0:00:00 - Alex Shevelenko
Welcome to Experience-focused Leaders! I am excited to introduce you to my friend of many years, CEO of CultureGene, Brett Putter. Brett is one of the foremost experts in the intersection of building a high-performance culture and operating either in remote or hybrid environments. He is the author of two books: “Culture Decks Decoded” and “Own Your Culture”. Brett, welcome to the pod!
0:00:36 - Bretton Putter
Alex, great to be on the pod! It's been a while since we last caught up in London. But, yeah, really good to reconnect, learn from you and hopefully share some insights.
0:00:51 - Alex Shevelenko
Amazing.
Well, Brett, you like something that any forward-thinking leader should be obsessing about, in my view. By definition, we all live in the large parts of organizations being remote by default and the rest being in some kind of hybrid mode. I think historically we were relying on “Hey, let's all get in a room and observe what other people are doing.” Some kind of role modeling that just happens in every meeting and interaction. There’s a higher density of feedback when you're in a face-to-face environment, you get more vibes from other people.
Now, the world has mostly changed, but the cultural problem is even bigger because a lot of people have not even had that kind of gap. They're joining organizations where they've never met anybody in person. And they're supposed to be the leaders in that organization. I think it's causing all sorts of a hard burn for people who are able to spot it. What are you seeing as the most typical challenges for, let's say, a high-growth organization that's dealing with hiring and maintaining culture in this environment?
0:02:32 - Bretton Putter
So I think that your point about the world has changed is very relevant. Because the world has changed but leaders and leadership have not. And this is the first challenge. We're still working or leading as if we were in the office five days a week. This is mainly because none of the vast majority of the leaders in companies have experienced what it means to work in an organization that was set up to be remote-first from the beginning. Yes, we had two years of pandemic remote work. But that's not the same as being in an environment where there are remote work best practices, where they know how to spot the challenges of remote work and overcome them. So I think that really is the first challenge.
0:03:29 - Alex Shevelenko
I want to double down on that in the sense that the world has changed but we're still carbon-based life forms, we have not changed. Our brains have crocodile components and limb bit components that are disconnected from the cerebral parts of our nature. For many years we have had these bonding moments when we're together in the physical space.
And so I'm really curious, how do you see both this and the leadership level? But also on an individual level, where do people find the energy when there are back-to-back zooms and Slack channels? What are you finding that brings humanity and meets those fundamental needs of working together with others? Historically, it's been done in physical space.
0:04:44 - Bretton Putter
If you're in back-to-back meetings in Zoom, you're doing a role. It means that you're not really working, you are in meetings. You have to work after you have your meetings. So I spent 14 months studying remote work companies. I looked at GitLab, Buffer, Zapier, Toptale, Doelist, Automattic, Hotjar and a bunch of others. And actually, these companies default towards asynchronous communication so that they can respond when they need to or when they want to. And they can work when they need to and when they want to.
The first point is what you're experiencing, you're doing it wrong when it comes to connection. We're used to building connections and community in an office environment and that was much easier to do because we'd bump into people, etc. Now we're finding it harder to build connections. Actually, there is a disconnection between people and our culture. And the reason for that is that the systems inside companies are wrong for the way we work now. We're still using the pre-pandemic operating system. But actually, we now have a post-pandemic operating system. And so we are expecting somehow for this post-pandemic operating system to evolve itself quickly. We're expecting these things that we had in the office to be replicated automatically. That's just not going to happen.
So, ultimately, what we're talking about is an operating system change in which people are leaders. It terrifies leaders because, especially high-growth companies, they're struggling to balance all the plates that are spinning at 1000 miles an hour. Well, I think this is just a good small thing, hold on. But the underlying ground that the plates are spinning on is wrong.
0:06:55 - Alex Shevelenko
Let's come back to the operating system. But let's touch on the async topic that you brought up. You bring up companies. For example, GitLab famously was the async-based communications. Everything was written down way before the pandemic and it has been very much building it in public. It has this sort of DNA and really useful content of their processes, everything is documented.
But also it's an open source-driven company where techie DNA has been the DNA of the movement, in contrast to, let's say, small to medium-sized business sales organizations. Historically, they would be sitting in the same bullpen area motivating each other and having this sort of camaraderie that helps the sports team. A little bit of competitiveness. But then in parallel, you have enterprise sales organizations. A senior field account executive was a $2 million quota that's operating in the Chicago area. And he flies in for some meetings but his or her job is to be the customer, so also kind of operating remotely. So there were these cultures in the past that had pockets of a successful remote organization. But if I think of the field, that's somebody who's already further in their career. They've been trained up in some ways earlier. They have a basic skill set around sales.
And if I think about open source, its own animal was its own dynamics. People are drawn to that movement and they are not the people who may need a lot of day-to-day interaction. So now this is spread outside of these pockets to, let's say, very large chunks of the organization. What are you seeing that's working?
0:09:29 - Bretton Putter
You know what we can take from those lessons of pre-pandemic success. Scaling in other parts of an organization as easily as maybe in the organizations predisposed to remote first. So I think the sales organization is a particularly interesting one because there are certain sales teams and sales leaders that thrive on that drive, that dynamism. Typically a younger salesperson needs that drive and push. I'm not saying that you shouldn't necessarily get those people together more regularly, but they don't have to be in the office all the time necessarily. It really depends on, once again, the operating system because ultimately there is a leadership style that is driving that behavior. There is a leadership style of “I need to see you, I need to use my charisma to motivate you, force or pressurize you to do that next deal, to get on the phone, to drive, drive, drive.”
You see this in studies done. Georgia Southern University did a study where they took 110 leaders. They took 110 teams and they said, “Four people in each team, go and work in an office and choose your leader.” Then they took 110 teams, four people in each team, and they said, “Go and work remotely and choose your leader.” The office-based leaders were charismatic, vocal and hierarchical, interesting. The remote leaders were coaches, facilitators, mentors and project managers. There's a fundamentally different style and a different way of working in-office versus remote.
0:11:39 - Alex Shevelenko
That's fascinating and that's unexpected, which is great for our listeners. I would have assumed that if you're remote, it's even more critical to convey the energy and bring in the charisma and the passion. I'll tell you what I've been trying to do. You'll ask my team whether it's working or not. I think it got to a point where I would sometimes read a poem that really moved me to the team. It would be an all-hands meeting, but it's a poem that has an appeal on a human level, connects people and brings them in an emotional state. It's got lines with our culture. Hopefully, I think that the intent was inspirational.
0:12:44 - Bretton Putter
That's not charismatic.
0:12:48 - Alex Shevelenko
You should hear me read it.
0:12:54 - Bretton Putter
What you're doing is you're connecting on a human level with your team. You're not demonstrating charisma, leadership through your personality, the force of your communication and the way you interact in a physical way. You're actually more connecting with them on an emotional level, which you felt they needed, which shows the emotional intelligence requires to run a remote organization. That for me, is not charisma, Consider Steve Barma standing on stage, sweating buckets of sweat, motivating them. Developers, developers, developers. That's on the wrong side of the spectrum.
0:13:40 - Alex Shevelenko
I don't think that was motivating for developers either. To be honest, I work with developers. Some of the best developers are my friends and I think they find that ridiculous.
0:13:59 - Bretton Putter
That's the extreme of what I'm talking about, that in-person interaction where "Come on, make a new ad, do another call." Versus how can I facilitate, how can I create the environment where you do the best work? Yes, you may need to bring younger employees who are less experienced and, yes, you may have to pull them into the office more often. But that doesn't mean they have to be in the office all the time.
0:14:24 - Alex Shevelenko
All right, that's fascinating. On that note, let's say, how do you, as a leader in this remote or hybrid organization, how do you lift up the energy level? Because I think this is what we're talking about. If charisma and rah-rah-rah is not a way to do it, what are other ways to do it? I'll throw out some ideas.
We're building a customer-centric product. The idea is that we're taking those culture decks and making them digestible by the audience, making them real, and concrete, bringing those examples to life, making it easy to find irrelevant. That takes a view that requires us to be driving customer centricity for our clients and for ourselves. Sometimes the customers are also not in your region. Sometimes you used to meet with them in the past, especially in the enterprise, the big relationships. Now it's challenging, A lot of it is remote. One of the ways that we do it is we talk about customers, In our Zoom meet in all-hands. We have a dedicated segment for a customer "RELAYTO Customer" in search. We have that as a reminder. The person who's running that behind. They like things, they respond to certain things, they celebrate things. It's a reminder of what's bigger. Who are we looking out for if not just ourselves, we're looking out for the customer.
The second thing is we keep reinforcing the mission and the power of what we're doing. Hopefully every now and again, it send shivers down the spine for somebody to say, "Hey, we're working on reinventing the book. You're the author. Who are these? Who is this In relative terms, tiny band of people that's taking on the book?" The transfer of human knowledge, and experience and empowering it was whatever new technology there is. Those things are what we're in our little startup at RELAYTO. That's how we're thinking about bringing up the energy and the relevance and connecting to the bigger idea so people don't get lost in everyday challenges. What are you seeing other companies do? This is not enough. There's got to be more ways to lift up the overall energy level.
0:17:08 - Bretton Putter
It's not enough. What you're doing is critical. It's very easy for somebody working in a remote environment to forget why they're doing it and forget the purpose. Because they've got the cat that needs feeding, their daughter needs to be taken to school or whatever it is. It's quite easy to forget the mission, vision, purpose and values. When you're in an office, you experience it more, and it's easier for leaders to call it out in an office. Well done, Jack. You did this. That's living our values. What you're doing is great!
The next level down is about ultimately building social capital across the organization. Social capital is the value I get from, first of all, knowing the organization and, secondly, the organization knowing me. It's actually more important for people to know you than it is for you to know people, but that's a longer story. Social capital is this oil that makes the organization run smoother. If I reach out to Bob in sales and Bob in sales has never heard of me before, Bob may take a day or two to get back to me. But if Bob and I had a drink two weeks ago, he'd probably respond quicker. It's that social connection, it's super important and it doesn't come easy. Especially, in a remote environment.
What you've got to think about is you've got to think about the two types of proximity that you have in a work environment. You have physical proximity, which means when I can see you, you're in the same room. You have emotional proximity. Emotional proximity involves being seen, being recognized, people understanding that people understand the value I bring to this. Emotional proximity can be used very effectively by leaders to overcome the lack of physical proximity. You do that by focusing on the moments that matter to your people. The moments that matter to your people includes personal occasions like birthdays, kid's birthdays, etc. The moments that matter are overcoming a tough project or hitting a target. The moments that matter are the things that you can look around and show the person "I see you, I value you and I recognize you for this moment that matters"
I may even call it out again just to remind you that I spotted that moment that matters. This is how you can go beyond that first layer of culture and go deeper into social capital and building social capital inside your organization through moments that matter both individually and to the broader group.
0:20:15 - Alex Shevelenko
Hmm. So actually I want to give you a shout out on this because when we chatted back in December, both one on one and as part of a group, were of entrepreneurs where you were offering some some of these perspectives, Brett, I picked up on that, and I think we were doing some of these things, but we probably weren't as systematic about it as we started after you've made that recommendation. So I'll provide feedback on some of your ideas are working, on creating emotional connection, probably one of the most favourite things that we started doing and I picked that up from you, is doing breakouts in zoom during our meetings. Meetings became, a lot less about kind of overall goals and the usual stuff we still have to do.
But the breakouts involves asking questions you would ask, your spouse, if you're trying to get to really understand them for example "Tell me about something that really influenced you when you were, between the age of 10 and 13". and it's amazing how people would not want to come back from breakout rooms. They really enjoyed getting to know their colleagues, there are some surprises and common threads. It's stopped away from being like a cult of the leaders talking right communicating a little bit, like you said, top down, what's the latest news, and became much more participatory, So that the meetings became you, everybody had to be part of it.
Most importantly, the questions were designed to connect emotionally with somebody and find, shared community across those zoom breakouts, and especially if you have diverse cultural teams, which we do, and many organizations that are operating across cultures, not just remote, need to work even harder on making sure that we find that community as well. So that's for one example. Another aspect like creating a formal space to celebrate things that happened. And then the last piece, that's what we've been doing for a while, we think the world's most asynchronous Zoom happy birthday for people. It's like a transition, because if anybody who's figure out how to make it sync up, let us know. But is it good?
0:23:12 - Bretton Putter
It's very good. Yeah, I wouldn't.
0:23:14 - Alex Shevelenko
I wouldn't want to change it at all. Anyway, people love this, these are the moments, and one time we had the birthday of one of our colleague's wife, so we sang happy birthday to her because she's the core part of his life and he's a core part of our team and it's reminded us that, we're there also to support the partners of our team members and that was even cooler right then in some ways, because it just humanized this person like they're not just a embodiment here, in zoom, they're full human being with a wife or kids. So what are your reactions to this anecdote? Is this what you expected? Is there more to build on this one? If we're starting to see the value of what you're describing, what would you recommend as a quick win for people, for small organizations?
0:24:24 - Bretton Putter
So, one of the things just to follow up on the comment about singing Happy Birthday to the wife. One of the things that a CEO that I spoke to recently depends on what you find out beforehand, you'll either send flowers or chocolates to the partner of the person who's joined and there's a handwritten letter that says, "Thanks so much, I just want to show appreciation, we know how hard it is to be a partner in a working environment, and it's really great to have your partner join us and we see you as as part of our extended family. So, thank you, we appreciate your support." however that it may be, it makes such a big difference because, they've just hired this person and then the partner gets this, this completely customized, handwritten measure of appreciation, which is a bonding moment between two people and the company and just in the new employee in the company. So they just, they're clever things that you can do, once you've interviewed the candidate and who are married, they got two kids, you can send them a box of chocolates or something, It doesn't take much, but it's a very small thing to do. This idea of social connection and emotional proximity, feeds back into one of the things that the remote a companies that I've studied do, which is they do more one to ones typically.
Then organizations would have to be pandemics, teams are smaller, no bigger than seven, and in the case of hot job, for example, They do weekly one to ones, and the one to ones are led by the, the individual, not by the manager. So the individual writes the agenda, and the individual will state what they want to talk about. The manager does have some questions in the back.
The manager, never drive the conversation ever, and so what then happens is, instead of it being an update on how's your performance, they have a document on details of performance over time. So they start off going this week or this month, this is what you're expected to achieve, and they just follow on that document. So you have a personal meeting with the individual finding out how they are, are they doing it, if they want to talk about performance and the things they're struggling with. That's not a problem, but ultimately the manager is managing the relationship, not the performance. If there is a performance meeting that's required, they will schedule one. But they can see by the project and the progress of the project, documentation and updates on performance, how the person is performing and they will know whether they need to step in or monitor or get involved or train based on the work, on that work they've done.
0:27:36 - Alex Shevelenko
So let me clarify. So when you're referring to as the document of performance, this is something that's run independently of the meeting, what you're saying is you have that sync right, some kind of a reporting documentation, and that could be the source of like problem solving and adjusting in the meeting, but it doesn't have to be the source.
0:28:02 - Bretton Putter
And it opens up time for other areas. It's up to the individual who you meet. If you're the manager and you're meeting with one of your team members, if they are struggling with something, it's up to them to put it in the agenda to discuss with you. If they're not struggling with anything, they don't.
0:28:19 - Alex Shevelenko
So that's interesting. You mentioned the whole operating system is changing, so one of the things that are where it's a little bit less visible, if you're in a sync environment in some ways, what's working, what's not. So you brought up this document, so what are you seeing people change in how they communicate? Progress, right, and I think both in one to once and then across a broader team, where some kind of alignment is required to avoid duplicative efforts and conflictual directions where well intentioned people could often go that I don't communicate enough.
0:29:02 - Bretton Putter
So this is once again a big operating system shift that companies are not ready for yet, but ultimately the best example I've seen of this is where there's Andy Grove of in high output management point the phrase task relevant maturity is a framework to help typically leaders of junior or inexperienced individuals or people, but actually it's applicable in any framework, so in any environment. So if you have a high task relevant maturity, it means that you've done this task before numerous times and you can do it well and we're confident of that. If you have a low task relevant maturity, it means that you haven't done this task before, or you've done it once or twice and you're not confident and you're not going to be good at it and you do is you take this idea of task relevant maturity and you look at a project and you go okay, this project has six tasks that you have to complete between now and the middle of March. Have you done these six tasks in the past? I've high task relevant maturity. I, yes, I've done this project three times. Okay, see you in the middle of March. Let me know if there any problems. Okay, bye, now.
As a manager. I know that Bob has high task relevant maturity. Bob's done it before and he's going to nail this thing and if he's struggling because of someone else in the team or an outside factor, he will let me know.
But when it comes to Jack, jack is new and has just joined the team. He's got six things in his tasks in his project, but Jack's only done two of those tasks well properly before. So I know I have to train him and have to monitor him and I have to mentor him through four of those tasks. If I don't take this task relevant maturity basis to this, jack is going to not really know what he has to do. Jack's gonna have to have meetings with people to understand what he has to do. So he's gonna be insecure about these meetings and insecure about asking all these questions. Jack is not. We don't have enough documentation so Jack can't read up about it. So what does Jack do? he is scared. Jack has got one foot out the door already. So onboarding people and then giving them the system and operating system to work effectively whether they have high task relevant maturity or low task relevant maturity is super important.
0:31:55 - Alex Shevelenko
So one of the takeaways is a playbook and really up to date documentation of how to do certain things. Because, again, if you're going in sync, that mentoring capacity is limited to certain hours of the day, alignment, et cetera, and if one of people is part time, it even complicates it further. And then I think you bring up something that is a challenge, like historically been a challenge for remote environments, where the people that thrive in them are the people that have already been trained in some at least basic like maybe not in a company level process, but in basic level, kind of how to do sales. They're already familiar with that, so they don't need to be trained or something like that. And then they're just basically need to adapt whatever their core skill set is to the company's policies and so on.
And then, separately, the classical startup hire is somebody who, even if they haven't been trained, just has the DNA to go learn fast, figure stuff out, and move despite full clarity. And whether that's a kind of unicorn person that's really a founder, right, that's, not everybody's like that, but it could have still wanted to be in the startup. That's kind of a separate question that I have for you. What is it like? Some organizations are just doomed, because they're too early in the process, there's too little structure, and so they just need the right people to handle that level of ambiguity and, like better agile, to figure stuff out on their own. What's your take on that?
0:33:52 - Bretton Putter
Yeah, I think if you look at the way most pre-pandemic remote companies recruit self-management people who can manage themselves, and people who can manage themselves will go out and find the information that they can and then be able to communicate and say, I've got this amount of information. This is what I'm missing. I don't think doomed is the right word, but I do think that ultimately, in a high growth environment, it's about speed, the quickest to market, the quickest to achieve certain milestones, etcetera. So I think that the friction that develops in a remote working environment is something that, over time, all high-growth companies or any company should be looking to overcome.
So, finding where remote friction is happening and then overcoming that through process definition or documentation or moving to sync communication these are, I know, for most high growth CEOs. It's literally like, Brett, are you mad? I'm trying to survive, and now you're telling me I must go and get somebody to write a document about that process. But at some stage, it has to happen, because the friction will grind the business to almost a standstill, and human beings are incredibly adaptable and incredibly good at finding ways to do things. But if you facilitate it and if you build a system for them from the outset, if you have the system mindset around, what do we do? That's not working. That's building up all this friction, and how do I overcome that friction Over time? It's not, nothing's going to happen magically overnight. But if you have that mindset over the next two, three, four, five years as you build your startup, you will create a system for a flexible work environment.
0:35:53 - Alex Shevelenko
So what I'm hearing is it like it still requires a mindset of people that are able to go and say, hey, I'm gonna document things, I'm gonna have a process, I'm gonna have to like almost go down the path of debugging. That still is a kind of a personality you know or kind of a hiring fit, potentially. Do you agree with that, or is that a something that you think everybody can learn? Does that learn behavior?
0:36:26 - Bretton Putter
Well, that's a little bit like saying let me try and think of it. That's not a good enough example there are. If you're gonna work in a remote work environment and you don't document things, it's literally where is the information? What decisions were taken? How do I know? Let my colleagues know the people who are gonna be impacted by this. We don't have an office that's gonna be effective in sharing and facilitating the flow of this information. I mean, if you don't see that as a reality, then okay, then you must run your business your way. In some organizations where people are, it's a less enamored with writing and documentation, I've seen companies accept video. So, instead of writing, just talk to just video or just record it and we will transcribe it. But, once again, this is a system mindset you need. If it's not documented and you go from 80 people to 300 people on two different continents, the chaos that you are going to have to deal with is immense.
0:37:55 - Alex Shevelenko
So what I'm hearing is that, fundamentally, this is part of that new operating system that you cannot hey. Three executives had a quick Zoom meeting and they came to decision and there's no. There's some sort of a to do, but there's no clear record of that and clear learnings from why that happened. So that kind of osmosis or past experience somehow needs to start getting captured in a more consistent way. So let's shift gears a little bit and let's go to pre-pandemic.
An example of a company who's probably supporting some of those remote workers was entertainment Netflix. You wrote about them in your culture decks decoded and about their famous culture deck, and I'll just quote you Netflix communicates in clear and simple language how living the values, the actual behaviors and the skills that are demonstrated by fellow employees will all help to get a new employee rewarded and promoted or fired if he or she fails to live up to the values. So let's talk about how that culture deck, which has been sometimes described as the most important document to come out of Silicon Valley, if you were to write it for today, what would it be, assuming you're Netflix right? Like, how different would it be in a remote first and probably more multi-product business? That is Netflix right? If it changes, would there be any differences there?
0:39:53 - Bretton Putter
So there's a couple of things. Netflix are one of the organizations that want everybody back in the office and that is their operating system, that they want, and whether I agree or disagree with it it doesn't matter. It's the way they wanna run their business and I think that's right. If they are confident that they will be able to recruit all the people that they're gonna need to recruit over the next 10 years by having offices and by attracting people close by or moving people, relocating people, then that's not giving their people the flexibility that they may want. Then that's absolutely fine. But that confidence and decision-making is build the culture you want. So that's the first point.
The second point about that culture deck is that culture deck is still mostly I would say 95% of it's still relevant today. Some words have been changed on the value side, but they still have the keeper test. They still look for excellence. They will bench you and then they will fire you if you're not delivering excellence. They still encourage you to go and understand what your market value is and actually that consistency of their culture is amazing. It's incredible and that's why I know they've reworded it somewhat, but it's still the culture and if you're gonna have a look at their values page on the internet. Now it's actually their corporate page, I think there's. Of the nine values, seven of them are still the same and the wording is pretty much mostly the same. It's not as detailed now because people have read the culture deck and people can access that culture deck, which is still close enough. So I wouldn't personally, based on Netflix's desire to be an in-person culture, I wouldn't change it at all.
0:41:58 - Alex Shevelenko
So my sense is that what you're saying is it's there's actually two like. You answered a separate question. This is like this if you have a culture and it's a strong driver of who you are, or everybody has a culture but if you have a culture deck and it's a strong kind of documentation of the culture, that doesn't change. That's sort of that's just living, breathing. It might adapt slightly, but it sounds like it doesn't change for most organizations.
0:42:28 - Bretton Putter
If the CEO, if the founder stays in and has a very strong understanding which we did and does a very good job of the initial documentation which they did, then it can tweak. I think principles change over time, but value shouldn't. They can, but they shouldn't.
0:42:46 - Alex Shevelenko
So one of the reasons I also wanted to chat is we are wearing my other hat at RELAYTO. We're seeing a lot of employee communications show up in using RELAYTO, which is a way to make it more human, more like engaging digital experience. So we see culture handbooks, we see culture decks, we see employee benefit communications that align with that organization's kind of mission and kind of how it wants to treat its employees and their extended families and loved ones. And the theme that we're seeing is almost congruence. So if you're saying, hey, we're easy to work at and then you show people like a very hard to read, hard to understand, hard to digest, something that's kind of incongruent and it doesn't really work. If you're saying we are exciting and then you bore people to tears with your culture deck or whatever communications are, that doesn't work. If you're saying we walk the talk and you have something that's highly abstract, it doesn't have concrete examples, then it's just talk right, like and there's nothing to walk.
And so we're seeing some of these like forward thinking organizations generally like they're looking for an edge in engaging their employees. Sometimes it's their extended employees could be like contracting folks could be kind of like we have a company that runs dental clinics and so some of the folks they need to engage are not their employees but they are part of the kind of clinic so they go to extraordinary lengths to actually humanize, create videos kind of create a common sense through again these values, the magazines, the newsletters, because the kind of the lame mo intranet post or kind of email just doesn't do it anymore. People are really stepping up and I'm curious if you're seeing that level of kind of merging digital with human and come up in some of the leading organizations in this right, because the wiki it's good for documentation but it doesn't lift up the human spirit in a way that a more visual and kind of immersive experience could. And I'm wondering if you've seen that pattern as well.
0:45:36 - Bretton Putter
I'm seeing it on a really like simple level. If you get an email from somebody who works at a well run remote company and you get an email from any other company, you'll notice often that the remote company email has emojis in it. Now, emojis are a super powerful way to communicate how you're feeling and where you're at, and a lot of people look at emojis as these silly images like why would you put a silly thing there? But actually, if you look at lots and lots of remote work companies, it's part of. They even build their own. They design their own emojis like brand based and values based emojis, so that they can enhance this communication. They can make it more human and more emotional, more connecting, and I think that's what RELAYTO is doing. It’s allowing people who would get some form of diverse interaction in an office environment to get that from a digital experience and so from a well-run environment where remote is dominant.
You see a lot of this where it's sharing of images, sharing of what we did last weekend, sharing of videos of the kids or the cat internally within the organization. So, yes, this is a. The remote company is looking for ways to enhance the inaction without meeting they. Yes, they do meet, and they meet once, twice a year, or more than that sometimes. But it's physical, it's emotional proximity. They try to increase and strengthen the emotional proximity of the experience in the company.
0:47:38 - Alex Shevelenko
And this is really a great point that you brought up video and async video. So one of the advantages is like yes, I don't have to write if I'm not a writer I could do a video. But the other advantage is the video communicates more powerfully an emotion in who's the human behind it. Now the challenge has been historically that, like, if you're doing full screen video recording, there may be some equipment things. There's kind of like some people may be slightly become self-conscious when they look at themselves in a video and so they kind of they start re-recording it 15 times and it's like this is too much paper to just hop on a call right and like. So there's this sort of learned change in behavior and I think over time more and more of us will be more comfortable with the sort of the video based on who want to many async communications. But one of the things that we found that's really interesting on that note is the like let's say you have a deck and then you have like a small. You can add to a particular page that's highly important or confusing or something you want to emphasize, or maybe the introductory page. You add a small kind of instantly recorded video of a CEO talking through something or kind of a regional leader giving an update on top of what would be dry information to have. Each slide is just giving some emotional color and that's been a surprise.
We got pulled into building that out because people wanted that human touch, whether it's to customer presentation or future customer. But surprisingly, a lot of it, like the early thing, was like remote first kind of company in Australia, right Like, which is, as we know, pretty large country, and then happened to have a very distributed organization, so it was very hard for them even pre-pandemic getting people together. So that became an insight that I think just we're seeing more and more of this desire to connect and humanize. And it feels like video is one dimension but then the other one and I'm kind of wondering how are you seeing these organizations work through? This is we are all kind of overloaded with information. Right, everybody's complains about endless slack. Right, everybody complains about endless Zoom meetings. Right, there is like you're saying, hey, let's document everything. Right, like well, that's just a lot more stuff to try to find the right resource.
0:50:20 - Bretton Putter
So not everything, Don't document everything. Documents Repeatable.
0:50:26 - Alex Shevelenko
Repeatable Document was relevant, relevant, right, but still there's a lot more content, like it's probably not a big argument to say there's a lot more content.
So one of the things that we've been seeing kind of was kind of more our customers tend to be more innovative, like trying to tackle this either on behalf of themselves, their partners, their customers, is what they're doing is they're kind of presenting a lot more.
Here's an overall architecture of all the key things that are relevant and then of those you pick your own adventure to get quickly to the one thing that's really relevant for you, and so they're building these sort of as like almost introduction deck to all the other decks that exist, you know, elsewhere, right, introduction deck to our values, introduction deck to this newsletter, right.
And so people are increasingly able to feel like they're in control and they don't have this monologue of, like one person talking, you know, or equivalent of a slide that you have to go so linearly to get to the part that you care about in page 84 on your phone, right. And that seems to be the other trend that you know. That's like in addition to humanizing and documenting the relevant pits, it's also like getting people to that right information. What are you seeing you know that uniquely being somehow relevant to remote and distributed kind of hybrid organizations, is there more of a challenge around information there? Is it the same as everywhere else and what are you seeing some of the most innovative companies you work with do around that?
0:52:14 - Bretton Putter
So I'm. I was speaking to Job, who's the founder and CEO of remote.com, and I was talking to him about documentation and he said that his target, that he is aiming for, is for anybody in the organization to be able to find anything that they want a relevant documentation in less than 20 seconds, and he said we're not there. It's a big challenge, but that's ultimately what we're aiming for is the ability to get to the right information as quickly as possible and then get to that even inside that information, the right information is really important. I'm seeing people play around with AI, but it's too early to really have a. I don't have an opinion and I haven't seen, I haven't, I haven't got any concrete results using AI.
In the sense, I think your point about your customers being quite innovative, I think that that if I was, if I was thinking about your customer, I think there needs to be an intentionality around, around communication and an intentionality around culture and the culture of communication, and for me, that that that would be, you know, it would, for my point of view, users of RELAYTO, would be, would I would just, I would just put them in a bucket of interesting cultures. You know, they must be some sort of intentionality there, because they care about the audience, right, I think they like.
0:54:12 - Alex Shevelenko
The defining thread is they care about the message is important to them and the audience is important to them, and so they want to get the message.
0:54:23 - Bretton Putter
They want to deliver it, yeah they don't want to deliver to that.
0:54:26 - Alex Shevelenko
They're like, if you just like, hey, you know, this is just kind of a quick email and there's one other person and yeah, that we're not the you know, go use Google Docs or PowerPoint or whatever. But if it's a you know one to few, one to many or like really important audience, really key stakeholders, we want to respect them, we want to show them a sign that we care about, you know them and we care enough about the message to make it accessible, right.
And that degree will vary. Right, like from AI is like you know. Like, for example, for employee benefits. AI is amazing. Our clients that are using that like, hey, I need to figure out fertility benefits. Like you know, the only way to do that right now is like to go through control F, through like 15 documents to really understand it, and then you will just see the word fertility. You won't get the answer and the likeliest page and the right document was an answer that you could then go validate. Right, imagine you could skip that and really make, make a much more informed decision across a library of content that doesn't have any kind of crazy stuff in there.
From general, you know AI tools that's really powerful and this sort of not a use case we thought of initially, but it sort of creates the sort of out of a noise, helps people get to the right nugget very quickly and it it's sort of against signals that we don't want to hide behind the small print. We want to be accessible. We are. Every interaction is about building trust. And how do you build trust? Well, we help you kind of to that point of your remote.com leader. We help you get to the right information, you know, and we help you then double check if you need the, the details and the footnotes and everything right, if you're that person or if you come from an evidence based culture, we need to provide the summary, and the quick access was the backup if you need it.
And I think that's the only way that I see, like, generally for society. It feels like that's a good way to build trust, right, like, you know, you kind of got to provide some kind of a framework for people not to get lost in the weed of the details but then, once they get to the relevant bits, see what's going to, what's backing them up. So you kind of back to broadly tell me I know you think about global issues, right, like, but we've talked about, you know, startups and it may be high growth companies quite a bit, but how do you see this changing the overall culture? Like, as you know, for, for societies, as we are kind of feeling, you know, we're all more remote, right, we have increasingly, you know, less, less physical gatherings. You know kind of social, maybe kind of civic lives. You know, how are you thinking that some of the lessons that you're learning could be adopted by other organizations?
0:57:25 - Bretton Putter
Yeah, once again, if you think, if you look at what remote work companies do, they don't. They actually encourage and in some cases they fund involvement on the local level. So, in your village or in your town or in your city, what do you want to do to go and give back? What do you want to do to to? And we will, maybe, if you're into animals and helping at the animal shelter, we will, you know, give you 50 euros a year to go and maybe buy some animal feed or whatever it is. You know they, but but there is a, there is a localization element of connecting with the, the, your local environments, and getting to understand that the people you live near and you live around, that, the, the remote work companies that I've worked with in interview, do not feel like they are missing out on connection.
0:58:21 - Alex Shevelenko
Interesting.
0:58:22 - Bretton Putter
Because the system is the right amount of connection. If I want to go and join a a lunch and learn, I know when I can and I will, and there will be 20, 30, 10, 15, whatever number of people on the lunch and learn. And that lunch and learn is structured in a way that it means that we introduce one another, we talk about it and then we do the lunch, then there's the lunch and learn. Or if I don't want to hear from any anybody in two weeks because I've got a really nail this project, I do that. And if I want and but I know that I have a weekly meeting with my manager, I know that I have. So one of the things that hot job does, for example, is they, they build, they build tribes. So they take one person from sales, one person from customer success, from marketing, from engineering and from ops, for example, and they build this tribe. So these five people meet once a month and they either work on a company challenge or they work on their own thing that they want to work on. And now you've got these tribes, which are not teams.
Once again, it's about intentionality, it's about a new operating system, it's about thinking, it's about thinking outside of what we currently know and it's about helping people understand that we are not going to replicate. You're never going to have the same amount of fun drinking a beer at your you know, drinking a glass of wine or a beer here, versus going into the pub and drinking it with with with eight of your colleagues or 20 of your colleagues. It's just, it's not comparable. But what we can do is we can make the bi annual weekly get togethers amazingly, amazingly connecting and gravitating towards.
So it's just, it's the way it's, it's this, it's ultimately, it's moving. It'll take us another three or five years to work out what this operating system is for the companies that are slow. It'll actually it'll probably take them 10 years to work it out, because digital, the transformation to digital for large organizations took a long time. They just thought let's put some computers in. They didn't think they needed to change the culture and the operating system of the organization to make digital work, to make the internet work for them. And that's the same. Here we're going through the same transformation.
1:00:42 - Alex Shevelenko
Lovely Brett. You can see that I'm like my head is exploding with ideas. I've already benefited from some of your ideas and your research. I am really thrilled that you're able to share this with our audience. Where can people find you so they could start getting an edge in that transformation with your, with the help of culture code and your research? And where can they find you?
1:01:09 - Bretton Putter
Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter, but if people want to reach out to me directly, it's Brett at culturegene.ai. That's culturegene.ai. I do have some books. I've built some training programs as well for hybrid and remote first working. So if you're thinking about this or you want to become more intentional about it, I'm really happy to have a chat. I'm looking to do in-person meetings. We're doing dinners in London. We're going to start doing some virtual peer learning sessions. So hit me up. It'll be great to talk to your audience and, Alex, as usual, it's been real fun, really enjoy talking to you both in camera and in person. So, yeah, looking forward to the next time.
1:01:58 - Alex Shevelenko
Thanks, Brett!