, what fascinates her the most about remote work, and why she thinks remote work can improve the education sector.
We also talked about the specifics of how Workplaceless helps companies transform into remote-friendly organizations, and whether it’s possible to “hire for potential” in a remote organization.
We’re taking an end-of-year hiatus after this episode and will be back next year with more cool discussions with other remote leaders! Until then, see you and have a great holiday season!
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The podcast is also available on your favourite players: iTunes, Google Podcast, Castro, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Player.fm, and Tune In.
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Topics also covered on the podcast episode:
- 04:12 — How Tammy realized that working in an office is not really for her
- 07:00 — What fascinates Tammy the most about remote work
- 08:27 — How remote work can improve the education sector
- 13:30 — How Workplaceless started
- 16:46 — Why companies and managers need training to successfully become “remote”
- 21:51 — Why creating a career map is important for remote companies
- 24:54 — The #1 fear of companies who are trying to go remote
- 30:24 — The three pillars framework you can start with when proposing a remote initiative to your boss
- 32:37 — Is it possible to hire for potential?
Mentioned resources:
- Running Remote conference
- Workplaceless
- Zoom
- Andreas Klinger
- Andreas Klinger: Normalizing Hiring Outside Silicon Valley
- Goplaceless Remote Readiness Assessment
- Claire Lew
- Claire Lew: Building Social Trust in Remote Teams
- Why are American companies so bad at re-skilling?
- Jason Fried
- Asana
Full transcript:
Jovian: Hello, world. Welcome to another episode of “Outside The Valley,” the podcast where we interview remote startup leaders, remote work advocates, and CEOs of distributed teams who thrive outside of Silicon Valley. They share insight on what works and what doesn’t so you can learn to do it right. “Outside The Valley” is brought to you by Arc, the remote hiring platform that helps you to hire remote software engineers and teams easily. I’m your host Jovian Gautama.
Now, this week on “Outside The Valley” we have Tammy Bjelland, CEO and founder of Workplaceless, a company that helps remote professionals, managers, and organizations to thrive in a remote setting. Tammy shares about how she got into advocating for remote work, what fascinates her the most about remote work itself. And as a former academia, she also shared why she thinks remote work can improve the education sector. We also dive into the specifics of how Workplaceless helps companies transform into remote friendly organizations, and whether it’s possible to hire for potential in a remote organization.
We are at Episode 14 now and we’re taking an end of year break after this episode, and we’ll be back next year with more cool discussions with other remote leaders. If you like the show, we totally appreciate it if you can go to iTunes and leave us a review. This will help other listeners and of course other remote startup people to find the podcast. If you have any feedback, feel free to hit me up via e-mail at jovian@arc.dev, it’s J-O-V-I-A-N-@-A-R-C.D-E-V. Until then, see you and have a great holiday season. Without further ado, here is Tammy Bjelland. Here we go.
Hello Tammy, welcome to the show.
Tammy: Thanks, I’m so excited to be here Jovian.
Jovian: Super excited. So I want to start this with a confession. So I found Workplaceless and I found you when I attended the Running Remote Conference this year 2019 in Bali with the company Arc and with my marketing manager, Head of Marketing and CEO. Before I went there, I have zero idea that remote work consultancy is a thing and Workplaceless is one of them but I met hundreds of consultants. And I found that super interesting because in my mind, this is a somewhat intangible thing, you know, “Oh, how do you help big company to go remote?” Just a lot of non-metrics related process that companies or startup probably, they don’t really like. So I really find it interesting. Before we get into that. So let’s start with a quick intro about yourself and your background.
Tammy: Yeah, so I’m Tammy Bjelland. I’m the founder and CEO of Workplaceless. And my background started in academia. So I was a Spanish major and I got my master’s in Spanish literature, and was working on my PhD and thought that I was going to be a Spanish professor. But then I got my first job in remote work in Ed Tech. And that was the beginning of the rest of my life because that really set me on a different path and showed me different opportunities to explore my strengths and grow as a professional outside of academia.
Jovian: Yeah, that’s interesting. So you mentioned that your first remote work opportunity was in a tech startup company?
Tammy: Mm-hmm.
Jovian: Right…
Tammy: Yeah. So it was in educational technology.
Jovian: Oh, got it. Just curious, do you remember the exact point in time that you make you realize, “Yes, this is it, remote work is for me. I don’t wanna go to the office again for the rest of my life.”
Tammy: So, because I was from academia, where you do a lot of work from home, you do a lot of work by yourself. And I was pretty well prepared for remote work. And I think that I always kind of knew that I didn’t really want to be in an office for a prescriptive amount of time every day. I enjoy being around people and I really loved being in the classroom, which was what drew me to teaching and to academia, but the idea of being in an office the same amount of time every day around the same people, I knew that that was not where I would thrive.
But in terms of like remote work outside of academia, I mean, I just loved it from the beginning.
And I was specifically looking for remote work, actually, at that point, because I was moving back to the states from the U.S. And I knew that I didn’t want to have to choose a place first, and then find a job there. And I also knew that I didn’t want to have to move based on a job. So I wanted the flexibility.
I wanted to, you know, have a job that I could do from anywhere if I chose to live in D.C. or if I chose to live in the town where I live now, which is in the northern part of Virginia. So that was really the moment when I was like, “Oh, there’s these jobs that I can do from anywhere and they don’t make me live in a certain place.” And at that point in my life that was really important to me, and I’ve loved the flexibility and have decided that I don’t want to go back.
Jovian: Yeah, I think that’s also kind of the premise for our company Arc. This sounds super salesy, okay, but it really is like, as a remote software engineering hiring platform, because we see lots of software developers based in Asia, Africa, or Europe, that is as good as developers in Silicon Valley, you know, communication skills, programming skills, and so on. But they are just limited by the geographical limitation that they have. So I think that is also that we are trying…in a way remote work companies like Workplaceless, us, and remote companies out there of course trying to solve like, just because you don’t live New York it doesn’t mean you cannot have U.S. standard opportunity.
Tammy: Exactly.
Jovian: Yeah, that resonates with me. What fascinates you the most about remote work in general? I know this is a very broad question. But the first thing that comes to mind?
Tammy:
The first thing that comes to mind is, I guess one of the biggest challenges as well as one of the most amazing things about it is just how you are able to develop connections across distance with someone that you’ve never shared a space with. So I’ve developed really close working relationships and even friendships with people that I’ve never met in person.
And I find that really fascinating. And that’s one of the reasons I think that remote work can work because you are able to develop those connections across distance.
Jovian: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And it doesn’t even mean you’re co-workers right, even through this podcast, I’ve connected and talked with a lot of great people, and that I admire. So that’s the magic of internet, I guess.
Tammy: It is.
Jovian: So I want to move on a bit about the future of remote work outside of tech. And I was thinking you are probably one of the best person to talk about this because you are from an academia background, right? A lot of times when we talk about remote work, it’s all about software, and startups, in a way it kind of leads to this kind of bubble.
So let’s talk about education first, because in my mind, the norm of you have to go to an office to work 9:00 to 5:00 also is also emphasized by our current education system in general. So I found it interesting that Workplaceless, and you in general, also focused on helping the education sector to go remote. So my question will be, what are specific problems that you see now in the education sector that you think may be solved if more academics can embrace distributed work? And any specific examples, that would be great.
Tammy: Yeah, so one of the biggest issues that institutions of higher education are facing today is lack of space and the lack and the cost of space. So as administrative teams are growing because their enrollments are growing because their programs are growing, and because of other needs in higher Ed, space is at a premium. And so when you are fighting to get increased enrollment or maintain your enrollment for students, you need space for them. But you also need space for those staff members that are providing those services to students, whether its faculty or whether it’s on supporting staff.
And so that space is a huge premium and it becomes a really huge problem, because it’s really expensive to develop new buildings. It’s expensive to, you know, place students in housing.
And so one of the biggest issues that remote work can help universities and other institutions of higher education solve is allowing remote work for their staff members, so freeing up that space for actual education and activities. And then another piece of it is providing additional opportunities for students themselves, so attracting more students with a more flexible learning experience so that you can bring in those students that you need to maintain your enrollment numbers.
Jovian: Yeah, it’s super interesting that you mention space because I never really thought of it now. As you were speaking, I was thinking, yeah, like, if you’re a startup, you can survive with a really small office. But if you’re a high school, university, you cannot do that. You need a massive amount of land, massive amount of building. Yeah, that’s super interesting.
Tammy: Yeah. And it takes a lot of time, it takes years to build new buildings, it takes years. And so by offering remote work, you can free up that space really quickly.
Jovian: Yeah, definitely. And, you know, as I mentioned before, remote work is very limited to tech nowadays, even though we see some improvements here and there. From what you have observed working with clients or just your general observation, how about in the future, any examples of more traditional companies trying to take advantage of the fact that you can actually work and find clients anywhere? Traditional companies let’s say, I don’t know, manufacturing.
Tammy: Yeah, I’m seeing…because of the advent of technology, like Zoom like we’re using right now.
I’m seeing more service based businesses leverage that technology to go remote.
So some types of companies or some industries that are typically a little bit more traditional when it comes to operational models, like accounting, and bookkeeping for instance, where you usually think that you have to go to your accountants office, and we’re seeing more and more of that in that sector, people are becoming more comfortable with delivering as well as receiving services remotely.
And so one of our clients, Reconciled, is an accounting and bookkeeping firm and they’re remote, and they’re experiencing really great success with that kind of model. And so that’s a really interesting case study in an industry that is, you know, usually seen as traditional. And then other industries would include law and the medical industry. So telemedicine as well as the government contracting sector as well.
Jovian: Got it. Yeah, I think just like you mentioned, I think even though some sectors you cannot go fully 100% remote, right, like medical industry, you cannot perform a surgery remotely and manufacturing.
Tammy: Yet.
Jovian: Yet. You go like…
Tammy: Who knows?
Jovian: Kind of like some video game control that helps you perform surgeries, and manufacturing even like, or maybe you can but when you have more robots in the future. But anyway, so let’s talk about Workplaceless. On the very basic first, how did you come up with the name?
Tammy: Yeah, so, I am a language person, as you can tell from my background, so I really thought pretty hard about the name itself and what…you know, I thought about using remote in the name, I thought about using distributed in the name, but really, I wanted something that was really unique and identifiable. And additionally, I am really intrigued by this idea of placelessness.
So when we use the term placeless it can sometimes have a negative connotation. It means, you know, a location that doesn’t have any sense of self or sense of place. And so I want to sort of turn that understanding around and think of placeless as being liberating. And so working placeless, it means that you can work from anywhere, and you can create any place from wherever you are. So that placelessness was really intentional, and then, you know, it works well with the other products that we have as well. So Leadplaceless and Goplaceless, etc. So all about placeless work when we’re talking about remote and distributed work.
Jovian: Awesome. And how big is your team now?
Tammy: We have…there’s eight of us right now.
Jovian: All of them are full-time?
Tammy: No, there’s four of us who work full-time and then the rest are part-time.
Jovian: Got it. And what was the V1 of Workplaceless just when you started?
Tammy: Yeah. So when I first started Workplaceless that was two years ago. And the original intent was to create learning programs for remote workers and leaders. So that is still very much the same mission that we have now. But when we started, I was just providing resources. So it really just started as a blog. And then I was developing my network of subject matter experts and developing the plan for the curriculum for the Workplaceless certification, which was our flagship product. And so that was released last year in September, and then we released our Leadplaceless program in January. So V1 was just a blog with, you know, learning resources and me trying to develop the network of subject matter experts that I would need to develop the course itself.
Jovian: Yeah. I would love to learn more about the…let’s talk more about the product that Workplaceless have. And for listeners out there, I want to just show you this is not a paid advertisement. So I’m asking this genuinely because I feel like these products actually encapsulate a lot of what I’m trying to talk about in this podcast. And of course, with this podcast, you can go check out the Workplaceless website and service for you. So yeah, let’s go.
Tammy: All right, so Workplaceless is primarily a training company. So we provide online training for remote workers, leaders, and executives on how to thrive in a distributed environment. And we deliver that training through self-paced e-learning modules, as well as live facilitated discussions and workshops. So we have four products there that are available right now. And those are full programs that involve self paced modules, as well as live discussions. We also have workshops, which I won’t get into right now, but I can share more information on that if you want.
And so our core four programs that are available now are our Workplaceless remote work certification program, and that’s designed for workers who are new to remote or individuals who are new to a remote team. And we often see this used as an onboarding tool for brand new team members to get acclimated with what it’s like to work in a distributed environment.
And we talk about the seven core competencies that are needed to thrive in a distributed team. So we talk about the remote workday, communication, workflow, time management and productivity teams, compliance and autonomy.
So that’s the certification program. And then our leadership program is called Leadplaceless. And that is for new managers of remote team members.
And what we often see in remote teams, as well as in other organizations is accidental managers. So we have people who are promoted to a management role when they’re high performers in a particular domain. But they aren’t necessarily exceptional people managers yet. They haven’t had experience and they haven’t had training. And so what happens is you get people promoted to leadership, and they aren’t provided any resources to learn how to manage people.
And so Leadplaceless really fills that gap for people who are performing leadership functions in a remote team, and that can mean those who are working in a co-located environment, but they’re managing remote employees.
So it doesn’t have to mean that you yourself as a leader are in headquarters or working from home or wherever. It just means if you have anyone on your team that works remotely, you need to know how to lead remotely.
And then our Goplaceless Program is for change managers within an organization that want to convert to a remote model. So organizations that want to implement a remote work policy, they would take this program to understand what’s needed to go remote. And the end deliverable for this course is a remote work policy. And so this is where individuals would get and they would realize, “Okay, well, if we wanna gonna go through this process of going remote. These are the things that we’ll need outside of this program so that we do this right.”
Right, because what you don’t want happening is a company deciding to go remote and then not really planning ahead and having that go wrong. And then, you know, in five years, they retract their policy, and all those benefits of remote workers suddenly go…
Jovian: Oh, wow, yeah.
Tammy: Yeah, so that’s really an education piece for people who are thinking about employing remote work in their organization. And then our last product that’s currently available is our Trainplaceless Program. And that is a train the virtual trainer program. So it’s specifically designed for individuals who perform a learning and development function in some capacity, whether it’s a manager who trains their teams, whether it’s an actual L&D practitioner on an L&D team, it could be an HR professional, or it could just be someone who is a consultant and wants to include more training in their advocacy and also in their consulting processes.
Jovian: Right. So I personally most interested in the Leadplaceless and Goplaceless because that’s basically something that I am interested, basically how companies transform into remote companies. Because several stages right from co-located and probably you go on to the hybrid model and then you probably go fully distributed. And for the Leadplaceless, it’s about remote leadership, which I’m super interested in.
I’m curious about the Leadplaceless, because I think, okay, a lot of remote companies…or I think there’s this criticism that I’ve seen surfaced for a couple of times for remote company is that you cannot built a career in remote companies just because, you know, you cannot meet your boss or something like that. Because you mentioned that for a Leadplaceless, you help people who become in your field from individual contributor become manager? And do you also help a company set up these kind of career path so that they can just grow from there? And if the answer is yes, can you just help us get like elaborate a bit more on how do you do that on what thing that you’re looking for or recommend to the company.
Tammy: Yeah, so creating a career map and those kinds of materials and services.
We definitely recommend that in a holistic learning and development strategy for remote teams, it’s especially important for remote workers because they literally cannot see what is possible for them.
And so we actually have a product that we’re developing that will be released next year, specifically around growing your remote career called Growplaceless.
Jovian: Wow.
Tammy: And so this will provide resources to the individual to map out their own career, as well as resources for the organization as well to help their team members identify where they can grow in their careers and what kind of gaps need to be filled, and how they can fill those gaps. So that’s definitely one of the things that is really important to us. And actually, that was one of the reasons that I even started Workplaceless itself was because I struggled with finding resources in developing my own career and seeing what was possible.
And you’re so right, that many people believe that you can’t move up in your career if you just stay remote. And I don’t think that that should be true. I just think that we need additional tools and resources to help us be more visible and also make the opportunities more visible and accessible.
Jovian: Yeah, I just want to clarify again to the audience that that was not a leading question. I literally didn’t know about their Growplaceless launch next year. My question wasn’t even in the show notes. This just came up and then I just asked Tammy, so this is a bit better but bear with us. I really liked the conversation. So let’s go to your Lead…oh, sorry, is it Leadplaceless? The Goplaceless program, sorry. I’m curious from…because, okay, my assumption is that when someone comes to you and say, “Hey, I want to join the Goplaceless Program,” is it correct to assume they basically already have like a total buy-in from their company that they want to go remote on our own?
Tammy: No.
Jovian: Okay.
Tammy: No, so part of the process for deciding whether it’s a good idea or not is securing that buy-in, right. And so, by the time people have made the decision to go remote they can definitely enroll in the Goplaceless Program to determine what to do next. But, you know, not everyone’s going to be completely on board, and the Goplaceless Program provides some of the tools that are needed to address those fears and obstacles when it comes to going remote.
Because one of the ways and reasons that a remote initiative can fail is not addressing those fears and those obstacles head on. You know, sometimes you’ll hear, “Okay, well, it’ll just work out just trust us, since…” You know, then you have people who aren’t being heard and when their fears are valid.
And so we present some tools and resources for change managers to really address those fears. Because that needs to happen before you can actually implement a remote work policy.
Jovian: Right. And from your experience, what is the number one fear?
Tammy: It’s all related to trust. And, you know, leaders fear that they can’t trust their employees to get the work done that they need to, and if they can’t see them actually working, or if they can’t be that visible reminder to people to be accountable. And then employees are afraid that they’re not going to be trusted. And they’re also afraid of trusting their coworkers as well. And then there’s the fear of the impact on customers as well, “Will our customers trust us as we change this mode and as we change, you know, how we provide services and products to our customers?”
And so that’s really the biggest fear that, you know, it touches everybody, right, is, you know, “How do we establish that trust? And how do we make sure that the trust that we have now translates to remote?” And so it takes a little bit of work and it takes, you know, some honest reflection on the part of executives, leaders, and individual contributors.
Jovian: Yeah, totally agree with you that trust is actually number one fear and also the number one thing that leads to the success of remote hiring, remote teams, and so on, which is kind of some of what we do in our platform, right. So if you want to hire remote developers once, we actually have to hire consultants that also in a way try to qualify you as a client.
Now that I think about it, it’s kind of similar because, you know, a lot of companies, they like candidates that have experienced work remotely before. And from our side hiring consultants sometimes try to figure out if the client has experienced managing remote engineers before. So, because for us, we kind of want everything to start at the same price level. So when a project or an engagement going three or six months down the road, there’s no…there will be no some kind of dispute or some kind of challenges, just because the lack of trust in the beginning.
Tammy: Yeah, and that’s really where education comes into play.
Jovian: True.
Tammy: Because educational programs like ours provide a framework and a common language to establish those expectations of trust.
So you know, so leadership knows what to expect of their employees and they know how to communicate that, and then employees understand what’s being communicated to them is expectations of trust. And so providing that framework so that there’s the common understanding. That’s really where education comes into play and can really have a positive impact on that trust.
Jovian: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I talked to Andreas Klinger from AngelList, you probably have talked to him before?
Tammy: Yeah.
Jovian: He has really…you probably know this, but he has a really great approach in terms of systematizing trust. Because we used to talk about trust as this intangible thing like an abstract thing. I really like his approach about systematizing trust, like how to make intangible and make it like a checkbox. So when you trust your team member, this is what it means. So it is an amazing resource.
So I wanna move on a bit to the more general remote work stuff still a bit related to workplace of products in general? So I talked about the topic of managing up with Claire Lew from your team. So I’m curious, in your opinions, any tips from you for workers that wanna get a buy-in from their boss or managers to start experimenting with remote work?
Tammy: Yeah, there are lots of resources out there that help specific individuals. So we don’t really work with the individuals to convince their organizations to go remote. But there are some really good tools that are out there that can help. And I’m happy to send those along. But I think, you know, one of…the biggest things, it’s all going to come back to trust, right.
So, you know, we talk about the three things that are really needed to employ a successful remote model and that’s infrastructure, mindset, and education. And, you know, for an individual to go remote you need to address all of those things. And that’s kind of a big ask, right?
But if an individual really has that initiative to move forward, we recommend looking at those three pillars to see what they can provide their boss to demonstrate that this could work, and again, it comes down to trust.
So you have to prove to your boss and to your co-workers that there are certain things that, you know, you will do in order to make sure that your work is going to stay the same, your integration in the team is going to stay the same, as well as any other metric that you use for your performance or productivity.
And so it comes down to the individual being responsible for identifying ways to improve that mindset on all sides, as well as providing the education for your employer, for your co-workers and for yourself on how to do that well, and then providing those resources and that infrastructure that can make it work.
Jovian: Yeah, I love that framework actually, I think it simplifies a lot from…it gives you a place to start with, like just thinking about those three, create a plan around those three and then propose to your boss, “Hey, boss, this is what I have in mind.” Amazing.
Tammy: Yeah.
Jovian: So in your opinion, can you hire for potential when it comes to remote company? The reason why I ask this is because I’ve seen a lot of remote companies…and this is not me talking bad things about them. It totally makes sense. They basically wanna find someone that is already experienced in their particular job or skill set, just because probably they find it a bit hard to groom this particular person into the person that they want like this person to the role they grow into, and your opinion… Yeah, do you think it’s possible to still hire potential?
Tammy:
I think not only is it possible to hire for potential it should be the strategy when it comes to hiring.
Jovian: Interesting.
Tammy: Because I just posted an article the other day on LinkedIn about…I didn’t write the article, but it was a summary of some research regarding re-skilling and about three quarters of companies in the U.S. do not invest in re-skilling and they would rather hire for an exact fit for a role, so they look externally. And that is a huge problem, that is not sustainable, because we have an unemployment rate right now in the U.S. that is at record lows in certain areas. And there are just not enough people who are looking for work that fit those exact roles.
You know, if companies do not invest in re-skilling and up-skilling, and just developing their internal talent, they’re not only missing opportunities to really capitalize on that talent, but they’re wasting a lot of money. They’re wasting a lot of recruiting resources. And they’re negatively affecting their culture as well.
Because if individual contributors and managers within an organization don’t see opportunities for promotion or advancement within the organization, and they continue to see that the organization is investing more and more resources in external hires, that negatively affects their engagement in the organization itself, and they’re going to be looking elsewhere. And so, it gets into a very, very complicated and messy situation when companies don’t invest in the development of their people. So it is tricky though, because measuring potential is one of those metrics that you can’t really measure, right.
Jovian: Yeah.
Tammy: But I do think that almost everybody is coachable, and everyone can learn. And more companies should be investing more in learning and development and really creating holistic and comprehensive approaches to developing their talent internally.
Jovian: Got it. Yeah, I think a lot of startups when they’re small like 10 or 20 people, when they’re co-located, you know, they dare to take the risk to hire potentials because they really believe we can coach this. We can coach him or her anyway. I think what I see is when they’re distributed teams they are less willing to take the risk for normal reasons, right? They’re afraid they don’t have a good enough process to onboard this person. And they’re afraid they don’t have a…it’s hard to appoint someone to the mentor and…although I’ve seen a lot of companies that really have great onboarding process on this.
So I guess it’s more like we’re on the stage now. Okay, remote work is normal, but it’s still under like…they still want to play it safe in the way, “Okay, we just want to hire someone skillful.” But I think based on what you said, of course, I think in the coming years, we can see companies get their processes together, and then they can figure out a way of course with a lot of remote work consultants like Workplaceless or other companies and resources out there and they can try to figure out how to tap into these potential people around the world, groom them to their best potential best capability.
Tammy: Yeah.
Jovian: When it comes to remote work, we always talk about the so called remote culture, which it’s kind of abstract, right? I wanna ask your opinion, what is…let’s not say remote culture, let’s say, what is company culture, how would you codify it?
Tammy: Yeah.
So, the culture of an organization is a common identity that reflects shared values, beliefs, attitudes, and rituals.
And so, values are those things that are important to us and that will always be important to us. And then attitudes and rituals, so the attitudes are how we approach work and the rituals are the things that we do on a consistent basis that reflect those attitudes.
Jovian: Totally, yeah.
Tammy: And I misspoke, I think I said shared values and beliefs and beliefs are there too, but behaviors. So behaviors are how you demonstrate your values. So it’s what you do on a daily basis. So if one of our values is trust, then one of our behaviors is, you know, providing open and honest feedback to your direct reports, and then also to your colleagues. So, behaviors are how you put your values in action. And then rituals are how you put your attitudes in action. And we divide culture into your character. So that’s where the values and behaviors fall into play, and then your personality, and that’s where your attitude and your rituals come into play.
So for instance, I…you know, this is a podcast so no one can see this visual but behind Jovian is this really great Halloween decoration background. And so I can see that in this particular space, the culture is, you know, pretty fun, like the personality is fun, and you wanna celebrate the different milestones that are both personal and professional. And that is an aspect of culture.
Jovian: Yeah, I was actually contemplating to do this podcast with my Halloween costume actually just before this, just for shenanigans. But I really like your answer because it focuses more on what you actually do, instead of just the more abstract part of its vision and mission, which is also important, but it’s less emphasis on the actions.
I think another way that I find it resonated with me is Jason Fried. He describes culture as the 50 days average of what your company does on a day-to-day basis. It’s like a rolling average, like, “Okay, in this 50 days. What does people do on a daily basis? What are the rituals? What do you guys do?” So that is your culture. So it’s not necessarily a big, a grand thing that flies above your company logo. It’s the real thing that you do every day. And it can change between these 30 or 50 days. What did you do? If there is an issue a week where people just don’t trust each other…I can’t come up with an example right now. So that’s your company culture around that. I think that’s [crosstalk 00:40:35].
Tammy: I really like that. Yeah, because you’re right, it is…when people talk about culture, sometimes it’s easier to just fall back on the abstract, right? And what the ideal situation might look like.
Jovian: Exactly.
Tammy: And it is important to quantify that and say, “This is what this actually looks like on a day-to-day basis. And this is how it’s tied together.” Because I think it is important to remember those ideals, because that’s what drives us. And it’s what keeps us aligned with the mission. But you need real examples of what that looks like on a day-to-day basis. And I think more and more companies are realizing that and providing that, but we have a module in a couple of our programs around culture. And we lead leaders through developing a culture canvas with set expectations.
So not just, you know, defining it, but then also coming up with real examples of this is acceptable behavior, this meets our expectations, and is aligned with our culture and this is not aligned with our culture. Because the more examples you have, and the more real and concrete they are, the more likely it is that your team members will be able to see that and then replicate that.
And that’s true and learning as well like having those really clear examples of what meets expectations and what does not meet expectations. It increases the probability of applying that new knowledge and those new skills.
Jovian: Yeah, definitely. It’s really super easy to just forget that when during concrete actionable examples that you see on a day-to-day basis.
Tammy: Yeah.
Jovian: Cool. And for my last question today, it’s more on the personal level. The super common questions or problems that people face in remote work is self-care. You know, when to stop working, when to start working and whatnot. So kind of curious what’s your approach to this? How do you practice self-care? What’s your routine like?
Tammy: Yeah, so I try to not set an alarm. So I wake up when my body tells me it has rested. And usually…
Jovian: The joy of remote work.
Tammy: …the joy of remote work, and also, you know, I pretty much own my schedule. And so I am pretty consistent about not scheduling anything before 9:30. I don’t sleep that late, I sleep until probably 6:30 or 7:00. Sometimes I’ll wake up between 7:00 and 8:00. But that just means that my body really needed more rest. But that allows me a nice buffer in the morning so that I can wake up, I can do the things that I need to do.
And I usually journal every day, and I write down things that I accomplished the day before that I’m proud of. And then I set my focus for things that I wanna focus on today. And then I also, you know, depending on time, and depending on how I’m feeling, like today, for instance, there were a few blocks in my mind that were really affecting me and so I try to write those out, like this is what is keeping me from doing the hard things that I need to do. So the journaling is something that I try to practice every day.
And then I try to do some sort of physical exercise every day. So today I have a yoga class at 12:15 that I’m pretty consistent about, but if I don’t make it to yoga then I go to the gym. And sometimes I run but I hate it. So I try to avoid that. That’s a last resort, last resort is a run. And then I’ve been really getting a lot better about stopping work before 6:00.
Jovian: Wow, yeah, I’m still trying to work on that. That doesn’t mean I work hard. It’s just that sometimes you get the inspiration like late at night and then you just cannot stop it, which is kind of bad.
Tammy: Yeah.
Jovian: Yeah, I think the joy of remote work is that even though people talk about work-life balance, you know, not working after 6:00, what I personally find is really about figure out what works for you. For example, since I work remotely, sometimes I work on the weekend, but that’s just because in a way, like my mind tells me to, okay, you can do like two or three hours of work. But probably on a weekday, I wasn’t as productive at 2 p.m. for example, I probably just, you know, slack around and potentially do nothing, but then I put the work on a weekend it’s just because that’s where I focus.
Basically, how I see is like you can distribute your time better and doesn’t mean…I’m not recommending all of you listeners to just go work until 4 a.m., don’t do that. But again, if that works for you, why not? But yeah, I think this one of the joy of remote work that I found recently.
Tammy: Yeah, for me the biggest part of self-care is, you know, just reminding myself that more work isn’t better, right.
Jovian: Totally.
Tammy: So there’s a difference between the quantity of hours and the quality of hours that I’m putting in. And also, trying to be really mindful of the time that I schedule during the regular working hours, because I do stick to a pretty typical schedule. Like, you know, some people are like, “Oh, remote work, that means I can, you know, start work at 1:00 and work until 9:00.” That’s not me. Like, I don’t mind the typical hours, because that allows me to spend time with other people who do have working hours as well. But for me, the hardest part is just limiting the number of hours.
Jovian: Right.
Tammy: Because there’s always more work to do. It does take constant work. And just because you don’t have a consistent practice and something right now doesn’t mean that you can’t develop it as you learn more things about yourself and how you work.
And that’s one of the wonderful things about us as humans, right. We’re constantly growing and learning new things and applying new things. And I’m still, you know, trying to get better about putting tasks and projects in Asana. Because I use a spreadsheet, for my task tracking, but it’s not…you know, that’s not scalable because I can’t outsource that spreadsheet and those tasks to other people. So I’m constantly learning ways that I can leverage the tools that we have that are shared.
Jovian: Yeah. It’s funny when you say Asana because a lot of my team members use Asana, like, I’m the only one that hates it. And people just see me as like I’m a heretic or something like that, yeah.
Tammy: Every tool is not for everybody.
Jovian: True. All right, Tammy, it’s been a fantastic chat. I really love this conversation, and where can people find you online?
Tammy: They can find Workplaceless at workplaceless.com. And if you wanna connect with me personally, I’m on Twitter @TammyBjelland.
Jovian: Yep, I suggest everyone to follow Tammy on Twitter and check out Workplaceless. Tammy tweets great articles and information about remote work from time to time. All of them are great reads. So I suggest you check it out. So Tammy, thank you so much for your time today.
Tammy: Thanks so much. This is a really fun conversation. I look forward to talking to you at some point in the future.
Jovian: Awesome. Thank you.
Tammy: Thanks.
Jovian: And that’s it for another episode of “Outside The Valley,” brought to you by Arc. We created this podcast with the hope that in each episode, you can learn something new from other remote startup people. So if you have any feedback or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at Jovian@arc.dev, it’s J-O-V-I-A-N-@-A-R-C.D-E-V. Or you can find us on Twitter @arcdotdev.
See you next week with another episode of “Outside The Valley,” and ciao.
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