EP040 - How to manage a team asynchronously with Chase Warrington of Doist
About the episode
This episode focuses on how to manage a distributed team asynchronously, and how to build a best-in-class team culture while everyone is working remotely. To discuss, I have Chase Warrington, head of remote at Doist, maker of async-first productivity apps like Todoist and Twist.
About the guest
Chase Warrington is the Head of Remote at Doist, a pioneer of distributed work that specializes in productivity software. Doist created the award-winning task management app Todoist, and Twist, the first team messaging app designed for async work. Collectively, Doist supports 30 million people globally to stay organized and productive.
Chase is responsible for developing and executing Doist’s remote work strategy, co-located events, and advocating for the future of work on behalf of the company. His work has led him to be recognized as a leader in the Remote Influencer Report and a LinkedIn Top Voice for Remote Work. He has worked remotely for over 14 years as one of Doist’s 100 employees in 35 countries. He is a regular contributor, instructor, and consultant to many of the leading remote work organizations and publications, as well as the host of his own podcast, About Abroad.
Chase is currently based in Spain and is fluent in English and conversational in Spanish. When not nerding out about remote work, he loves traveling in his campervan, spending time in the mountains, and taking his husky pup on a jog from time to time.
Connect with Chase on LinkedIn.
Check Todoist’s Inspiration Hub to learn more about how to work more efficiently with your distributed team.
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.
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Welcome everyone. Our guest today is a well known thought leader in the remote workspace, head of remote of Doist, a company that creates products for the future of work, like Todoist and Twist. I'm super excited to chat with Chase Warrington. Hi Chase. It's lovely to have you here. Pleasure.
Peter. So good to meet you finally. And yeah thanks for having me.
It's amazing that you have the time to talk with us and share some insights on how do you work at Doist. What are the best practices that you can share with the audience, but everything has to start from somewhere. What's your remote, what's your personal remote journey? I know pre call we discussed that you are calling from Trento like a small part of Italy from the mountains. And you live in a van. How did you end up in that journey?
Yeah, that's a funny, it's a funny small page, one page within the larger book of this journey. I'll go back a little bit for you because I, I think something that's interesting is like the first remote worker I ever saw or witnessed in my life was actually my mom who managed to convert her nursing job at working in a hospital to a fully remote position. And the cool, even cooler than that, she managed to negotiate a four day work week. And we're talking like 20 something years ago. One of those like classic jobs that you think can never be remote. Somehow she she really wanted to be able to work from home. She wanted to be able to be a part of her kids lives. That was what that was her purpose. The job was just a thing. And so she managed to do that. And I saw that at a young age when I was in my early teens or something but I also saw that the worst of remote work can be really bad. Like actually her situation was the classic, the epitome of all the things that you and I would probably tell companies not to do forcing people to be on at all times, working long hours, mouse jigglers, no joke, tracking keystrokes, things like that having to ask to go to the bathroom from your boss who's working at a distance. So anyway, I saw the worst of it. I saw the best of it because she did have a great family life and such. And so I think there was a seed planted early on that huh. I want to go into the, to the international business world. I w I was interested in the tech space. I was very interested in international business and collaboration, but I just didn't want to go sit in a cubicle and on all those jobs were generally like in office jobs. And so I think the combination of those two things, I thought I can work in an international environment. I can travel a lot. I can experience more of the world. Those things are important to me personally, but I can also have a successful career. If I go into this with the mindset that I want to work remotely. So I put that at the forefront of everything. That was my P one, my top priority was I'm going to get remote work. And so coming out of university, that's what I did and it's progressed to where I am now. Now I literally get to focus on optimizing remote work for our team and evangelizing for other companies that want to do it. And so that's the condensed version. Here I am today from in Northern Italy, talking to you and another place in Italy. And and it's just amazing that we're able to do this.
It is, but this was a really condensed version of your story. So I have to have some follow up questions on that. So sorry about that.
No, please.
So you never, and that's not an attack or something, whether you never had an official, like full-time in-office job ever. You went straight to remote work at the university or after the university, correct?
Yeah, I had, yeah. Yeah. So there a couple little caveats, but that is correct. So I did a few internships while I was in university. Two of them were summers spent in an office predominantly. I found it terribly unproductive. Like horribly, actually, like productivity stifling, creativity stifling. I just, I did not understand it. And I was appalled by how bad it was. And that's not every in office experience. I'm just saying my experience was that way. And then I, when I graduated, I went to work for a company where the first six months I had to go into the office one day a week and do some planning and meetings and stuff like that. And we had quarterly to semi annual offsite meetings which I was able to take part in coordinating and planning and stuff. So I did have some in office experience but I guess for six months, 15 years ago, one day a week was the extent of it.
That's amazing. And you are doing this for how long now?
I guess it's since 2008, 2009. It got to, I started in January of 2009. So yeah, 14 years.
Jesus, you are one of those dinosaurs like myself. You're actually, you actually start, you actually started way before me which is, which says a lot. I started in 2014. Most of the guests of this show, There are two groups, right? So they either started during the pandemic or after the pandemic because they were forced to go remote. So they adapted and either created leadership positions within the company so they had to adapt it or they provided products or services for those companies who forced to work remotely now. And the other group are who already worked remote before the pandemic and those people, they usually started way before, years before anyone else in the 2010s, or even earlier, like yourself. Let's talk about the products and the tools that you had back then. Back then, I know it's hard to believe, but we didn't have Slack. We didn't have zoom. We didn't have pretty much anything. I remember days when we used Skype for calling, which is. Like the equivalent of saying that I had a BlackBerry once. And we did everything on Google stuff, and then on a Google chat and there wasn't any Hangouts chat and stuff and drive and that's it. So how did you. Because when you worked in the office, all the tools were available to you, yet you found it really unproductive as a space. And then you switched to remote. There wasn't too much tools available back then. How come You still felt more productive in that environment.
What's funny is, so there's two things that your question brings to mind to me. One is the most exciting part or one of the most exciting parts about this movement towards the future of work has been the evolution of the tools that has emerged like five years ago, pre pandemic. There were very few tools that serves the needs of distributed teams. They were all built predominantly in office. As in office tools, then they were adapted to distributed team use. And so the evolution of that is like insane. Like we, as an example you and I both know like documentation is super important for distributed teams. You could argue it's important for all teams. But especially when you have a decentralized workplace, having a thorough documentation system is crucial. And like there weren't that many tools available that were very good four or five years ago today. Like we did this year, we just did a revamp of our documentation and handbook at Doist. And we evaluated like 20 different tools that are specifically built for remote team documentation. Like that is just like one example. So extrapolate a bit across the whole ecosystem of all the tools that we use day in and day out. The bar has been raised so, so high and it's it's never been easier to do what we do. Right now. So that's one point. The other, I think is like even more importantly than the tools back then, like really dinosauring it here. But there were no, like Practices like there was no like I was never trained. We winged it. You just, you would just wing it. Yeah. Like I spent seven years working remotely without ever having any training on how to work remotely. It was a predominant, I mean as a hybrid company where 95 percent of the company was in the office. And those 5 percent of us that were out of it were adapting to trying to make it work using office first principles. So there were no, like there weren't tools, correct. But there also weren't like, best practices, there was no training, there was no education on here's how to even just the simplest thing, set up your work day. There were no perks in place to say co workings didn't even exist, but you didn't have a co working perk or you didn't have a stipend to upgrade your home office and ergonomically so all these little things have adapted to where we are today. And for me, like that's even like more exciting than the tools almost. I think, I don't know how you feel, but that's what's been really impactful for me.
Same. And I saw the same trends. Yes. One for the tools. That's true. But I do think that on the tools, by the way we were able to make impact and create value without the tool abundance that we have right now. So I do still think that tools don't matter that much that we think they matter. Like we do now and practices do matter a little bit more than the tools yet still the abundance of the tools that we have right now. I think it's more connected towards the generation of the companies that are the same as like yourself. So you never had a an office job. You started immediately working remotely because you had a personal drive and story to recreate that thing in your life and the personal motivation to do so I think is the same with the companies. So the companies they also made up by people and they had their own intrinsic motivations as well. And they start immediately going remote so they are searching for tools that I specifically designed for distributed collaboration. So that's for the tools. In terms of practices, I don't know how you have felt during those days like early dinosaur years but, yeah, sorry for the dinosaur reference. But I felt that the practices that we had were like a, they were like a mixture of old enterprise practices mixed with offshoring. So they collaborated with people across the globe. And it was more like a delegational issue. There wasn't any real collaboration time to time. Not even sync or async or whatever. It's more like a delegational stuff. Yeah, I personally, and I think you too as well, we both worked in all, I couldn't call it leadership positions, but not as an offshore service provider to a headquarter in whatever United States or where meaning that we had to collaborate. Not as an offshore outsource someone, but as part of the company, yet we weren't part in the office culture or office stuff. But there wasn't any practices at all. It's, it was all like, I don't know, no intention. We were a hundred percent winging it.
Yeah I would agree completely. And I think like one of the. elements of that the thing, one of the things that I got to see early on working as a hybrid worker you know, as one of the few remote workers in a more office centric company who in all honesty, had an amazing culture was like known for the culture had a lot of intention put into like employee well being, work life balance did regular quarter, like even for us that were remote working far away, like regular quarterly off sites, took care of the people, right? Did it right especially for the time. One of the things that I got to see that was really interesting, I think, is like proximity bias in play.
So I mentioned that I had to go into the office that, that first six months, one day a week. That means that I was close enough to the main office to go in to that office. But the rest of my team was scattered across the country. So they weren't doing that. So I was, I didn't realize it at the time, but I had a distinct advantage. I was there one day a week face to face with the chief marketing officer who was the person that my team reported to. I was going to the company, the happy hours after work. I was going sometimes meeting up with teammates for lunch because I was just down the street working from home the other four days a week. So I did the shoulder rubbing, got the water cooler talk that we all know is so crucial. And so I got to see some of that. Eventually I moved away from that physical place. And I no longer had that. And so I got to see both sides of that. And just, I think that's always resonated with me. It's not that I had a horrible experience when I moved away by any means. It's just that I saw I recognized pretty early on, wow, I have an advantage being here in the office, even just that one day a week. And being surrounded by all the people that I am and then feel feeling that void to create when I moved away. And so I guess I say all that because like one of the things that I'm most interested in at this stage of the future of work movement and like where we are at least at Doist is like we're circling back to we're pretty good at the work. We're a productivity company. We've been doing remote work for 15 years and a lot of us have been doing this a really long time. Our CEO intentionally built the company this way. So we're really good at the work. I think like we, we do that pretty well. Not that we can't do better, but we're pretty good at it. But we're circling back to like, how do we connect and really enjoy this experience and make sure that like people are getting some of that in office experiences and those conversations and connections that are really important and part of the whole gig. And still maintain the fully distributed mindset that we built the company on. And that's been really fun, like creating those experiences and seeing the impact that it's having on the bottom line, which is the most important thing, like we, it has to make business sense. But also the personal connections and the culture and everything like that. That's been a lot of fun right now.
People often forget that companies are a group of people or a community of people creating a shared value for business purposes. But at the end of the day, they are still a community of people. So they have to, they, mandatory, they have to connect. If they cannot connect, they cannot collaborate and they cannot grow within the company. I think the main difference between, between every company and the company that you're talking about right now is that when a company is purposefully built distributed or remote, fully remote that's when they usually explore having use of how to build culture, how to build connection between the teams. It's not just about adapting to a remote environment because you have to adapt because of pandemic, because of not just pandemic, your startup financial reasons, right? You ditch the office, you save some money. You can hire talent from, I don't know, lower wage countries. It's more financial sense to do that. These are more adaptions, I think, but when you purposefully create a community or a company distributed, then usually that's when you explore some things like culture connection building trust, transparency. So let's talk a little bit more about that. And what are you guys doing on Doist? Let's start with your title. I think that, you are head of remote, so tell me. I had the chance to talk with with other guests who were sporting that title for other companies. And they all gave a different explanation what that title is all about. Tell me what does head of remote do if you are doing it?
It's so funny. You mentioned that about everyone giving different different answers because when I first got hired as the head of remote at Doist it was an internal hire. Like I just lateral move from one team to another It was a newly created position. And so I reached out to all of the people that I could find in my network, some of which I already had relationships with some of which I didn't, but anybody that had somewhat of a similar job description title. I was like, Hey, what do you do? And the only common denominator was that there was no common denominator, like there was no single thing that everybody said, Oh I focus on this. Everybody had a different goal. Everybody had a different focus every day. And so anyway, I found that like really interesting and I think it just speaks to like the novelty of the, this position, like there's only a so many people out there, only so many companies out there that have somebody specifically focused on this. And I think it's also super in a way, like I'll use the word weird, maybe there's a better word, but it's a bit odd in our case because we were, a lot of the people that I talked to in that role, they were helping companies through a transition to remote or to a distributed or hybrid workplace. And in our case, like we had already been doing this for a really long time. Like since 2007, very technically, probably more like correctly when the team really started scaling in 2012, we've been fully distributed since that point, never had an office. Everybody's always worked predominantly asynchronously. We already had a pretty well oiled machine in that way. But what our executive team saw was that there was an opportunity both like an opportunity and a Potentially a challenge. So the landscape was changing. Remote landscape was changing very quickly after the pandemic, all new tools emerging, lots of companies suddenly offering flexible work. And for a long time, this had been like our big selling point for us, like to hire and retain really talented staff. And so I think there's a little bit of concern like, Hey, if we fall behind the eight ball here and we don't stay at the forefront of being one of the best distributed companies in the world, then that could be a potential problem for us. The second was this opportunity where it's like, Hey, this is a core part of our company DNA and we have an opportunity to level up here. We've been packing it together with these tools and practices that we built over the years. But now there's, instead of a fraction of 1 percent of companies doing it this way there's millions of companies that are approaching remote work and they're all sharing details about how they're doing it, like we could actually learn from them and uplevel our approach. So that's where the idea was born out of. And on a more like tangible basis, day to day, basically my role is split 50, 50, 50 percent focused on our operations and how we like optimize our remote infrastructure that encompasses also culture and connection and things that I mentioned earlier, but also tools and practices and documentation and things like that. Then the other part is focused on marketing and we're a big proponent of building in public and sharing our what we are learning along the way. So I do all the quote unquote marketing, even though it's not a product that we're selling, it's more like building in public in terms of the future of work.
Most people whom I talk to, and I'm sure that you talk to the same people as well in terms of what the head of remote is, they usually tell you the same trend, although the balance is different, that it's partially marketing, like employer branding, shall we say? A little bit more than, right? Employer branding, just to be more precise. And it's also a flagship role within the company because It not just attracts talent, but it also highlights that the company itself is a remote first company who's proponent enough to have a dedicated person handling that whatever it is. And the other half or the other part of the balance is that it's operations, right? So it's almost I wouldn't say people operations but people, operations, operational operation, like structure, integrity, infrastructure, and so on. And you just said the same thing. So for you, it's like a 50 50 balance. But I'm sure it's important to notice that you said, for example, in terms of operations, the remote work, the remote infrastructure within that infrastructure, there is the culture as well. So it's tools, how you work and what the culture is. If you ask, and I'm sure that you know this and most of the audience know this too, if you ask any person in an enterprise or a medium size or a larger company, they wouldn't put culture under infrastructure. They will put culture into HR ish, maybe if they are modern enough, it's more like people operations. Sometimes employer branding, it's more like marketing approach, but it's definitely not an operational issue. So why do you think it's more like an operational issue? For example, the culture how the internal team collaborates and works together.
It's a fantastic question because you've mentioned the word earlier, we probably have each said it a couple of times already, but it's intentionality and I think most of us that have been a part of this conversation for a little while have used that word a lot, maybe sometimes overused it, but I don't think it's overused in this situation when you have a fully distributed team, especially I think, This is just a hypothesis. So I could be wrong. But especially one like ours, that's hyper asynchronous. Like we, our team averages around two hours of meetings per week, like 85 percent of the company reports having less than five hours of meetings per week and more than 50 percent report having less than two hours per week. I think it's a vanity metric in a way, because it doesn't necessarily mean anything. But our goal has been to like, really optimize for asynchronous. And that can come with a cost, right? Like you can lose value in you and I connecting here and having this conversation, quote unquote, face to face, as opposed to exchanging it asynchronously and there's a lot to be gained there. So we're just like really intentional about how we use our synchronous time, both virtually and I think even more so in person when we do get together for retreats, offsites, mentorship trips, meetups, things like that. And so I think like connecting all of these ideas together, the idea was like if we're going to be really good at distributed work, we have to also be really good at how we intentionally create those serendipitous conversations, those in person connections, those virtual connections and it's specific to our remote infrastructure as to why that's a challenge and an opportunity. And so that's why I think it lives under me and in an operational mindset.
That's wonderful. Just to give the audience a context, how many people are we talking about? And where do they based?
So We're around 100 full time employees and we have people in 35 different countries. So like doing quick math, like every third person's from a different country and those countries span all time zones. So it's extremely distributed in that regard. And that's one reason we started with async first. We did start with async first and then hired accordingly. It wasn't like, Oh, we're fully distributed this way. We have to adopt async principles. But that's one reason that we're able to do that and be so distributed is because everything is built with an async first mentality.
That's a challenge to have for all hands, by the way.
We don't have them. We never had a virtual all hands meeting. And we only do we do one all hands in person meeting, which we call Doist Connect once a year. And yeah, which we just did in Italy actually in July where you and I are now. Like people ask, like, how do you do your all hands? Oh, it's very easy. We just don't do them. We do it all asynchronously.
I think that's a common question from the audience so I should ask what do you think, what should be synchronous and what shouldn't be synchronous?
So I think the goal with our approach is just to make async the default. We try to give guidelines around when synchronous communication should take place, but not hard rules. And we just try to challenge when a synchronous meeting is proposed, we, it's openly challenged. Could this be a thread and twist instead? Could we handle this asynchronously? Because every time we switch to synchronous, we're inevitably leaving somebody out. We're inevitably trapping information in a silo. And so if we can avoid it, can we and the inverse of that is the way a lot of traditional companies would think is like. Let's hop into a meeting. First thing we got, we've got something to do. It's got to be in a meeting. And so we're just approaching it from the other end of that spectrum. But there, there are some clear cut times, like when holding a meeting takes place. First of all, we do monthly one on ones like at pretty much across the board, at least monthly some direct reports have. more frequent based on needs or whatever. But monthly one on ones with your leader and direct report. We have we have things that like a lot of social activities that take place synchronously. We have a whole social calendar built out. So every couple every month there should be a handful of activities you could join virtually if you wanted to that are more focused on social than they are on like productivity. So building connections, having discussions with your lead, like about growth, compensation challenges that you're facing. And I think the other like big bucket is challenging conversations. Like when of course when something just can't be tackled asynchronously when you've tried and it's just I would really benefit from a call to, to get through this. That makes sense. But also like when you need to deliver tough news, constructive criticism, career progression and stuff like these are great times to switch to a synchronous process.
Just to recap and highlight some things that you just said, most of the synchronous meetings that you do are one on ones with either a direct report or a team member who's got stuck with the project. And it's palpable because it's on twist and you can see that it's not going from anywhere. And they are struggling to deliver. So it might make sense to join on a one on one call. But question presents itself: what about team?
We do have them. They're optional for team to team. So some teams say this makes a lot of sense for us. Maybe also like time zone wise, it can align. So I would actually say like a majority of the teams have at least a monthly Attempt to sync. There are some teams that sync weekly. That's the most frequent that I'm aware of. But there is some team discretion there. And then of course, within that, it's usually there's a lot of guidelines around here's how meetings should be presented. And here's how we should approach these but and they're recorded and transcribed and shared asynchronously. They're also almost always optional. It's attendance optional, not even like attendance expected in a lot of cases. So yeah this does happen. The other thing I didn't mention is like brainstorming. And I've always put like brainstorming with a little asterisk because I think we actually do more brainstorming asynchronously than we do synchronously, but there's definitely something to be said. I think it goes without saying there's something to be said for the energy that's created in a room when you can even virtually, like when you can get people together, put your heads together and just jam on something. And that does make sense. The only thing I push back on is when people say brainstorming has to be done synchronously. Like that energy is the only.
The chemistry, what about the chemistry Chase?
Yeah, the chemistry that's a factor like I won't deny that exists or whatever. I think it can, but there's also all the downsides that come with a synchronous meeting that you can't just toss out as well. There's a lot of people who aren't going to function well in that tight window their best ideas are going to come later. Or they're not going to feel willing to speak up or they're going to feel very intimidated by someone else who has another idea. These things are much better flushed out in an asynchronous environment. So there's pros and cons with everything. But like, when it comes to brainstorming, I often hear people only hone in on the pros of that chemistry that you brought up. And I think we just have to recognize that both can work probably a healthy balance of the two makes a lot of sense.
I'm going to ask about what kind of people that you're looking for to join Doist because I think it's important, but I'm starting from the chemistry approach. Hear me out. I do believe that if a company attracts the right people to collaborate with, they usually connect unintentionally anyway, and organically anyway, and for example, you and me, we are we, of course we are both sporting a man bun. And yeah, and we are ...
United by the bun...
Weirdly, but now we are both in Italy and stuff. But because we are like the same preferences we have in terms of working and how we will live our lives, we do have a little bit of that chemistry anyway. Now, I do think that if you attract the right people to your company, you don't have to deal with this whole chemistry issue because it will present itself anyway, it will present itself in an asynchronous environment. It will present itself on a documentation and even on a synchronous call and it will be fireworks when you actually meet with each other in person. So I think everything comes down to what kind of people that you're looking for. How do you filter those people out who will join the company. Generally I think it's important to discuss what kind of people are, I wouldn't say able, but I will go with that anyway, able to work remotely and in an asynchronous manner, because that's like a very special kind of people, I think, who don't need training on that. What do you think on that? And what kind of people that you are personally looking for? I know that you are not a recruiter in a sense at Doist, but some of your work is closely or loosely connected to attracting talent anyway.
Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people refer to Doist as a remote first company, which we are, but I would say that's like point number two, point number one we're a people first company. One of the reasons we adopted a lot of remote first, virtual first principles is to enable people to embrace the non linear workday, build their best craft their perfect workday, spend more time with their families, all these things. That's a lot of the reasons why we. believe in the future of work movement and all of that. I think this is like really important. And so we start it all starts with hiring and onboarding the right type of people. We're very values driven. Our mission statement and our values are very clear for everyone to see. We flush this out way before in the interview process, way before we're looking at skill set and talent and ability to do a job. In the end, we're building SaaS tools. We're trying to do challenging things where we want to, we set the bar very high, but there's a lot of people out there that can do a lot of the jobs that we're hiring for. So most important is we're going to, we know we're going to get someone that can do the job. But we need to find the right fit culturally and from a value standpoint first. And so we put a ton of emphasis on this and I think that's like first and foremost. So like my advice when people ask Hey, I want to get a job at Doist what should I do? I'm like, read our blog, figure out who we are as like people, individuals what do we stand for? And then figure out like what the job is, because that'll set you up for the most success. And then going beyond that, like going to the skills and what we're looking for. Again we're predominantly going to communicate asynchronously, which means you need to be a fantastic writer. I can't tell you how many people I've met who are incredible orators. They've never met a stranger. They can say, they can articulate something verbally in an amazing way. From a written standpoint, they're overly wordy. They can't get to the point. They don't know how to make something succinct and powerful. Honing your writing skills, honing your ability to convey a message and be a self starter, figure out problems on your own. When you're working distributed as we are like that's extremely important. So put a lot of focus on those things is obviously very important. And then I do also think like there's a lot to be said for the way we approach work. We get a lot of people applying that will say look, I'm that person that will burn the midnight oil. I will be up I work 60, 80 hours a week and I'll be there. At every single meeting. And you're like, you didn't put any thought, like you have no idea how we work, obviously, because if you did, you wouldn't have mentioned any of those things. We'll take the person who can get the work done in 30 hours. We don't care about the hours. We just want you to get the work done in a sustainable way. And so anyway, I think there's a lot to be said for digging into that when you're applying for any company.
And can you share some secrets on how do you measure, for example, remote work performance? So when you have these people who are self starters owning their job with as much authority and autonomously as they can, or as they're direct reporting provided, but yeah. How do you, because it's not about connected about hours, connected about tasks everything is documented in async anyway, so it's probably public at least internally for everyone. How do you measure the performance?
Yeah it's gotta be super clear for everyone what their what the company's mission is from a 30, 000 foot view. And then also like from a much closer view day in and day out, and then how their individual work ties to that. And so this is disseminated down throughout the organization through what we call our DO system, which stands for Doist objectives. It's a essentially an agile built sort of process in which we identify strategic priorities and then build projects around those strategic priorities. And then everybody's work is passed down to them for a given period of time. Every six months we have three strategic priorities. These are the three main objectives set by the leadership team for the company. They each come with one or two North Star metrics that we're trying to move. And then so once we have those strategic priorities in place, we have a few what we would call DOs, Doist objectives that build that strategic, that individual strategic priority up. Each of those DOs is going to have a cross functional team attached to it. So people from across the organization that are going to work on that project or that do to support that strategic priority. And so at any given time, we have eight or 10, 12 DOs taking place to support those three strategic priorities, and everybody on the team is united on those around those fronts. So your objectives are laid out for you very easily. We give a lot of autonomy, we will give like the end goal and say, this is where we need to get. It's up to you as a squad. That's formed around that do to make that happen. And then we have feedback loops happening monthly, quarterly on a semester basis that are giving people the opportunity to provide feedback on their teammates, provide feedbacks on themselves about how they're hitting those goals. And then ultimately it's up to the squad leader, the person who's leading that do to move that project across the finish line. So they're held accountable. They're empowered, but they're also held accountable to the end result. And so it's very black and white. I say that there is a gray area where sometimes things succeed on paper, but not in practice. But generally speaking, like if you're hitting those goals, if you're staying in line with the timelines, and if you're doing all that without hitting a point of burnout then we're satisfied. And so the summary of all that is like the, when someone asks, like, how do you measure someone's work when you can't see them? It's we just look at the work. Like we, did they, are they crossing the finish line? And it's like simple, actually. The distributed nature of this means you don't get credit just for showing up. We don't care if you're the first person in to twist every day or the last person out or present at all times or answering super quickly. Did you get the worker across the finish line? And are you empowering people on your team to do the same and like that's it. That's all we focus on.
Okay. This is golden. This is super, super important to discuss. And it's so important that you just said that just by getting busy or looking busy you won't get compensation or moving forward with your career. That's not the case with distributed work. Actually when I switched, for example, so personally, I'm coming from advertising 10 years in like in office and stuff like that. Especially also in London, which means that half of my work was spent on meetings. And yes, you do get credit when you show up. And then you mingle with others. That's true. And when I switched to remote, the most important thing that I realized that, oh, I can't hide now. I can't, I need to deliver. I need to do the work. It's not enough just to show up for a meeting. It's not enough that just to chat with others even though it's water cooler or slack, it doesn't really matter. You just need to do the work.
Can I ask you a question, Peter?
Please, of course, feel free.
So let's say you sit in a meeting with eight people. Mostly that's that. That's that. Sorry.
Sorry. Let me say eight, eight people. That's immediately a wrong situation. That's take me back. Take me back to your advertising days, you did that on a daily basis. Yeah. So you were sitting in that meeting room with eight other people, probably dominated mostly by one or two people. You contributed, let's say I'm using my experience talking to others you might have contributed 10 minutes to that during that one hour meeting, maybe, right?
Maybe.
Do you, in that case you got credit for being there for an hour, you contributed 10 minutes worth of work, worth of anything, added 10 minutes worth of value. So the people who are really focused on inputs and hours and presenteeism for some reason they don't see that logic. Like they don't they see No, the person was there for an hour and they're very focused on this. And I find this like really fascinating because I'm like, there's some really smart people out there running really successful businesses that see that as non problematic. And for me, that's very challenging to sit there and watch eight people in a room who got 10 minutes of value and 50 minutes of wasted time and not see a problem with that. And it's not as black and white as that, but like on the surface, it is. So I don't know, like I just find this like fascinating and wonder how you think about it.
Usually during these meetings I just want to add two things. During these meetings there is usually one person who actually did the job. Who did the presentation, most of the work, did the research. Pretty much contributed just by the ability of having a meeting about something. In almost all cases that person is never getting the credit. Second thing is that if you are, so I do believe that remote work is a great equalizer between I don't really like the distinction between introverts and extroverts, but between people because everything is transparent. You can contribute to a transparent level almost equally without any bias or without any, I don't know overemphasization of some individual who was dominating the room with, I don't know, a huge ego or something like that. So these meetings in the especially in the advertising business, by the way, which is pretty much a hundred percent ego. So yeah it's weird to work that way. And I personally do believe that the future of work is not remote, distributed, office or whatever. It's just more equal as an opportunity for everyone. And it's more people centric in terms of collaboration. And let me turn back the table. What do you think? What the future of work is?
Yeah, you defined it perfectly, in my opinion, because I like I have had conversations with people that are very passionate about specifically about remote work, and it may appear on the surface that's the case for me but actually it's just more about access to options and ensuring that if remote work is your thing, that at least that's an option that you don't have to make extreme sacrifices for. If you want to live the lifestyle like mine and yours, or you're just someone who needs a bit more flexibility in their day, but you can get your job done from anywhere, then like seeing that as a true option and not one that you have to make sacrifices for in order in terms of like career progression, pay, whatever it may be in order to have. That's really what I care about. And so the future of work for me is about optimizing that and making sure that it's accessible to the masses. And if we can do that, which I think like to a large degree is has been done in a lot of ways already. It's then that's mission accomplished. I don't care so much about like I have people who will say to me, something along the lines of we need to kill the office. There's no need for the office anymore. It's all the, it's X, Y, Z, all the problems with it. And I'm like, if you feel passionate about that's wonderful. I don't necessarily, I just want to make sure that we cause I have friends that, that love working in office. They prefer it. They hated the remote work that they don't, they have zero desire to work remotely. Great. As long as the options available. Then wonderful. And a little bit of like context on why that's important to me. I felt throughout my career as I optimized more and more for flexibility that I did have to take cuts in pay. I had to I stepped down from roles in order to get more flexibility. Things like that. So I feel there's a personal attachment there. And then I think on a, yeah, and then on a grander scale, there's so many opportunities here on a societal basis to even the playing field globally, even in our backyards for families there's a lot that can be done with the future of work. So from a DEI perspective, I think there's a whole nother conversation that can be had. That's extremely important and probably doesn't get enough discussion.
I think it's important to highlight that the transparency, remote work brings us transparency and transparency actually flattens everything out which is wonderful for Even with people who weren't transparent enough to how to hire others, how to work with others, how to treat others. I think it will be marvelous for DEI as well. At the start of the show, you mentioned about your mother that you saw everything that was really great about flexibility and remote work, sorry to get back to the, to That she had struggled with with all the extra hours of remote working and so on. And I think that's a primal motivation and drive for you right now. So I must ask, have you found that right balance in your personal life?
I can honestly say I have and it's not come overnight either. I mentioned early on, I think I correct me if I'm wrong. I think I mentioned this, like I spent probably five or six years, like really not working optimally in a remote setting, like very basic stuff. Like I was just hacking my way through it and not even thinking about it, like just trying to just opening my laptop every day and working from home and doing a lot of things wrong. And including overworking, including trying to be present online at all times. And then down to the smallest thing of not even having a real workspace where I was working from just today it's from the sofa, tomorrow it's from a coffee shop, whatever. And not really like just doing some basic stuff. So Fast forward to today and like through a lot of intentionality, I think also like a huge kudos to Doist and the like our CEO Amir built this company very intentionally this way. And there's a lot of internal education. And beyond education, like a push internally, like from our teammates to do this right and an encouragement to disconnect and to focus on deep work and focus on the outputs and things like that. So today I live the location independent lifestyle that I really wanted on a personal level. I have a lot of balance and time for things that I love doing. I feel successful because I get to move things forward at the speed that works for me and make an impact on something that I care about. And I'm connected to my teammates. I meet up with my awesome teammates and incredible places around the world a few times per year that fills that cup for me and lasts for many months. So yeah I feel balanced, I feel fulfilled. It's the right way for me to work and I could never trade that for anything I don't think.
Chase, that was wonderful. And thank you for being on this show.
Yeah. Thank you, Peter. This is a lot of fun and I appreciate you having me on the show.
Of course. And where can people find you if they want to talk with you or apply to Doist, please share the details.
Yeah. So the best place we do have as of the date of this recording, we do have a few open positions that actually. So Doist.Com slash careers is the best place to go check those out. We don't hire often. Jump on board quickly. Those hiring windows close quickly too. And then I talk about our approach to remote work and distributed work on LinkedIn quite a bit. I try to be active on other social platforms, but LinkedIn is the best place to connect with me. Follow along there. And then we also have, I'll mention a quick plug for Todoist. Todoist. com has, Todoist is one of our leading products. It's a productivity platform for individuals and teams that want to focus on task management in the modern era. And we have an awesome inspiration hub. That's fairly new, it's a conversion of all of the blog posts and content that we've created over the years. So a lot of it's future of work focus, remote work focus, productivity focused. But I think anybody listening to this show would probably get a lot out of that so go over to todoist. com and look for the inspiration hub there. I think you'd get a lot there. And then finally, I guess maybe I should also mention Peter, we're going to have you on my podcast on about abroad. So if you want to hear, if you want to hear the microphone flipped around and hear me quiz Peter a little bit then tune in there about abroad com or wherever it gets your podcasts you can find about abroad.
Thanks. All of these will be linked in the show notes. And again, thank you for your time for coming here.
Thank you, Peter.
