EP048 - How to build remote into your company’s DNA with Darcy Marie Mayfield
About the episode
This episode focuses on remote culture and, more importantly, creating a remote culture built into your company’s DNA. How you can match your people’s needs with the business's goals while keeping an engaged, loyal, and productive team in a remote environment. I sat down with Darcy Marie Mayfield, a remote experience designer who came a long way from Airbnb, TaxJar, and Stripe to becoming a source of help for remote teams worldwide.
About the guest
Darcy is a Future of Work Thought Leader and remote Experience Designer. Her deepest why is that work doesn’t have to suck, and she has dedicated her career to ensuring that it doesn’t. After spending 9 years working remotely in tech at Airbnb, TaxJar, and Stripe, she’s now a remote-first culture designer, consulting with startups to build engaged and connected remote-first work experiences. When she’s not helping to increase connection and profits while in my wetsuit, facilitating a remote-first engagement workshop, or coaching leaders on how to shift their mindsets to support autonomy & belonging, she does gardening, cooking, or surfing in San Diego, CA (for now!) with her husband Dan and Golden Retriever, Blanche.
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. Today we will discuss culture, real estate connected to culture, and how remote companies should embrace and build intentional culture within themselves. I have Darcy Mary Mayfield, From shift with Darcy, she's a really prevalent remote worker advocate, really popular on social media networks and she's also working with companies, helping them to create better culture internally.
Thank you, Peter. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, I'm a culture architect and remote work experience designer. And I help companies codify and scale their culture when they don't have real estate.
That sounds super fancy and also a little bit more controversial, by the way, which we will discuss why. What's your background? How did you end up working remotely?
Awesome. My background is actually in hospitality. I was at Airbnb for four years and went through massive growth there. And my team was located in San Francisco, but I was located in an office in Portland. And it got to the point where they said you're gonna have to move to San Francisco if you want your career to grow. Oh, this was... 2016, 2017 and I was like, I'm not really a city kitty, you're not going to get the best out of me. And so I left and moved to a very rural area and I really missed solving hard problems with smart people. And that's when I dipped my toes into the world of remote work, pre pandemic, late 2017. And I was very fortunate to take a role as head of employee experience and culture at a fully remote tech company. And That company really looked at remote as a way to look at work in a completely different way and not using remote work just for utilitarian saving money reason, but really saying, what if we just use remote to unlock the potential of what work could be and what our lives could be like? And that's when I just got for lack of a better word, completely obsessed with human psychology, human behavior, meaning at work, and how we architect an experience when you remove the office.
Okay, so we actually, this is a great journey but you said at least two different statements which I want to follow up. One, was that you mentioned that And I agree with that, by the way there are two different companies, one who is using remote work or remote as an option to mitigate costs, shall we say politely and diplomatically or they are into the remote work because of the cost reduction. And there is another company who treats remote work as, not just part of their culture, but it is their culture. So why do you think there These differences are distinguished between the two. And what are the main characteristics of the differences aside from cost?
I don't, I can't tell you why there's a distinction. I think that has to do with the leadership psychology and a lot of what those leaders have been through in their life and their values and willingness to look at things in a different way. I think that's just plain and simple. The differences that I see often, and again, this is my own interpretation and my own experience and perhaps people can relate with it. But the companies that I run into that or interact with that use remote as sort of an option, not a heartbeat. Tend to follow a very similar model to that of the office. And I call it in a lot of ways, the lift and shift. It's traditionally still a nine to five default to synchronous communication. Really similar organizational structures, just saying great, we're going to do remote, but it's just it's a perk, right? It's not necessarily baked into the culture, and again, I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I think the companies that are doing that are, I personally believe they're missing an opportunity to build something that could be better than they could ever imagine.
If I would be a leader and I agree with what you said, it's it's coming from the leadership and I love the expression of lift and shift by the way, because I personally also communicate with leaders who would treat remote work as like you expressed. And when I tell them that the main differences are usually shifting to asynchronous work, documentation investing into remote culture. The main question, and this is my question as well to you okay, but what are the benefits? Why should I do that? Because right now I feel that everything works just fine or at least okay. Plus I gave my people the option to work remotely. So they can work from home or whatever until they attend I don't know, Monday 10 a. m. call all hands meeting or something. Why should I do better? What should I what can I win if I do better?
Yeah I think if a leader has the consciousness and willingness to, Want to seek more out of themselves and their people. I think I've seen the companies that use remote as a heartbeat have really unlocked much more potential higher profits, better community involvement, really looking at a stakeholder governance model, which is really how do you look at a company and say, how do we make this a win situation for everyone? And how do you create a self regulating system? And I think that's where I Work with companies and leaders and it's often that a lot of these leaders have and this may not be across the board But it's what I've ran into It's a lot of these leaders who are using remote to unlock the greater potential of their people of their company of their Profits have actually had a near death experience in the past or they've gone through something and then their lives where they've said Work is more than just doing what we've always done. What if we could open our minds? What if we could use appreci AI, not artificial intelligence, but our appreciative inquiry to say, What has worked well in our past and build on that instead of just following the status quo.
I really love the example of having some sort of a life changing personal experience that created a personal value within the leader to ensure that, that their people can also work remotely, meaning that they can actually invest in other ways of other areas within their lives not just into the work.
Absolutely. And I'll give an example from my personal past. In the United States, we have something if you are a W 2 employee, which is a full time employee in the States. Sure. Protected by a law called family it's called FMLA leave. It's family medical leave. And you can take leave for up to three months with full pay if you need to. If something's going on mentally, physically, or with your family. And I suffer from I've never shared this on a podcast before. I suffer from pretty severe anxiety and depression, and I have my whole life, it's just been a constant battle, and I can control it with my environment, obviously my habits and that's all on me. But my mornings are harder for me than the average bear. And I was working in an office, and I had talked to my manager, I said, hey, Is there any way I could just start a little later every day and come into the office a little later, or work from home in the mornings, that's fine, but I just need a little bit more time to get grounded, I just need my routine, and then I'm going to be able to show up great for you and for this company, and they wouldn't accept it. And so I ended up having to take leave just to take care of myself. That cost the company money, it cost me time and exhaustion. Whereas if I had just had two extra hours every morning to work from home, I would have shown up so much better. And so I think that there's this perception of just how everyone should work, where we're not all built the same.
Yes. Everything is super personal. Yeah. Even work. Even work. In return of your sharing, I also share something that I usually don't share online. I have a heart condition. And I was never actually felt... I wouldn't say normal, but fit into endless grinding of his culture. I did that because I had to do that for 10 years or whatever, but it was a subtle and almost utterly big change to me, how I work now. I've been working remotely since I don't know, like more than 10 years now. And now that I have the health aligned with the work that I do and my life, which is again, it's a separate layer. No one can pay me enough to even consider going back to the office. And I think it's super important to state things like these because most of the leadership decisions are also driven by personal reasons or personal goals, aspirations, or scenarios. Let's continue with that personal thing, because what do you think, what are the, key personal traits of a good remote leader of a great remote leader who is investing into a nurturing culture that embraces everyone at the workplace?
I think the top thing is self awareness. It's really understanding And experimenting with how you work best. And I think that is going to change in different phases of life. And I think being really conscious about, as a leader, how you work best, and then sharing that with your people. I remember when I was in a fully remote environment as an in house employee, our CEO would share often What his day looked like and when he logged off and what he did during his day and sort that actually gave people I had so many people come to me and be like, that was so helpful that our CEO shared that he logs off at 4 p. m. I feel like I can log off at 4 p. m. And so just these tiny little. Moments and nuances of being a leader and knowing that people will follow the leader. And so not only being self aware and saying, Hey, I experimented with this week, or this week I'm experimenting with going out in the middle of the day and going to a movie or. Picking my kids up from school, whatever it is. It doesn't matter. Sharing the experimentation, sharing the results, and modeling that permission that it's okay to learn how to manage your energy, not your time.
One of the things that I teach to my clients and the leaders that have a user manual on yourself, on how you prefer to work, why sometimes if you can share on why that's also important and that actually drives others to relate to that and also adapt to that because you are the leader. So they are adapting to your work roles and work needs and stuff like that. So it's important to share why you are working. For example, you you want to start a little bit later, 11 a. m. or something. I personally also the same, not because of that reason, but because I just hate mornings, by the way. I'm a late riser and I usually work during the night. So it's like a totally shift from the nightfall. But again, it's also within the personal manual of yourself. So this is how you prefer to work usually. That's important to understand and important to share with the people who you are working with.
It's important to share. And I think that there's such a huge real opportunity to when people have their permission to share like and explore how they work best like I remember I've had people on customer service teams like be able to show up 24 hours a day, not them 24 hours a day, but Working with their schedules because people actually knew Hey, I'm on in the morning or I'm on in the evening. And then we just totally restructured like our customer service, how people showed up when they were working based on their preferences and based on when they showed up, that's instead of Okay, you're signed up for this four hour window or whatever, what if you just asked your people when they wanted to work and it's going to be like. Then you just architect it that way and hire for it. It's not that hard.
It's again, everything that you said is super simple, but actually not many people do that and I think one of the key, you mentioned self awareness. I think the another personality trait is to, I wouldn't say humble, but deeply caring about who you are working with and that care can show up, not just in support, but actually like listening and asking Because again, not many leaders are familiar with sentences ending with a question mark. They are usually communicating in the statements. And that can be changed too. Because you worked at Airbnb and you said that you left because you didn't want to move into San Francisco, which, by the way, I understand , no hard feelings towards people from San Francisco, by the way, but I would still prefer Portland. That company at that time, it was like you said five or more years ago ,that company wasn't ready for remote work. Now they are. So they are actually right. So Yeah. And where I wanted to get with this is this change. So actually companies can change and invest in true remote culture, even though they started in a non remote company embracing office work. But in order to do that, I assume, but you probably correct me or have some opinion on that. I assume that it requires a lot of intention in building a remote culture for those companies, even more so than companies who are just starting out because they need to shift a lot of value perceptions and a lot of stuff around, around that. So in order to facilitate that change, what are the best tips that you have? How should one start with that change management?
I think before we dive into that, I want to state that there's a very real reality with larger companies that were co located to start architected, co located, and then shifting to remote work. And I'm gonna say something that may be controversial. I don't think remote work will ever be the heartbeat of those companies, ever. And that's partially because When you build a building, you're building it for people to move within a certain way within it. There's a couch there, people know they can sit on it. There are rooms in which you meet. There are signals to the brain that tell you... That you have permission to move within this environment and that's a very real thing and plopping remote work on top of that is like opening up an entire new building that most likely hasn't been architected for people to have signals of which, how, where, when they can move within or feel the culture and so that change is going to take Depending on how much intention you put into it Years, and it may never ever be the heartbeat. And so that's something I wanted I just like Strictly say but in terms of the change management, I really think if a company has real estate and is offering remote work, you're effectively as a company managing one company and two experiences because you want to be creating equity of the experience of those who do choose to come into the co located space, And those who choose to work away from it. And I think that's a reality that a lot of companies have yet to face.
That is controversial, and we should discuss that, by the way. One key takeaway that you said is that I'm oversimplifying it, obviously but it doesn't mean that you work remotely just because you work online. So these co located offices, yeah I've been there many times, worked usually in the My last in office job was in an agency in London, and yes, we did have multiple office locations around the globe, and we had teleconferencing. I know it's hard to believe. And Jesus, it was horrible. And yeah, people actually worked stuff on the internet. This is what we called, by the way, a company hub before, and so on. But that doesn't mean And that these companies are working remotely. It wasn't a remote work environment. It was a in office environment where we had satellite offices around the globe. And sometimes due to the sheer fact that we couldn't travel to their location, we had to collaborate online or somewhere else. So that's a good takeaway. But let's discuss the really like a black or white statement that you said that You either have an office and you're building an office based culture or you don't have an office at all and you're building a remote first culture. So I presume you are not a big fan of hybrid work.
I don't love it. I don't think there's, look, many companies will have hybrid. Many companies are distributed. I get it. I not knocking it, I just. No, it is a much, it's much more difficult to architect and manage and create equity and belonging in a hybrid environment than it is to either be office first or remote first, and I think that's just a reality.
All because of the location bias or all because all because the consequences of the location bias?
I would say consequences of the location, bias and human be like human behavior, right? It's shared experience like we bond as human beings through shared experience. And if the majority of a team is going into a physically located space every day, and two people on that team don't have access to that or don't want to, or have a disability or whatever the reason may be. They're not having an architected shared experience, right? That's fact. That is a fact. And what would the people in person, if the majority of people in person, Why would they architect a fully remote experience if they don't have to live that every day?
Sure. Sometimes you don't really have The opportunity to ditch the existing real estate that you do have as a company if I would be a company that already have an office would you say that a digital office entirely make it a hundred percent optional to join and start creating a remote first experience for your team or something else?
I think there's a lot of different ways to do it, and I think that the first thing I would say is if I were to ask 15 different founders today what remote means to them, I would get 15 different answers. And so I would ask the company to really understand what are you going to have remote mean to your company? Is it going to be an other than? Are you going to bake it into design? What does it mean for your culture? And I think just being very real and honest about the definition of remote for what that means to the company. So I think I would start there. And I think if the desire is to create a remote first company where the office is a gathering place I would offer to decide. And rename the office. Take the name away. Words make worlds and people will behave within an environment of what they associate the definition of that word to be. I agree. And what's the purpose? Is it a hub? Is it a collaboration space? Is it for off sites? Is it for trust building? I would, if the desire, again, is to create a remote first workplace, I would completely rethink of what is the purpose of the physical real estate? It's no longer an office. What is the purpose of that real estate? Define that and only operate within those bounds.
And only operate the real estate when people are in the real estate, by the way. That's a, that's an addition too. So pretty much your office can be a surf house in a, in an island. If it's part of your retreat or whatever. Yeah. Totally. Totally. I agree. Do you think that so I think the, what you're saying is controversial only because companies are already existing with majority of real estates and offices and stuff like that. But there are companies who are just starting out or they, or there are founders who are Thinking about founding a team and creating something else. So they are on the totally other side of the game, I personally believe, and maybe that's also a controversial statement, that any kind of startup founder who is starting a company right now, you should not have an office like investing into any kind of real estate. If you are below 100 people is like waste of money. And also some sort of like a bag of weight to creating some sort of like a better culture for your team. So do you agree with that statement? Should new companies invest into any kind of non remote environment? If not, how, what would be the first step in creating or embracing any kind of culture for them?
Look, I'm not going to tell anybody what to do. People can do whatever the hell they want. It's their company. I don't really care. But, that said, sounds expensive to have an office. Go for it. That sounds like a lot of money that I don't want to spend. It also sounds Especially at the early stage. Yeah, especially at early stage, like, why not save that money and hire somebody like me to architect your culture remotely? And do it with intention. Again, I'm not going to tell anybody what to do, and I'm not going to knock anybody who gets an office. Go for it, I wish you the absolute best in finding the best talent in the world. Good luck to you. But I don't know if you've ever seen that the model, and he's wind is blowing in his hair, and he's bad hair days. I don't have them. Good luck to you. Talent problem. I don't have them. Good luck to you, says the remote founder. So anyways, I'll leave that there. Back to your question. You asked what are the first steps in building a remote first culture, correct?
Yes, because the first step for them, defining what remote is not really a first step, because they already defined that they want to have a remote thing and it's baked in the culture.
If you want remote to be a heartbeat... I would say the culture shifts every seven people. And so once you have seven or 14 people, I'd say about at about 14, you really want to look at the behaviors that have started to develop in that wise.
Why seven?
Have you ever been in an environment where there's seven people and you start to feel a little bit of difference?
I was okay. That's a good question. And I have to look into my memories actually a group of people, like three people is easy, four people is almost like a pack, but there are no internal groups within the pack. With five and six people, there will be some internal groups with it. So people make alliances, however you call it, and you will prefer certain people over certain people, which is normal. Yeah, I can feel it. Yeah, seven. Yeah. Yeah.
So roughly it just shifts a little, right? Like dominant cultures, if you hire a leader at seven, you'll start at 14, you're going to start to see subcultures develop. And so at about 14, I would say, start to look at what behaviors have developed and start to write the culture down. And that's one of the most important things that I see a lot of companies not focus on at the moment that are fully remote. They're actually not attracting or detracting the right type of people to scale their culture because they haven't written down what those behaviors are, how they work, what's expected, who they want to be, what does their best day look like, 80 percent accurate and 20 percent aspirational. And again, That's starting to codify. That doesn't mean this won't shift. That doesn't mean that this is going to be forever. But really starting to mold and looking at the behaviors and this ethereal movement at 7 to 14 and starting to codify, solidify, Okay, this is working, this isn't. Again, using AI, appreciative inquiry, to build on what is working, not fixing what isn't.
It's interesting that totally agree, by the way, and that 14 people, usually, by the way, that's more or less the same number when a startup exits the really early stage. So usually with that side of size of the staff, they either found or close to find product market fit and stuff like that. So it's easier. Yeah. Again, I think we discussed the self reflection part from the leader because that's important to, to write down how they work, to be reflective on how the actual team works. And what's the next turning point after that 14 people, so given the situation that they might wrote down what they what they feel, how they work how they codified, how they attract people intentionally to build into the team and what is the last or the next step to their, from there?
I think the next step would be to start codifying the rituals. So at that point, there's probably consistency that aside from behaviors that have started to develop, whether it's an all hands meeting, whether it's an artifact, whatever it may be, and people will start to build on those rituals. And so codifying the rituals. This schedule or framework at some point, like what can you expect? That's really important because rituals are going to carry through the culture as it scales. So that's something I would say is probably next. So there's codifying the behaviors and how you work, but then also what are these, what's the framework and what's the freedom within it?
This is a pretty solid and almost simple journey to do where can one make mistakes.
I think there should be mistakes that are made and I think that there should be experimentation that happens. That's the whole point, is you're figuring out how you work best as a team, what works, what doesn't. I think being really experimental in, in those early stages. But I also think it's important to, for the leaders to be very clear and repetitive of, That's great, we made that mistake once, let's not make it again.
Yes. Yeah, sorry, we haven't discussed this before, but I honestly wholeheartedly hoped that you will say that there are mistakes that you will make. Yeah. And it's Totally. Okay. It's part of the journey. Just keep in mind that you still need to be self reflective. You don't stop that be self reflective and understand what are the mistakes that you made and why, and maybe improve on that.
Yeah. And I think that the number one thing with the most successful remote cultures that use the remote as a heartbeat that I see are it's really safe to fail and that lexicon is repeated often and that's a really important point I would say for any leader in a startup, especially that's fully remote is people aren't getting is perhaps as much feedback. They're not getting nonverbal feedback as often as you would in person. And again, words make world that extra level and layer of, Hey, it's okay to mess up often early and often is really important because I grew up in a family where it wasn't okay to mess up. It was not okay for me to experiment as a kid. And I still am unlearning that in my adulthood, and I have to do a lot of personal work to know that and when I seek clients or an in house role, that's the first question I ask a leader is it okay to mess up? And how is it okay to mess up? And give me some examples because it's, I know it's important to me.
Yes, totally. It's very, it's, I probably wouldn't use the parallel analogy here, but it's like a relationship. So if the relationship is honest and transparent and people are communicating to each other, it's totally okay to fuck up something. Because we are people. We forget stuff. Sometimes we are rude. We didn't sleep well. Whatever things can happen. But if you...
Life's crazy.
Yeah. Life is fucked up. Yeah. Life's insane. Yes but if you keep the relationship open and honest and transparent, then you can, too much fuck here, but you can unfuck the situation. So that, that can happen. It's this very same analogy and very same build that you can do within the company culture as well. If the processes, if there, if the expectations if the way you work is transparent and honest and frank. People will make mistakes, that's normal. They can learn how to do that how to, they can learn what they ma made a mistake and what are the learnings from the mistake and improve.
Yeah, absolutely. I talk a lot about remote work, like designing a remote work culture, like as the heartbeat is a lot like Sesame Street. Like we're just teaching people how to be a human again.
Yes. How to be an adult. Responsive, responsible, and open minded human.
But also how to and how to play, and how to think differently, and be creative. I think we've lost a lot of creativity in the bounds of what the office stood for a long time. Yes. And that leaves a lot on the table, and it leaves a lot of money on the table too.
Totally. Are you optimistic in terms of that more and more companies will shift into this more transparent, more honest, even though maybe not remote, but at least transparent and honest way of communication and way of culture?
Yeah, I am. I am optimistic. I'm also an internal optimist, so take that for what it's worth. I'm very optimistic. I think, at least in my generation I'm 37, and I've been through two economic downfalls, I graduated at the height of 2008 from college, been through a pandemic, my, where I grew up is burning, it's on fire I live a very privileged life, but I also have been part of a generation that's just really sick of being beat down and like surviving in a lot of ways. And so I'm very optimistic that leaders that are coming out of this space want more and more meaning and more truth and more, not gonna say this well, more better. Like we just want to do better. And I don't want to, I don't want to be part of something that repeats the patterns that have held us down for a long time.
I think that was a really Great closing statement. What do you think?
Sure!
I'm also part of that generation and I completely understand what you just said. And I think most of the people who are applying to jobs right now are also within that same generation. Or even younger who have even more problems than we had, by the way. But just give it, leave it as a side note. Cool. Where can people find you if they want to build a better culture?
LinkedIn is the best place to reach out to me. So definitely find me on LinkedIn and my website is shiftwithdarcymarie. com. Feel free to shoot me a message over there. And then I do have a Monday newsletter. You can sign up for it via my website called Remote by Design. Cause a culture that is intentionally designed remote is a lot more better than one left up chance.
Thank you. And I appreciate for your time and thank you for coming here.
Thanks Peter.
