Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akio and if you're interested in
working from anywhere company culture and how to build trust,
this episode is for you Joining me today.
I have two guests, Marlene Coppert, Head of People
Experience over at Tenka and Sebastian Becker, CTO over at
Tenka as well. They are both on this work from
Anywhere journey and they're here to share what they've
learned. I'll put all their socials in
the description below, check them out.
And with that being said, enjoy the episode.
Beyond commoding, You called me. You were in the mountains,
somewhere in the mist, and no one has ever thought that I was
like, you're on vacation. I didn't expect you to answer.
Yeah, I'm always a part of me is always on.
And I was with the kids and they were, they were walking on this
bridge that I thought, it's scary and I thought you're
calling this is a good break as well next to you also.
Yeah, they've ran over the bridge.
It was over a ravine, so I was really happy to say sorry I'm
busy, so it's saved by you on that part.
That's really funny. But I'm not always on, but I'm a
lot of times I'm still on thinking about stuff, doing
stuff as well. It's not that I say to the kids,
Hey, don't bother. But if.
If the moment is there, I'll, I'll pick it up and I'll fix it.
Yeah, so everyone also brings like you bring your laptop and
like work phone and stuff like that.
But it's also right, like, like we discussed, right?
You have several types of people.
Some people really like to separate work from life.
Yeah, personal life. Because work is part of your
life. That's my view.
So I don't feel like my work is intruding my holiday, so I don't
feel. That someone is expecting me to
open up my laptop. I just, you know, I'd like to do
some things. Yeah, while on a holiday,
exactly. And you can still wind down,
even though that part of you is sometimes still think about
work. Yeah, because especially when
you have time to wind down, right?
That's when you start thinking about things where you might not
have the time to think about when you're busy working.
Do you have an example of that? Like there was there in this
vacation period, something where you were like, when I come back,
I'm going to pick this up. Well, what I'm usually doing in
my summer break is think about. So most people think the year
runs from January to December, right?
My year usually starts after my summer break.
So then I'm thinking, okay, what's up for the coming
quarter? What's up for the coming year?
How do I organize that? What should I tell my team about
it? How?
Those are the things that are then on my mind.
I love that. I've never thought of it because
in my head it runs through jam through December.
Sometimes fab because that's when I get my raise, my parents.
But taking the time when you're away, whether that's summer or
some people go away in winter and reflecting and taking that
as kind of a fresh start, I like that perspective a lot.
It works for me right? So it might not work for
everyone, but for me it works. Yeah, yeah, you get that.
So everyone's like refreshed and recharged batteries and stuff.
That's like the school we both worked in a school there.
Yeah, you have it right. You do your year and then over
the summer you think, hey, what I'm going to do different?
What's gonna change? Yeah, that really helps.
Yeah, summer. I mean, school.
School times also have like a longer vacation.
Yeah, like a six week. I mean, elementary school uni
was different, was sometimes 8 weeks.
And then you're just out of it and you're reorganizing and
making sure you're ready for the next year.
Yeah. And then and if you look at it,
educators, they wind down, right?
So the last two weeks is really reflecting on the year and then
you ramp up for the next year, you start thinking about what
you're going to lecture that year and how it's going to work.
So there's also sort of easing into the holiday and then easing
out out of it as well. I think I'd do that as well.
Cool. Can you elaborate on what you do
or what you did kind of working with schools and educating in
that way? Yeah, I was as a director of
seven schools and it was vocational education.
So and this was really about helping the curriculum and also
connecting to the work field. And there was in the hotel
industry, so totally different from here, but it helped me to
see craftsmanship. So I did hotel management school
as well, but this was on the restaurant level.
And there you see how people really want to go, where they
want to go and also how the industry takes these people
along, how to make sure that they stay and they want to stay.
And especially in the restaurant in the streets, hard, right.
You train someone and they can work anywhere because of the
skill set. So that was interesting for me
and some. And sometimes in tech we we tend
to forget, right. We want the Super seniors and we
want them to hit the ground running.
And there's the restaurant in the streets, like Okay if you're
skilled and if you want to. You can learn and and you can
get to the complex part like a Michelin star restaurant where
it's really complex. So it's interesting to follow.
Yeah, I can imagine. Do you think in the tech world
it's the same that where you have the skills, you can go into
an organization and hit the ground running the people that
are really good or is there some additional stuff that's involved
as well? I think it's additional and if
you look at a formal restaurant it's easier because every.
Everyone will follow the French setup, right, with the chef, the
cuisine and everything there. So it's easy to know your slot
in an organization. Whereas I think that if you're a
senior developer, it means something else in a different
organization than the other one. Yeah, So there's a difference, I
think, and it's harder to slot in.
It might be an idea to think about it in that way.
I think it's also it also has to do with how you organize, right?
Because I've been working in restaurant business where we
work with non professionals. And then we just made sure that
we were organized in a way that a non professional could work in
that system. So you could also think about
how to make a setup where you would start with non
professionals and non developers and how you could train them on
the job, but then they it's necessary that they have the
skill set, which is think about curiosity, learning, mindset.
Things like that, to really make that work.
Have you have you tried a program like that or something
similar? Because we we try to act CB.
Actually I was one of the people that pitched for it where we
have a bar that is quite high. Because it is a consultancy
company, we expect a certain level of expertise.
But I joined actually, and I only had one year of work
experience when it came to software development.
So I was always kind of an edge case, kind of.
They took a flyer on me basically.
And The funny thing is after I got hired, I could see through
their internal recruitment system what was said about my
application and who was pro and who was against them.
That was really fun reading back to it.
But now that I've been here for three or four years especially,
I mean back years when I pitched this, I wanted to pay it
forward. Also for people that have a
great mindset, have that curiosity and drive that you're
looking for are really a sponge and are looking for knowledge.
Because I feel like, I mean we advocate for knowledge sharing,
so it should be something that we do anyways and I feel like
people that come in with a fresh perspective also add to a team.
So then we developed kind of this program where people would
join that have less work experience than what we usually
look for. We train them for a month when
it comes to ways of working processes, some technical skills
as well and then we make sure they land in a team within a
consultancy assignment. It's also aligned with the
client. They have a different hourly
rate. Everything should be fine.
And that's a program we started off with the beginning of this
year. We hired 2 people as kind of a
proof of concept to see how it would land.
And it was a lot of fun doing it actually.
I talked to people and they were like okay.
Now that we've been doing this for a bit, it's been now eight
months actually. How's it gone?
And there were some challenges and some some interesting
tidbits along the way. I really liked the first month
of training. I'm.
I'm a horrible planner and I had to plan the whole thing.
So also some some things fell through the cracks where there
was like okay, we expected this person to show up.
They're actually at home, they can't be there.
This other person also is knowledgeable about this thing.
They can give the training. So stuff like that we also did
on the fly and the people landed the assignments and they're
they're right now really happy with the decision they made to
join this company because they're learning a lot.
Cool. Yeah.
Your question.
We haven't tried it. So we take juniors from school,
Yeah. And we train them and we try to
get them. To commit codes as soon as
possible. But we haven't really taken what
you say, right? Amazon does the same, right?
If you don't have education, you can still grow into that part.
Yeah, we haven't done that yet. Actually.
It's a good idea. Yeah.
Curious, will you, will you expand that from 2 to 20?
We'll try because also right now with regards to the economy,
we've had challenges finding the right assignment for the people
that we hired back then. So with that in mind, we still
want to make our sales pipeline a bit more robust before we try
this again. But everyone I talk to is really
enthusiastic. They even want to be involved so
they can share what they learned for the new round, let's say and
expand it. So I'm hoping yes, but our sales
needs to be a bit more robust so we can land an assignment easier
for them for the new people that would land.
Yeah, I'm back going back to the schools.
If you go back to the schools and discuss it with them, yeah,
that will make the the, the, the break from from from school to
to work also a much easier. So it's interesting we're trying
to get to that like from the educational journey.
We pick them up. Yeah, that's not where we're at
right now. We went through, OK, this is our
bar and we're going to go a little bit below that.
So we do have bad people that have work experience but not the
work experience that we require. So we can help them with that
one month of training in in bridging the gap, but I
definitely also because I like working with people that are
kind of a blank canvas in that way.
I definitely want to go from that educational route and then
they join our organization to learn and grow from.
I think that's just a lot of fun.
Yeah, it is. And it will also help change the
industry, right, because it's still you have to have this,
this, this type of of of background or or this type of
experience or that they're interlinked, yeah.
And changing that is, is also core, I think.
Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to how you hire
and what you're doing at Tinka, you mentioned actually Marlene
in our in our intro call that you've hired someone even from
Kenya. And the thought that popped in
my mind back then, I was like, if you're hiring globally in
that way, in a fully remote way of working, how do you make sure
that the culture and the people still work together effectively
as you want them to? Yeah, well.
As we discussed, right, it's it's not like we started this
work from anywhere strategy just because we thought that was a
fun thing to do, right? That was a strategic choice,
knowing that we would need some specific talent that we probably
could not find in Zula, the Netherlands or maybe even
Europe, right, So. That's when we started thinking
how to solve that problem. And because of COVID and where
everyone saw that working from home wasn't that scary as some
people thought it would be. That's how we how we came up
with that strategic decision to just have this work from
anywhere, policy, its guidelines or strategy, a way of working.
So that's how it started and you don't start with hiring someone
in Kenya, No, right. So we started with Portugal,
Germany, countries like that. And what I see in Tinka is
because everyone is working from anywhere, you don't have this
distinct, you don't distinguish between okay.
So you have 50 people in an office and you have 10 people
working from anywhere. That doesn't work.
That doesn't feel like one team. But if everyone is working from
anywhere, then everyone is the same, so most meetings are
remote. So it's not like you're meeting
with 10 people who are physically in a room and you're
the only one those are all trying to participate in a
meeting online. So that helps.
And what we also do is organize events where teams or even the
entire company gets together. And there we there we put
emphasis on social cohesion. So we don't ask people to come
to the Netherlands for as we say, think a penance day which
is our annual think up party, to just sit them down and board
them with 800 slides about information.
No, we we invite them to come over and just spend a nice day
with colleagues. Love that.
And. Well, I have seen that people
respond quite positively to that.
So I'm certainly planning to to keep that.
And of course, right as you said, how, how do you make sure
that you have a culture? But I think that that's always
an interesting conversation, right.
And the first question that then immediately pops up with me is
yeah, but what is it? Culture, right?
Because sometimes I get the feeling like people discuss this
as as this okay, this is the culture.
Almost as you could put it in a box or so, right?
Or I think it's culture is mainly about behavior.
So culture is how you do things in your company and I think you
you can align that also when you're working from anywhere.
And of course you don't have the water cooler conversations,
right, because there is no water cooler.
So you have to be intentional. Think about what can you
organize to to make that happen? And well, if you ask me that,
that is sometimes as simple as, let's see, I have 10 minutes in
my calendar, let's call someone. How are you doing?
Yeah, as simple as that. It's it's as simple as that.
And you see people who are who quite naturally pick that up and
you see people who who would then say, yeah, HR should
organize something for me. And it's.
And it's like, okay, That's interesting, right?
Yeah, that's a different mindset, I guess.
But that's a different mindset and again, there's no wrong or
right, so you need to. That's also about different
people looking at things differently.
And how do you cater for all sorts of personality types?
Yeah, that's where I thought the challenge was going to be,
right. Because you, even though you
start small, you start with a specific culture, right?
The way you do things around here, Yeah, basically.
And then you hire, you went gradually, you went to Portugal
and Germany, which are still kind of adjacent, some a bit
further than others. But then they come in and they
can see the existing work culture, but they bring in their
previous work experience, how they've done it previously,
their previous cultures as well. Do you feel like your culture is
then still every evolving when new people come in?
I think in every company culture is an every evolving thing.
So yes, I think it's ever evolving and it's also I look at
culture, okay, what, what is the strategy for the company?
What is the plan and what is the, what is the company's
current state of mind that's that's culture, right.
And is there a match or isn't there a match.
So for example, when we carved out Tinka, we knew we had to
make the step to really become this innovative.
Learning organization, sometimes willing to take calculated
risks, and that was a different form of behavior than.
How the company previously operated, Yeah.
So then you know, you have to have a culture change, right?
But if as soon as you say it's culture change, everyone goes
like, oh, that's, I don't know, yeah, where are we going?
You know, because with change, right.
It's like everyone, everyone says, yeah, it needs to change
and then, but that also means that you have to change now.
I don't have to change. The other people have to change,
right? So I think we took quite a low
profile approach there. And as I said, right, culture is
behavior in your organization. So if you need to change
something there, then what you're actually talking about is
change of behavior. And how do you do that?
Well, you can read 1000 books about it, but what always helps
me is quite a simple structure for it, which is you need to
prioritize the behavior you need.
You then habitualize people with that behavior and then you put
the systems in place or you check whether all your systems
aligned are aligned with the behavior you want to see in your
company. Exactly.
And that that to me makes it quite simple and quite tangible.
And then the next question is how do you prioritize behavior?
Well, what we did is we said, OK, most people have, most
companies have values. And then we said, yeah, we
probably. Should also have values.
But what is it with values, right?
Because you typically write them on a post or stick them on a
wall somewhere, and then HR tells you that this is how you
in the intro, this is the onboarding, this is the values.
So here's the handbook. Do this, you'll be fine.
And we said, OK, let's not talk about values, let's talk about
virtues, because, and that seems like a small difference, but
virtues is more. It has more of the behavioral
side of things in it already how you describe a value and then
it's like Okay who who tells the people that these are our
virtues. Is that HR now is that the just
the management team or the CEO? No, because you know, if it's
our company, then it's all of us.
It should be everyone. And then of course as HR you can
make sure that this. Project or that this subject
gets the right attention in the company.
So that's the role I took. Yeah.
I organized workshops where everyone that works for the
company would go through the workshop.
And it's not like I was telling people okay.
This is the virtue. This is what it means.
We just had open conversations with people.
Okay. If this is the virtue, what does
that mean to you personally? How do you feel about it?
How do you recognize this in your day-to-day work?
Or maybe you don't recognize it at all?
So then we're not doing what we're telling that we're doing.
So how do you think we can solve that?
Where do you start and that we're.
I really enjoyed doing those workshops.
I can imagine. Yeah, it was super cool.
And what we also did, we did not.
Not only people that were on our own payroll participated, but
also the people we worked with, right?
So independent contractors who would work with Tinka for a bit
longer, they also participated to really get this 360 view on
OK, if you say this, but I see that and there's probably
something, there's something missing.
There's something missing, but also really good to hear, right?
And it's also made. I think it's also.
Something that make people feel proud, right?
Because you're also discussing what is already going really
well. Yeah, exactly.
I feel like having those discussions and having them open
as you laid it out, there's no right or wrong answers, right?
It's an opinion and it's a perception on things that have
happened or things that are happening kind of in your inner
circle. And at the end you can decide if
you accept that or not, what you think of that or not.
But the perceptions of the perceptions right, they have
happened. You just lay them out and you
discuss if this is kind of the way that you want to work
together. Yeah.
If not, you make a change. And if this is how you want to
work together, then you're aligned.
You're going to have the shared mindset of the virtues that you
laid out. And there was another
interesting thing that you did. You mix a lot of different
departments, so it was all in contact.
So you had the people from development talking to the
people in the call center. Yeah.
And they have different contacts, so they have customers
that talk directly to them and the developers are thinking
about how do we build better systems.
So it was also really about sharing that context to to one
company that was also interesting to hear and to see.
Yeah, I can imagine. And you're then there from the
software development side, and I'm assuming you want to
understand all the domains that are adjacent to that, right?
Yeah, exactly. And maybe even even further than
that, right. If you talk to finance,
normally, if you're a developer, if you're in development, you
don't go there. But really, hearing what how
they view the company and what their concerns are is even more
interesting than. Talking to to the direct users
of your systems, Yeah, exactly. And does everyone from the team
or a few people of the team, do they share those kind of
interests and areas of interest? Because me, from a software
engineering perspective, I love knowing about the business, but
that's I think because of the person who I am.
I am innately curious and when we're building something for a
customer, I also want to understand where they come from.
And I would, I would love if that's carried on through the
team as well, but I'm not sure how that would is.
Yeah, it's a it's a personal mindset, right.
So, So some people say, well, I want to know, I want to see
what's happening. I want to understand.
Others are less so and say, well, let tell me what to do.
But in the end, how we hire is that curiosity is always there
in a certain level exactly. Otherwise it's it's going to be
hard. If you're not curious, it's hard
to connect to a remote company as well.
I think I can imagine how have the challenges been in in
working remotely, kind of within the tech side of things.
Have you seen challenges when bringing together those people
that are living in in different areas or is it still doable in
that way? I think it's still doable.
It's also due to the size that we have.
So, so there you can make a direct connection with almost
anyone in the company, right. It's it's small enough that that
it's still manageable in that size.
I think that helps. I think it also helps that most
of the developers, if you look at the community, it started
with development. Now it's also going to the call
center and on other places as well.
But for most of the developers already were used to some sense
of of of remote or not everyone in the same room.
So that made it easier for us. So I don't think that there were
big problems. What you saw happening is.
You had to juniors. You had to really actively get
them out. Like Mernain said, you have to
get those 10 minutes in and think about Okay.
I have to talk to the juniors and not not the seniors, but but
it went fluid gradually. I think the COVID helped there
because then it was what it was forced.
Yeah. And now I don't see anything
that I say, oh, it's a problem. We have to go back or we have to
to manage it in some way. Is it because everyone has kind
of built these relationships you think or do people already speak
the same language because of the technical domain?
What do you think? It is as smooth as it is?
It's a combination and I'm looking at, I'm looking at you
as well. I think that what we saw is we
had a sort of lighthouse. We had a head of Data Science
and Data engineering. He was living in Stockholm and
he really made it his key point and we learned a lot from him.
Because he showed the way, Okay, if I'm going to do it, I'm going
to do this deliberately, Yeah. And that helped us see and also
make the shift in Okay. It's something else than just
not being in the same office. We have to do this in a
different way, I think, and that is interacting together.
Is that what it's talking about? Yeah it's it's it's everything.
So it's a ritual. So the interaction, the social
talks, the knowledge sharing, everything that you do like like
you have at CB, at the XKE, the knowledge exchange.
How do you do that remotely? Yeah, how do you as a team bonds
remotely and and also how do you deal with setbacks remotely,
right. If something goes wrong or an
error is made, how do you get together and learn from it and
also share what what happened right?
Yeah, if you make a mistake and normally in the office someone
will pat you in the back, hey, it doesn't matter.
But how do you do that if if you if you can't talk to to them in
the water cooler? I think that helped us because
he showed us okay. You can do this remotely if you
make that deliver choice, I think.
Yeah, that makes sense. Money.
You wanted to chime in. I saw.
Yeah, I think it. So I think that's part of it,
right. How do you organize and be
intentional about things? Put it on the agenda, yeah.
When I started with Tinka, Tinka didn't have an HR department.
And I'm I'm saying HR department constantly, but our department's
actual name is People experience because we think about employees
as people, not as resources. But that aside, so then I
started and onboarded my team and that's where I was thinking,
okay this, this might be complex, right?
Because the entire team is new in the company, the people
department should, you know, be aligned with what is happening
in the company as a whole. And also for me, how do I make
sure that my new team feels at home in this organization where
I don't see them? Yeah.
So how did we do that? We we just had conversations
about it, right. So.
So when starting with Tinka, they knew where they were
stepping into. So if they were like people who
would like to be in an office for five days, they probably
would have not joined Tinka. Yeah.
So I think that that is step one, yeah, the expectations.
That's expectation management and it's also.
I think one of the upsides of being able to start an entire
new team, right? Yeah, clean slate.
Clean slate. And you know if you have a team
where you have three people that like to be in an office the
entire week, that's that's a different problem you have at
hand. I didn't have that problem.
But what my team did, which was I think really smart and really
cool thing. So they just started working
while having a Slack call open or maybe 70% of the day.
So they would just, you know, be working each in their own home
but having this constant open line, at least with each other.
And I really said to them, listen, I get it, it's hard,
right? It's a new company.
It's there were junior when they when they started working on my
team. So I said listen, if there's
something or worry or you're stuck, just call me and if you
cannot reach me, just text me or slack me or whatever.
I will always prioritize. You over anything else I'm
working on at that moment and I think that's just how we started
it and I want to zoom in on that because we also tried that the
whole open communication channel.
People were saying when COVID happened, like I'm in my
apartment, I'm really alone, I missed the office chatter and
stuff like that. And then we opened up the call
and in some instances it worked. And in some instances where I,
for example, would say to someone, you can always call me,
I'll prioritize it, stuff like that.
It would not always work. I figured there's a certain
skill and probably how you came across to those people.
The trust that you build with them allowed them to step to you
or to any other colleague to ask those questions, cuz it requires
a safe space. How did you kind of engage that
and create that within the new team as well?
I think that's part of right if you.
Really openly discuss. Listen, it's not like a million
companies before have done this for 50 years, right?
And it's also think about it right when when I started
working for Tinka as a head of people in a work from anywhere
environment, most HR people would look at me.
That doesn't work. How do you connect with people
you don't? See the people, right?
So I think. That is part of it, right?
Having that conversation and also being really honest about
it. Now, it is not 100% ideal,
right? There is there.
There are certain aspects of it that aren't that ideal and that
will never be ideal. On the other side, working in a
Openoffice space is not ideal either.
So then it's all about okay if this is a situation, this is a
setup we chose, we deliberately chose.
It's a strategic decision we took.
How do we make it work and how do we make it work for everyone?
And it's also learning by doing it.
And as long as you see the fun and the beauty of that learning
curve, I think there's no again, there's no right or wrong, it's
just okay. This works for us, doesn't work
for anyone. So the team you mentioned,
right? There are also doing things that
don't work for my team. On the other hand, there are
things that I do with my team that won't work in that team.
Yeah, it's it's also taking the space to really again, almost
personalize the experience. Yeah, it's interesting that you
lay that out because the you want your virtues to kind of be
upheld through the teams, right? Yeah.
But the way of working within the team as you lay it out is
apparently flexible. It's more so tailored towards
how do these people want to work together and really form a team,
right? Because you don't start off as a
team. You're a bunch of people
together and then you learn how to be a team by probably trying
things out. There's an open communication
channel work for us or do we do something else?
Do we call up someone when someone needs someone or
something else in that way? Still, I feel like at the
fundamental level, it might have to do with the virtues and how
you get people to jump aboard on the 1st place.
But there needs to be kind of this trust level, this safe
space for people to do that, to be themselves, even though they
are remote with people they have probably never seen in person or
not yet and still be comfortable with that.
Yeah, and for us in tech, what helped was.
If you have a big incident and you do inslect the huddle, you
said open the channel and everyone joins and can join from
the company that also created something because then you're
all there and and what we tried to do then is also make jokes,
do something on site, right. You're not always working you're
waiting for something to happen or someone to come back and and
what we also saw this there was a lot of stress.
There was a lot happening. People were relying on the
systems. They were also in that call.
We just had a chit chat as well, right.
Someone said I'm going to call the vendor, I'm going to call
this. I think that helped us in the in
the early COVID months as well. And we keep that up.
So if there's an incident, anyone from the company can join
and if you're a new joiner and and I'll say, hey join those
channels and listen up because then you hear how people work
together might be that you're. I think you're right.
You triggered me something on trust and then I thought well
there we trying to build the trust.
Everyone does the best that they can.
There's no wrong. Thing there and it's it's all
about keeping the pressure down so you can keep on thinking
might be that there's something there that that helped us, I
don't know. And also with trust, right?
Where wherever people work, mistakes happen.
Yeah, I make mistakes. You make mistakes, everyone
makes them. And I think if you look at
trust, it's mainly how you how you respond or react to
something that went wrong, which then is the proof of the putting
for people OK? Is it?
Can I? Is it trustworthy here, or do
they just say it's all right to make mistakes?
I like that a lot. It probably wasn't a conscious
choice to open up the channel and make everyone or try and
make everyone comfortable. It's just what happened because
of the people, because of the openness and probably the
transparency in the culture. And there's also this paradox of
trust. Or Paradox of Safety, right?
To find out that it actually is safe, or that you can actually
trust someone, you first have to make the first step, which is
where the paradox is right. Try.
So try and then find out what happens.
And then as leadership. Really.
Make sure that you that you don't make mistakes there right
you you can make a lot of mistakes, but as in a leadership
position, you don't don't make the mistake there.
Yeah and it's hard right? Because you're also you're also
people. You also make mistakes also
there. Yeah, also there.
Yeah. And I think it's also right if.
So for example what I do if if something goes wrong right I I
know the people on my team. They are.
They really want to do the right things, right?
They really want to do the right things right.
So whenever they make a mistake, I know that it's probably the
biggest problem for themselves. Yeah.
And then I just ring them. Hey, what's up?
Well, nothing is up. I was just checking whether you
weren't making yourself going crazy.
Exactly. About something that went wrong
earlier today, because that shouldn't happen.
I'm just calling you to say stop it.
Yeah. In other environments, other
people would say you made that mistake and they would kind of
drill down on that. But because you know the type of
people that are in your team, you didn't have to do that.
You knew they were already aware of the mistake and they were
already making sure that wasn't gonna happen again.
Exactly. Or okay.
Let's discuss that. Right.
Yeah. So this happened.
Okay. Not ideal, but the world is not
ideal. Exactly.
Okay, this happened. How do we go about it next time?
How do what can we put in place to prevent this from happening
another time And also making sure right?
It's not like I'm writing this down for your quarterly review
to confront you with. Yeah, I get that.
When we're looking at kind of the foundation that we just laid
out in being effective and still being remote, we talked about
the virtues. We talked about kind of creating
this safe space, allowing for mistakes to happen and building
trust in that way. Is there any ingredient that's
kind of missing that you would still want to add there?
I've something I think that we have a clear purpose so, So what
we said out is we're going to make it better for our
customers. We're going to be more
responsible in in how we do it. As Stinka.
I think that also helped because people really wanted to connect.
If you, if you're remote, you want to connect to the goal more
than if you're not remote. If you if you have the
interviews as well, people are really looking okay, What are
you going to do? What?
Why are you here? I don't know if we chose them,
but but so many of the questions were.
Why do you do what you do? And and the people that ask
those questions, if I really were also the people who were
really successful in getting with us because they were like,
I'm going to, I'm not just going to work here because it's
remote. I want to work here because
we're going to do something I do that I need to understand.
Yeah, I want to understand and I think that was that's also part
of of what's really important and I think that's maybe also
something that you put in every. Opening had those This is why
we're here, yeah. And maybe we funneled or we
filtered out these people that that we're looking for that, but
that helped from the get go. Yeah.
Was that always as crystal clear from the start or was it really
when people were challenging and asking those questions that it
was honed? Yeah, I think the last part,
right, I mean and I think that. You start doing something and
and then you see, hey, there's this side effect is that's
what's happening. And then of course you zoom in
and you think, OK, that's that's what we're going to do.
But I see that that works for us as well.
I think I like that a lot. Also the acknowledgement that
you're not starting off perfect, perfect, right.
Yes, you have a purpose, but it's still kind of malleable.
And I feel like the more conversations you have, the more
people that on board you and that want to kind of go in the
ship and sail with you, the sharper it gets, the more
crystal clear it gets. Yeah, it's like Marlene said on
culture, right? Everyone brings something, yeah.
And that, yeah, it's fly with it's ever shifting.
Yeah, I like that. In working together remotely and
it being going the right way, let's say, have you also
experienced something that didn't go as right that you've
pivoted or still are working on when it comes to challenges
there? Well, I think if you look, if
you look at work from anywhere, I think most people in a company
have a really positive outlook on that, right.
So we have this thing called Office Vibe where people can put
in feedback. And if I look at what people are
positive about and work from anywhere is definitely part of
it, yeah. I think where we can always be
better is in making sure that everyone is aligned with
everything they need to know. On the other hand, I'm not sure
if that would be different if we were in the office so, but I
think being remote makes it a bit more of a challenge.
Yeah, I think it's. It makes it a bit more of a
challenge or it makes it easier for people to say that something
isn't communicated because you're this work from anywhere,
right? So I think it's two sides of the
coin. Interesting.
Basically, and I think as a manager or as a leader in
company, I think for each and every team.
That should be prioritized. Do my people know what they need
to know? Yeah.
Have I communicated everything they need to know at the
earliest moment in an understandable way?
Yeah. And does it land?
And does it land Right, so we have town halls.
And what I do after each and every town hall is call my team
and ask them, OK, what is your take away?
OK, So this part to me, it was a lot of information.
And so what's your take away? You really understand what does
that mean to you? Yeah, so that's, that's a
question I asked them to check. But I also think if you have a
really large team, that's more difficult, I can imagine, Yeah,
yeah, it's gonna be harder. Then I like the kind of checking
because probably if it doesn't land, it's something for you to
improve or whoever that gives that information to improve as
well. And if it does land, then you
know it was well done. It's land that everyone knows.
Now we kind of have to share the mindset of where we're.
Going, or at least from my team. Exactly, Yeah.
Yeah. You wanted to mention something
as well. Yeah, the tunnel is one of the
parts. So we have a centralized tunnel.
But for tech we do this as well with the contacts and what's
happening, I still find that the hardest part to organize.
So one-on-one, it's easier. One on two or three then you can
do it because then the conversation is still happening,
even remote, but having a sort of screen.
And and getting the interaction in, getting the feedback in and
and not always having the sort of water cooling cooler talk
afterwards. That's the hardest part.
I think those town halls getting that in, getting the interaction
and getting the feedback, I'm still struggling with it.
What do you think that is? Is it because kind of the the
grandeur that a town hall brings?
Because you said when an incident happens, for example,
you do have. Those interactions that you're
looking for? Yeah, everyone steps in with a
purpose at that moment, right? Something is broken, something
is happening. And with a town, you set a time
and a date. Everyone shows up, and probably
there was half of the time they're still with their minds
on the problem that they're trying to solve for the next
meeting that's coming up. And then you get all these blank
phases, right? You're talking.
I find it hard maybe maybe the differences with what what do
they expect out of that meeting, but I don't know yet.
I'm struggling with it because I got some memes of of of the
drove people in the same show or the Muppet show.
You you have that that background as well.
We try not to make it too big, but it's hard to make it
interactive and to really get 20 or 30 people to really be there
and and take it in, I think. I can imagine.
Also with with the organization that is growing some stuff that
is going to work well or some stuff that are already
challenges are going to be more apparent.
We're going to have to shift also with the growth of the
company. Is that something you're you're
consciously thinking about with the processes you have now
versus kind of how the company is growing?
Yeah. If I look at it, what I see is
you're always one or two steps behind, right?
You see it when it happened and then you start thinking about
it. So I'm now in the process.
How do I fix it? And to be honest, I've thought
about it a lot. We tried some stuff.
We also tried. You have gathered down where you
can walk around and do stuff. I haven't found the solution for
this one yet. That's maybe the biggest set
back. And then you go and do one and
one and one with smaller groups. But that's also hard.
You give a different message, You miss information.
It's hard. I.
Get a money. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
What are your thoughts on kind of staying ahead with the rest
of the processes when a company is still growing?
Are you actively reflecting what you have now versus where the
company's heading towards or even with growth in just the
amount of people? I think if the answer to that
question would be no, then we're definitely.
Doing something wrong, right? Yeah.
On the other hand, it's not easy to solve this.
Yeah. And you know what?
What I see people do is as soon as someone misses some
information or wants to share some information and it's
always, yeah, let's do that. And that should be in the town
hall. But listen, town halls aren't a
cure for any for every disease, this disease in the company,
right? It's it's not like there's this
magical silver bullet. And I really strongly believe
that doesn't work. So to me it's it's like a
cascade, right. So town hall is just is more
overall information for the entire company and then for each
and every team if you ask me should look into Okay how it
starts with how big is the team. I have a small team, right?
I can quite easily call people after the meeting and just make
sure that that I pinpoint the things that I think are
especially important for the people team.
Yeah, your team is a lot bigger. So as you just said, right, that
that would not work for you. And then the question is how do
what can you organize to also make it work for your team?
Yeah. And I think that is something
that I discussed with most leaders in the company and it's
also not not for every team, the same solution.
I can imagine, yeah. Just like the team processes
within the team. Yeah.
How the communication structures are in place is also and also I
think right. If you if you speak with people
and something goes wrong, probably the first thing that is
mentioned is communication. So something went wrong because
of the communication that was missing or wasn't well or wasn't
timely or whatever. Yeah, maybe that is the case,
but not in 100% of the cases. So I think part of it is asking
people questions. What do you mean?
What information is missing? And some people, some people
just want to want to know a bit more about the strategy.
But other people just want to make really need their manager
to point out, OK, so this is what it means to you in your
day-to-day job, yeah. This is the impact.
So then again, right, it is
about interacting. Yeah, asking questions and
having an honest conversation about it.
Yeah. And also being probably being
flexible in that position to kind of tailor fit to whatever
the people need, right. If people want to understand
more so the strategy, then at that point in time you have to
lay that out. And if people want to know kind
of the impact in their day-to-day, then at that moment
you have to explain that a bit more, communicate that more.
Feel like it's really hard to be in a position like that and not
be flexible. If you're like, this is my rear
of the hallway, then it's not gonna work.
Or you're only gonna have the same people and people like you
probably, yeah. And if you have that right, then
diversity. It's not gonna work.
It's not gonna happen, no. No, no.
You need to be flexible. That is like at the ground, but
I think that makes it more complicated for managers, right?
Yeah, it's easier to lead A-Team where everyone is the same,
where everyone has the same needs and wants and things in
the same way. Yeah, but it's also not fun.
No, it's not fun. And also it has flaws, right?
I think back because I used to say this in elementary school,
I'd be like if there was a team of me's, we would have this
done. And now I know I have so many
flaws that I'm like now. This part would would get done
really well and this part would not get done at all.
Yeah. So that's I think it takes some
realization and probably you have to have been in that
position, you have to have worked with people that are more
diverse, like the fondness memories of a team.
I had was when we had like 10 different nationalities where I
would sit at the lunch table, look around at my team and this
was also kind of a team within a bigger team.
But sure, I I would count the nationalities and we would have,
we would have 10 different ones in a group of like 1415 people.
I thought that was really cool because I I was growing not just
on a technical level, on a professional level, but on a
personal level. I learned about their cultures.
They made me excited to travel there.
It was on a bigger level than just work, and I feel like where
work and personal life kind of assimilate, especially because
we can do that now with remote working, is where you're going
to have the most joy, the most flexibility else as a person,
and hopefully grow the most as well.
Yeah, in. Kind of rounding off this topic
of remote working and effective working, is there anything that
is still missing that you still want to add on?
Cuz otherwise I want to go into kind of my last thought, which
is how you two got to work together as long as you have
been. Is there anything that was still
working and missing? Sorry.
No, I think we covered quite a lot.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Cool. Then who can take a stab at how
you two got to work together and still have been working together
for so long? Who wants to kick that off?
Normally I do this at the start, but I like to round off this
time. I think we met at Vacom Okay.
Yeah, where you are a team manager and I was the HR
business partner for the department.
I had never worked in technology.
Okay, this was like a first time so I would join standups where I
could literally not understand any work that was set.
Did you know what a standup was? Sebastian told me.
Okay, that's good. And then at night, because my
husband also works in technology, I would ask him
bunch of questions, right? To not look stupid at work.
But I think it only took me a few weeks to really like that
technology environment and mainly the people working in it.
Yeah, I think in a different life I could work in technology,
right? So yeah, that really felt like I
was. I found my place.
You were working as an IT manager and we were working
together quite a lot because there was a transformation going
on back then. Yeah, yeah.
And what I liked in the conversation is talking about
systems like we do on this table.
What's happening here? Why is it happening and what's a
layer beneath it? And and why are the actors
acting and the way that they do. That's something that that I
like to to see and and to see how can I influence, how can I
make it better. And that's all from the get go.
We're there, right? You didn't know what a stand of
us may be. But you did know how a group
works together and you see that right away in a stand up with a
visual visualization of everything.
And in that part you hit off right away.
You said, I don't know what's happening here, but I see that
this is happening. And and that's how we took off
right away and and from there then you see a lot happening,
you learn OK, let's do it differently.
I think that we also in the transformation we had a lot of
Ouch moments, a lot and and we also had a lot of moments where
we didn't agree. Yep, Yep, Yep.
I think that's also healthy to not always agree, but to
challenge each other in that way.
Yeah, and that's also cool, right?
And and then then way back in this conversation, you spoke
about trust. Yeah.
And I think that is what is most important, right?
There have been times where we would disagree very, very
firmly. But I would always trust that we
would find a solution. Yeah, Somewhere, somehow.
And that it wasn't personal. Is that hard to not take it
personal when it comes to like you have this common common
interest, right? The shared passion, even
sometimes. And when you disagree, you can
take that objectively. This is what we disagree on, and
I feel like some people also take that personally.
It's different for different cultures.
Sometimes it's faster than others, but it is a challenge, I
feel like. Have you experienced that as
well? Yeah, for me it is, because I
think that the way if you try to change things, you take a lot of
yourself into the job, right? Otherwise, if you're really
detached and you're completely the objective observer, you
can't change the system, right? You have to be in that system in
order to change it. So from time to time it's hard.
That's also what you say to me that I'm like I want to fix and
and I've just tried to get it fixed and like.
Chill. So that's maybe also the trust
that you get the feedback. You know both.
You're in it, You also want to change things, and you have
things that yell dearly. But if you have the trust that
you can also have that meta discussion that that's
important, I think. I think you share a goal and you
you share how you would look at things from a moral side of
things. Maybe even.
Yeah. And then life happens, right.
Or in our case, work happens. Yeah.
And then then it is about the
paradox of safety, paradox of trust.
OK. So we now, I think the first
time I said something that wasn't that nice.
And then he looked at me, Whoa. And I was like, yeah, it's not
nice to hear. I get it.
But it's not. Not true.
Exactly for a reason. And as I walked away, I was
like, okay. Now let's see.
Yeah, what happens? Yeah, because I'm the kind of
person, right. Most people would think I'm kind
of direct, but I would, to give that direct feedback wouldn't do
that all the time. So to do that, I think that for
me was one of the was a moment to check whether I think I can
trust this guy. But what happens if I?
What have? What happens if I tell him this?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Because if it breaks, then you know it's it's not to trust next
time. Yeah, so.
I I passed the test. I think it wasn't easy, right?
So you get something that goes to your core and you get, you
get feedback. You're like first you're angry,
right? If you get that what she's
saying and then you go back and yeah, she's got a point.
And then you also think why does it?
Hit me. So I was anything, yeah.
Why does it sting? And it's at your core and then
you think, OK, yeah I have to think about this one.
So, so that's that's how we do it.
I can also think about 100 times where I would be, well, not
panicked, right, But worried about something and I call you
and then you would tell me something and then you would
say, yeah, does this doesn't help, right?
No, not at the moment because I'm too emotional.
But tomorrow this will help me. So thank you anyways.
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I like that a lot. I mean, the hard part is like
I'm I'm a software engineer most on the day today and I work in
teams and the teams of various sizes, right?
I know people that I work with that are close to me, that I
have built up that relationship, that we have had those
discussions and we're still out of it together probably and and
we know each other more because of that.
But as the team grows and also with more people.
Having that kind of team quality that you would have with A1 on
one or one like in a in a group of three, it gets trickled down
with more people. And I feel like that is that is
kind of the challenge that we have with creating software in
that a team size matters a lot, but I don't know if it if it is
known that it matters a lot. Sometimes I feel this kind of
urge if people, if there's more people than the problem, the
solving of the problem goes faster or the solution is there
faster. And I thoroughly disagree with
that because I'm in the team. Basically.
So to hear you say that you two work effectively because you've
gone through a lot, you've been open and honest with each other
a lot as well. I feel like that makes a lot of
sense because it is kind of that one-on-one dynamic.
And then for me to have that with each individual of a team,
let's say of seven people, that's just not going to happen.
That's going to go years down the line before we have that
with each individual and probably that team is not going
to be the same then as well, no. I agree.
Yeah. Cool.
I want to round it off here. I want to thank you both so much
for coming on. How was this?
Was this as nervous as you thought it was going to be, or
did it? Was it as nervous?
Yeah. More of a sort of normal
conversation that we have about teams.
That's good and and I like your question, so it was really cool.
Thank you. Thank you as well.
Same goes for me, right? I told you when we met last
week, had the first conversation.
I immediately liked the way you asked questions.
So awesome. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Cool.
I'm gonna round it off here then.
Everyone. I'm gonna put Sebastian and
Marlene socials in the description below.
Check them. Outlet them know you came from
our show. And with that being said, thank
you for listening. We'll see you on the next one.