The Remote-First Revolution: Building Borderless Teams with David Nilssen

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Hello, everybody.
Welcome once again to the Long DistanceWorklife Podcast, where we help you
survive, thrive, arrive alive, whatever.
In this crazy world of remote and hybrid
and the evolving workplace.
My name is Wayne Trammell.

(00:28):
This is a Marissa Alice episode.
Marissa will be back next week.
But that means I get to talk to somebodyreally cool about an important topic.
And so today we are going to talk
about building international teams,working internationally,
and probably ruffle a few feathersalong the way, I suspect.

(00:52):
My guest is appearing on screen now
is David Nelson from Docs and Talent.
He is in Boise, Idaho.
Hi, David. How are you?
I'm doing great, Wayne.
Thanks for having me on today.
Well, thank you for being here.
Listen,the question is, who really quickly.
Who are you?
And docs and talent and what makes youqualified to talk about this?

(01:17):
Yeah.
So, docs a talent is a socially consciousoutsourcing firm.
We help, companies in the US buildand scale up
high performing teams of global talent.
What makes me qualifiedto talk on this topic?
We actually have about a thousandemployees across
seven different countries,and we have zero office space.
So I'm a real,I'm passionate about remote work.

(01:40):
I think it is the future.
And I love talking about this with people.
So glad to do it today.
Now, before we started
recording, we were having a conversation,
and you said something interesting,which strikes me as,
a little paradoxical,which is that you have no office space.

(02:01):
But you told me before that you areremote first.
Yes. You had.
How do you swear that?
How do you make that workwith this many people?
Yeah, I think a lot of peoplehave this assumption that
the reason why companies go remoteis to save money on office space, and.
And the reality is, what I tell peopleis that when we chose to go

(02:22):
fully remote,meaning no office space whatsoever,
we weren't remote, only we were remotefirst.
It's not a cost cutting exercise.
It's just a strategic move to embracewhat we think are modern workforce trends.
And so for us, when we say remote company,
it does not mean that we don't everget together, as an organization.
So, for example, next week,my entire leadership team,

(02:44):
and other members are flying into Manilaand we're going to have,
a week long, eventwhere we do some cultural training,
where we do some strategic training,we unveil our annual plan,
we do some teambuilding,
and then we have our annual holidaycelebration, and we'll have approximately
700 people ascend on Manilafor us to be able to have that.
So that'sobviously a pretty large expense.

(03:07):
We're not saving money,we're just investing it in different ways.
And that's really important. I,
I think this is a little sidetracked,but I think it's important,
this notion that people look at remoteas a way to save money
and therefore investingin getting people together
is something we don't need to dobecause we're remote.

(03:28):
Yeah, I don't think that's actually true.
I mean, I do believe that in an officeyou have this great opportunity
to build relationships,but you generally do it
unintentionally through osmosis, right?
You and I meet at the water cooler.
We have a little coffee together.
Or we have these crazy events.
And I remember, you know,
a decade ago when I had everybodyin one office in downtown Seattle,
we had all these fun eventsthat we would do.

(03:49):
And it's reallyabout creating a fun environment
when you move to the remote worldnow, also,
you don't get a chance to sort ofbuild that connective tissue
that you would just build,naturally through,
being in an officeand so we have to sort of create
those opportunitiesin small, digestible snippets.
And so that's what we arewe're doing in that regard with the group.
The other thing I would say, though,is that also, instead of investing

(04:12):
what I would call fun,and that's what people often
think of culture as we're investing morein professional development
and tools and training resources to helpelevate them as people, professionals,
along the way.
What kind of skills when you are puttinga team that is going to be remote first
and more than that, international,what kind of skills are you looking for?

(04:35):
Well, in our in our company,we help companies.
We help our clients.
I say build teams of everything from,administrative professionals
to finance and accounting, data science,software engineering.
So the skill set that they need,
will vary depending on the type of rolesthat our clients need them to play.
But I would say aside from that,

(04:56):
there are some characteristicsof the way people work in this sort of,
internal needs that they havethat are important.
So we actually use an assessmentto help us as one indicator towards
predicting whether this personcan be successful in a remote environment.
One is have they done before?
And if they haven't.
And we want to understandare these people autonomous workers
or do they need a lot of directionand sort of support,

(05:17):
or are they social people?
Because if you have a very high
social need, the remote worldcan actually feel very isolated.
For someone who's really a high producingindividual,
doesn't need a lot of social stimulus,though
it can actually bea very freeing environment.
And then the other thing that I would saythat we do is we spend a lot of time,
working with our clients to make surethat they have the right process

(05:39):
and systems and collaboration toolsand rhythms
to get the the outcomes that they wantfrom the workers that we have,
because we could providethe best worker in the world.
But if the company is instead ofto actually support a remote worker
or an international team member,then it may not be successful.
Anyways. What kind of pushback do you get?
What don't they expectthey're going to have to do?

(06:01):
The workers with the clients?
The clients? I'm not.
The person with the moneymakes these decisions in the long run,
and are largely responsiblefor whether it works or not, right?
Yeah.
The thing
that's always the most surprisingand the place where people are challenged,
the greatest working with remote workers,whether they're offshore, onshore,
it doesn't really matter.
The question is, do they have the toolsand the sort of rhythms

(06:24):
to work with people in our environment?
Oftentimes we default in office practiceswhen we have in office workers.
And so we haven't built the the sort ofmuscles that we need as leaders
to make sure that people are clear onthe outcomes that are expected of them to,
ensure that they've put the right personin the right seat
and that, everyone feels likethey're on the same playing field.

(06:45):
So that would be
the first one, is do they understandhow to work with the remote, workforce?
The second, though, is dothey have standard operating procedures
for the roles that are,you know, required for people
to do similar work constantly,which is often what gets outsourced.
They need to have standardoperating procedures.
Well, it's pretty interesting to me,as I've worked with large scale

(07:05):
organizations up to public companieswho didn't really have strong SOPs.
And so that tends to be the placewhere there's the biggest friction point
when you're trying to blendinternational remote with standard work.
Yeah, the notion ofthis is how we want you to do it.
As you say,it happens a fair amount by osmosis.
When you're in the office, it'skind of in the oxygen.

(07:28):
There that you breathe,
which also leads to something else,which is
you are very definitely remote first,and you're not a big fan
of hybrid work, or at least whata lot of people call hybrid work.
Now, here's your chance there.
Here's your soapbox, buddy.
Have.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, look, I would say,

(07:50):
my first experience.
So pre-pandemic, we were sort ofplaying with should we go remote?
We've been a centralized organizationfor almost two decades. And,
the company that I was running at the timeand, you know, we celebrated culture,
but we were starting to get the,you know, people reaching out to saying,
hey, I'm having to move further to afor a home.

(08:10):
I want to work here.
I love the company,but I can't can't commute two hours a day.
Would you be open to this?
And so we started playing with that.
And we constantly heardlittle grumblings from our team.
That was just a bad experience.
Well, it became, true to mewhen I was traveling on the road,
we were having a leadership team meeting,and everyone sitting around the table.
And here I amsitting in cyberspace on a zoom call.

(08:33):
They kept forgetting about me.
I wasI wasn't able to barge into the calls.
I couldn't read the bodylanguage of the people around me.
And I realized really quickly
that by creating a hybrid environment,we created two classes of people.
Those that had accessto information, access to leaders
could read the body languageand those that did not.
And so when we looked at it,we zoomed out, we said, hey, look,

(08:54):
in an office, we built all the samesort of muscles around.
How do we how do we think aboutproductivity and employee experience
and what management, skills and toolsdo you need,
and how do we train peopleand the same thing is true in remote.
If you're fully remote,you build the same sort of muscles.
When you're in a hybrid environment,you have to do both.

(09:14):
So you do both and you pay for both.
But you can't really be best in classeither.
And so for us, we decidedwe wanted to be a remote organization.
We felt like that was the futureof the modern workforce.
But I'm not against in-office work.
I just believe that in the hybridenvironment, it's the most expensive
and potentially the most dangerousfor employee experience.
There you go.

(09:36):
Now, some of that, of course, has to dowith what we think of as hybrid.
And are we aware of these dynamicsand taking steps to deal with them?
Right.
Well, where I'm in violent agreement
is when it's done badly,all of those things.
Yeah. Okay.
Well, you talked about training justa second ago when you brought that up.
I thought, you know,that's a great example of one. Right.

(09:56):
So when we used to have salespeoplethat would onboard
with us in an office, I would say, hey,Wayne, welcome to the company.
And I'm over generalizing, of course,just to be illustrative here, but hey,
great to have you here.
You're to be our orientationwith our HR leader.
And then I'm going to have you sitnext to Dave.
Dave's been in this role for two years.
You're going to watch him for the next2 to 4 weeks.
You'll pick it up, you'll be great.
And that's sort ofhow people think about training.

(10:18):
It's really training by osmosis.
But in a remote environmentthat is absolutely impossible.
So if your company is set up to onboardand train and develop people
in a, in an in office environmentthat is not aware of or sensitive
to the remote workforce,then the remote people get the short
end of the stickand oftentimes, are much less successful.

(10:38):
Absolutely.
So we're going to put a pin in that forthe moment.
Let's get back to the notionof building an international team.
If you're remote first and probablyon some levels shouldn't matter.
In the job and you havethe infrastructure, it'll work.
I suspect human beings don't workquite that easily.

(11:02):
What are some of the challengeswhen you're putting together
an international?
Yeah,so there's a couple of things. One is,
most peopleare actually not terribly clear
on what sort of outcomesand activities are required of the people.
So I can't tell you how many times I getsent a job description.
And it looks like somebody tooka, an executive assistant, a finance,
professional and a software engineerand just sort of merged them together

(11:24):
and said,hey, we're looking for this unicorn.
And I think when a company is thinkingabout outsourcing, be very clear
about the specific skill set, and outcomesare looking from a particular role.
I know that sounds like table stakes, but,it is not.
The second thing that I would sayis that most people don't realize that.
There's nothing there is nothing natural.

(11:44):
There is nothing natural or
simple about doing thingsnaturally and simply.
Yeah. Totally true.
The second thing we've already covered,
which I won't go into, it'sjust it's the management side of this.
I find that most of the timewhen offshore teams fail,
they either have the wrong provider,which is possible, or the management
team is not really equipped to dealwith both remote or international talent.

(12:09):
The remote side we will talk aboutbecause we did just a minute ago.
But when it comes to remote workforceright now, two really hot destinations,
both of which we serve,are the Philippines and Colombia.
And when you think abouthow do we communicate,
how do we evaluate, problemswith an organization, how do we lead?
How do we make decisions?How do we build trust?

(12:29):
How do we disagree?
Those are all very differentbased on the cultures you're in.
So I'll give you a couple of examples.
One is, how we communicate.
So, you know, in the Philippines,they've been a country,
living on these islandsfor thousands of years.
They've learned how to communicatethrough cultural nuances
and very sophisticated levelcommunication. Well, there you go. To us.

(12:50):
We've been around for 250 years.
We're a, a country of immigrants.
We have to be very explicitwhat they call low context.
And the way that we communicatePhilippines high context, U.S.
low context.
So oftentimesthe Filipinos to the Americans
can feel avoidant in a conversationwhen in fact, actually
the way that they communicateis just very, very different.

(13:12):
The other thing is how we build trust.
So here I'm very task based,
which is very U.S centric,very in the way that I built trust.
When you told me you were going to do X,you did it on time and you did it well,
I now trust you to do the next stepin the Philippines.
Well,
they want to have long coffees and lunchesand get to know you as a human being

(13:32):
and those kind of thingsbefore they trust you.
And so understandingsome of those nuances, they're not wrong.
They're just different.
But I think a lot of times
we expect everyone to be very Americanin the way they work, when in fact
we also need to be open to and embracing,the cultural nuances the others.
So one example of that would be,
when it comes to
giving feedback, in the US,we like more direct

(13:55):
feedback, not quite like the Germans,but we like more direct feedback.
And then in the Philippines, indirectnegative feedback is how you give it.
So you have to sort of sandwich,
the feedback one positive, a negativeand then another positive.
In order for themto be able to hear and understand it.
So there's just things like thatthat make a big difference.
I'm curious.

(14:16):
And maybe this is my Canadian
American centric brain.
It seems to memarkets like the Philippines.
And this has to do with colonialismand all kinds of things,
probably function with Americansa little bit, probably better,
but certainly different than a countrylike Colombia, which is unifying you all,

(14:38):
which you know, is there challenges there?
Well, surprisingly,the Colombian culture is actually, closer
aligned to the American culturein terms of the business environment,
the Filipinos. Yes, I would say from a
the standpoint of it is primarilyan English speaking country.
To your point, at one point, American saidhad, certainly occupied the territory.

(15:03):
There's a great alliancefrom a government standpoint.
There's a tax treaty.
There's a lot of reasonswhy you would think that.
But, they are still very,
you know, hierarchicalin terms of the way that they operate.
Then it's got to be very prescriptivein terms of what's expected of them.
And so,
just a little bit different, though,in terms of the business environment,
they've not quite yetadapted as a full culture in that way.

(15:26):
Obviously,there's some people have been working
with, American business for a long time.That's not an issue.
But in general, what I've seen is actuallythe Colombian culture is a little bit
further towards, or closer alignedto the American way of doing business.
Well that's fascinating.
And I could geek out on
this for a very, very long time.
When you go into these markets

(15:48):
and looking for talent,are you looking for locals?
Are you looking for expatswho happen to be living there?
No, actually, the I'm in fact, I would
I would venture to say I'mnot aware of any expats that work for us.
These are all, local, individuals
who who want to work withand learn from, American companies.

(16:11):
And so, you know, a lot of the skillsets are the same when it comes
to design and, emailmarketing and finance and accounting.
A lot of those standardprinciples are the same.
So it actually translates very, very well.
But the things that we look atwhen we go to these markets is, is there,
you know, safety, currency stability,
is there the right infrastructure?
Both.

(16:31):
We look at,you know, the the possibility of,
natural disasters,
all these sort of thingsthat we look at to say, hey, is business
continuity going to be an issue for usfor one reason in these particular areas?
And so that's one of the things
that we look at in addition to time zoneand talent density and things like that.
Very, very cool.
We are nearing the end of our timealready, which is amazing to me.

(16:54):
If you are advising somebody
to put together an international team
that's going to be remote first,that you know it's going to do this,
what are the 1 or 2 very first things
that they need to do in your mindto be successful?
Yeah.

(17:15):
I would say first I would lookat the places in my organization where
I need to add excess capacity,but doing their fiscally responsible way,
or where we have peoplewho could be adding
even greater valueto the organization doing,
work that that could be potentially movedsomewhere else.
Standard work.
That, could be moved someone elseso that they can focus their time

(17:38):
and energy on higher value out of test.
So that would be the first thingthat I would look at.
The second thing is I would look at is,
what are some of the thingsthat are on the back burner that have been
your perpetual second or third prioritythat you know, need to get done, but
you just haven't yet had the time, energy,or capacity to address?
Those are the first two thingsthat I would look at.
And then downstream
are the things that we talked about,which is making sure you got the right

(17:59):
standard operating proceduresand the tools and resources
to be able to help to collaboratewith those individuals.
But deciding why you want to do it,and that this is a good business
thing to do,is probably a good first step.
And you'd think that would bea natural thing for people.
Absolutely. You would think so.
But I think a lot of peoplestill just believe that outsourcing is

(18:21):
really for, you know, low level tasks.
Outsourcing can actually add valuein every part of the organization.
And my expense I've seen the furtherwe move up in New York chart,
the more valuewe extract from that experience.
And so I would not limit yourself tojust thinking about administrative work,
more about where are the partsof organization that you want to advance,
faster than you are today?

(18:41):
Absolutely.
David,thank you so much for being with us.
Ladies and gentlemen,we will have links to David to, to
the future is Borderless podcast Host,which is his podcast.
We will have that on our show notes
at Long distance Work life.com.
David, I'm going to dismiss youand I am going to wrap up the show here.

(19:05):
Thank you so much for being with us, man.
Thanks for having me.
And now,ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.
Well, come back,
long distance work life
is based on the books.
The long distance leader, long distanceteammate, and long distance team.
If you want information on our new book,long distance

(19:29):
leader, revise rules for remarkableremote and hybrid leadership.
This is the new, updated edition.
It is available at long distance worklife.com/ldl.
There are special deals and allkinds of extras that you can get there.
If in fact, you are interestedin our training on this,

(19:52):
we have the long distanceleadership series, which is coming up
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We would love to have you check that out.
Visit it.
Kevin eikenberry.comif you enjoyed today's show.
And I certainly enjoyed my conversationwith David.
It's a podcast. You know how this works.

(20:13):
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(20:36):
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Thank you for being with us.Keep your head above water.
Don't let the weasels get you downand we will see you next time. Hey!