Episode 115: Hiring & Leading A Remote Team? Hacks to Improve Productivity & Collaboration with Liam Martin

Written By Erin Diehl
 
 
 

Are you leading a remote team? Or are you struggling with hiring a remote team? Perhaps you need some hacks on how to improve productivity and collaboration?

If this sounds like you, you are in luck. We have the one, the only, Liam Martin, who is such a fantastic resource when it comes to remote work. Liam is a serial entrepreneur who runs Time Doctor and staff.com, which is one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. He's also the co-organizer of the world's largest remote work conference, running remote, which has some fantastic speakers.

On today’s episode, Erin and Liam discuss:

  • The challenges of remote work

  • Three ways to promote collaboration in a remote team

  • Ways to promote productivity within your team

More about Liam: Liam is a serial entrepreneur who runs Time Doctor and Staff.com — one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. He is also a co-organizer of the world's largest remote work conference — Running Remote.

Liam is an avid proponent of remote work and has been published in Forbes, Inc, Mashable, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, The Huffington Post, Venturebeat, and many other publications specifically targeting the expansion of remote work. Liam's products and services are defined by the concept of giving workers the flexibility to work wherever they want, whenever they want.

 

He holds an undergraduate and graduate degree in Sociology from McGill University. He lives in Canada but travels 3-6 months out of the year due to his ability to work wherever and whenever he likes.

While he travels around the world a few times a year, he usually spends time in Austin, Las Vegas, and Ubud. He encourages others to work remotely while he's on his travels.

Liam has also co-authored a book - Running Remote - focused on remote work methodology. In this revolutionary guide, Liam and his co-founder, Rob Rawson, have unearthed the secrets and lessons discovered by remote work pioneering entrepreneurs and founders who've harnessed the async mindset to operate their businesses remotely in the most seamless, hassle-free, and cost-effective manner possible.

Hit play on this tangible episode and drop us a line at info@learntoimproveit.com to tell us what you think!

Show Links:

Connect with Liam Martin:

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Connect with Erin Diehl: 

Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award. 

This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre. 

When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl. 

You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online! 

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If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing this podcast! This helps Erin support more people – just like you – move toward the leader you want to be. Click here, click listen on Apple Podcasts, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with 5 stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let Erin know what you loved most about the episode! Also, if you haven’t done so already, subscribe to the podcast. That way you won’t miss any juicy episodes! Thanks in advance, improve it! Fam :) 

 

Episode 115 Transcription

Erin (00:01):

Oh, improve it. Pees. Welcome to, to sh welcome to today's show. Wow. I'm start off with a bang, but you know what? No mistakes only gifts gonna keep it real here on the improve it pod. And let me ask you this. Are you leading a remote team? Are you struggling with hiring a remote team? Do you need some hacks on how to improve productivity and collaboration? Well, if that's you, this is the show for you today. I have the one, the only Liam Martin, who is such a fantastic resource when it comes to remote work. Liam is a serial entrepreneur who runs time, doctor and staff.com, which is one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. He's also the co-organizer of the world's largest remote work conference, running remote, which has some fantastic speakers. So we'll link to that in the show notes, Liam is an avid proponent of remote work and has been published in Forbes, Inc.

Erin (00:59):

Mashable tech crunch, fast company wired the wall street journal, the next web, the Huffington post venture B and many other publications, specifically targeting the expansion of remote work. Just a few small ones, you know, but Liam's products and services are defined by the concept of giving workers, the flexibility to work wherever they want whenever they want. Liam's also, co-authored a book called running remote, which focuses on remote work methodology. Now in this revolutionary guide, Liam and his co-founder Rob Rossen have an earthed, the secrets and lessons discovered by remote work, pioneering entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and founders. Who've harnessed the ay mindset to operate their business remotely in the most seamless hassle free and cost effective manner possible. This show is packed, and I know I have so many leaders on the line listening today who are leading remote teams, you're gonna hear about how 45% of the workforce worked remotely starting in April, 2020, some of the coolest places that he's traveled.

Erin (02:06):

I also have a great conversation with him around the great resignation to what he is calling the great migration. We'll hear the benefits of remote work. You'll talk about the challenges of remote work, and we're gonna give you three ways to promote collaboration in a remote team, as well as three ways to promote productivity within your team. Just pull up a pen and paper for this one. This is so fantastic. I like to give you an agenda, as you know, and one of my favorite quotes from the show is no agenda, no agenda, which you'll hear more about, which is all about setting agendas for your time and for your space and for your meeting. So about further ado, let's get to improving it with Liam Martin. Are you a leader or change maker inside of your business organization or corporation? Are you looking for new, innovative ways to drive morale through the roof?

Erin (03:04):

Are you looking for fun and exciting icebreakers team building exercises and activities that will foster team growth, friendships, loyalty, and completely transform your organization from the inside out? Have you been searching for a fun and unique way to create change instead of the same old, dry, boring leadership books and ice breakers that aren't actually working? Hi, I'm Erin Diehl, business improv, entertainer fail, Flur and professional zoomie who is ready to help you improve it. My mission in life is to help you develop teams and leaders through play improv and experiential learning. In this podcast, we will deep dive into professional development team building effective communication, networking, presentation, skills, leadership training, how to think more quickly on your feet and everything in between. We have helped everyone from fortune 500 companies to small mom and pop shops transform their business, their leadership, and their people through play. So grab your chicken hat. We are about to have some fun, welcome to improve it. The podcast, Liam, this is me coming in, huh? With a song. Welcome to the improvement podcast.

Liam (04:35):

Thanks for having me, Erin that has probably been the weirdest introduction that I've ever had to a podcast, but I'm so happy to be

Erin (04:42):

Here. You're welcome for it. Yeah, no, I we sing on this show. There's there're singing, there's dancing. People can't see it, but they can feel it. So I'm excited that you're here too. Let me, let me start off by doing this. I wanna know five fun facts about you that we could not find on your bio. We couldn't find on your LinkedIn profile. We couldn't read this anywhere about Liam. I'm gonna do a little Diddy. That's me clearing my throat for this Diddy. And then I just want you to tell us five fun facts about yourself. All right, here we go. This is how it goes. Five facts, five facts, five facts, five facts, five facts. Give us number one.

Liam (05:25):

My wife runs a mermaid school with about 40 different locations throughout north America and Europe, where she teaches people how to swim in a pool with a mermaid tale,

Erin (05:38):

Keep going, keep going. When you get going, keep going.

Liam (05:42):

I used to be a international level para skater ice dancer. I was the guy that lifted the girls and I was ranked about 20th in the world back in 28. <Laugh> 20 2007, approximately. And then I ended up breaking my kneecap and was proverbially brought out back and kind of like shot out back. That was the end of my, my sports career. I really love remote work, which is something that you could probably find on my LinkedIn anyways, but I love remote work so much that I have given up jobs that were offered to me for hundreds of thousands of dollars more than I was making a few years ago, because they were gonna be in an office. And I just couldn't stand that distraction factory, that little great box called the office. What else about me? That's kind of weird. I actually have a bunch of t-shirts and pants.

Liam (06:40):

I have about 500 pairs of t-shirts and pants, and I leave them at different locations all over the world. So I'm gonna go to Libon next week. And I actually have a friend of mine who allows me to leave like 30 pairs of pants and shirts in his closet so that I never have to fly anywhere and check my baggage. I can just fly on, get on and get off. There's a bit of a hack actually on how to do that, which I can talk about too, if you're really interested. Yes. And last thing about me is I'm an academic. I have a master's degree in sociology. I'm looking at it on my wall and that's probably something that people don't necessarily co associate with me because I don't take myself too seriously. But those academics do. And that's generally why I didn't continue onto the PhD.

Erin (07:23):

Oh my, okay. This is why I love this game, cuz it's phenomenal. And can I just tell you first and foremost that I always, I moved to Charleston, South Carolina, because I said I'm a mermaid like that is I wanted to live near the ocean, so I need to meet your wife. I need a tale. Okay. It sounds

Liam (07:42):

Like my wife actually.

Erin (07:43):

Okay. Yeah. I need a tale immediately. Number two, I need to know about, well, okay. This hack is insane. So te tell us about the hack when you travel and you leave the pants.

Liam (07:55):

Yeah. So the t-shirts are Calvin Klein t-shirts and if you use a tool called import Yeti, you can actually figure out where any manufacturer makes their stuff. So instead of paying $20 for a Calvin Kline t-shirt you can buy 500 t-shirts for a thousand dollars that are exactly the same Calvin Kline t-shirt directly from the manufacturer. You can have them shipped to your house and then I just have them distributed everywhere. So sometimes people randomly like, if I'm really good friends with them, or if I have a property somewhere magically just a box of t-shirts will show up to their door. And those are my t-shirts that I use to live my life day in and day out.

Erin (08:37):

That is genius.

Liam (08:39):

Yeah. It's pretty simple. It doesn't work as well for women to be completely honest with you. Unfortunately.

Erin (08:45):

Yeah. I was just gonna say yep, but

Liam (08:46):

You could, I mean, you could get in love with like a Sundre or something like that. And you could just say, wow, this is gonna be the thing that I wear seven days a week. I just have the same shirt that I wear seven days a week, same pair of pants, they're matte and bow jeans. And they've got like stretch that goes in four ways. They feel like jogging pants, but they don't look like it. Dark wash and to buy them is $200 search that on import Yeti. They actually cost about $6 to make <laugh>. So wow. You can just buy them directly from the manufacturer and then just have them shift. It doesn't have the branding obviously, but it's the same pair of pants

Erin (09:24):

That is so genius.

Liam (09:25):

So I just distribute them everywhere that way. Yeah.

Erin (09:28):

Okay. Cause you know what you're right about the women thing, cuz my husband, he just, he said he just bought a ton of shirts from untuck. It that's his favorite brand. And he said he literally bought probably 15 shirts in the same color or no, sorry in a different color, same shirt, 15 different colors because he loves the fit. He loves the style and he goes, I'm not buying shirts for two years. And I was like, okay, good for you. Perfect. But I can't do that. Like I just can't do that. It's harder for women cuz I like a variety, you know, but Liam, that's not, it's not our problem.

Liam (10:02):

Number one, I think me and your husband would get along really, really well. But on top of that, I think he should just go and find out where that untuck company comes from, pop it into import Yeti and he probably could have gotten the same 15 shirts for 30 bucks.

Erin (10:16):

Yeah. Genius. Okay. Import Yeti. Here we come. Also it's not the same Yeti, but Yeti cooler products are my absolute favorite. So anyway, okay. We won't go down this rabbit hole. I could keep talking about this all day. That is fascinating. And I love this game so much because these are things I would've never known. And here, here, now I do here. I do. So Liam, let me ask you this. I like to set an intention for every show before we do, before we dive in. So what is one word? What is one word intention that you wanna get out of this show? And we're talking all about remote work, which is one of your favorite things, hiring, leading remote teams and how to improve productivity and collaboration.

Liam (10:59):

I think my one word will be dent. I wanna dent the universe with under with showing people that remote work is something that's going to completely change their lives for the better. And again, I'm pretty biased on this. I have done a lot of research, but I think remote work is probably the single most important thing that will happen in the 21st century. Yeah. For work for ourselves for the way that we live our lives. I, in, in the beginning of our book that I spent the last year and a half writing called running remote, I quote Andreesen Horowitz. Who's probably arguably the best investor on the face of the planet from a venture capitalist perspective. And he says that remote work is a permanent civilization shift, more important than the internet itself.

Erin (11:51):

Wow.

Liam (11:52):

It is going to completely change everything that we understand as it's gonna completely change everything connected to all aspects of your life place. You know, cities are no longer gonna be places that you work. They're gonna be places that you live. You're gonna be able to take your work with you wherever you want to go. You're gonna be able to have more job opportunities than ever before. That's why this great resignation thing is currently basically happening is people have a lot more options than they did before. And just one statistic here, which I think blows at least my mind every time I think about it, February of 20, 24% of the us workforce was working remotely by March 45% of the us workforce was working remotely. That's the biggest shift in work since the industrial revolution, but the industrial revolution took 80 years and we did that in March. So it's a complete game changer and something that I'm so excited to be able to tell absolutely everyone that I possibly can because it's made my life so much better. The people that work for me and also my friends and family.

Erin (12:53):

Oh my God. Yeah. And you know what? I feel like everybody felt that shift from April or from March to April. It was so crazy. It was so insane. If we could, if I could have pinpointed one word for that, it would be dent. I, it left a dent in my life and I love that's our intention for today. And it's forever changed the way that I show up the way I run my business. So I wanna start here. This is another kinda fun fact question you say that you travel and you work remotely three to six months out of the year. What is the coolest place that you've ever worked remotely or where,

Liam (13:28):

You know, so I have this really cool photo of me in front of the great pyramids and I worked there for about a week and it was great because during, and for anyone that's interested in going, Egypt's a little rough Cairo is a little bit of a difficult place to go to. I wouldn't go. If you had kids as an example, you need to keep your head on a swivel, but it is so cost effective. The people are so interesting. The culture is so different from anyone that's in the west. And when you go and see those, I, I studied ancient history in university and I was mentally preparing myself to see the pyramids. And however big you think they are, they're bigger when you see them in person, they're just awe inspiring. Like there are stones that are the size of a transport truck that are positioned so perfectly that you couldn't put a piece of paper in between the two of them. And I just looked at this thing. I watched every sunset and sunrise. I would go up to the roof of the hotel where I'd be able to see the sunrise on the great pyramids. And it was a fantastic week and I just basically spent most of my time hanging around the pyramids and doing work.

Erin (14:51):

Oh my God. Okay, wait, I have a, this is sort of a personal question, but just it peaks my curiosity. So I have a two and a half year old. You mentioned you have a daughter. Do you bring your daughter with you on these excursions? I know not Egypt, but how does that work?

Liam (15:07):

So she's 22 months. Okay. So we haven't had her on many trips, but we are going to continue to bring her on trips. The beauty of it is if your kid is under two, they get to fly for free. Yeah. So we're actually just gonna put this one last trip in under the the free kid tier with with United, which has been fantastic. But generally we do. And it's much easier before the age of six as well, because then they go into grade school and you need to be able to actually have a good education system, you know, in place for them. But there actually are a couple companies right now that are coming up with education programs at international schools, like the French international school, the American international school, which is like a academic standard for private schools across the world. And there's going to be exactly the same program running down to the week across all of these different schools. So your kid could spend one month in chiro as an example, and then you could fly to Ubud in Bali at green school, which I know is part of the international, the American international school system. And they can pick up the exact same week because they're not at a sink more than one week. It's a really cool way to be able to take your kids with you. If you wanna be location independent,

Erin (16:23):

I love that you and I are gonna stay in contact. Okay, I've got, I've got dreams, I've got visions because my guy's two and a half, almost three. And I, my husband and I'm like, we have to go on this RV adventure before. He's five. I'm like, we've got, we have three years, you know, well, not three years, really two new years now, but it's just so interesting to think about because I, I love what you're doing. My just kind of a side note, my, my business improve. It was completely in person prior to March of 2020, we had an office space then like many people in the pandemic. We let go of this space and we're now completely remote. We've got most of our team spread out all over the us, Illinois, Maryland, LA New York, Charleston. That's where I'm at. So how long have you been running this remote business and, and what, what was the inspiration behind it? What, what made you think I need to do this and really lean into it?

Liam (17:22):

Well, going back to the, the grad school thing, the master's degree that I'm looking at on my wall, I started this actually way back in 2008, 2009. So I've been working remotely for a pretty long time. And I was teaching a class at McGill university which was the university that I went to. And for those of you that don't know if you're in college or university, most first and second year classes are actually taught by graduate are not taught by. Professors went in, taught the class, had about 300 students, came out with less than 200 at the end of the semester. And the worst academic reviews in the history of the department and the department had been running for about 136 years. So I was not very good. I remember walking into my supervisor's office and I said, I don't think I'm very good at this.

Liam (18:10):

And he said, no, you are not <laugh>. And then I said, okay, so what do you think I should do with my life? And he said, you gotta get pretty good at this teaching thing, because that's all you're gonna be doing for the next 10 to 20 years before you get to do anything fun. So six weeks later, I threw a master's thesis under his door. I was out into the real world and I started my first online business, which was an online tutoring business. And that was really where I got the first taste for remote work. I was using Skype, which I'm sure probably most people know what that is, but that was, we didn't have zoom or Zencaster or Google meet or anything like that. We had Skype, which kind of worked like 50% of the time. And that was a fantastic first taste into remote work. And now I've built a bunch of other remote companies, time, doctor, staff.com, running remote. And now this book that we've written about remote work, because for us, we believe that people should be able to work wherever they want whenever they want. And our mission in life is to be able to empower people to do that.

Erin (19:11):

Oh my God, it's so cool. And honestly, this was a dream of mine personally, to move to Charleston. I've always wanted to live near the ocean. Like I'm a mermaid, like I said. So the fact that the pandemic actually allowed that to happen for my family, for my husband is been a real blessing. And it's, it's so inspirational that you were, you were the pioneer of this. So many other people have were doing this before, you know, 2020, but you said 45% of corporate America started going back or started remote working right in April of 2020. So

Liam (19:49):

Yes.

Erin (19:49):

Can I also quote something I was looking through? I like sleuthed through your LinkedIn. Okay. And I read a post that you wrote that you cited that in June of 2021, 4 million us workers quit their jobs. Do you think that that was due? And you mentioned this earlier with the great resignation, but do you think this, this massive amount of people leaving work was due to employers asking their teams to come back to the office?

Liam (20:22):

Undoubtedly. Yeah. I mean, data backs that up. So here's the reality work is no longer a place. You can take your work with you. You can just pick it up in your computer and you can take it wherever you want to go. You wanna go to Charleston, go to Charleston. And this is a really empowering moment for a lot of people that have said to themselves, I have this really high paying job in New York. I don't like New York, but I like my job. And I also like the money that it provides. Now that person has 8, 9, 10 other options that are literally a Google search away. And they're probably as much money or more money than their previous position before. So that's the absolute core of the great resignation is these people that now are not necessarily tied to place that labor can move so much more easier, easily than it could before.

Liam (21:17):

This is also producing. I think another wave, which we're going to see very soon, which is I think that the great resignation is going to turn into the great migration. So pre COVID 5 million people on planet earth were what were popularly called digital nomads. So people that work from their computers and they travel the world and that number now by best estimates is 50 million. So we've see the 10 X increase in the amount of people that are basically working from their computers and they're traveling. And I project that's probably gonna go up to what a quarter of a million people, a quarter of a billion people, sorry, by 2030. So we're gonna be seeing this other big shift, which is all of these people that are no longer necessarily going to have a home, but they're just going to travel the world and they're gonna become what I kind of refer to as the new cosmopolitan class, the people that can basically just move from place to place.

Liam (22:17):

And, and I also think by the way, is all of the, all of the products and infrastructure that they're going to need in order to be successful for anyone that's thinking about starting a new business, I would really look at that market because they're going to need a place to live. They're gonna need a place to educate their children. They're going to need a van to be able to travel in. They're going to need to figure out what the best hotels are in a particular location. Airbnb just did this. They made their entire organization location independent. Yes. So everyone at Airbnb can basically be a digital nomad six months out of the year. And that's a really cool thing. And supposedly Airbnb has seen a 17 X increase in the amount of applicants because everyone is really asking for this.

Erin (23:05):

Oh my God. And you know, what's so funny. I mean, I hear this and I hear what you're saying. And I am seeing the stats and I'm feeling it just from even my my own business, which is a small business, but we always were location dependent. We thought Chicago was the only place that we could have an office that the team had to work. It had to live. Once we've opened up this door to hiring new people and any location, the talent comes out of the wood. I mean, it is crazy the talent that you can find when you are location independent, there's so much wonderful talent out there. So let me ask you this. Cause I'm giving my own opinions. What do you think are some of the biggest benefits of remote work?

Liam (23:53):

Oh boy. I mean, <laugh>

Erin (23:54):

Like, if you could name like two, the top two benefits, what would you say

Liam (24:00):

After this podcast? I'm gonna go have lunch with my wife downstairs and then we're gonna go have a walk and have a coffee and then I'm gonna go back to work.

Erin (24:08):

Oh my God. I love it.

Liam (24:10):

That's benefit. Number one. Yeah. Right. So freedom of having the ability to interact with the people that you want to interact with. I lovingly call, I mean, in the United States, generally there isn't arranged marriage, but there is arranged friends because you're stuck in an office with these people. And those are going to become your friends. Now with remote work, you can choose who your friends wanna be. You can work at a co-working space, you can work at a coffee shop. You can work on your own. You can work with your family. I mean, it's really up to you as to how you want to be able to interact with other people. And I think that this is a really exciting moment in it. It not just like in society, but for civilization where we're going to completely reconceptualize how to live. And I, I talk about live because it includes work inside of it.

Liam (25:01):

Right. We've always divided those two, but even just about three blocks away from my house, there's a brand new condo complex going up. And what are they advertise in the front of that condo complex co-working space included with your condo. Now it's like, this is the new shift that everyone is recognizing. And I think we're in the first innings of it. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're not actually adapted towards remote work, if you think that this is just a, a fad, that's kind of going away you've honestly got your head in the sand.

Erin (25:34):

I agree. I agree. I agree. And no, let me, let me flip this. What do you think are the biggest challenge, even though you're a champion of remote work, what are the biggest challenges of remote work?

Liam (25:47):

So, because remote work allows for you to have connections in so many different ways. It also allows for you to disconnect in many different ways. And for people who are introverted as an example, sometimes a little bit more difficult for them to be able to get out there and build those social connections, not only in their work life, but also in their personal lives. When you look at the social net of an individual, generally that social network starts to degrade right after they come out of post-secondary education. And it only pops back up into their sixties when they retire. Huh. And why does it do that? It's because they're out of their work environment. So they're now forced to be able to socialize, right? They have to actually get out there and interact with people. And that's the only reason why that social network increases in their sixties.

Liam (26:41):

And I think a lot of people right, are stuck in this work from home mindset, which is I've gotta stay in my house. There's quite possibly a scary virus outside that may or may not kill me. And that's the only thing that I can do. And I'm stuck here with my dog and my cat and my kids and, and my wife or my husband remote work is you can work from home. You can work in an office a couple days a week. If you want to, you can work at a co-working space. You can work at a coffee shop. You can work on the beach if you want to. I highly suggest you don't do that though, because I did that once.

Erin (27:11):

Yeah, very Sandy.

Liam (27:13):

Yes. It cost me 500 to fix my laptop. Cause I got sand stuck in the laptop. So don't do that. But everything else is a okay. And the beauty of it is that you can go out and you can socialize with people. You've just gotta get yourself out there. I have a coworking space that I frequent here and those are my kind of like cowork buddies, right? The people that I spend a lot of time with people that I might go out for drinks with on a Friday night. And it's not necessarily that big of an issue to go out for drinks with people that aren't necessarily part of your organization. I mean the, before the office, those were just your friends. Yeah. And so I think we all need to be able to get back to that.

Erin (27:54):

I love it. I love it. Yeah. And speaking, you know, I'm gonna go back to your beach thing. Hypothetically, you used to see Instagram pictures of entrepreneurs working from the beach and I'm like, no one does that. Right. Unless you're a mermaid, no one does that. So just sit somewhere with an ocean view, just not in the sand. All right. Well, let me ask you this. So knowing that that's one of the biggest challenges, cause I hear it too. And that's, you know, something we work on here is we help promote connectivity and connection through improv in these remote environments. So in your space, what are three ways that you can promote collaboration within remote teams? What are three things people could do to collaborate with their remote team?

Liam (28:41):

So the first one is implement what I call asynchronous management, which is actually the subject of the book that I've written over the last two years. So asynchronous management is the ability to be able to communicate through forms of collaboration, interaction that don't require someone's immediate attention. I know that that sounds a little bit confusing, but so like a zoom call or a, a slack message or a Microsoft teams' message, which is, Hey, I need you to jump on a call right away to be able to solve problem. X is generally actually counterintuitive towards the success of an organization. Number one, it stresses the heck out of the person that's on the other side of that transaction, but also it interrupts them from their focus. So what we suggest that people do is have more asynchronous forms of communication and collaboration. There's a company called to doist, which is one of the largest task management tools in the world.

Liam (29:40):

And they actually built a video game through text. I don't know if you remember back in like the eighties and early nineties, there used to be a lot of video games where you would just you'd be told you're in a forest, you turn left, right. Or go forward. And they all kind of do it as a group inside of their task management app. And you can come in and jump, jump in and jump out. And there might be a monster that pops up and everyone has to fight the monster. But it's done asynchronously. It's kind of like a chess game that you can basically leave whenever you want and you can come back and jump into it. And that's a really good team building activity. Another one that I would suggest for people to build more collaborative perspectives, that's much more granular is virtual reality.

Liam (30:26):

So we actually have a whole bunch of Oculus rift headsets that we use inside of the company. And we'll collaborate in there. We'll play games in there. And it's a really fun environment because you get some of the nonverbal cues that you don't necessarily get on a zoom call. Like, you know, how tall someone is, you know, how they move their hands. You know, all the little mannerisms that you wouldn't necessarily pick up on zoom that you can get in virtual reality. And I'd probably say the third one for me would be really get people excited about the mission of the company. So I think that at least for remote work sake, it's less about the people and more about the work that you do. So if you can get your team super excited about the work that you're doing, putting that dent in the universe, making that positive change in the world for people, that's something people really align towards and they will work much harder on trying to accomplish something that they're passionate about than something that they don't really care about.

Erin (31:26):

Oh my God, these are awesome, Liam. I love this. And I gotta talk to you about this virtual reality. I can imagine improv would really resonate well in this VR world.

Liam (31:39):

It sure does. And the thing that's even funnier is because you're in virtual reality, you can change your rapper whenever you want. So if you wanna have a 12 foot Mohawk and you know, 12 eyes you can do that in virtual reality. It's a really cool environment. By the way, we did have a couple HR problems cause we had people showed up like in string bikinis and something like that to their virtual kind of lunch and learn. But as long as you have general rules, which work from a, from a work perspective, it's a really, really cool environment. And I think that's only going to grow as apple comes out with their headset over the next year, Facebook is building a completely brand new one. That's going to be much more high, higher fidelity than the previous version. So I think that virtual reality is, again, one of those industries that's just starting,

Erin (32:28):

Oh my God, me too. I can't wait. I can't wait to never leave my house and just be like an avatar and be like, yes. And, and yes, and, and, and like, people are like all across the world anyway. Okay. This is fascinating. I'm loving what's happening here. I, I wanna ask you this in the same vein of threes, would you say that the ways that you promote collaboration are also the, the ways that you ensure productivity in remote teams? Or do you have any other tips for our audience of how you can ensure productivity happens? I think a lot of them go hand in hand, but I'm just curious if there's something that, that we missed.

Liam (33:03):

So first thing, ground rules, people have to actually be excited about their work. Yeah. But that's whether they're not they're in an office or outside of an office, but I think there is more of an opportunity to not necessarily communicate that excitement or that vision as much when you are remotely, you just have to do it in a different way. So we do it through a lot of asynchronous video content. As an example, we do an all hands meeting where me and my business partner will do like a 20 minute video with really high production value, you know, with cool editing and, and, and music in the background and all that kind of stuff. And how we measure people's engagement is how many people watch the video and how long did they watch it for? That's what we really actually look at. It's not the model that we currently see right now in remote work, which is okay guys, it's Friday.

Liam (33:56):

So everyone has to show up at 5:00 PM to the required zoom call, where we all play cards against humanity, but the HR friendly version, not the actual fun version. And your beer will be FedEx to you at 5 25. And everyone is, you know, has to, has to work on or has to answer a whole bunch of questions that they don't really necessarily wanna answer. I call that culture by gunpoint and it's not fun. If you set up an anonymous survey and you send it out to your team and you ask them, would you like to do more of that or less of that? Generally you're gonna get 90% of those people that say, well, we wanna do less of that. And that's the issue is you need to meet them where they are. What do they wanna do? Do they wanna go in VR, put 'em in VR?

Liam (34:40):

Do they want to not interact at all in that way? Do they wanna actually just communicate through slack messages and, and that's fine for them, but they're still engaged. Great. You need to be able to meet them where they are. And this is the thing that I think the vast majority of these people, and it's not their fault. They were thrown into a situation that's completely different, right? They had one way of working for the past, literally 120 years. And then we got thrown in a completely different way of working. So the rules have changed, but I am telling you that, you know, it's now been two and a half years. You should adapt to those new changes.

Erin (35:16):

Oh my God. Yes. Love it. And it's so true. I know it's very, it's a very different world of, of the beginning of 2020, when everybody was like, let's do a happy hour. I was talking to people I haven't talked to in years. I'm not even talking about work related. I'm talking about like high school. People were like coming outta the word work. Like we can talk again. And I'm like, we've had this for forever. So I, I hear what you're saying. You really have to meet people where you are and, and where they not, where you are, where they are. Let me ask you this. So now that most teams are hiring remotely, what would you tell leaders to start doing when it comes to hiring remotely? And what would you tell leaders to stop doing when it comes to hiring remotely?

Liam (35:59):

So start doing is, it's not about whether people use slack or Microsoft teams or zoom or Google meet. If you're asking those questions, then you don't actually know the answers that you're looking for, which is the worst position to be in. What you need to recognize is that management has changed because the entire work environment has changed. We're no longer in an office we're working from home, we're working from co-working spaces, you know, and you need to be able to adapt your management philosophy to that same framework. I personally really like asynchronous management. That's why I've written a book about that particular subject, but each to their own, just think about how you can actually change your managerial, you know, theoretical framework now that everyone is working remotely and something that they should, something they should start doing and stop doing. Right. That was

Erin (36:54):

The question. Yeah. Yep, yep.

Liam (36:54):

Yeah. Yeah. So they should start doing that <laugh> and they should stop really providing this environment of imediacy that I think is actually really stressing people out. Yeah. I don't know about you. I don't know if you've ever worked in corporate before, but if you ever get a message on like a task management app or on slack or Microsoft team saying, Hey, could we talk tomorrow for 15 minutes? Do you know how much stress that's putting the other person?

Erin (37:25):

Oh yeah. On

Liam (37:26):

The other line of that through what is that about? Am I gonna get fired? Did they find out about this is, you know, is something else gonna happen to me? And so one of the rules that we have is we will never have an open-ended question like that. We will Al we will always say, Hey, I'd like to meet with you because of this particular issue or this problem, just so that everyone's very, very clear on what we're meeting about and how we can actually move through it together. I think that a lot of people kind of leave difficult conversations to the absolute last minute. And this actually creates a lot more anxiety than you necessarily need to

Erin (38:07):

Have. Oh my God, Liam preaching two Aqua of people, which is me. I did this to one of my teammates on slack the other day. I literally said it was so I was so excited because we got some great news. And so I slacked her and I said, Hey, this is Jenna, our client experience director. And I said, Jenna, can we talk for two minutes? Like nothing. Like, and she literally was like oh my God. Yes. And like picked up the phone called me. She was like, Erin, what's wrong. Oh my God. And she's like freaking out. And I'm literally like, oh my God, I'm blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This happened. And she goes I'm so you just made me so nervous with your slack message. I teach on communication, Liam. And this is like 1 0 1. So I vowed never to do that to her or to anybody again. But I love that stop, stop doing it. We can't do that to people because it actually especially in this environment of remote work, that is a tonality issue with communication. We're using written communication and the tone of that can be constrained so completely different. So I, I appreciate that.

Liam (39:11):

There's two other things that I wanna add on to that, which is always assume positive intent. Yeah. So if you're on the employee side, just always assume a positive intent until you actually meet with that person synchronously. And then another one that a buddy of mine, Aiden, who runs a company called fellow, is this really great saying, which is no agenda, no agenda. That's him. Oh, I like that. He said, Hey, you know what, if there's no agenda, then I do not attend. And I thought that that was really cool because then it, it relieves a lot of that stress of particularly on the employee side. Cause I think a lot of the times we miss out, I mean, this podcast is obviously for the managers and the business owners, but you don't recognize the amount of stress that you're putting your people through by literally saying, we need to talk for 15 minutes tomorrow. Yeah. That is something that they, that they have sleepless sleepless nights over. And you really need to be able to nip that in the butt as quickly as

Erin (40:08):

Possible. Oh my God. I love that. No agenda, no agenda. Thank you, Aiden. And thank you Liam, for sharing that, cuz that is now gonna be, I'm gonna steal that. I mean, I'm, I'll quote you and I'll quote Aiden. Okay. So love that. Let me ask you this. This is a question we ask everybody on the show, improve it. The, it is whatever your purpose is. What is your it? So we say, it's that thing that you wereit here to do. What is Liam's it you've said it before, but I just wanna cap it. What is your it, or the thing that you want to bring to the world

Liam (40:42):

Assist in the world's transition towards remote work?

Erin (40:45):

Yes. Yes.

Liam (40:47):

In any way possible that I can that's my it.

Erin (40:50):

Yeah. And you're crushing it. What a cool, I mean you have literally the coolest story. I love what you're doing. So tell the improvement, peeps where they can find you, if they wanna connect with you, they wanna get your book, tell them all of the things we're gonna link to all of it in the show notes. And also tell them about running remote as well, which is something we didn't get to talk to. So anything you wanna share where they can find you.

Liam (41:12):

Yeah. So running remote is the conference that I run. You go to running remote.com. You can check that out. It's the largest conference on remote work actually just ran one literally two weeks ago. But there is gonna be another one next year. And if you can't wait for that, just go check out the book, go to running remote.com/book. It's actually of the same name. So it's super easy, just type in running remote into Amazon. And you'll be able to find the book coming out August 16th. And then if you can't afford the book or a ticket to the conference, go to youtube.com/running remote. All of our talks are up there for free. And we talk about remote work, the tactics and strategies that you need to be able to build and scale your organization. And it's a really great spot to be able to, I think, get like a master's degree in remote work very quickly and on YouTube,

Erin (41:59):

I'm checking it out and we're gonna have all the links here for our audience to check it out too. I think what you're doing is so awesome. So you've nailed it, Liam. You nailed it. And it's not even remotely possible to give all of the juicy nuggets, chicken nuggets of wisdom away like you did today. So I wanna say thank you so much for giving them to us. We are forever grateful for this wholesome meal of virtual goodness. Thank you so much for being on this show and we appreciate you.

Liam (42:27):

Thanks for having me

Erin (42:36):

Improve pees. Okay. Liam is crushing the remote work game. I feel remotely better after this conversation. No, I feel a lot better about this conversation because I'm leading a remote team and he definitely gave me some really awesome ways to promote collaboration that I don't think about. So let's recap those number one, communicate in ways that people don't need your immediate attention. So the slack messages, I, I love slack as a way to communicate, but they are sometimes distracting. So really think about ways that you can offer up support to your team in a different way that doesn't require them to stop doing what they're doing in the moment. Number two, he talked about you saying virtual reality, which I love his, his thought process that that's actually gonna become more apparent tests in the future. And then number three, get your team excited about the mission of the company.

Erin (43:33):

You mentioned videos, he mentioned creating things that people can open. So you can see the open rate and understand if people are actually listening. I love this one. And I wanna use number three as your homework because it's so easy to forget in the day to day the why the why we do what we do. So here's my challenge to you improve it. Peeps. I want you if for you're just a leader of your, a small team, a big team. If you are a CEO of your organization to really think about the mission of your organization, I wanna challenge you here. It's gonna feel a little icky, but this is why we do this. We get comfortable with the uncomfortable. I want you to record a 32nd to one minute video. That is a reminder to your team about your why, why you show up every single day.

Erin (44:27):

And I want you to send it to them in an email, all right? Not on slack where they think they have to open it, immediately send it to them in an email so that when they have the time they can take it, they can open it and they can watch it. If you want, you can track it in some way by placing it on YouTube or just send it as an attachment and really focus on the why. So if I were to do this for my team and I'm just shooting from the hip here, it will look something like this. Hey team. I just wanted to say, you're crushing it with our goals. I'm so proud of you. And we are bringing so much laughter, levity and positivity to people all over, not only the United States, but the world. I am so inspired by the work that we're doing by the chicken dances that are happening and by the smiles and connection that we've been able to create in the room and in the zooms with everybody that we've been able to impact over this past six months, six months into 2022.

Erin (45:25):

And we are crushing our goals and we are really bringing laughter levity, positivity, and connection to people through laughter play and experiential learning. So I just wanted to give you a shout out and say, good job. Keep going. Let's continue to make the next six months the best yet. Something like that. Just shooting from the hip here. All right. But that's our why that is our mission. So think about your, why your mission and really send a note. Whether it's video, if somebody's just listening right now, probably just hit pause because they're like, I am not sitting a video. Aaron, you are nuts. You have, you are off the rocker. Okay, listen, I get it. Video can be scary, type it up, put it in a note, but remind them of the mission because it's gonna bring them back to why they get up every single day, open their laptop in whatever location that they're at and reminds them why they're doing the work that they do.

Erin (46:22):

I love you improve it! Peeps. I really do. I am so proud of the work that you're doing. I really am. And this is my love letter to you. You know what I'm gonna say? I want you to keep failing every single stinking day, keep improving because we need that special. It that only you can bring so proud of you go out there and crush it. Bye. Hey friends, thanks for tuning in to improve it. I am so happy you were along for the ride. If you enjoyed this show, head on over to iTunes to leave us a five star review and subscribe to this show. So you never miss an episode. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Now, if you're really feeling today's show and you've improved it even just a little bit, please take a screenshot and tag me at keeping it real deal on Instagram and share it in your stories. I'll see you next week, but I wanna leave you with this thought, what did you improve today and how will that help your future successful self? Think about it. I am rooting for you and the world needs that special. It that only you can bring see you next time.

 
 

Erin Diehl
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