Jayden Brazil, host of the Happy Market Research Podcast, draws on a special-edition podcast series to share practical guidance for market researchers and insights professionals suddenly working from home. He interviewed three guests, including leaders from Wildbit, Lookback, and Delve, to compare remote-native companies with those forced into rapid transition. The talk covers physical setup, tool selection, organizational transparency, and the human connection habits that remote work requires.
Key Takeaways
- Set up a dedicated physical workspace before solving for tools or meeting schedules. Working from a shared or semi-public area inside the home undermines focus in ways that are easy to underestimate.
- Distinguish which work is synchronous (requires real-time collaboration) and which is asynchronous, then match the right tool to each type. Using Slack for everything creates the same interruption pattern as someone constantly appearing in your office doorway.
- Before adopting any new tool, answer three questions: What problem will it solve? How will it solve that problem? How will I know when the problem is solved?
- Transparency must increase in a remote setting because people lose all the informal information they used to absorb by bumping into colleagues. Leaders should share company health, proposals in progress, and operational updates more frequently, not less.
- Deliberately manufacture human connection. Schedule time before or after meetings for informal conversation, and create optional but recurring touchpoints such as virtual lunches. These interactions do not happen organically in a remote environment.
- Video highlight reels and testimonials will become a standard expectation in market research deliverables. The current period is accelerating executive comfort with video, and researchers should anticipate that demand will persist after the crisis.
Questions & Answers
- How do you create opportunities to bump into co-workers when working remotely?
- Brazil acknowledged this as the thing he personally misses most. He recommends manufacturing those moments deliberately: leaving unstructured time before or after meetings, using optional social segments in all-hands calls, and creating recurring open-access touchpoints such as his own virtual lunch calls. He also noted that Slack can serve this function if used specifically for informal, social exchange rather than as a primary work communication channel.
- How do you provide constructive feedback to team members who are struggling with the transition?
- Brazil said the grace period is effectively over and productivity expectations need to return to normal or above, given time saved from commuting. He recommended addressing underperformance with kindness, clear acknowledgment of what has happened, and a concrete plan for improvement. He noted his own team had experienced underperformance and he addressed it directly.
- What do you do when the organization says it values customer experience but does not provide the tools to support it?
- Brazil suggested focusing on free solutions, particularly right now when budget approval for new tools is difficult. He specifically pointed to Lookback's upcoming Go Team platform as a free video collaboration option, and noted that free survey tools are acceptable for internal employee pulse surveys.
- How do you handle moderating qualitative interviews on video platforms if you are used to in-person fieldwork?
- Brazil recommended doing test runs before every session, even for experienced moderators. Have a team member play the role of participant, go through the setup, and complete a short run of the exercise before the live session.
Session Notes
Context and Background
This talk was delivered at the April 2020 Quarantine Virtual Insights Conference (ARVIC). Jayden Brazil co-founded the survey technology platform Decipher, sold it to FocusVision, served as CEO of FocusVision, and then launched the Happy Market Research Podcast, where he has interviewed roughly 350 guests from the consumer insights industry. The presentation grew out of a special-edition podcast episode on remote work, based on interviews with three guests from companies with direct experience building or transitioning to distributed teams.
The Three Source Guests
- Rhian van Muir, Head of Product at Wildbit, a software company that was built remote-first from its founding.
- Henrik (CEO of Lookback), a video IDI platform that was also designed around asynchronous, distributed work from the start.
- Steve Mast, Chief Innovation Officer at Delve, which was a traditional in-office company and had to make the same sudden transition most attendees were experiencing.
The contrast between remote-native companies and Delve was intentional. It allowed Brazil to compare what deliberate remote culture looks like versus what rapid, unplanned transition looks like.
The Scale of the Shift
Only 16 percent of companies had a fully remote workforce prior to the conference. For most organizations, this was an entirely new operating mode, arrived at without preparation. Y Combinator's long-standing position is that a company can be good at three things at most, and choosing to operate remotely consumes one of those slots. That means remote work is not just a logistical change. It competes directly with product focus and customer delivery for organizational energy.
Tip 1: Set Up Your Physical Space First
Brazil's first instinct when moving to home was to solve for technology and meeting calendars. His conversation with Rhian van Muir reframed that. The physical space has to come first.
You need to have a space. You just can't work wherever. — Rhian van Muir, Wildbit
- Designate a specific room or area that functions as your office, even if others need to be temporarily displaced from it.
- A closed door or a sign does not reliably signal to family members that you are unavailable. Expect interruptions and build in social grace for them.
- One attendee (Kate Wilson, YouGov) and her husband, both working professionals in a one-bedroom apartment, built a whiteboard check-out system to prevent simultaneous video calls from colliding.
Tip 2: Separate Synchronous from Asynchronous Work
In an office, the boundary between focused solo work and collaborative real-time work is enforced by physical cues, a closed door, headphones, or a meeting room. At home, that boundary disappears unless you build it deliberately.
- Synchronous work requires real-time collaboration: live meetings, calls, and video sessions.
- Asynchronous work does not require others to be present at the same time: writing, analysis, documentation.
- Remote environments create freedom to do asynchronous work at different points in the day, but that freedom can erode personal time if boundaries are not set explicitly.
- Match the right tool to the right type of work. Slack fits short, in-the-moment exchanges. It is not suited to information that needs to persist and be retrieved later.
Tip 3: Choose Tools Carefully and Set Rules for Their Use
Brazil emphasized that tools like Slack and Zoom do not solve communication problems on their own. The application of a tool and the rules around it determine whether it helps or hurts.
Slack is more of a doorway conversation. Somebody stops by, they're standing in your doorway, and they tell you stuff. It's in the moment and then gone. — Henrik, Lookback
Wildbit, a well-regarded brand among software developers, actively avoids Slack because they find it more disruptive than useful. The platform creates a sense of urgency around every message and can produce constant interruption of deep work.
Three Questions to Ask Before Adopting Any New Tool
- What problem will this tool solve?
- How will it solve that problem?
- How will I know whether the problem has been solved?
Tools Highlighted
- Zoom: Dominant for synchronous video; now the default for most teams.
- Slack: Useful for in-the-moment, informal exchange. Not a repository for persistent knowledge.
- Notion: Described as an internal wiki. Suited for meeting notes, company state, culture documentation, and anything that needs to be retrieved over time. Brazil's recommended place for information that should outlast a Slack thread.
- Go Team by Lookback (free, about to launch at time of recording): A video platform positioned as an alternative to Zoom for team interactions that do not require webinar features.
Five Areas Managers Must Address Actively
Brazil argued that simply supplying a laptop and a video call link is not enough. Leaders need a deliberate plan to address the following areas, and one person must be clearly accountable for each.
- Employee morale: Use short, regular pulse surveys (even a simple scale and one open-end question) to track directional changes over time. Use a free tool separate from your client-facing survey platform to avoid access and security complications.
- Customer access: Sales and client teams cannot visit in person. Build surrogate experiences. One example cited: a branded box mailed to an executive, containing a video screen playing a personalized message and a gift card for a restaurant, with an invitation to a virtual lunch.
- Work enablement: Ensure people have the tools and processes they need to do their jobs from home, including access to collaboration and research platforms.
- Organizational clarity: Increase the frequency and reach of internal communication. Steve Mast at Delve moved to daily leadership meetings and company-wide communications from the CEO. The goal is to replace the information people used to absorb from hallway conversations.
- Innovation enablement: Whiteboards and physical collaboration spaces are gone. Teams need a digital equivalent for ideation and real-time creative work.
Rebuilding Human Connection Deliberately
The informal information exchanged before and after meetings, in hallways, and at the water cooler is completely lost in a remote environment. That loss is not trivial. It affects morale, trust, and the informal awareness of how colleagues and the business are doing.
- Lookback's all-hands meetings are scheduled for 30 minutes but often end in 13 to 18 minutes. The remaining time is unstructured: someone might play guitar, share something personal, or just chat. Attendance in the informal portion is optional, but the space is held open.
- Brazil opens his own team's 20-minute daily meetings with 5 to 8 minutes of personal check-in and small talk before moving to business.
- Brazil hosts a free, open virtual lunch call on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 a.m. Pacific, accessible via his LinkedIn. Attendees range from pharmaceutical CEOs to insurance professionals to researchers.
- Remote-native companies document informal one-on-one exchanges in shared tools like Notion or Slack channels so that information is not lost. This is an added discipline that in-office teams do not need but remote teams do.
On Transparency
You need to be transparent by default. People can't bump into you and they can't bump into information. — Henrik, Lookback
Lookback shares everything with its full team: revenue coming in, proposals in progress, and the overall health of the business. The reasoning is that people who feel like anonymous cogs disengage, and that disengagement is more likely when the informal signals of organizational health are no longer visible.
Implications for Market Research Practice
Brazil connected the broader shift to video communication to a coming change in research deliverable expectations. As executives become comfortable consuming video and connecting through it daily, they will begin expecting video components in research reports.
- Video highlight reels and respondent testimonials, whether from real IDIs or professionally curated clips, will move from a differentiating feature to a standard expectation in research deliverables.
- Researchers conducting qualitative interviews via Zoom or similar platforms should do dry runs with a team member before each session, even if they have used the platform many times before.
- On video calls, non-verbal communication is constrained. Brazil noted that 80 percent of communication typically happens below the face, and most of that is lost on screen. Researchers and moderators should compensate by being more deliberately expressive.
Closing Thought
It is not the strongest of the species or the most intelligent that survives, but the ones that are most adaptable. — Charles Darwin
Brazil closed by framing the transition as a test of adaptability rather than strength or prior expertise. Being skilled in the pre-COVID office environment does not guarantee success in a remote one. Intentional design of how work gets done, and how people connect, is what determines outcomes in the current context.
Transcript
Read the full transcript
good afternoon how are you that's going great good good you're the last presenter of the day Jenga this is it this is very exciting and with the space background I'm loving it yeah so I'm gonna do a quick intro I won't run through our rules of engagement because we shared those several times and everybody is abiding that by them perfectly so thank you guys and thank goodness Tech has been our friend today so knock on wood I really hope I didn't just junks the presentation that's about to happen but our next presenter is Jayden Brazil and he is going he is from happy market research podcast which you know what I'm describing this event as is basically the biggest collaboration since Steve Urkel visited the Tanners in full house you've got the happy market research podcast meets the quarantine virtual insights conference it's just this is big guys so you know watching the news feeds tomorrow cuz this is gonna be a big I don't know about that I appreciate that I appreciate the introduction you know and jaemin has since he is the last presentation of the day he has agreed to stick around for it being well in Charlotte North Carolina it's 5 o'clock 5 o'clock somewhere Jamie's on the west coast he's getting started a little earlier but this is the portion of every confidence when it's cocktail hour time and we're trying to be no different so encouraging everyone to join us I've got my local charlotte craft brew curbside pickup for social distancing I'm doing my espresso stout Imperial espresso stout which I'm really looking forward to I'm gonna just mute myself and let Jane and take it from here thank you so much bill so yeah cheers my friend I think my it like pops out of view which is super odd oh that's very cool magic yes I can do that so if ever you yes cheers Thomas if ever you've heard me speak you would know that I tend to get audience participation in fact my rule of thumb is a 30% of the talk really should be audience involved whether that serve group activities or something else so this is going to be for me a little bit unusual because I don't have the opportunity to see your fantastic faces so what I'd like you to do right now is one kindness as I start my little introduction can they they're able to chat and I'm able to see the chat right I'm gonna soon the answers yes okay great so I see it perfect so if you if you do me a kindness and go ahead and enter in the biggest challenge in chat the biggest challenge that you faced working remote so I'm assuming that that majority of you in fact I'm assuming that 84% of you are recent to working remote out of sight out of mind that's interesting so if you just keep that going I'm gonna use that as a reference point a little bit later on but keep that feed going I love this alright great so I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen all right super so everybody should be able to see my screen built that's not the case let me know today I'm going to be talking about how to transition from an office to working from home I know it's a little bit of an unusual topic in context of my background and for those that don't know just really briefly I co-founded a survey technology platform known as decipher I sold it to focus vision and then became the CEO of that company for a few years about gosh two and a half almost three years ago be 3 or September I left the post of CEO focus vision and started a podcast called the happy market research podcast I have actually fallen I loved I loved podcast before I have really fallen in love in a different way in a more intimate way with consumer insights since starting the podcast that the first question I've asked the 350 ish guests is tell me a little bit about your parents and how they inform what you do today for a career I wish I could take credit for coming up with that question my executive producer was the brains behind it the but the reason that we started doing that started with that framework is on the public forums of the insights Association and other other boards the number one thread is always how did you wind up in consumer insights or market research and I think it's so interesting that we can work right alongside people for decades in my case and really not have a sense of their background and so for me is one of the biggest benefits is being it has been and privileges who's been able to hear the stories of how people have wound up in consumer insights and then you know mapping that back to their childhood whether it was a positive experience like is usually the case or occasionally we even get like darker tales in fact I had one guest who the the CEO and owner of research America and um you know his his background which I don't spend a ton of time is a little bit off topic but his never knew his father and his mother at a very young age wound up taking him and his sister to the airport and putting them both on individual on separate planes one-way tickets without notifying anybody so he wound up growing up in a very unusual situation but it was such a inspirational story of how he was able to really take that negative and navigate a very successful you know life happily married with children and obviously successful as it relates with with his business so if you are that's my only advert for the happy market research podcast if you consume podcasts I would consider a privilege if you would tune into one of the episodes yeah so I'll shut up at that at this point so this particular presentation normally I interview had some insights this particular presentation is that is a little bit different I should probably take a drink from my two o'clock don't judge this presentation this has come out of a special edition podcast that we dropped last week and it's obviously dealing with this very relevant topic that all of us have been impacted by even if we are a or previously were a working from home or remote the the the way our methodology for the podcast is we usually come up with a specific theme like I'm talking about the next in April May and May we're releasing a podcast on diversity and we interview people that are like we have the head of insights or sorry the head of diversity for McDonald's on the podcast so we usually interview between three and six specialty guests and then we turn that into a journalistic episode and that's where this one comes from and so the three guests that I had on there were experts in the area of working remote Rhian van Muir is the head of product for a company called wild bit well but it makes tough developers use all the time it's a very famous brand if you are a full-stack or any really developer we also had the CEO of a UX technology company and Rick Matson called look back look back is a video IDI or platform I think it's if not the best is actually among that the best has recently been touted the best on quite a few posts as their business has been exploding and then on the third is Steve mast the CIO chief innovation officer for delve in eeeh some of you may know Davinia and some of you may know one of their sister companies methought of I what the reason I chose those three guests is you know Rhian is that they're a company and and look back both there are companies that have worked full-time from their existence they were actually pretty they were built on this idea of creating an asynchronous work framework that is to say it's not really about meetings or being in person but we're gonna create a culture and remote is that that supports remote the video is really interesting because they were the opposite they were a company where you showed up for work every day like like most of our business that we had even even my little podcast so I thought it was really interesting kind of being able to compare and contrast the experiences and we'll dive into that a little bit later on if you do have questions there's a questions tab of course all of you know this excuse me please feel free to use the questions tab it'll help me kind of navigate through the difference between the chat and questions all right great I thought this was an interesting statistic only 16% of companies had a fully remote workforce prior to just four weeks ago the it's just a it's a completely new experience that most of that had most of us have been forced to enter into and I mean it's not just redefined the little things like how we do Easter as a family and you know what time we wake up and what time stop doing work but it's impacting the big things like how you know if you're into Saturday Night Live which is one of my favorite TV programs last last week they did a special episode where they threw zoom so this is absolutely hilarious if you haven't seen the highlight reel of that I encourage you to check it out but we know that working from home just isn't as simple as unplugging your laptop from work and then putting it on your kitchen counter right it's a lot more to it in fact Y Combinator which is the number one accelerator for startup companies they think about like Airbnb and zapier and many many big companies have come out of the Y Combinator ecosystem they believe and have had this mantra in place for quite a while which is a company can only be good at three things that's at most three things most companies aren't even capable of being good at three things by the way no disrespect you just kind of what it is but at most three things and if you choose to have a remote workforce that leaves you with only two other things and I think this is such an important point because we know that if we're going to build a company or a personal you know a sole proprietorship or whatever it's really I mean you know that takes a ton of focus and is very very difficult to build that product or that service and then subsequently deliver to our customers but if you decide to do this in a remote framework then it I mean it's going to take that much energy the same amount energy in order to maintain things like culture and best practices and velocity inside of what you do so our world has changed but I believe that at its absolute core is the function of how we work and so that I put up five companies that are doing it particularly well and have been doing it well before but for a while bit well but and look back both our but but it is interesting that the number of companies that are not in the technology space is actually very small I couldn't find a list of companies that are like more CPG based that have a remote workforce most of them for obvious reasons you know manufacturing etc don't and so you think about like how that's in how this transition is impacting them you know they're just everybody is just really scrambling trying to figure it out and hoping that you know in a month for now we're going to be out of this lockdown state I mean it's you know hope in that framework I think is could potentially be misguided and it's really important that we kind of own the place that we are right now and understand that we need to perhaps settle down with where we are and make sure that where this current context is one that we are successful in alright great so I got a couple of things that came out of the interviews tips if you will the first one is setting up your physical space Rihanna Vandermeer who's pictured here he is a quote from the interview that I that we did and he says you need to have a space you just can't work wherever I love this part of it when you when you pull back my kids literally or banging on the door right now it sounds like the Huns are coming sorry about that but you know I before interviewing him I was actually set up on my kitchen counter so it wasn't until I had the conversation with with Rhian oh my gosh that makes a lot of sense because I'm in this semi public area and it's important that I'm able to kind of sequester myself and it seems like a common-sense thing when I'm saying it out loud but when I just initially made that transition into you know from an office into the house you know I wasn't I wasn't quite aware of the amount of focus I need to put in the actual physical space that I was going to be occupying I thought it was going to be more of a question of what sort of technologies am I going to use and how is my meeting schedules how's the meeting calendar going to be different and that sort of thing but but virtual actually has to be secondary to the physical space I thought this is a great image I was able to pull off the internet but the quote actually is also from Rihanna and and that is to say that the sign you know the door that says dad is on the call isn't always as effective as I want it to be and this is something that I have heard time and time again when I'm able to get into the actual chat which I will do momentarily I think you know this part is you know we just there's that overall forgiveness that just didn't exist four weeks ago and you know you it would have been inappropriate there's two big things that have happened one is there's just a in my opinion there's two big things there's probably many many more than that but things that have stood out to me it's okay to have a semi unprofessional context behind you that just kind of is with it so for my in my example I've got two teenage boys this is our room and they get kicked out from 9:00 to 5:00 or whenever every every day and that's just kind of is what it is this is just dad's makeshift office until everything's over with and they understand it and do whatever so the the the point there though is sometimes you'll see teenage boy stuff in the background which is I try to clean up right now which is kind of wheat which could be kind of it's terrifying the other thing that is really interesting is it's now unacceptable to not have your video on during virtual conversation so it used to be the case that maybe 50% of the people or zero percent of the people if they're on a zoom call or similar technology they would not share their video and now it's the case that far and away the majority of people don't share their video and if you don't share your video it almost feels like it almost feels like there's something different or wrong or like you're not fitting into this new social norm so if you are familiar with the book give a mouse a cookie it has this like really weird journey where you know you start with in one spot and you end up in another spot but the journey to get there is just like crazy thing and in my head it oftentimes works the same way so when I think about the applicant the learning of video what I mean by that is the adoption of video as a normal way for us to communicate I am all of a sudden thinking about the importance of a highlight reel four weeks ago so thinking you did your in-depth interviews you did your quant research you've got your bar charts you've got your methodology outlined you've got your presentation you know it was becoming at that point it was because we're becoming a trend but now I believe it's the case especially coming out of this at once that happens that executives are going to demand that there's a highlight reel in the video so those testimonials if they're real or even manufactured professionally are going to become a mainstay inside of our market research reports and so and the reason why is because we are learning to connect with video in a way that we frankly just didn't even for I didn't and I think most of us didn't for four weeks ago and so that's the that's the part that I think is really important for us to be framing out because we're thinking about our you know maintaining that sort of cutting leading edge is that video will continue to play a significantly a more important role in how we communicate story to our customers kind of ending on the physical space Kate Wilson from YouGov she I host a zoom called twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 o'clock Pacific time anybody can join it's just for connecting really it's a 30-minute called virtual lunch chat and if you want information on that you can check out my LinkedIn and I post on it a couple times a week so she had this right away she had this really funny I had asked this question what's change and she said well we live in a one-bedroom flat in San Francisco and we can't really go outside and it's her and her husband both of them are working professionals they had this big problem because there wasn't a physical space for them to be able to jointly do a zoom call it was just like chaos so she actually created a check out system which is a a whiteboard and in order to have a zoom call you have to make sure you find a space on that board that your spouse isn't doing it which is kind of this really funny hack that she came up with but talk about like the overall ability to micromanage the last point I wanted to bring up on this I think it is yet good the last point is and this is is maybe a little bit confusing for me it was very confusing at first and that is determine what work is synchronous and asynchronous so we all know what you know we know the words mean I'm not trying to you know mean the Webster dictionary here but but the point is that in a physical spit in it when I'm in a physical environment it's very easy for me to know okay the door is closed or whatever I got my headphones on and now it's time for me to get work done in a synchronous that's where I'm in person in a meeting or in a zoom call when you work remote all of a sudden you can have the opportunity to do your asynchronous work that is the work that isn't needed where you don't need to work with other people at the same time I'm and you can get that done at different points during the day and so it creates a tremendous amount of freedom for you I would say that one of the one of the other the other side of this is that it can create it can encroach on your family time or your personal time and that's where you need to be really strict on you know what your boundaries are and when you're willing to do things but you know it frees me up for example to go well I'm not picking my kids up at school but if I was then that would be a good example of you know something that uses it in a remote environment I wouldn't normally be able to do because I would be a work excuse me and then so you need to determine what work is synchronous and what work is asynchronous and then you need to make sure that you the right tools that are specific to that work we're going to talk more about the tools right now so we I believe have kind of thrown and I mean categorically not like individually we have looked at tools like slack and zoom to really solve the problem of virtual work and it's really important for us to understand that those tools are not going to solve any communication problems per se they don't make us better communicators it's the application of the tools and the rules around them that are really really important in fact wild bit which again is this renowned brand software development company for software developers they actually hate slack they do not enjoy using it they find that it's more disruptive than it is beneficial for them so before you roll and you could think of why right because in Rhian did a really good job in his interview of kind of providing the color commentary for that this particular point and that is that with slack everything feels important but I liked how henrik framed it he goes slack is more of the in the doorway conversation meaning you have an office somebody stops by they're standing in your doorway and they tell you stuff so it's like in time and then gone it's not this thing that persists forever and functions as the repository for of knowledge it's not like a internal wiki for example I mean and so in that way you know a lot of people use slack as this way of communication as opposed to email but the problem with that is it feels very like instantaneous in that and you can wind up in a scenario using Hendricks point where you're constantly being interrupted as opposed because it'd be like somebody constantly a new person constantly showing up in your doorway interrupting your asynchronous a little work that you need to get done so when you're rolling out a new tool for those of you who are in this thinking about leveraging new platforms or technologies there's three questions that the guests had identified that you need to answer the first one is what problem is the tool gonna solve how will it solve this problem and how will I know if it's been if the problem has been solved which I think is a really important point if you have something that is vacuous like we need to do we need to have virtual communication or we need to organizational clarity during this period of time you need to make sure that you have a pre and a post framework of what that looks like an ability to be able to measure that the best way to do that in my opinion is something like an internal survey with your employees so we know that we we have to as managers we have to do a more than just throw in throw up a laptop on the on a desk on a desk someplace inside of our inside of our thoughts so we have to actually navigate a plan or have a plan that we navigate to address in my opinion again these these five things and the first one is employee morale if you're not accustomed to working remote and if you're not accustomed to managing the remote workforce then it's critical you figure out how you're able to gauge and keep your employee morale high surveys are a great way to a way not maybe a great way but a way an established way to be able to do that if they might not give you an absolute connection but they'll give you a direction proportional meaning responses in context you can see if morale is going down over time or up over time those are and what's changed when those particular events are happening so you know and nothing complex here or something and I'm cringing at saying this but something in PSE where you know it could just be a 5 or 11 or whatever point scale and maybe even an open end and that's it just monitor that on a weekly basis free tools are totally acceptable here in fact if you are a survey plap if you have a survey platform that you currently use it's probably not a good idea to use that particular platform for security reasons because you don't want anybody to have access to the information customer access is a second thing that is really important so if you have customers that you're used to visiting in person maybe you're in sales it's now it's you can't go do that anymore and and it isn't okay just to say oh well I just can't do that anymore so you need to make sure that you're creating surrogate experiences whether that's you know zoom or something else like that one of the you know one of the things that a friend of mine used to do was send a video invitation to lunch so it was quite literally his very nice wrapped box it looked like an Apple type box and the executive would receive it in the mail it would open it up when they open it up there was a video screen that was a was that person the sales person giving a pitch basically saying listen this is who you are this is what we do and this is who we do it for and you would love the opportunity to take you to lunch and here's a gift card for the lunch place if you want to spend it with me at lunch great and if you decide you don't want to no problem go have a great lunch on us anyway we appreciate that I appreciate you and so you got to think a little bit differently now maybe it's something the gift boxes or something like pure L or something along those lines right you've got to just maintain some level of relevancy work enablement and probably we've talked a lot about that already organizational clarity I actually think this is the overall most important thing I like how Steve mastered the davinia framed it and this this part with with my interview with him was probably my favorite they actually went to a daily meeting so they've actually become as an organization more transparent with the entire organization as opposed to just with the executive team so there Adam the CEOs is doing weekly calls there are and emails to the entire company there's just a lot more transparency and communication because you don't have the opportunities to be able to bump into one another and the last one that I want to just touch on briefly is the importance of for innovation enablement so the whiteboards gone huge problem and because all of us are accustomed to drawing or you know in physical space interacting with one another now we can't do that anymore we have to make sure that we have a tool that enables us to have those same interactions that in a digital construct Rhian actually had this particular point he said that a lot of the job functions start changing so his example was a physical facilities manager all of a sudden can become the team happiness and ops head of ops so the the the idea here is that there is this like you're not necessarily getting jobs jobs aren't like being removed as much as sometimes they're having to be reframed in context of a digital framework so who is responsible to answer these questions I'm not gonna suggest I know the answer to this for you but I do think it's really important that if you decide you want to measure these things you need to determine one person that is ultimately responsible with ensuring that they can answer yes or no or directionally one of my mentors at well as a CEO focus vision was he told me he goes you know we need it we need to answer this in every board meeting are we excellent and I thought about that a lot over the following quarter and in order to answer that I need to really define what excellence is and so you know my point there is if we if we really care about these things and it's gonna create a lot of focus for us and help us I believe drive better outcomes for not just customers but also employees and ourselves alright I'm gonna stop really quick because we have so there's many many people that have been chatting appreciate that are there any questions if there are any questions please feel free to pop in and let me know sorry I've got to check this real quick this means there we go nope I'm not seeing any questions all right create opportunities to bump into co-workers yeah that is the biggest thing that I personally am personally missing right now I am there's a there's a lot of joy I personally find with just having chats around the water cooler as they say and you know we don't have that opportunity in anymore so now you need to think about how you're able to really create those experiences and that's where a platform like slack actually can do a good job so Hendrick in a remote organization you need to transfer can't read it Tran something there we go you need to be transparent by default and why because people can't bump into you and they can but they can't bump into information and I really like how he's framing the whole like the difference between bumping into people and bumping into information in you know in a literal way of it the bumping into a human actually gives us information you can tell by their demeanor you know is the is that my manager stressed out you know what's happening inside of this customer relationship you can get those kinds of fees you can have those conversations on the side and that information is ultimately completely lost you think about the amount of interaction we used to get when before a meeting and after a meeting well now we don't get any of that now you start when the meeting is scheduled to start and then when it's over with people jump off the call one of the things and I've gotten to know look back really well over the last three months one of the things I like a lot about the culture that they've built is they when they have an all-hands meeting though it's a 30-minute scheduled meeting the actual meeting itself might only last for 13 to 18 minutes but the balance of the time is spent with somebody picking up guitar and saying this is a new riff I learned or you know something along those lines there's this like and it's not mandatory some people leave and some people stay but you know there's these like organic opportunities but they have to be manufactured and create it as opposed to at least right now because it's not part of our DNA as opposed to how it was before it just felt really natural for people to be able to mingle after a all-hands or after a meaning and chat and you know have breakout sessions now it's you just you know unfortunately that is a big loss for us as a by not having the personal interaction but we so we have to go out of our way to make sure that we create the opportunities for people to be able to bump into one another I hit on this already that I'll read his quote here we're very transparent about everything from the number of reads coming in the number of proposals being written the health of the business people are unsatisfied right now being a cog all of us always have been I would say but right now is even it's even more important that we are aware of the the need for people to understand how we're doing as a company how we're doing as as people and and and and it's the responsibility is quite literally on both sides of sorry on both sides of the of the fence from employees to executives and and around again so you know we can't just be quiet we're not cogs executing at the same time we don't employ cogs and so and so that in this in this framework is really important that with all the uncertainty that we become more transparent with people letting them know how we're doing and what we're going to do about it whether it's good or bad at least if handled and in the right way and then it'll be well-received by by your constituents again either either direction so the two tools when I've talked about at nauseam already and slack and I wanted to highlight it's clearly come out and zoom as some of the winning platforms here and the other is notion so notion is where you canonize your culture process and self-help so this is actually a the video that I'm sure the the screenshot that I have behind this these words is captured from a tool that look back is about to release that's free but it it it's a great like team it's actually called go team will be really seen next week I believe but anyway it doesn't have a pay structure so it is like a hundred percent free the but the reason that I'm bringing this up is you know if slack isn't the place where we put stuff that's permanent and then where do we put it and and that's where I've really leaned into this tool called notion so notion is if you haven't used it it's it's a really nice sort of internal wiki is how I'd put it super easy to use and it's a great way to put things like meeting notes that need to persist over time or you know state of the company or anything that's that you want people to be able to reference from a historical perspective in an easy in an easy way and then Henry excel point when I've made this already but I couldn't agree with it more is that you need to make sure that you leave time after some meetings for personal connection in summary on this point like successful working it's just not like we it's from my mind when I started this journey four to five weeks ago it was quite literally uh I just didn't think there'd be a problem I mean I've I've traveled I used to travel 50% of the time I'm accustomed to all these tools I didn't think there would be any material change but doing things like structuring my physical space and being very diligent around it as well as making sure that I've got human contacts a contact with humans that is not necessarily in my normal vein like pre or post meeting that was the reason that I started doing the virtual lunch is and anybody can attend I have a today we had a CEO of a pharmaceutical company attend and we had an insurance salesperson I mean it's like quite literally all over the map in terms of and mostly researchers you could imagine but you know the reason that we sorry I started that is just because I felt like it's important for us to be able to create those opportunities these four for connection I'm gonna end on this slide we've all seen this slide on too many presentations but or some variation of it but you know Charles Darwin's one of his many quotes it's not the strongest of species or the most intelligent that survived but it's the ones that are the most adaptable and that's that's the point that I think we as as as people that are in April to you know the middle of this crisis need to understand is that you know rigidity and being really good in the in the precoded world that was great but now we have to live in this current one and in that way we need to be very intentional with how we get work done and how we live and integrate the two that you know it's just really it's just really important for us in order to maintain a level of ongoing success so anyway that's what I got for you guys today I'm gonna stop sharing and I'm gonna jump into any questions that you may have for me whether it's specific to working remote the topic of today or if it's something else that you want to talk about and then while I'm waiting for questions I'm going to take a minute and read some of these I'm not gonna feel the Mac stuff when I think that was when I just popped in so the point about being out of sight out of mind this is something that came up on in the conversation I had with Henrik he was you know in in a in a company that's not intentional with its culture and has a physical space it will usually treat remote employees like second-class citizens not intentionally but by accident and the reason why is because the way that information is transferred is through the bumping into as opposed to in specific tools like notion etc so the example that Henrik gave which I thought was very on point is if you have a virtual bump into somebody that you need and it's important for other people to know it it's incumbent on you to document it in notion or slack depending on the type of information it is so it adds by by saying we're a remote call even if it's for a short period of time then we have to take the added burden making sure that we're documenting things yeah kids home all day my goodness that has been a joy and also quite literally well a little bit of a stressor for me the 24/7 working 24/7 is something that I've heard a lot in the probably 40 or 50 people that I've been connecting with on this topic there's this like I was talking to a friend of mine I want to who he is but or the company he works for extent his permission but the but he was telling me that you know he's actually working and he worked a lot before he thinks he's working about twice as much right now and he's ever worked and the reason why is his wife who's a schoolteacher is now home not I mean she's working but not like she was and she's taking care of everything in the house he's got he's got his meals prepared for him congratulations to him and yeah so he just finds himself having a lot more a lot less interruptions and demands on his time which is I think pretty interesting so he just finds himself working more so now he's like okay I've got to figure out where I'm able to just stop I would say ending the workday is something I don't struggle with I personally but I know again kind of feeding into the other point that is something that is there but now I'm kind of piggybacking on the other person's point not watching TV while working I actually struggle a lot with that sometimes I will get either on social media or like sometimes I'll be on LinkedIn LinkedIn or Twitter and I'll just wind up down this rabbit hole where my focus is like initially just a little bit of time gone and then all of a sudden it's like a 30 minute or more period that's gone so yeah I feel bad I don't know you probably just need to like I been on tick-tock if you've been on tick-tock we do me a favor and post a post something in the questions I'd like to know this this from you if you do use tick-tock and I don't think I can do a poll can i no but if you are using tick-tock I'd be interested to know what your what your thinking about it so that would be the question that you would frame they actually have these hilarious they're like video means if you're not familiar with the platform one of the trending ones is my wife has a job and I don't and the hashtag is working from home and it's really funny the hilarious things that the guys wear gals are doing while their spouse is trying to focus on work all right the 16 month old daughter is a big problem because for me mode for me and I think for all of us when you have a situation where you've got a younger child I have a three and a four year old then and they you know they want what they want and they don't understand like these necessarily these like 16 months obviously is far different than three year old but but it's the same kind of like things and I don't know what those solution is it kind of breaks my heart sometimes when I'm on a conference call and I can't you know go help them I have stopped conference calls before we had a bee sting last week and I'm like oh that sounds like a big deal so sorry guys that's trumping it but you know those kinds of things and everybody understood whereas that would have never flown again four or five weeks ago the managing my team well is probably one of the like for me the biggest problem that I've had so we had a in-person meeting and you could just tell what people walked in how they're doing every morning we had that before and now you know everybody joins on time but it's this you know the ability to read the face is kind of going away and so what the hack that I built into that is as soon as the last person gets there if you will so we might start a minute or two late but as soon as that person arrives then we literally spend time it could be in our excuse me in our the meetings are relatively short about 20 minutes we'll spend the first five to eight minutes just talk getting caught up on whatever everybody's doing and it's these little trivia stuff right it's the small talk it's that about the kids or you know Chewie she loves kpop so I always ask her some kpop trivia or that kind of stuff so there's like this opportunity to connect and that just helps maintain that human connection the other part that I've struggled with is ensuring that the work is getting done so we actually completely change we are overall velocity for work has decreased dramatically in the last four weeks and and the reason why is just you know we need to put different systems in place and we have started that this week actually to ensure that we're maintaining a discipline around getting the work done client communications are in place all that sort of stuff it says Alan says it's already a challenge for the organization to get customer experience they say they do but they don't support it or provide the tools I need yeah I mean lobbying for tools right now is really hard anything that costs money is a problem and that's and because companies are in this great unknown and there's lots of other reasons why and so you know what I what I'd encourage you to do is look for free solutions that's why I mentioned that look back we'll be launching go teams next week in a free all free video platform if you don't have access to great screen share that kind of thing and you need to go over the 45-minute window you know it's a really good I actually like it better than zoom for many things it doesn't support use cases like webinars but it does a lot of other things it's super easy to use and free admission free so the waiting till 5:00 to open the bottle of wine no I'm not kidding Judy I think that is at this point alcohol sales are up we've seen the statistic 55 percent you know the problem is that the I mean the problem there's the what's interesting about that statistic is while those sales are up they're actually not up in the most profitable category which is bars right so you think about the type of consumption that's happening is the the stuff that is low margin for four distributors for that call space and so you know that's I think that space in general while it feels like there's been a boom to sales is actually I'm gonna be under a lot of cash pressure in the coming quarter so be interesting to see how that whole thing materializes the keeping happy part is something that I don't know what the hack is there exactly except communicating with other people as much as possible using video so not through you know text doesn't scratch that itch for me and then I would say this not multitasking when you're having the conversations so treating this has been this is actually a discipline for many of us you know it used to be the case that it was acceptable to have the video chat on the way up and then start multi doing emails or some work or something else and have it more as background noise and then chime in when you're asked a question now it's the case that people should feel like they have your attention or they're gonna start checking out of the conversation and and you we all know the cues we we can all hear the noises we know what's going on in that and so you know the it's really important that if you're if there's a 30-minute meeting and it's on video then we need to make sure that we are being disciplined with how we're spending our time there yeah ergonomics at work I actually bought it's like a few hundred dollars at Costco standing desk that's helped a lot for me just cuz I like to move around although I've noticed that I do I take I have actually been walking and exercising way less so yeah if you guys have a solution for that posted in QA or chat yeah a constructive feedback to team members who may be struggling with the transition I don't know what you mean by constructed in air quotes it could be very that you know maybe they're not maybe their performances following up I think there's like we're kind of like over the grace period vacations over so to speak and now we need to really get down to it and make sure our productivity is back to normal if not better they really quite literally should be better I mean we're saving time in our lives not commuting etc so in that kind of a that kind of a framework I think you know clarity with performance is really important this is what I've had we have a small team of four so I won't go into any details so I want it you know but you know we've had some under performance and so you know these are those things that have to be addressed I mean myself included so you know it's addressed with kindness and then an awareness of what's happened and then make sure that there's a plan for what that solution looks like yeah getting rid of your husband creating a husband free work for that was exactly what it's exactly right it's very difficult it's very difficult to do that check out some of the videos on tik talked about I have a job and my husband doesn't you will find that therapeutic all right no physical separation from yet we talk about that a lot real challenge reading emotions yeah I we almost have to be a little more emotive intentionally emotive not actors but like video does such you just miss the biorhythms and the and be and you're kind of like I'm constrained if I was at if you and I were at a at a cocktail hour like we should be then it would be easy to be emotive and have a conversation but you know I stopped using my hands when I'm in front of my computer or which is a big part of my how I talk and we and eighty percent of body language or eighty percent of communication is happening below the face so you know there's a lot there's a lot to trust to figure out on that front I don't the the homeschooling of kids that's super tough taking care of my wonderful husband he sounds very lucky oh my gosh open-heart surgery Oh brutal yeah think could play I'm very thankful that we've got you know health over here but man I changed I still so our 3-year old she's obstinate of not wanting to get out of diapers which I don't know what that's about but I'm sure some of you psychologists do so if you could enlighten me on how to make that better because I unfortunately you have to change diapers occasional use it my boys are literally gonna walk in right now can't see them because the son has the space background I guess anyway you know one of the things that we have to do it for use if we were you doing in person interviews and used to doing that we and we go to we go to zoom it can be a little bit or whatever platform it can be a little bit jarring for you as a moderator and it's very important you do test runs so this is something I still in doing right now where if I'm gonna you know I view zoom probably at least a hundred times in a week and I if I'm doing an interview I still make sure I do a dry run beforehand with somebody on my team where they are pretend to be the participant it's not like the full thing but it's a setup go through the exercise and then done that is really really important I'm gonna kind of skip down a little bit queries for the clients and teams yeah that I would say that like it feels like people right now at the client side or have found their feet and are a little more around the like pay attention to calendars again but for the first couple of weeks that was awful if isn't he oh yeah it is a generational thing like working my dad I don't know doing yeah it's it would be challenging for certain generations to be affected our job functions probably more accurately to understand how they could how somebody could work for my house so work life balance our company has always been virtual Wow congratulations that sounds awesome Gail but net yeah that's funny because you can have a virtual you can be virtual but then all of a sudden if your spouse or partner winds up being a virtual now all of a sudden it can create this like weird dynamic so I'll give you a real quick example where my wife walked in this morning because we had a broken sprinkler the front has in the middle of a conference call and I'm like oh I can't literally can't do anything the broken sprinkler right now and so you know there's this like access part in a soccer ball because the sprinklers broken is a problem he's got salt and you know and nine times out of 10 she were to walk in it would have been fine but this tricky oh it wasn't so you kind of have to navigate that with this I find with some kindness because whatever is important is it for that person is you know that side of it is is happening to yep Jim's okay I'm just gonna plow down really quick I'm gonna jump over to questions if there are any questions which I don't see any questions bill so I mean my mission is complete trying to there we go I think that's it I think he did it I've been working while you've been presenting I will say that two of my favorite moments in today's presentations were your kids walking into the room and loss in one of our earlier presentations from Allstate she she actually had a appliance delivery schedule a window of you know Sunday and guess when it happened at the moment her presentation was set to begin under percent and I mean that's what we're all dealing with right now totally it's just it's refreshing it's it's neat to be able to see others you know we can talk about it all we want but it's kind of cool so I think that was fantastic you know I will say from a personal standpoint if you are not subscribed to the happy market research podcast I think you absolutely should be I am you know two decades in this business and I wish when I was starting my career and research that there have been a resource like that available you know I think if you're young and coming into this business this is it's a great you know just a lens into the world of research and the industry itself so thank you for putting that together oh yeah it's honor and thank you for presenting and being our last of the day yeah it's tall order closing out the day so we said only a few people here which is awesome surprising I think that was great and definitely appreciate it I hope you can stick around a little bit tomorrow yeah and I hope everybody who's still online comes back and enjoys the show tomorrow you know I think I think this went great I think I'm very pleased with how we turned out you know knock on wood again Tech has been then our friends today so hopefully it continues tomorrow as well so thank you everybody successful day one let's do it again tomorrow go team all right
