EP018 - Remote works - how to make work better with Ali Greene of Remote Works Consulting
About the episode
This episode focuses on remote work habits. How to make work better, how to build better remote working habits, and how to create better remote teams. I had a great chat with Ali Greene, who co-authored a recently published book, Remote Works.
About the guest
Ali is the co-author of Remote Works: Managing for Freedom, Flexibility. A remote worker and leader since 2014, Ali has experience growing the fully distributed team at DuckDuckGo from 30 people to nearly 100 people in four years as their Director of People Ops. Before co-founding Remote Works Consulting she was most recently sharing her remote work expertise as the former Head of Culture and Community at Oyster, where she hosted their Distributed Discussions podcast. Ali was named a "Remote Accelerator" in the 2022 Remote Influencer Report by Remote. Ali's mission is to empower people and companies, helping them thrive in making work (and life!) better.
About the host
My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. My mission is to help and inspire a community of remote leaders who can bring more autonomy, transparency, and leverage to their businesses, ultimately empowering their colleagues to be happier, more independent, and more self-conscious.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Want to become a guest on the show? Contact me here.
Quotes from the show
Remote work is letting people do their thing. It's about letting them figure out how they work best instead of telling them how they work best.
People operations need to revisit employee benefits. It's not about the benefit. It's about why the benefit exists. What purpose and behavior are you trying to encourage employees to have?
While I think we're seeing organizations decide if their company will lean into hybrid or fully distributed, it is up to the managers to make the remote work process successful for their employees. And I hadn't seen that done intentionally because I don't think managers knew what that looked like.
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Welcome everyone. Yet another day to talk about the future of work and the future of leadership. Today we will talk about remote work and remote work advocacy. In recent weeks, a new book called Remote Works has addressed the fundamental challenges of remote people, operations, and culture. I have one of the authors with me, Ali Greene. Hi Ali, how are you?
Hi, good. Thanks so much for having me.
Really love that you are here because this is a really important topic and the book is really amazing. I asked the very same question from everyone because this whole remote world and remote journey is totally different for everyone how they got there. So what was your journey? How did you end up working remotely on the first place.
Yeah, so I love this question because I usually answer it with one starting place in mind, but since writing the book, I realize my journey was even earlier than I first imagined it by just changing the definition of what remote work could be. So I normally start my story back in 2014, I was living in New York, and for those who have visited New York City or have lived there, you know, It is just a world of chaos and noise and fast-paced humanity, and that is not how I think any of my friends would describe me. So how I ended up living there and doing the hour long commute by foot, by subway to get to an office every day by 8:00 AM was just a whole another lifetime ago, and something that I thought I needed to do to prove myself in the US as I was climbing the corporate ladder. And I found myself deeply unhappy there. And it wasn't necessarily because of the work that I was doing. I was doing learning and development, and I loved it. I loved seeing people grow in their career, in their confidence and learn new skills. But I hated the fact that every day I was in an office. Sitting in one place, not feeling like I had the freedom to choose when I could be creative, when I could be productive, and when I could focus on things outside of work such as dating or working out. Because at the time I was in my twenties and those were things that were important to me and it was very cliche but I knew I had to do something big to pull me out of New York City, and so I decided to quit my job and go backpacking around South America. I always joked that it was Madison Avenue to Machu Picchu, but I think life really threw me like just a really nice sign that this was gonna be the direction I was going in in the future. Because at the time I was planning on leaving my job, a lot of other people in my same team chose to leave, and I ended up being one of the only people in the organization that did what I did. And so I had a lovely conversation with the S V P of people at the time, and we decided that I could stay on as a consultant and work not in New York City until they found my replacement. And then even after they did find my replacement, we got along really well and I continued to consult and do employee trainings in a remote setting. So that was my first taste of remote work by sort of the digital nomad definition. But in writing the book, I realized I worked for a startup early on in my career in Washington DC that had a lot of satellite offices and a lot of salespeople on the ground and I worked with those salespeople. So while I, myself was going into an office every day, all of my team, my communication, how we stored information was done in a remote setting because I was working with people in Canada and California and Kansas all while being in Washington DC. So little did I know, but looking back, my journey started even earlier.
This is a really amazing journey and I love the things that you mentioned because it reflects to not just my personal journey. I did the same, but not in New York, but in London. And also I love how you mentioned that You pretty much worked remotely even when you didn't know that you're working remotely a little bit. And I always tell to others as well that probably if you, if you work for an enterprise company and you have satellite offices everywhere, some of the work that you do is already asynchronous, already remote already hybrid ish. Although now we are calling it hybrid, remote and asynchronous but way before then, that wasn't the case. I cannot hold myself because I need to ask this question as well because you also started this whole remote working journey pretty early on in 2014. And I did this exactly the same year I made the switch in at exactly 2014.
It's a good year.
It was a good year.
But if you remember at that time the digital nomad, like as a term just getting started I think I, I think I googled that a few weeks ago just because I wanted to tell it on the show but Slack wasn't a thing back then. So, When I worked remotely in 2014, I know it maybe sounds lame, but we used Google Drive, you know, Google Chat, all the goodies. So we didn't have those amazing tools that we do have right now, and we still made it work. So what was your experience back in the, you know, old days?
Very similar. I can't even remember the first time I heard about Slack, but it was way later than probably the digital native person using Slack cuz even when I joined a fully distributed company later, many years later, we weren't using Slack. We were using a tool called Mattermost for those who who know about it. There's so many tools out there, and as this type of working has gotten more popular, more tools have come into the ecosystem, but what I think people are forgetting is it's not about the tool, it's how you use the tool. And so I had a very similar experience as you when I first started. I was just using email in a very effective way that worked for me and the companies I was working with. Even when me and Tam first started writing the book we ideated the book and the chapters that we were most passionate about in WhatsApp conversations because we're friends from many years prior. And so the conversations about the book were blended into like our personal conversations. And so I always talk about when you're first starting to try to work remotely, if you're trying to keep up on the most trendy tools, I think you're gonna be overwhelmed. But if you meet people where they are at, Then you can make the tools work for you. And so simple things like having phone calls instead of video calls were things that I did, you know, back in 2014 and 2015 when I was first getting started, sharing information on Google Drive or Dropbox. And it goes back to the fundamental element of setting expectations and being clear on where you can find things and what you can find in those documentation. That is the most important, and I think we're forgetting that now that we have so many options available to us.
I highly agree. This is the very same thing that I tell to my clients that the tools literally don't really matter. What matter is the goals that you set and how you want to use why and actually why you want to use the tool. Now you can figure out how to use it and only after that you need to actually pick the tool at the end. Let's do sort of like a trailer to the book because I think it's super important. And you mentioned that some practices should be established In any kind of company that are working remotely to be effective. So again, you've started this whole journey like way, way, way, way, way back. What did you see? What were the crucial challenges? How did you address that and what do you think, what are the tips that you can give to others on how to be effective more in remote work?
Yeah, so I would say early on when I was first starting my remote work career it was really about, for me, what people are asking for today. It was about flexibility. So I wasn't yet a digital nomad. I wasn't yet aware of all of the other remote work companies that were doing amazing things. You know the original best practices that existed. But I knew that I'm the type of person that likes to have a disjointed work week. I like to do a few activities for my personal life, do a few activities for my professional life, and I enjoy them being blended. The separation never made sense for me. And I get a lot of energy from physically bouncing around. And so I have a hack that we talk about in the book called One Place, one Goal, and it sounds silly, I think to people that don't understand. But for me it is such an important change of perspective on how to look at productivity. And so for me, what I'll do is right now I'm sitting in a desk upstairs that's in my bedroom and we're having this call. This desk is where I do all of my video calls, and for me, when I get here it immediately, the physical place puts me in that mentality. If I tried to do creative writing here, I think I would struggle. For me, creative writing is about being out in the world, so I love working at coffee shops and hearing people converse, listening to the music, hearing the banging of the people washing out the dishes in the espresso machine. And I think something that's incredibly important with all work, but especially remote work, is taking little breaks throughout the day. We're seeing a lot of articles now around remote work and burnout and people being more productive but working longer than ever before and not having commuting as a boundary to separate them from work and life. But what if your separation is just the bike ride it takes to get to the coffee shop? And for me, that gives me a little hit of physical activity. It gives me some endorphins. It makes me happy cuz I love to ride my bike and get some fresh air. And so I get these little breaks just 10 or 15 minutes. Every time I complete a task, which also mentally gives me a time to reset and so I've seen in my journey is that everybody has these little tricks that work for them. And being part of a remote company is about sharing these tricks, knowing more about yourself, and then learning from your team. How do these tips and tricks that work for you compliment the people on your team and how might they create some sort of disagreement or conflict in your working style preferences. And so later in my journey, that's something that, that I discovered when I became a digital nomad. And like many digital nomads some of the places you wanna go are places you haven't had the opportunity to go as a tourist. And so, I immediately pretty quick in my journey, went to places like Cape Town, which is where I met my co-author. I went to Asia and spent some time in Thailand and Vietnam, and I found my team was not used to me working in those time zones. And it was incredibly difficult to figure out how we should coordinate and for what and why, which is a question you brought up Peter, that I love. I love asking why, for everything to the point where sometimes it's like a little kid. But I noticed that people were scheduling calls with me and they weren't necessarily taking into account my working style preference when I liked to have calls and also the time zone I was at. And so while it was super convenient for them, it could have been like 4:00 AM my time. And so also like resetting, like you are an early bird back in the US. . I like to work in the evening. We have this giant time zone issue to deal with. How can we make both people happy and come together. And so the, the agreement that we came to is, okay, well 7:30 AM since you're a morning person, isn't that bad? Like you can wake up and just take that call downstairs while you're having your morning coffee, cuz you don't have to commute to an office do a 7:30 AM call. For me 12 hours ahead. It's 7:30 PM. That's great. I can have this call and then go have a dinner break and then come back and do some creative writing or something like that or work on documentation or do a project plan. That's another thing I learned that we incorporate in our book is how can you really codify all of these little micro stories of how you're learning to work with somebody. And so when I see successful remote companies today, there's common themes that come up. Things like having user guides, things like having team charters, discussing if you actually need synchronous collaboration time. Based off the context of your work or if your work can be fully asynchronous, and all of these decisions are decisions you have to make at the team level because each team has incredibly different needs. So while I think we're seeing organizations make decisions on our company's gonna lean into hybrid, or our company's gonna be fully distributed, it's up to the managers to make the remote work process successful for their employees, and I hadn't been seeing that done in a very intentional way because I don't think managers knew what that looked like. This is a new skill for everybody around the world, and so the impetus for writing the book was really how do we help managers level up their remote work fluency, their native skills as it relates to just having these thought processes so that they can help their teams be happy, more successful, more engaged in their work, and have all the benefits that come with remote work. And that was all things that. I had witnessed that had experienced in my years working at remote companies as well as traveling as a nomad and hearing about these struggles from my peers and my friends including my co-author, which is one of my friends from a digital nomad trip.
Nice. I love the fact that you mentioned that when you are at your desk right now you're doing all the calls, but when you need to do deeper you are going out for coffees. I'm exactly the opposite, by the way. But the methodology and the whole focus is very same, it's so hard just to reflect back on that because it's kinda like personal. But also can be useful for others. When you are working from home, it's really hard to separate work from your life, of course, your personal life. And we are not even mentioning the issue if you have kids or family at home or if you are living, for example, in New York where you have a smaller apartment Anyway. Yes, not everyone can have a study room where they can, you know, retract back to and do their work. So it's really, sometimes it's the couch, sometimes it's the kitchen table. Sometimes it's just a office chair or something. Sometimes it's a cafe shop. So it's really important to have like a, as you said, one, one goal, one location, that's super important. And and again, because you started this super early like almost like 10 years now, I guess my experience was, and because also started the same that information is really easy to get right around remote work, especially nowadays. You know, tips, tricks, books, whatever. But at that time, like 10 years ago, I mean, no one really talked about that. And it was so hard because I personally, I had to like freaking figure it out on my own. How do I react when I go to the study? I had to study by this, so I had a separate room where I actually worked. And I was lucky or, and I had a bigger, bigger apartment and And when I went there, I was immediately in work mode. I had to sit down for like five minutes to do some whatever. And then I am in work. I can do writing, I can do calls, I can whatever. But I am in work. And when I exit the office and the kitchen, because the kitchen sometimes, you know, it is the place where you get the coffee, coffee sting.
The kitchen is my favorite second office.
Or, yes. And, and, but if I go to the living room, then I'm not in work, but I need at least five to 10 minutes to like unwind. But I had to figure it out on my own to watch my reaction. I was living with my girlfriend and, you know, it's like constantly talking to me when I enter out from exit out from the office. But I'm not ready for a conversation yet because I'm still in work. And I'm not even bringing up the another challenge when you are in the relationship and you're both working remotely.
That's my situation right now, and it's funny, we've navigated things differently over the years as we've been working on different projects and as our relationship has developed
And especially if both person are super extroverts, like for example, me and my wife you know, we have this meeting now or recording session and I need to hold myself back to not go out and tell everything about it immediately right?
Yeah.
Because not everyone like a patient enough to hear everything that happened to you in the work at the moment. Yeah. And And it's so hard when you are working from home because in the office you are already talking to each other. Anyway I don't want to...
Do you work together like as kind of colleagues that spend time working together, or do you like to have your independence and space and then come together and talk about your day?
Only in a minor sense, but yes, because she's a designer and she has her own clients and stuff who I'm not touching. But everything that I create as a content is obviously go through her. So there is like a small little piece of cake, which is common and shared. But the rest is different. Thanks God. Because if you would having that moment as well where you actually are colleagues as well and working from home, that's like an even harder challenge I think to navigate.
This topic is fascinating to me because there's a lot of media attention right now around remote work and isolation and having friends at work. And for me, it's funny because I like to work physically with people in my general area, but I don't want those people to be my direct colleagues. I like when there's creativity coming in from other people working on totally different things and then I can make a link to what they're working on and something I've been struggling with. And I think it adds a lot of value to companies, but also gives me personal happiness to like be around my family or my friends or my boyfriend while I'm working. But at the same time, It's been an interesting journey to navigate. If we're spending all of this time together, we're kind of coworkers, even though we work for two totally different kind of companies and do different type of work. We're taking our breaks together. Like what does that mean and what does that look like for this next generation of remote workers? And how do you find community? And things like co-working spaces and coffee shops and things like that. And what do you do in a household when your working styles are completely different? And so you mentioned like you're kind of the opposite of me. Like you wouldn't be able to do deep work in a coffee shop, Peter. And it's funny cuz like my boyfriend's the same way. He, like, I call it the, the work cave. Like the desk that I'm sitting at, he'll love to sit here Yes. And do deep work. Yes. And it's silent. And I'm like, but it's boring headphones. Like, how can you Headphones? Yeah, the headphones, the big headphones. And I can't, I hate wearing headphones. Like I love to listen to music. No headphones. Like sometimes I even do podcasts with no headphones. And it's like, how do you, how do you in the same space. Also like navigate different working styles. And it's been really cool to see though because I've had to learn how to appreciate quiet and do a different kind of work in the quiet space. And I don't wanna speak for my partner, but I hope that he's learned that like there's work that can be done at coffee shops and getting out in the world and like going to meet up with our friends for lunch breaks and things like that has been a really interesting way of navigating our lifestyle design and even funny little things I've noticed about myself, like, I'll work in the kitchen. We just said, but I won't sit in the same place. So I sit on one side of the table when I'm working, but when I'm eating dinner with my family, I'll sit on the other side of the table. And even that is enough of a mental switch for me to like separate the fact, like working versus eating. So you don't need a big apartment to like make all these adjustments and do it even when in a household with multiple remote workers. As someone who's also lived in co-living spaces where I've lived with like 20 remote workers at a time, all working for 20 different companies. So it's really fun and interesting to see how this all can play out in a society way as well.
It is. And again, I don't want to turn this episode into a personal relationship advice mentorship.
This is not the topic, but relationships matter in work in everywhere. .
But it's amazing. And it's, again, remote work usually changes everyone's life fundamentally. And yes, when you are both working remotely from the same location, that gives a separate, totally new challenge that hasn't been undressed by anyone else. So I wouldn't be surprised that there would be new upcoming remote work relationship coaches who are helping guide people through these kind of relationship challenges in the future because, It is a challenge and there are many coping mechanisms or tips on how to do. Just two things that I want to share again, cannot hold myself back because it's so close to my heart. Currently we are in a moving scenario, so I'm moving from one location to another and one of the desks we usually have two separate desks. So one thing. Have different desks. Or like locations where you work or tables or whatever it is. Because if you mix that too, and you are not the same style of person, shall we say, so for example, my desk is like a minimalistic I dunno IKEA catalog literally, so it's like, there is no like zero, zero clutter on the desk. And if there is clutter, I get angry. So I'm really, really minimalistic here. And my wife, on the other hand, she's a designer, right? So creative. So when she sits down to the desk, Everything becomes disorganized, things moved around and you know, chocolate paper here, I dunno. And stuff like that, and These are small things but still it affects how you work. And now we are sharing one desk. So it generates a lot of challenges, obviously because of the moving situation, but you know, that will be resolved. One other tip that I can tell and that works for us and I heard others that it works for them as well, is to unlock the location. So when you are working home, both of you from the same location. Sometimes it really helps if someone is going out for a set of period of time. I'm even talking traveling alone. So that's also, also a real big thing. But we, we actually do that a lot. So she goes, or I go separate ways for a week and that's it. And you know, you're starting to missing each other. Everything changes a little bit and there is some quiet around you a again, so it really helps.
Yeah.
Because again, if you are working from the office, you are commuting to your location that is not your home and you together as a pair or couple you meet with each other at the morning, maybe, or at the evening, and that's it. And the weekends. So if you, if you add those numbers up it'll be a drastically different number compared to if you are both working from home and you need that separation a little bit.
Yeah. It's funny, like we're talking about right now, our personal relationships, but a lot of the lessons that you're talking about are nuances that I think are important for managers to know for remote teams as well and their nuances like the point of when you spend time with each other and you're connecting and making that connection intentional versus when you're going away and you're just doing your heads down work. And if you Yes. Kind of expand that concept to remote work and teams. We're talking about debates, like hybrid companies or the growing need of offsites and retreats with your coworkers. If you're a fully distributed and remote company. You're talking about things like nuances in how you work. Do you like a clean desk? Do you like a desk with a lot of like chaos and energy? And what that speaks to is like what is your approach to work like, are you someone, and this is really interesting, between my co-author and me, I like to do a little bit of work every day. Like sometimes I'll work seven days a week. I love working on weekends and taking weekdays off if possible, but I'll just do a little bit and there's a constant stream of information going into our project management tool from me. However, my co-author likes to work in sprints, and so she'll do a big sprint. Get a lot of information in the project management tool at once and then take a bigger time to rest and recharge. And so you think about these two conflicting work styles similar to how it might be conflicting for you with the desks. And you say, okay, how can we make this work? What are the benefits that we have to people working in different ways to our team, to our organization, to our couple. and there's lots of interesting conversations that can be had. And so I think just even looking at the microcosm of two people working remotely in the same physical space, whether it's a couple or, I was just recently visiting friends and family in the US and I co-worked with my cousin at her apartment. I co-worked with my sister at her house. I co-worked with my best friend from college. And even though we studied together when we were roommates in college. How we approach work is totally different. And just the more you have points of comparison, even though there's so much information out there these days on best practices, you as a remote worker need to learn what nuances work for you and watching other people with their approach to remote work and say, Ooh, I really like that. I wanna try it. Or, Ooh, I don't think I would enjoy that at all. That's not, for me, is so eye-opening on how you work best. And that's what remote work is letting people do. It's figuring out how they work best instead of telling them how they work best. And I love that.
Totally agree. And my personal goal, by the way, in the next one or two years is to essentially kill the name of remote and make it, turn it into flexible because that's how actually most of these works should be done. For example, you mentioned that that different work styles might not work for everyone, right? So let's say if, we're talking about couples and personal relationships, which is fine. That's our, that's okay. But no, seriously, but that applicable to, to people operations as well in the company. So let's say the remote company has a, like a perk that the company gives you a stipend to compensate you for co-working offices or any kind of like office related stuff. Personally that's just me personally I don't really like co-working offices. If I have to work from a location has people around me, it's a coffee or a restaurant or something like that. Same, same. But I don't, because every time I enter a co-working office, everyone attacks me, right? So they, I have this idea. I'm working on this, I'm working on, I don't care. It's like, like, so I don't like that at all. So the step end that the company provides me is not useful for me. So why not change it into something else? Have like a, I dunno, a monthly $500 compensation on working away from home, and you can use it for whatever you want. You can buy an espresso in a coffee shop, I don't care. Or you can turn it into a co-working pest. It doesn't really matter. So again, most of the people operations, because you've worked a lot in, in people operations, that that's why I'm trying to get there should be a little bit more flexible as well. Right. Yeah.
Yeah, I have something to say on this because it's the same that we talked about tools. It's not about the tool, it's how you use the tool. People operations need to look at employee benefits. It's not about the benefit. It's about why the benefit exists? What purpose, what behavior are you trying to encourage employees to have? And so I love that you brought up co-working stipends because if you are about to do a benchmarking survey as a people operations person in remote work, you will instantly see that most of the top remote organizations offer some sort. Co-working stipend, that's pretty normal benefit. So you could just copy and paste and say, we're gonna offer that benefit as well. We want to increase retention when we wanna be attractive to new employees. Whatever the reason is. You're not asking yourself the all important question that you said earlier in the podcast, which is why, why are you offering a co-working benefit? And for me, I see two reasons why a company would wanna offer this. One is to support productivity. In which case, maybe the answer is not co-worked because maybe like us. I don't like working in coworking spaces. I don't feel productive there, but I do feel productive at a coffee shop. So maybe if you're trying to help your employees be more productive, you need a stipends that can be used to enhance their home space to get out in the world and work at coffee shops or a co-working, something like that. Also there's things like, there's still plenty of places where co-working spaces don't even exist. The town that I'm currently living in, there is no co-working space. So you always have to think about those things. The second reason why someone might offer a co-working benefit is to fight isolation. And then if you're thinking about that, it's like, well, If people are going to co-working spaces because they want to be social and that co-working space doesn't have an active community, it's just sort of like an office that you can rent out, then again, you're not actually going through with the goal of why you're providing this benefit as a people operations person. So then you can think, what are other ways that can support navigating against isolation? Both by enhancing the relationships inside the organization, going back to things like team retreats or supporting our employees being active in their local or global community. So maybe it's a stipend in to have a lunch and learn in their local town. Let's say I'm a designer. Let me invite five other designers for a morning coffee to talk about our design challenges, the best practices of design, how we're implementing them at work and learning from each other locally for the price of a coffee per person. And then that benefits the company because they're getting new ideas and innovation and an employee that is excited because they just spent a morning with friends in their industry. So there's lots of interesting ways to play around with fringe benefits, and I'd love to see more companies get creative on their approach.
Perfect. Yes, totally agree. And I think most people, I'm not sure that they, they disagree with or misunderstand it, but people first, it actually means that you, you ask and collaborate with your own people within your company on what do they need and focus on their needs and provide to those needs. And by the way, if the needs are that they are, don't want to work remotely. It's totally okay. So you are still people first. Not everyone, every company should need to be working remotely. It's a totally flexible situation. And all this depends, all the benefits, all the perks, everything that you provide, all the collaboration processes that you design should take people first mentality and you should collaborate with the team on how to create those. So, I love it. Yes. It's early in the year. I know it's not January anymore but still early. And you just released a book with your co-author. What do you think? I know it's really hard to look into the crystal ball and do any predictions for the short term, like for this year, for example. It's always better to have, you know, longer term predictions for the couple of years ahead. But what do you feel? What do you think what's the future for work look like?
Yeah, I think This is gonna be a year of more growing pains for a lot of companies. I think the past two years, people had strong opinions, but they weren't experimenting enough. And so what we've seen is now their is a big debate when a debate is not necessary of standing behind a certain point of view and trying to prove that that point of view is best. But for the reasons you just said, there's no one size fits all approach to work. And so I think this is gonna be a year of growing pains where people are going to try to hold onto their position and see that it's not ideal. That it can't make everybody happy, engaged, productive, focused at the job at hand. And so I think people will start to question themselves, to question what's coming up in articles in the media around concepts like hybrid and remote work and go back and analyze what they've been doing the past two years and, and try to seek improvement. Maybe that last part is my optimistic hope more so than the crystal ball fortune telling. But I think that this is the year for people to get uncomfortable to learn from the mistakes that have been made the past two years to learn that you can't just take an office environment, copy and paste it and put it into a home environment. And then you can't let people get really good at working from home and then force them to go back to an office without people having opinions about it. Sure. And so my goals for this year is that people experiment more. They truly try to, Level up their skills with remote work fluency regardless of where they're gonna work in the future. That they have more conversations with their employees and make decisions not based off of what whole industries are doing, but based off of what's gonna be best for their organization, and that they're able to then vocalize in a very intentional way. What they're all about and why. So if they're going to be hybrid, what is the goal of using the office? How is the office used? How does it relate to their standard operating behaviors and their culture? If they're fully distributed, are they actually, like, are they going to allow people from other countries to be part of their work team? Are they gonna hire abroad? Are they gonna let people travel or are they fully remote only in one country? I think it's getting harder. Now more than ever, to navigate what the strategy is for companies when it comes to flexibility, and I think it's time for those companies to navigate explicitly what their expectations are from their employees.
Hundred percent agree. How I usually express this same thing, and again, a hundred percent agree is that we both started during the infancy years, I guess, of remote work when everything was like super, super, just getting started early adopt. And now we are kind of like around teenage years with remote work, you know, pushing the boundaries experiment a lot doing some pitfalls making some mistakes maybe but still pushing everything towards some sort of like a mutual agreement. And only, you know, adultery only comes next year or later. When finally decided what would be the best processes and opportunities for everyone. Yeah, agree. Cool. So how can people find you? Where can they buy the book anyway? Important question.
The book is available on Amazon in any amazon.com dot fr it of your choosing. And should be available in hopefully many local bookstores. And so if you'd rather go out in your own country and buy the book locally, just be sure to ask for remote works, managing for freedom, flexibility, and focus at that bookstore. And that would be really cool as well. But Amazon's always a safe bet and you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Ali Greene e at the end of my last name.
Perfect. Thank you. That was a really inspiring conversation. Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming here.
Yeah, thank you. I love that we talked about not just work and then we were able to make a point how it all ties together Anyway, so that was super fun.
