The Future Is Now: Mark McGarry of YORK Athletics On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake…

The Future Is Now: Mark McGarry of YORK Athletics On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Footwear Industry

Your mindset determines your success. I believe that we often set our own limitations in life and get in the way of our own success. Once I had an awareness of this for myself and started investing time in shaping up my own mindset I began to stretch myself, take more risks and 9 times out of 10 achieved my goals.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mark McGarry.

Entrepreneur and sneaker industry veteran, Mark McGarry is the CEO & Co-Founder of YORK Athletics Mfg., an independently owned performance footwear company that celebrates the spirit of the everyday fighter.

Mark’s interest in the sneaker industry began as a coach at a snowboard camp owned by footwear and apparel company, Vans. That led him to work for a skateboarding footwear brand and then to leadership roles at Nike and PUMA. While at PUMA, Mark traveled the globe as a senior executive responsible for brand strategy of PUMA’s global sport-lifestyle footwear portfolio.

In 2016, Mark pursued his dream of re-launching a legacy brand into the e-commerce space. He teamed up with the York family, a family company that has been designing sportswear for athletes since 1946, to launch YORK Athletics. Today, the brand is disrupting the sneaker industry with their award-winning unisex performance footwear.

Voted Best of Boston E-Commerce Retailer 2019, YORK’s signature sneaker was named “2018 Best Cross Training Shoe” by Men’s Health Magazine and praised by ESPN, Esquire, POPSUGAR Fitness, Footwear News and more for the versatility of their design.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

My path as a skateboarder ultimately led me to the sneaker industry. After college, I got a job teaching skateboarding and snowboarding at a summer camp in Oregon that was owned by Van’s Footwear and ended up moving to Portland after that. Nike was launching a new skateboarding division at that time and I was fortunate enough to get my foot in the door. I was 23 years old and it was my first real job in the footwear industry, it was a dream gig. We had a skateboard park in our office, a bottomless keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon and I started traveling with the pro skateboarders that I looked up to as a kid. I’ve been hooked on the footwear & apparel industry ever since. I often wonder where I’d be today if I never picked up a skateboard.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

When I co-founded YORK Athletics I had the challenge of working for myself. So many things had to get done and nothing could be done fast enough for my liking. From fundraising, to securing our factory partners and building our operating team, I was really overwhelmed and struggled with the fact that I could not get through my daily to-do lists. I’d crawl into bed at night and have this feeling that when I stopped, the company stopped which is obviously not a healthy feeling. I did have the foresight to know that I had to evolve or I’d burn out quickly. It was the beginning of a long and continuous personal growth journey to find calm in the chaos of running a start-up company.

Can you tell us about the Cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

Our YORK Fit Finder is a three-dimensional foot measurement tool designed to identify precise shoe size using the camera on a phone or tablet. Developed in partnership with Findmeashoe, a world leader in digital shoe sizing and fitting, the YORK Fit Finder uses a proprietary 3D scanning technology that scans and measures the entire shape and proportions of the foot to identify a personalized shoe size recommendation from the comfort of home. Unlike other footwear fitting technologies, the YORK Fit Finder simulates your foot entry and position inside the shoe.

It is a breakthrough because the Fit Finder’s state-of-the-art image processing technology scans and measures foot length, width, shape and proportions of both foot and footwear to simulate fit. It is the only footwear fitting tool that scans every sneaker style, placing the dimensions of your foot in each YORK sneaker to then produce an extremely accurate footwear size recommendation for each style, all in less than five minutes.

How do you think this might change the world?

The YORK Fit Finder will change the footwear industry. This kind of technology helps deliver innovation to an area of the footwear industry that has gone without it for far too long — the actual sizing & fitting experience. For most of us, the first (and perhaps the only) time we ever checked the size of our feet was using the old, cold metal Brannock device at a local department store. This provided very basic length and width estimations for your feet, and made a size recommendation from it. However, this creates a very rudimentary 2D outline for your feet, and certainly doesn’t take into account the volumetric shape of your foot.

By understanding not only length and width, but your truly unique foot shape, the footwear industry can better serve its customers by a) making the best possible size and style recommendation for you, and b) design a better product with this kind of data in mind.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

The only drawback is that it does require the end-user to have access to a few items: one or two sheets of blank white paper and a smartphone. Thankfully these are items found in nearly every household; however, it still may limit some from being able to participate at the exact moment they are shopping (on a train, waiting in an office, etc). Regardless, we’ve tried to make sure we’ve lowered the barrier of entry for our customers, wherever possible.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

Yes, with more customers getting comfortable purchasing athletic footwear at home and the footwear eCommerce category projecting 30–50% growth over the next 5 years someone had to step up and figure out an at home fitting solution. The ‘try on 3 pairs and ship back 2’ thing was getting old and consumers deserve better. Given our focus and commitment to fit, we’ve leveraged being a small business to our advantage against the footwear giants. We knew we could innovate and get the Fit Finder technology to market quickly because we manufacture one proprietary last shape to optimize for fit, compared to the thousands of last shapes that big footwear companies churn out each year. Our Fit Finder algorithm integrates our customer’s foot scans and the shape of our last and sneaker shape to recommend a guaranteed YORK Athletics size, right out of the gate.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

Arguably, the first two steps necessary don’t require technology at all. I think we first need to help educate consumers about why fit is so important when it comes to footwear. It’s hard to reach mass adoption if people don’t recognize it’s a problem they have. However, 60% of people’s shoes don’t fit properly, so it’s our job to first make people aware of that. Second, we need to encourage people to have a sense of curiosity to discover that the size they have potentially been wearing for most of their adult life, could be incorrect. Lastly, we need to make sure that this foot sizing technology is unbelievably quick and easy to use. We feel like we’ve done a really good job of that upfront, but as we continue to receive user feedback, we will continually improve upon it.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

Before we launched the Fit Finder, we asked 150 of our most loyal customers to try it. We were as interested in seeing the results as they were, and in the corner cases where the Fit Finder gave these loyal customers different results than they were wearing, we shipped those customers their new size to try. While it wasn’t a lot of people, the handful of customers who went through this process were surprised to find they were wearing the wrong size! We used their real life feedback in social media ads when we launched the Fit Finder, as well as spreading the word through the rest of our community.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My family. My two boys, Mikael and Kieren, and in particular my wife Elizabeth. Having their love, support and this stability has allowed me to stretch myself more on the career front.

I’m a classic, hard-charging, get it done, type A dude when it comes to career and work ethic. As we know, over time this can start to wreak havoc on your overall well-being. Elizabeth once asked me if I’d ever be content with where I was at in my career and I instantly knew the answer, never. It was the first awareness I’ve ever had of this and I got really curious about how our brains work and started to understand the downside of this wiring. She bought me a book called Saltwater Buddha by Jaimal Yogis, that really opened my mind up to meditation and going inward instead of looking to outside forces for contentment and happiness.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

At YORK Athletics, we live and breath our purpose everyday and are fortunate to be in a position where we’re able to promote physical and mental health in the world today. We formalized and launched our YORK Gives program in early 2020. As part of the program, we created #FightFromHome at the onset of the pandemic to help keep everyday fighters and those in need on their feet. In April 2020, we kicked off the movement with a community initiative to assist COVID-19 frontline workers. Our customers went to our website to donate a pair of YORK’s sneakers to a loved one on the COVID-19 front line. A custom, inspirational note thanking them for their service and courage was sent with the donated sneakers. We then sent the customer a free pair of sneakers of their choice. We also donated 50 pairs of our best footwear for the front lines to the workers at Boston’s Community Servings. It was a huge success and we donated thousands of pairs to front line workers across the country.

In September 2020, we continued the movement with the help of Gold Medalist Gymnast and advocate Aly Raisman to assist families navigating homelessness, which has been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by Raisman’s work with non-profit Heading Home, for every purchase of a pair of Raisman’s YORK Athletics signature sneaker we will donate a pair of sneakers with an inspirational message to an individual experiencing homelessness. The donation provides encouragement and physical support to stand tall and keep on fighting.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Your mindset determines your success. I believe that we often set our own limitations in life and get in the way of our own success. Once I had an awareness of this for myself and started investing time in shaping up my own mindset I began to stretch myself, take more risks and 9 times out of 10 achieved my goals.

2. Stay true to yourself. I was an outlier in high school as well as in my career, taking the skateboarder path. I gravitated towards independent thinkers in general. When you remain authentic to yourself and your values, they will eventually become your superpowers. Stop comparing yourself to others and be you.

3. It takes time.

4. Focus on what matters. Us type A chargers love ‘to do’ lists and I quickly learned that in a fast-paced start-up environment it was nearly impossible to cross everything off on a daily basis and maintain a healthy work/life balance. I started listing out only 3 priorities for the year, month, week and each day that helped me identify the ‘needle-moving’ priorities that would either strengthen our brand purpose or generate revenue.

5. Clarify your purpose as a company and as an individual. Does the world need another _____? Fill in the blank for your company or brand concept. Distractions are at an all-time high today and cutting through the clutter takes a lot of product and brand differentiation; and on the personal front a whole lot of motivation to manifest success. Make sure that your company’s mission and personal motivations are in step with one another.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I would love to see the world wake up. There’s a lot of not awesome stuff going on in the world right now and so many people are suffering. I am hopeful that the ongoing movement to live more consciously and mindfully will continue to grow so we can all deepen our connection with one another, the planet and live with more empathy.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite is ‘You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf’. I’m biased being a surfer but love this one. It means that we’re all facing or going to face adversity in our personal life or in business and instead of avoiding those challenges we can learn to surf them or embrace them as transformative opportunities to better ourselves and those around us. I recently put this into practice when my father passed away this summer. It was a very difficult time for me and my family, but I chose to nurture every minute of the experience and just be present as it was unfolding and not getting too caught up in the ‘why me’ thinking. The result, although painful, ended up being a beautiful and transformative experience for myself, family and those close to my father.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

60% of people today are wearing the wrong size of sneakers! The old school fitting methods like the 90-year-old Brannock device was built for retail and not for eCommerce. Our obsession with fit and our ability to innovate quickly has provided a long-overdue solution for our customers. YORK manufactures the world’s best fitting cross-training sneaker and now our ability to gather new foot shape data will strengthen and further our commitment to fit.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

https://www.instagram.com/yorkathleticsmfg/

https://www.facebook.com/yorkathleticsmfg/

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

The Future Is Now: Mark McGarry of YORK Athletics On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Is Now: Paul Lockhart of NoviSphere On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up…

The Future Is Now: Paul Lockhart of NoviSphere On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene

Never be afraid to fail. If one chooses to not do something because they might fail, most of life’s interesting twists and turns may never happen, leading to regrets later in life. I want my “regrets” bag to be light and small. I want to give back to youth by writing an adventure story that will capture their imaginations. I may not succeed, but the desire is there, and my regret for not trying would be more painful that making the effort and finding out that I fly airplanes better than I write.

As a part of our series about cutting-edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Paul Lockhart.

NoviSphere™ CEO Paul Lockhart was most recently Director of Engineering for PEMDAS Technologies. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Vencore, where he oversaw Vencore’s operations supporting NASA, NOAA and the Department of Defense.

During his tenure in this role, annual revenue of the Space Systems and Services Business Unit grew from $65 million in 2008 to $275 million in 2015. Paul also served as an astronaut in the Senior Executive Service at NASA and is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions. In 2007, he retired from the United States Air Force after 25 years, having served as a fighter and test pilot. Paul holds a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Most good stories involve good people, and so it is with me. I met a fellow veteran at a conference for veteran-owned small businesses, and it was clear we both wanted to help service members in need. My new peer was founder of an architecture and engineering firm to support VA hospitals and needed someone to help launch his business. Our original intent (and still our long-term focus) was to develop and deliver rarified air environments for a range of applications and industries. With my background in space exploration and the incumbent high requirements for uncontaminated clean breathing air in the space station and space suits, it was a good match. For me, it was a new challenge and a way to give back for all the opportunities I have had in my careers. Little did we both know that a secondary business line, developed around a prototype pathogen-elimination device (the NoviSphere PE 254), would become the cornerstone of our new company, NoviSphere, just as the pandemic struck. Bringing this system to fruition became our immediate priority due the urgent need for the technology. I am truly fortunate, as the work our outstanding team is doing at NoviSphere can not only help our veterans in hospitals around the U.S., but can also contribute to America’s fight against the terrible viral scourge.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

The U.S. Air Force and NASA put me in places with some of the most interesting people. It is hard to settle on one. One such story involves a crippled spy satellite that the U.S. Navy shot out of its orbit to ensure it would not re-enter the earth’s atmosphere and break-up overpopulated territory. As an astronaut, I was brought up on special military orders to deploy and recover any of the satellites’ dangerous parts that survived re-entry if the Navy’s attempt to destroy on orbit failed. Sitting at the end of a runway listening to the Navy countdown, not knowing if I would be traveling to some other part of the world to perform damage control, was very exciting. Ultimately, we didn’t have to go anywhere because the Navy hit the bullseye. Go Navy!

More recently, I supported the testing and verification of new atmospheric sensors on unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) in Barrow, Alaska. These drones were being evaluated to see if they could track whales for our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Alaska is so beautiful!

As a test pilot, I had the opportunity to test many of America’s most advanced weapons for our combat aircraft. This was at the start of precision munitions, those using GPS for guidance. I was proud to know that I was the first to employ some of these systems from the F-16 fighter and that my work made our combat aircrews during Operation Iraqi Freedom safer. Watching operations start in March of 2003, knowing that these pilots were using the techniques I developed, was very satisfying.

Of course, my missions at NASA are at the top of my list of the most exciting things to have happened in my career. Seeing the earth from that perspective in space is a unique experience. The word I use to describe the view of our vibrant, colorful earth suspended against the black velvet of space is “majestic.” We humans truly do inhabit a most beautiful place in our solar system.

Can you tell us about the cutting-edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

NoviSphere is at the leading edge of helping people closely monitor and control the environmental space in which they live, learn and work. Our innovative efforts exploit proven technologies and physical processes, so they force multiply their impact on the problem at hand. For example, NoviSphere is bringing ultra-violet (UV) light, a known pathogen eradicator, to the battle against COVID-19; however, we are adapting these products to meet the specific needs of the user, using adaptations such as high-volume flow rate to purify the air in a room every 15 minutes. The next level of service is to “force multiply” these capabilities by integrating these products into a self-monitoring system of air purity devices with feedback to the owner/operator. The key is to make the feedback relevant to the situation at hand. That means to deliver actionable information to the user so that well-informed decisions can be made. These are the first steps to autonomous functioning of a living or working space.

Why is this important? It lets those at the end of the process, the people doing the work that keeps our society functioning, focus on their real tasks at hand, such as performing medical operations, operating the giant distribution warehouses that deliver goods to our homes, or performing the music you and I enjoy at community venues. Plus, we will live and work with the security of knowing that pathogen scourges such as COVID-19 are not a threat. Everyday stress will not disappear, but the fear that pathogens are hanging in the air ready to pounce can be eliminated. Moreover, continuous operation of the NoviSphere PE 254 may assist in addressing seasonal airborne illnesses, such as colds and flu, and aid in improving employee productivity, reducing absenteeism and lowering companies’ medical costs.

How do you think this might change the world?

In the 1980s, the world was introduced to the Global Positioning System (GPS). It first came to the forefront as a military aid to positioning, navigation and timing. However, the benefits to civilian society for knowing where something was located at a given time and what its speed and direction were soon became overwhelmingly obvious. Now GPS is a daily aid to everything we do, from navigating between point A and point B to locating ATMs for accessing cash. Our youth today would have a hard time learning to use paper maps and turn-by-turn directions. I know — I tried to convince my daughters to try it, and they coyly returned to their phones and apps. I think we are beginning down the road to not just tracking the localized environment (call it a micro-environment if you wish), but actually “shaping” the environment to optimize human activity. Clearly, it is to our benefit to eliminate pathogens and other harmful organisms, but the trade space for doing much more is clearly there. Relative humidity, ion concentrations, dust, aerosols, and other airborne and surface particulates will be measured, controlled and monitored to maximize human capabilities, whatever that may be in the future. It is the nexus of sensor technologies, new innovations and big data analytics that will allow us to better the atmosphere we humans breathe at home, at work and play. NoviSphere will be at the tip of the spear in developing these capabilities.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

An excellent question. All advancements, innovations or inventions have peripheral consequences. Some of these are attributed to misuse by we humans; many are by-products of how society adopts them into their daily work and personal lives. If people use these products as intended with judicious prudence, then negative impacts can be minimized and unexpected, positive outcomes can be embraced. As with any networked system, cyber security becomes important and must be accounted for. Concurrently, I am most excited about the unknown positive impacts that will come from more closely monitoring and controlling our local micro-environments. Perhaps a by-product will be decline of some types of diseases. We will have to wait to see!

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

As I noted earlier, NoviSphere was developing our pathogen eradicator long before COVID-19 struck. We initially developed the system for the medical industry to lessen/eliminate health-acquired infections (HAIs) — which our internal testing confirmed it could do. When the pandemic hit, we felt obligated to test it on coronaviruses, which pushed out our launch of the product. We knew the key was to expose the pathogen to the UV light for the maximum time and intensity, at the appropriate wavelength. We designed to these criteria. However, we also knew we needed to test the device under laboratory conditions. We found the ideal team and test equipment at the University of Minnesota. It was during this testing that we began to understand our device was fully effective at every fan speed we selected. Suddenly, we realized that we could operate our PE 254 (for Pathogen Eradicator, 254nm wavelength) at speeds high enough to purify the air in a large office within 15 minutes. That means the air is scrubbed free of pathogens four times an hour. Furthermore, since we reached maximum air flow of the testing apparatus, which was totally unexpected, we are still determining the top-end speed effectiveness of our PE 254. We plan to investigate this further to better understand how much faster we can pull the air through the PE 254 and still achieve the requisite pathogen-removal efficiency. This means, of course, more air changes per hour and even higher levels of assurance of controlling viral contaminants for human safety.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

Our NoviSphere team desires to be a “trusted agent” with the public in matters regarding air purification and rarified environments. Thus, we must build a level of trust up and down the chain of stakeholders that operate, work or live in places that demand the strictest levels of clean environments. I am confident the market will turn to NoviSphere to provide clean room and rarified air technologies through demonstrated quality, service and support. Our best marketing will be customer testaments and personal outreach.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

As a company, our experience runs deep — from my background in space systems, to our chief operating officer Joe Cestari’s three-decade operational experience in developing laboratory and semiconductor clean environments, to our director of marketing and business development Cindy Egnarski’s proven track record in the food and service industries. Between us, there is not much we haven’t experienced in bringing innovative, technological products through quality design and development and then to the customer.

NoviSphere also has an excellent team of partners with proven experience in getting the right exposure to the right potential customers. We are well positioned to succeed.

The key is the approach we are taking. We are not about just developing a product, putting a price point on it and then doing cold calls to generate interest. Our goal is to be a thought leader in this new paradigm on micro and rarified air environments. Thus, our path is to seek the voice of those knee-deep in this COVID-19 crisis, asking them what their problem is, how it can be solved and how a product should be engineered to meet their needs. The next variants of our PE-254 will evolve from these discussions. Then, since our field will be human safety and health, our goal is to build in quality from the front end through repeatable testing and the application of known systems-engineering processes. Finally, we want to be part of the entire life-cycle of a suite of modular, layered products and services designed to deliver the rarified, pathogen-free environments our society needs to get back to a “normal, COVID-19 free” work and lifestyle. And if another pandemic threatens, having our technology in place will provide risk mitigation and peace of mind. We would rather be a bit slow to market with a product that can be counted upon to build trust, than to rush and ship out something that we think will work, but without the test data and consumer feedback to prove it.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are many, and while it is hard to single out one individual without concern for not recognizing others, I can point to my graduate professor in aerospace engineering at the University of Texas. Dr. Wallace Fowler took a gamble on me to earn a master’s degree in aerospace engineering without ever having completed any undergraduate courses in this field. To say his reputation was at risk is an understatement. He also knew I was to be commissioned into the Air Force within two years and so had little time to waste. He constructed a master’s research project that focused on the Space Shuttle, knowing that I wanted to apply to NASA in the future. Then, he gave me a background in operational, not theoretical, engineering — the very foundation I needed to succeed as a test pilot. Finally, and I learned this much later, he was the behind-the-scenes champion for many of my awards. In short, Dr. Wallace took me under his wing and laid out the milestones I needed to enter the Air Force and eventually NASA and succeed. The work I did on my master’s thesis contributed to my on-orbit flying of the Space Shuttle.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

This is such a simple question, yet it sits at the heart of who we are individually and what I want our team at NoviSphere to embrace as a culture. What legacy do we want to leave behind? How do we want to be purposeful and contribute to our lives and to others?

There are always the expected and very worthy ways to bring goodness to the world — one can volunteer, donate to charities, and tend to the needy and sick. These are important direct actions that help those impacted by disasters and their resulting life circumstances.

However, there are also indirect ways to bring “goodness” to one’s circle of family, friends and associates. One way I choose to leave a better mark for the world is to conduct myself in the manner that others (particularly the younger generation) expect of an adult — especially someone that has had the good fortune to be an astronaut and the CEO of a technology company. I try to exhibit a level of integrity that generates trust between me and young children. I want them to know they must aim to comport themselves with courage and conviction. I know we can achieve this level at NoviSphere, as well, with our customers, to become the “trusted agent.”

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

I am not sure I can add much to the sage wisdom of men and women who have found their path in life and been successful in their business and private lives. However, the following ideas keep recurring in each endeavor I undertake:

  • Never be afraid to fail. If one chooses to not do something because they might fail, most of life’s interesting twists and turns may never happen, leading to regrets later in life. I want my “regrets” bag to be light and small. I want to give back to youth by writing an adventure story that will capture their imaginations. I may not succeed, but the desire is there, and my regret for not trying would be more painful that making the effort and finding out that I fly airplanes better than I write.
  • Persistence underpins success. Many times, the willingness to stay with a project or undertaking is all it takes to be standing at the end as the winner, as others fall away for a variety of reasons. I was not selected by NASA the first time I applied as an astronaut, nor the second. It took a third try, and a personal visit to Johnson Space Center to make sure my application was in order, before I hit the mark. How about this for persistence: There was a member of my 1996 class of astronauts who applied more than 10 times before he was selected. That is persistence.
  • Perform risk analysis based on reason and not emotions. We humans bias our view of the world extensively through lenses that are shaped by our culture and opinions. To be successful, one must step out of that context and understand each situation based on the facts as best they can be discerned. Piloting high-performance test aircraft and flying the space shuttle were dangerous; however, no mission or flight was ever accomplished without first understanding the incumbent risks. I learned how to value the risks undertaken and to undertake those that delivered the result I or my team desired without endangering life or resources beyond some limit.
  • Surround yourself with quality individuals, committed to success. There is no going it alone in any life endeavor. Your greatest success comes from the partnerships you establish, and the leadership provided, either by yourself or someone on that team. Continually seek out those that demand excellence of themselves and for the project to which you are joined. My life has been a wonderful story of high-achieving teams — my Air Force squadrons, my crewmembers on my space shuttle flights, the public and private companies I later joined to serve NASA and the Department of Defense, and now NoviSphere. My desire is to build NoviSphere with individuals on a mission to serve the public good by delivering products that improve our living and work environments.
  • Serve with gratitude. We are each the recipient of the support and well wishes of our friends, colleagues, and family. While these relationships aren’t always without friction or disagreement, I believe we are best served by focusing on the positive aspects of our work and life. My association with NoviSphere has introduced me to a completely new circle of experts, business peers and customer sets. I am in a constant learning cycle with these committed individuals, and I am grateful for their patience and service as we build NoviSphere to be a recognized leader in pure and rarified environments.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

My career as a military officer and then an astronaut provided me the great honor of serving our nation and its people. The personal satisfaction I experienced has contributed to my growth as a person, to my maturity as an adult and to my confidence that I tried to make positive impacts with my actions.

I desire our youth to have the same understanding of serving the greater good. It does not have to be through the military, but it should be part of a broader national initiative that confers respectability and known sacrifices so that each “member of graduate” can look the others in the eye and know they have done their part. I envision a mandatory national service for our country that could encompass many facets of life and its needs and that, once completed, would provide our youth the confidence and self-satisfaction needed as they transition to adulthood. Others have proposed such a program, and while I don’t have any specifics regarding how such a national service would be administered, I believe it would serve our nation well for binding our youth to their country’s past and future.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

This one is easy, but it is more of a story than a quote. As I considered joining the military to provide a path to becoming an astronaut, the Air Force officer in charge of the ROTC unit at Texas Tech University asked me a very important question: “How committed are you to becoming a space shuttle pilot?” My response was, “Sir, I want to fly the shuttle so desperately that I would clean the toilets on the shuttle should that be the only way to do so.” Many years later, I learned that the pilot on the space shuttle is responsible for the waste control system (aka, the space toilet), so I achieved what I desired — to be the pilot AND to be responsible for this very important onboard system.

The lesson from this is what I tell youth when I talk about achieving their goals — they must commit themselves fully to have the best chance of success. I describe how I changed my thinking from, “I want to be an astronaut” to “I will be an astronaut.” That mindset is the foundation for any success, whether big or small.

Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them

NoviSphere is poised to be the only provider of comprehensive, high-quality, turnkey solutions and services that deliver clean, pure and, if needed, rarified air environments to people wherever they live, work or play. NoviSphere delivers modular, industry-standard clean working spaces where our customers need them, be it in deployed locations for our military, or in America’s most important pharmaceutical laboratories. Our products — such as our NoviSphere PE 254 — also monitor, clean and track the air we breathe, enabling coronavirus-free spaces that deliver confidence, reduce risk and improve health, allowing Americans to get back to work and their day-to-day lives.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

NoviSphere

Paul Lockhart — personal social media (optional)

@PaulLockhart113 — Twitter

@VirtusAdventures — Facebook

The Future Is Now: Paul Lockhart of NoviSphere On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Is Now: Mark Willison of OpenSquare On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up…

The Future Is Now: Mark Willison of OpenSquare On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene

Hire a salesperson (aka, “selling ahead”) — One of my earlier jobs was running my own company where I wore all of the hats including replacing the occasional crew member personally when needed. I credit my wife with this one. I was running a very large project and not keeping an eye on the next future project and that project did not exist because I was not selling ahead.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Willison.

Leading a team of technology engineering, integration and sales experts across the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, Mark supports the One Workplace/OpenSquare Technology Team in creating transformative workspaces powered by cutting-edge technology. He brings decades of experience in the audiovisual, UC, IT & broadcast industries to this position to help meet customer technology goals.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I started out in television and video production, which evolved into freelance television work at local news stations and sporting events in the Seattle Area. The work hours were not conducive to a steady relationship with my girlfriend (now my wife 25+ years later). It meant lots of weekends, holidays, early morning and night shifts as well as some epic sporting events. Moving to a day job in broadcast and CATV installations settled me down and began both my career in technology and marital/family bliss! Fast forward to 2020 New Year’s Eve and I told myself that I would scratch the career itch if the right opportunity were to appear in the coming year. I was already in an enviable position, co-leading the largest AV integration firm in the world and leading one of the top offices in the company with an expert team and a well-balanced customer base. Why leave that!? At the same time, I knew I’d hit the top of that challenge and wanted to do it again.

First came One Workplace and their Northwest business, OpenSquare, and then came COVID-19…

The chance to join an interior workplace solutions, furniture and design firm was intriguing to me. From my previous interactions on project teams, the furniture provider would often eat up the AV budget, and as integrators we had to rely on the furniture team to have their pieces in place on time. From a sales perspective, I also noticed the relationship between the furniture team and the customer was different than mine. We had been talking about the convergence of AV & IT over the last 5+ years. Why not converge the integration of technology and furniture, and more importantly, very early in the project process? One Workplace was doing that in California and they were starting to do it in my hometown. The opportunity to build a team under a new converged model with teams and customer bases like OpenSquare & One Workplace was exciting to me. It felt like my next great career challenge.

The interview process dragged along due to COVID-19 challenges; Seattle was the first hot spot in the country, so business slowed down drastically, and I thought the interviews would pause indefinitely. To my surprise, both local and California leadership recognized how important technology was to the recovery from the pandemic and to businesses’ strategies for returning to work. It truly became an even more exciting opportunity. That leadership understands and advocates for the role of technology sales closed the deal.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

From a project perspective, I was a part of one of many teams working at the Wynn Casino. With the grand opening days away, the project was a mad race to the finish line. It would take a full book to tell the stories and lessons learned on that project, and I joke I could write the greatest book on Project Management based on those 20-hour workdays in Las Vegas. Following a presidential campaign through the northwest while working for a news station was also exhilarating.

But the most fascinating story I have worked on to date was the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial coverage. I didn’t have much business knowledge at that time of my life, but as a member of a video crew and fly on the wall during all of those proceedings, there’s another great book that I need to write … if not for that NDA.

Can you tell us about the Cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on?

We are going to market this month with a new immersive camera that transforms the experience of video meetings. The Katai camera is offers a 360-degree view, built-in microphone and a small form factor PC that enables the camera for any platform meeting application — Microsoft Teams, Zoom, BlueJeans, Google, etc., without a computer present. It delivers on the many promises of telepresence without the equipment and expense.

How do you think that will help people?

The camera is a real breakthrough for many applications. If you’re a teacher or professor with a hybrid learning environment, this will truly make the virtual classroom experience both immersive and collaborative. For the corporate meeting room, we have seen the equipment lists shrink in size as customers choose either a Zoom, Google, Teams, or BlueJeans experience. But this camera not only lessens the amount of equipment needed, it also allows you to meet on any of the platforms rather than being only a “Zoom Enabled Room” Or a “Teams Only Room”.

How do you think this might change the world?

The ability to meet anywhere on any device — what we have been calling BYOD (bring your own device) — is not new technologically speaking, but to have this camera with all the offerings built into it is revolutionary. Its size and price make the camera an offering that any school district or small business can afford and scale with their own growth. This capability used to be a Fortune 100-only space, but now we can support all levels of business, education and healthcare with an offering that will work cross-platform. Globally, the camera’s small form factor and built-in offerings make it a very travel-friendly tool as well so you can take your meetings around the world. Imagine having this camera with an organization doing good in the world such as Doctors without Borders? The opportunities are endless.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

You will certainly want to make sure you turn the camera off once you are done with your meeting, it follows the person speaking. And meetings on all platforms can be recorded.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

Choosing just one platform (Teams, Zoom, etc.) has been problematic for many organizations. In fact, a lot of companies use multiple platforms but moving between them can be a time-consuming ordeal. The new Katai Camera and its cross-platform offering are a result of these time and cost challenges.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

The current work and learn from home scenarios we find ourselves in every day are proving that collaboration and the ability to feel part of your class, team or meeting are sorely limited. The Katai camera’s 360-degree view offers an enhanced user experience that will transform what has become a somewhat unfulfilling way to connect, to one that is rich with possibilities.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

The Katai camera is in beta testing with existing customers to better understand use cases. Feedback from educational institutions such as UC Berkeley is promising. Support for collaboration and mentoring in the corporate environment has been identified as a strong need — from virtual tours of workplaces with camera installations in real time or VR designed walkthroughs to demonstrate the experience.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Creating meaningful AV integrations is a total team sport and positive influences have come with all of my work experiences. From something as simple as a news anchor suggesting that I read more, to a GM (now retired to Bend, Oregon — I am coming for you soon, Pat), who really did “settle me down” as a salesman. He was a grooming influence for my salesmanship and helped shape how I interact with customers. Pat was very approachable, didn’t inflict his will on you and, almost like a great parent, set you up to learn and succeed on your own.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I share the same positive attitude I learned from Pat. It’s easy to say something nice, pay a compliment, clearly and calmly respond or just share a smile. Once I mastered those small actions, I found myself open to modeling positive behavior regularly with my team members and project partners. Haven’t you noticed how a positive approach can set the tone for better communications? I have.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

  1. Hire a salesperson (aka, “selling ahead”) — One of my earlier jobs was running my own company where I wore all of the hats including replacing the occasional crew member personally when needed. I credit my wife with this one. I was running a very large project and not keeping an eye on the next future project and that project did not exist because I was not selling ahead.
  2. You can’t do it all — See above and learn that, while you may be good at everything individually, you can’t be good at everything when you have to do it all.
  3. Write it down — This goes back to a broadcast management course I took in college almost 30 years ago, but it is a good one! Keep a record of all interactions and decisions. It can keep you focused and, if necessary, quickly clear up misunderstandings.
  4. We are all replaceable — This isn’t meant to be as cutthroat as it sounds. But I was told this on more than one occasion and I always questioned it until the guy that said it was let go, and business still was just fine after he left. I misused it in a team meeting once and a couple of folks took it mistakenly as a threat — but I still stand by it. At the end of the day, I use it to keep myself humble.
  5. Empower someone or the team — Leadership 101 here, but it couldn’t be more true. Using the team sports analogy again, you have to empower the team and trust them. They will grow and develop from the experience and so will you.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I love the idea of paying it forward and I always enjoy the good news read of someone leaving a really large tip to someone who needs it. As we wrap up this beast of the year that is 2020, I would start a campaign of spreading good news to the masses. Even something nice and simple like Forrest Gump and the Smiley Face or Ringo’s salutation of “Peace and Love” would be great. I’m going to think about it more and decide what my version of spreading good news will be. The world really needs more of this now!

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

There is a simple air to my responses throughout this article and in life. And there is nothing more appropriate than applying the Golden Rule as my life lesson quote. Treat others the way you want to be treated. I use it every day with friends, family, co-workers and customers.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Virtual meetings — which once held so much promise for collaborating from a distance — have quickly become routine and even boring. The idea that we can use a small but powerful device to instantly create a more immersive virtual experience opens up the possibilities from the boardroom to the classroom to the playing field.

It’s all about the power of one — a simple, single and integrated solution that can strip away all of the complexities that come with multiple technologies, multiple platforms, multiple vendors and multiple budgets. Integrating interior solutions like design, furniture, technology, construction and project management with one partner just makes good sense. And when that partner is not just an integrator but an innovator working to enhance your workplace — whether you are onsite, remote or a hybrid of the two, you know you have found a good partner.

We call it the Power of One.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-willison-30871b9/

The Future Is Now: Mark Willison of OpenSquare On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bastin Gerald of Profit.co: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful App or SaaS

Launch & Learn attitude: Speed to market is critical. It is important to not get stuck in “Analysis Paralysis.” SaaS startups need to have engineering agility and plan rapid releases. Study the customer usage patterns, learn, refine and release again. This iterative process will help you to get to product/market fit fast and scaled-up.

As part of my series about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful App or SaaS”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bastin Gerald.

Bastin has a proven track record of taking initiatives and turning them into market-leading products. For the past two decades, he has worked with startups, as well as major technology brands like Oracle in Silicon Valley, and has established product strategy, recruited top talent and led international development teams that delivered profitable multimillion-dollar new business applications. He authored a well-received book on supply chain management titled Oracle E-Business Suite Manufacturing & Supply Chain Management.

Furthermore, Bastin founded two cloud app startups — Apptivo & Profit.co — where he stays in close connection with his customers, from reviewing support emails to taking customer calls — ensuring he is focused on the entirety of the company and their customers’ needs for ultimate success.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I started my career as a process consultant, re-engineering business processes to achieve dramatic improvement in performance. In my first job, I led the re-engineering of the warranty settlement business process and reduced the lead-time from 210 days to 7 days. This project propelled the company to receive the prestigious Deming Prize.

With this background I moved into Silicon Valley where I joined Oracle and worked in multiple roles — implementing ERPs for Fortune 1000 customers and developing product strategy, GTM plans and strategic alliances with partners like Deloitte and Bearing Point. From there, I joined a fintech startup called CashEdge, now part of Fiserv.

After leaving CashEdge, I started my first cloud app venture called Apptivo.com in 2011, a mid-market CRM solution that today has grown to over 200,000+ customers globally. I have been using OKRs for nearly two decades and have seen both large companies and startups alike struggle with spreadsheets over the years, while Silicon Valley has been practicing OKRs for some time. In 2018, I met a few of my friends working in large companies. I heard their challenges in implementing OKRs using spreadsheets first-hand, and it was then I saw the opportunity to simplify OKRs and created the minimum viable product (MVP) as proof of concept for Profit.co in two months, which launched at an event in New York in 2018.

What was the “Aha Moment” that led you to think of the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?

In the summer of 2018, I had gone on a trek with a group of my friends from all over the US. These were guys with some of the leading American companies. With them, I learned more about the problem and gap between “strategy” and “execution” that plagues many companies.

In one iconic communication company, I learned that the corporate teams and the many departments within an organization were totally disconnected. People had no idea how their work contributed to the overarching company goals. No one knew what the other teams were working on. During an audit, three different teams were found to be working on the same research problem unaware of each other’s efforts. Meanwhile the strategy team was bemoaning the lack of resources to execute its vision. One of my friends from Silicon Valley quipped that OKRs would solve the “strategy execution” gap. I knew that OKR was a deceptively simple but powerful framework that can help companies bridge the “strategy execution” gap, but people were still using spreadsheets to implement OKRs. This was causing chaos as people were maintaining different versions, overwriting each other’s work, all with no ability to provide reports or dashboards — just overall creating a bad user experience across the board. OKRs were getting a bad rap with spreadsheet users hating the cumbersome execution. I saw an opportunity for a user-friendly SaaS app to implement OKRs — thus Profit.co was born.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

The MVP was done in two months and I wanted to launch the product at an enterprise product event in NYC. However, the reception was not exactly warm. One of my friends with extensive enterprise software experience offered to review my MVP and provided valuable feedback on the user experience. As he detailed his feedback, I took extensive notes. On the flight back to San Francisco, I did a UX redesign exercise for five hours straight. By the time I landed, the new design was ready, and I was raring to go. The redesigned, optimized product was launched in the next four weeks and there was no turning back. This has been our operating principle: Listen to customers, adopt agile engineering practices and keep delivering product and service experiences that “wow” customers.

So, how are things going today? How did your grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?

Profit.co is doing great. We have customers all over the world. Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises, multinationals, government agencies, and startups, across the globe and from key industries including technology, manufacturing, financials, among other verticals. We have gathered deep expertise on OKRs and publish our best practices on OKR implementations regularly. Our customers love us and show that through their feedback and reviews in Capterra and G2 and by referring their friends to us. We have a mature OKR coaching program to help customers adopt OKRs.

COVID 19, with its unpredictable series of lock-downs, created some demand uncertainty. But we have stood steadfast with our principle of listening to customers and acting fast on their feedback and requirements. In the last two quarters we have added hundreds of customers. We intend to continue to listen and act on our customers’’ requests with agility.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

During the early days we used to rely on Google Translate for translation. One of our East Asian partners called us and in the politest way possible complained about the translation. Apparently, wherever we mentioned relationship and partnership in an article, it was translated to a phrase meaning “marriage-based relationships” and sounded very off for a business article extolling partnerships. While I had a hard time controlling my laughter in front of the very serious looking partner, we took the feedback earnestly and enhanced our quality control for translation, bringing in qualified partners to do the job.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Our ability to listen to customers and act rapidly on their feedback coupled with engineering agility really sets us apart. To share an example, we were working on a deal with a CHRO of a mid-tier tech company. The CEO was challenging the CHRO about the time taken to implement the product. He was thinking of the years it would take for ERP-like products to be implemented and was wary of approving any new initiative during the uncertainty of COVID-19. The CHRO knew that implementing OKRs with Profit.co was the exact need of the hour and came to us with a request on a Friday afternoon as he was scheduled to have a meeting with the CEO the following Monday afternoon. He was expected to share his vision for the organizational structure for one department with 50 users. We asked for the entire organization chart of 650 users inside the company. Our team worked over the weekend and had the entire organization set-up in Profit.co in advance of the meeting. The CEO watched the demonstration of the app with all his 650 employees already set-up with their department and reporting details included. The implementation plan to train OKR champions and the entire organization over a period of six weeks was presented as well. The CEO was blown away and the CHRO became the hero in the company.

Our focus on the customer and the solid technological architecture of the product helps us to move rapidly similarly in various situations.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

Recently I read that Dropbox has limited meetings to only four hours a day, with all meetings need to be scheduled only between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. The remaining hours are for the employees to schedule their work according to their own needs. This is a great way to improve deep work and productivity and more importantly avoid burn-out. Continuous meetings can wear people out.

I recommend my colleagues to manage their work and team based on “outcomes and not on the activity and time spent.” This means having a culture that revolves around trust, teamwork and collaboration. I encourage my colleagues to delegate and not micro-manage. This helps us to develop leaders and avoid burn-out of key leaders. It’s a win-win for everyone.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I would like to thank one of my earliest enterprise customers in the East Coast. The senior executive knew me as “a dependable guy” and batted for my company in his large organization selflessly, expecting nothing in return. I cannot name him or the company for obvious reasons, but we are immensely grateful for his encouragement and guidance all these years. We strive a little extra hard to make him proud about his decision to support Profit.co every day.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. Approximately how many users or subscribers does your app or software currently have? Can you share with our readers three of the main steps you’ve taken to build such a large community?

We have 1,100 + companies using profit.co, worldwide. The three most important steps that we have taken that contribute to our success are:

Focus on Customer Success: We believe that our long-term success is directly dependent on the extent to which customers derive value from our product. We take customer success seriously and have regular conversations with customers, track adoption frequently and don’t wait for “service inquiries” from customers. We encourage customers to make use of our customer success “weekly office hours” to learn about OKRs and implementation best practices. Our customer community is a passionate bunch. We encourage them to share their experiences with each other as we believe it adds value to the community.

Provide High-Quality Content: We provide the most detailed and practical content on every aspect of OKR implementation on our website. Our customers love this content and find it highly useful. These are practical insights on implementing OKRs based on our experience of working with hundreds of customers across the globe. Check out our YouTube channel, where you will find some of the most amazing content on OKRs including demos based on user roles, customer interviews, product guides and best practices.

Use OKRs to Help Execute: We practice OKRs sincerely. We practice full transparency where every team member has access to all the OKRs. The planning process at the beginning of the quarter is done in a bottom-up manner with teams aligning their OKRs to the company OKRs. This provides a great sense of purpose as teams know exactly how their work contributes to the company goals. Weekly check-ins and reviews are done diligently. Dependencies on other teams are discussed out in the open. Employee engagement and development happen as part of the OKR implementation. Overall, OKRs have helped us execute with extreme agility.

What is your monetization model? How do you monetize your community of users? Have you considered other monetization options? Why did you not use those?

We sell our offering on a subscription-based model, where we keep it simple and remove barriers to adoption with services such as OKR coaching for customers who need additional help.

Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a very successful app or a SaaS? Please share a story or an example for each.

Launch & Learn attitude: Speed to market is critical. It is important to not get stuck in “Analysis Paralysis.” SaaS startups need to have engineering agility and plan rapid releases. Study the customer usage patterns, learn, refine and release again. This iterative process will help you to get to product/market fit fast and scaled-up.

UX is king — test, test, test and keep iterating: Develop the user personas that you would like to target. Invest significant time in Interface testing. A/B testing with select groups can help you in refining your interface over time. Time-based user tasks should be done to check if the users are able to complete specific tasks and the time taken.

Customer feedback influenced roadmap, but owned and controlled by the product group: Listen to customer feedback intently. Feedback comes from multiple channels — sales calls, onboarding sessions, training meetings, support emails and chats, social media and sustomer feedback sessions. Make sure that you listen to the feedback. Your content generation strategy should take inputs from all these channels. The product roadmap should be influenced by customer voice, but the product management team should still own and control the process.

Use OKRs to execute: OKRs are secret sauce of Silicon Valley. From startups that just got their series A funding to market leaders like Google, many successful companies’ credit OKRs for their success in execution and reaching their goals. OKRs ensure that you focus only on the top goals that matter, stay aligned at every level, target stretch goals and achieve them through collaboration and teamwork. The weekly check-ins and reviews ensure that progress is made regularly, and problems are identified and brought to the surface early. The transparent score board ensures that everyone is on the same page and people are motivated by the high achievers. Teams that are lagging get help on resources after the weekly reviews.

It’s not always the product: In B2B, along with the product, having a great website with helpful content for improving user adoption is a must. A solid services team that can help customers with onboarding and the hand holding for customers is required in most cases. A great customer success function can help your customers to derive value from your product and convert them into customer advocates.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

“A mentor for every child.” Many children with disadvantaged backgrounds need positive role models and mentors to help them. Ideally, we can use digital technology to safely connect children with mentors and help them grow. I believe that mentors will also be benefited by giving — bringing us as a little closer as a society.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

We are on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook. Please follow us and I promise to share the most useful and practical content on OKRs, performance management and more.

Bastin Gerald of Profit.co: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful App or SaaS was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Job van der Voort of Remote: Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage a Remote Team

With remote work, you have to create these moments for team bonding on your own. The only way to do that is to think deliberately. How can I foster connections between individuals at my company remotely? There’s not one solution for that. At Remote, we have multiple bonding calls at different times, play games together, have fun Slack channels, and an always-on hangout where people can go to talk about non-work topics.

As a part of our series about the five things you need to successfully manage a remote team, I had the pleasure of interviewing Job van der Voort.

Job started his career as a neuroscientist before leaving academia to become the VP of Product at the largest distributed company in the world, GitLab, where he helped grow the company from five to 450 employees across 67 countries with no offices. He’s now the CEO and co-founder of Remote, an HR tech startup solving remote global organizations’ biggest challenge: employing anyone, anywhere, compliantly.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is your “backstory”?

I began my career in neuroscience before becoming VP of Product at GitLab, where I helped build the world’s largest all-remote company. While I worked there, we regularly ran into problems while trying to hire people internationally. I realized companies needed a better solution, so I started Remote to help companies of all sizes hire great people all over the world, easily and in full compliance with all the complexities of international labor law.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

It was a series of fortunate events that led me to where I am today. I left science to found a startup, but ran out of money quickly as I was earning no money at the time. I had a few thousand Euros and burned through them in a few months. Then I found a job as a programmer — sitting next to Sid, the person who would later start GitLab. After about nine months, we both left that company to work on GitLab, which led to my role there and later on inspired me to start Remote.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

My email address is [email protected] — it’s not short for anything and not a mistake, it’s my legal first name. It’s a coincidence that I happen to work at a company that helps people get jobs. I always laugh because I do get a lot of emails from people looking for a job.

What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?

Set the example. Take time off and be public about it when you do. Insist upon a culture of documentation and asynchronous working. With an international team, we can’t all be online at the same time. One of the benefits of remote work is the ability to change your schedule as necessary. When everyone communicates appropriately and often, it’s easy for people to take time off when they need to and do perform at their best when they’re in work mode.

Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Some companies have many years of experience with managing a remote team. Others have just started this, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Can you tell us how many years of experience you have managing remote teams?

I have been managing and building remote teams ever since I joined GitLab in 2014. We have gotten a lot of attention for our global employment expertise since the pandemic, but our company started long before the virus was a concern. Remote is not a response to current events but a strategic answer to the needs of the workforce of the future.

Managing a team remotely can be very different than managing a team that is in front of you. Can you articulate for our readers what the five main challenges are regarding managing a remote team? Can you give a story or example for each?

Controversial opinion: there is not a big difference.

People in offices are generally terrible managers. The only reason they get by is because their terrible management is saved by the fact that they can just look at people and talk to them in person, so they don’t need a formalized structure or think much. They rely on being in the same space. They never think about how to manage, because proximity means they don’t have to.

That’s been my experience my whole working life — until I joined GitLab. There, we had no structure beyond how your manager was your boss, and that’s the story.

Good managers do the same things in both situations — remote and in person. Doing that is not very hard at all if you manage deliberately.

First, have regular 1–1s will every report. In that 1–1, the purpose is to discuss things related to that person, how they’re doing, how they’re feeling, if they’re feeling good or challenged in their work. Those are the priorities. Discussing the actual work is secondary and can be done in a public setting.

For seven years I’ve experienced the absence of good management until starting to do it myself at GitLab. There are so many things you expect to perceive when you’re just around each other. People often assume others are OK and happy. I’ve found if you actually ask people and spend significant time with them, you discover much more and can help them succeed.

I always give the same example. In offices, people rely on the ability to walk over and talk. You can’t do that in a remote setting, but you can constantly Slack each other or call. You should be able to work undisturbed, but when that doesn’t happen, the benefits of working remotely become harder to attain. The solution is documentation and async communication.

Bonding is also essential. In the office, you get bonding for free. You say hi to the person at the reception, see your colleagues at breaks and at lunch, get snacks together, and maybe you commute together. None of those moments exist in remote work. Those moments may have felt worthless in the office, but they served a great purpose of bonding in an unstructured way, every single day.

With remote work, you have to create these moments for team bonding on your own. The only way to do that is to think deliberately. How can I foster connections between individuals at my company remotely? There’s not one solution for that. At Remote, we have multiple bonding calls at different times, play games together, have fun Slack channels, and an always-on hangout where people can go to talk about non-work topics.

Based on your experience, what can one do to address or redress each of those challenges?

I think I already answered that in the previous question.

In my experience, one of the trickiest parts of managing a remote team is giving honest feedback, in a way that doesn’t come across as too harsh. If someone is in front of you much of the nuance can be picked up in facial expressions and body language. But not when someone is remote. Can you give a few suggestions about how to best give constructive criticism to a remote employee?

Our top value at Remote is kindness. It’s the first part of the first section of our employee handbook. Without kindness at the core, remote workforces suffer. We make a point to everyone to assume the best intentions of their colleagues. No one goes to work to do a bad job. Giving performance feedback or constructive criticism on a project is much easier when you have a basis of trust and kindness to begin with.

Can you specifically address how to give constructive feedback over email? How do you prevent the email from sounding too critical or harsh?

Email isn’t the right channel to deliver feedback, especially when the person receiving the feedback may feel like they’re under the microscope. If the feedback is about a specific project, we collaborate in Notion or one of our project management tools, always focusing on the task and never on the person doing it. If we need to give feedback to a specific person or redirect their efforts, we do video calls. Everyone deserves to feel respected and heard.

Can you share any suggestions for teams who are used to working together on location but are forced to work remotely due to the pandemic. Are there potential obstacles one should avoid with a team that is just getting used to working remotely?

The most important thing is to recognize that there is no such thing as a “remote-friendly” company. You must be a remote-first company. Otherwise, people who work remotely will find themselves left out of important conversations and your organization will become misaligned. Build and retool systems with the understanding that remote work will be a permanent shift, either for some or for all, so that you can grow in the future without worrying about where people work.

What do you suggest can be done to create a healthy and empowering work culture with a team that is remote and not physically together?

We do all sorts of things, but again, the value of kindness is the most important part. We recently changed our meeting structure to schedule at least one bonding call a day for people in different time zones to connect with each other. We have one all-hands meeting per week as well and we are always exploring other innovative ways to get to know one another.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I left GitLab to start Remote because I wanted more people to have access to great opportunities regardless of where they live. As the world gets smaller and more connected, these are the types of movements and opportunities that will allow more people to live better lives. And that is the ultimate goal — to give people the tools and connections they need to live fulfilling lives. I’m very focused on Remote’s mission, but there are many other missions that focus on democratizing global opportunities.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite quote is from Finding Dory — I actually never saw the movie, but she says “Just keep swimming!” Especially now, times are tough for many people. In a business, it can be a roller coaster, especially as a founder. You have to deal with bad and good things, and you always have to keep going, no matter what. As a parent, it can be exhausting, but it’s also very rewarding. When times are really tough, you just have to keep going and “keep swimming” — you have no choice and it’s ultimately what you want to do.

Job van der Voort of Remote: Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage a Remote Team was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ketan Dattani of Buckingham Futures: Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage a Remote…

Ketan Dattani of Buckingham Futures: Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage a Remote Team

Communication: When teams work remotely, it isn’t always easy to foster open communication. Fostering open lines of communication is critical to preventing employees from feeling isolated.

As a part of our series about the five things you need to successfully manage a remote team, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ketan Dattani, CEO and Founding Owner of Buckingham Futures.

Ketan Dattani is a multi-award-winning entrepreneur. He holds over 20 years of recruitment experience and has a high profile within the sector. He is widely documented as an expert on Employment Law, Employee Rights, and for providing Careers Advice.

He is the Founding Owner and CEO of Buckingham Futures, a specialist Environmental Health Recruitment Business that provides bespoke permanent and temporary recruitment and consultancy solutions to public and private sector employers.

Academically Ketan is a graduate of Environmental Biology and a post-graduate of Environmental Planning and Management.

He also holds a Certificate in Employment Law and The Certificate in Recruitment Practice which is a nationally recognised recruitment qualification developed jointly by the REC and key employers.

Outside of business, Ketan volunteers with a number of schools, colleges, and universities providing career guidance, CV & interview technique workshops, and conducting mock interviews.

He also offers work experience programs and opportunities at Buckingham Futures for students and young people to help them achieve their potential by giving them an insight into the world of work.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is your “backstory”?

Thank you for this opportunity!

I was born in Leicester in the early 1970s after my parents were forcefully expelled from their birthplace of Uganda by a military dictatorship.

My early memories are of growing up in a small house with lots of uncles and aunts and tons of cousins. With the loss of much of Leicester’s industry during the mid-1970s my parents moved to London to seek employment, which is where I grew up.

In London, our economic situation wasn’t the best. Sadly, there were few prospects in Thatcher’s London. She had declared that there was no such thing as society and no one understood that more than Council Estate residents. We were bearing the brunt of a broken country.

As a child, seeing my parents’ daily struggle as Ugandan refugees have contributed to my development and where I am today.

I was raised with a strong sense of values — respect, hard work, integrity, humility, and a duty to help those less fortunate than me.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

The most interesting story since I started my career is how and why in 2013, I left my corporate career and started my own business Buckingham Futures, a specialist Consultancy supplying Environmental Health personnel across the Private and Public sectors on a nationwide basis.

It was undoubtedly the biggest career risk I ever took was to quit a very well-paid career to set up a self-funded Environmental Health Recruitment Business from scratch from my parent’s box room.

I started Buckingham Futures for personal and professional fulfillment. I love to accomplish goals and feel as if I am contributing to something important, an overarching vision for what I can create, and am motivated by change, challenge, and diverse problems to solve.

I was very motivated by the idea of creating something from the ground up.

Making the jump from being an employee to starting my own company was very exhilarating, rewarding, and fun, but was exhausting, relentless, and stressful in equal measures.

Ultimately, nothing beats the freedom of being your own boss and being able to spend quality time with your family.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I first set up Buckingham Futures, I felt that to succeed I needed to give the impression that Buckingham Futures was not a ‘one-man-band’ and that it was a bigger business than it was.

I look back on the early days and laugh now, but I used to play YouTube videos of a busy office environment in the background when calling clients.

I even invested in a virtual receptionist and virtual business address to help add credibility to Buckingham Futures as I felt would be easier to successfully attract clients by having a ‘brick and mortar’ location.

My business cards showed a prestigious central London location, all my mail was posted there and I would arrange to meet with clients in the reception area of my virtual office and conduct our meetings in nearby swanky cafes.

This set up was running well for about 8 months. Then one day I received a call from a client to say that she was in London for the afternoon and would love the opportunity to meet with me and my team in person to thank us for everything we had done for her and that she would be at my office in less than 10 minutes.

The problem was that it would take me over an hour to get to my virtual office from my parent’s house and there was no way I’d be there in 10 minutes. I was afraid that the receptionists would let the ‘cat out of the bag’ and tell her that Buckingham Futures did not have an office, let alone a team-based there! I felt that had no choice but to come clean about my business setup.

It was on this day that I learned that the most imperative quality clients look for is authenticity. To be authentic can be the difference between a company failing or succeeding. It is not easy, as being authentic is as much about revealing your flaws as playing to your strengths. It is often tempting to put up a front of total competence rather than risk looking vulnerable. However, authenticity is a key ingredient in running a successful business and leading a great team.

As the business has grown, I remember to always remain authentic and to never lose that openness and willingness to connect with people.

What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?

Behind every great working business, there is a support system of employees working hard to keep it going.

It is virtuous to keep your employees’ minds and experience updated to ensure that they are performing to the best of their abilities.

The best way to avoid employee burnout is to ensure the health and wellbeing of your people is always front and central to your business culture.

Take a comprehensive look at what you’re offering beyond salary and traditional benefits and talk to your employees about what they’d find most helpful in promoting wellness within your organisation.

Ultimately, Business Leaders must structure the work environment so that every employee feels happy and motivated and has the tools and support they need to succeed.

Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Some companies have many years of experience with managing a remote team. Others have just started this, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Can you tell us how many years of experience you have managing remote teams?

The COVID-19 pandemic has required the Buckingham Futures team to swiftly transition to working from home in March 2020. Before that, I had no experience in managing a remote team.

Managing a team remotely can be very different than managing a team that is in front of you. Can you articulate for our readers what the five main challenges are regarding managing a remote team? Can you give a story or example for each?

Expectedly, when transitioning to working remotely, there was an adjustment period. Managing a remote team can be somewhat challenging, especially when you want to do ‘business as usual’ and have your employees work in a way that makes them feel like everyone is working toward the same goals.

The five main challenges when regarding managing a remote team are:

Onboarding: Every business has to master the art of effective hiring and onboarding to attract and retain top talent, but with the pandemic forcing us to use remote tools to perform these functions, we had to quickly modify our approach.

Communication: When teams work remotely, it isn’t always easy to foster open communication. Fostering open lines of communication is critical to preventing employees from feeling isolated.

Company culture: I felt that we had an exceptional company culture that had taken time to cultivate and involved hiring the right employees, fostering healthy communication, and instilling that culture across the board. I presumed that by us not being together that the team cohesiveness and company culture could suffer.

Productivity: I found comfort in showing up to a physical office and seeing my team hard at work in the same place. Having everyone working remotely requires a different level of trust and an alternative way to measure productivity.

Isolation: Employees feeling isolated while working from home need a tactical approach. While there’s no magic elixir here, the solution revolves around addressing company culture, open lines of communication, and finding new creative opportunities to engage employees in a fun and meaningful ways.

Based on your experience, what can one do to address or redress each of those challenges?

Employers should be thoughtful and premeditated about creating an inclusive and engaging experience for each new employee, even before they officially join your company.

It’s important to continue regular communication between team members, especially when working remotely. In addition to open communication, giving positive recognition to team members while working from home shows that you see the work that they are putting in daily.

Business Owners should put more importance on remote team socialisation such as regular virtual meetings, company-sponsored team lunches from home, and socially distanced gatherings (when possible).

I have found that remote work gives employees more autonomy in choosing how they spend their time, and in my experience, people surpass what is expected of them when they are given trust and the freedom of accountability.

When Business Owners meet the basics needs of engagement, even casual, friendly conversations turn into innovative discussions that help the team thrive.

In my experience, one of the trickiest parts of managing a remote team is giving honest feedback, in a way that doesn’t come across as too harsh. If someone is in front of you much of the nuance can be picked up in facial expressions and body language. But not when someone is remote. Can you give a few suggestions about how to best give constructive criticism to a remote employee?

As a leader, I know that feedback is necessary and beneficial to my team and my business. I always begin the conversation with positive reinforcement that reminds the employee of their value.

Since I can’t see my team members in person and don’t have close working conditions, eye contact or informal conversations, I have phone contact with them on a more frequent basis to build and maintain personal rapport.

In virtual one-on-one meetings, I ask team members what they’re focusing on, review their understanding of their goals, and help them work through possible conflicting priorities.

Can you specifically address how to give constructive feedback over email? How do you prevent the email from sounding too critical or harsh?

I wouldn’t recommend giving any feedback over email unless you are recapping feedback that you have already delivered previously.

If, however, you really must give constructive feedback via email make sure you take time to craft a balanced email. Once you write it, let it sit in your ‘drafts’ for 24 hours and re-read from the viewpoint of the recipient before you send it.

Can you share any suggestions for teams who are used to working together on location but are forced to work remotely due to the pandemic. Are there potential obstacles one should avoid with a team that is just getting used to working remotely?

In the office, there was a structure in place, from set office hours to set break and lunchtimes. However, when working remotely, these can prove difficult to adhere to.

For my businesses, working from home was unchartered territory. I’ve quickly learned that managing remote employees is a balancing act between being sympathetic to their needs based on their work environment and ensuring they are equipped with the right solutions to execute their responsibilities. Distance does not necessarily equal detachment.

Ultimately, successfully working remotely is about figuring out a way to mitigate these obstacles. Implementing tools and services that contribute to this can help teams overcome any obstacles that arise.

What do you suggest can be done to create a healthy and empowering work culture with a team that is remote and not physically together?

From a leadership perspective, it’s crucial to be emotionally aware that worldwide events are happening in our employees’ lives and on a global scale that affects us all.

It is therefore critical to ensure a sense of belonging. If employees start to feel disconnected, the isolation will crush their morale and productivity.

In our morning meetings, I always include something that is not directly related to work. These little moments of sharing help build connections and make the team feel like they are a part of something special.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Am I really?

I would love to see more people get involved in mentoring. It is more than the transfer of advice, knowledge, and insights.

As well as the personal satisfaction of sharing skills and experience, being involved in mentoring also provides exposure to fresh perspectives, ideas, and approaches and an opportunity to reflect on my own goals and practices

Mentoring helps young people develop their character, raise aspirations, and improve their academic attainment, and helps them achieve their potential.

From undertaking mentorship, I have developed a passion for working with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and those at risk of offending.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.” ~ Rumi

I see a tree as stable, strong, and robust. Its roots grow deeply into the ground, allowing it to stand firmly in its place.

Being like a tree means creating a deeper connection with Mother Earth, being present in the now, and continuously growing even when it’s not visible for others to see beneath the surface.

Letting the dead leaves drop to me epitomises being open to change and allowing myself to renew.

Thank you for these great insights!

Ketan Dattani of Buckingham Futures: Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage a Remote… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Rick Kershaw of Peakon: Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage a Remote Team

Isolation — It’s not unusual for remote employees to feel isolated. It can be more difficult to collaborate or connect with a team that you don’t share a physical space with — especially if some members are physically working together. This workplace isolation comes on top of the social isolation and disruption many people are experiencing now because of the pandemic. We need to engage all of our employees and give them the tools they need to connect, so they can adapt and feel safe in a time of uncertainty.

As a part of our series about the five things you need to successfully manage a remote team, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rick Kershaw.

Rick is the Chief People Officer at Peakon and leads the global people team. Rick’s passion is creating employee experiences that support talented people as they do their best work everyday — which ultimately enables continued business growth.

Rick has over 20 years of HR and talent management experience, spanning different sectors and including businesses such as Pepsi, Mitsubishi, and most recently Expedia Group, where he led the People team supporting the EMEA region.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is your “backstory”?

I grew up in a very small, industrial town close to a region called the Lake District in the UK, before heading to University in Liverpool — probably most famous for the Beatles, football and Kim Catrall. I then spent my formative years building up my HR experience across various sectors, including engineering, consumer goods and technology in scaled and scaling organisations (200–200,000). I have been very blessed along the way to work with inspirational HR leaders who have challenged me, taken risks on me, and helped shape me into the leader I am today. Outside of my job, I am married — my partner and I are just celebrating our 17th wedding anniversary — and we have two amazing children, aged 14 and 7.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

In the People function you get to see and experience many situations. I can now honestly say that nothing ever surprises me. During my time at Pepsi, I was asked to support the expansion of the talent acquisition operating model across the Europe business, which grew from 30k to 60k people overnight following two major acquisitions in Russia. It was an incredible journey. I was privileged to spend time in Russia, to experience the culture, to work with new colleagues, and really understand how to drive change at scale.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

In my first ever HR role, I was asked to sit in on a number of intern interviews that were happening back-to-back all day. I didn’t have an active role and was there to observe only. After about the fifth interview, I could feel my attention slipping away from the candidate, and was distracted to the point I was reading instructions on a fire extinguisher. My colleague who was interviewing spotted me, so asked what my thoughts were on the question from the candidate. Highly embarrassed, I pulled together a quick response. However, my lack of attention showed. What I learned very quickly is that anyone who invests time in wanting to be part of your business — successful or not — deserves your full engagement and attention, to ensure they have a positive candidate experience.

What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?

You have to give employees a safe channel through which to give feedback, and listen to what they tell you. Employees need to feel like they can let you know what’s on their minds, and that you’re not only paying attention, but that you value their feedback and will act upon it. When people see that you value their feedback, it builds trust and engagement, and motivates them to help drive your business forward. That’s what we provide companies with at Peakon. I love seeing business leaders take hold of their employees’ words and make their work environment and experience better as a result.”

Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Some companies have many years of experience with managing a remote team. Others have just started this, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Can you tell us how many years of experience you have managing remote teams?

“Before coming to Peakon, I worked for a range of different companies, including Pepsi and Expedia. I’ve managed dispersed and remote teams for a significant proportion of my career. In one of my more recent roles, I had a team spread across 10 countries and at least three different time zones.

Remote working has been a growing trend for a number of years, but 2020’s pandemic has accelerated this shift — suddenly making it a necessity for many. In my experience it is critical that you have high levels of trust, set clear objectives, and communicate continuously to be effective.

We’re all still adapting, but at the same time, learning so much about how people work, and what works best for them. I’ve learned a lot about our employees at Peakon as we came together to work through this pandemic, and meanwhile observed global workplace trends transforming through our global data set.”

Managing a team remotely can be very different to managing a team that is in front of you. Can you articulate for our readers what the five main challenges are regarding managing a remote team? Can you give a story or example for each?

1. Fear of cultural erosion

◦ Many leaders fear that going remote will lead to some sort of cultural erosion. But in reality, it just involves taking a fresh approach to cultural enrichment. Culture extends beyond the four walls of the physical office. Events can still be hosted virtually. You can still have online get togethers and coffees with teammates. And you can still praise excellent work and celebrate each other’s successes. During the first lockdown, Peakon employees even participated in a 24-hour ‘Zoomathon’ to raise money for the Global Foodbanking Network. Cultural erosion only occurs when we don’t adapt for our new environment. You need to be very clear on the traditions that are important to your business and get creative around how you maintain them in the fluid dynamic.

• 2. Isolation

◦ It’s not unusual for remote employees to feel isolated. It can be more difficult to collaborate or connect with a team that you don’t share a physical space with — especially if some members are physically working together. This workplace isolation comes on top of the social isolation and disruption many people are experiencing now because of the pandemic. We need to engage all of our employees and give them the tools they need to connect, so they can adapt and feel safe in a time of uncertainty.

• 3. Communication

◦ When everyone is working remotely, or split between home and the office, communication can become more challenging, and some employees risk feeling less engaged or even excluded. Companies need to build out a process for fine tuning the communication within teams and across departments, so that people feel that they are in the know, engaged, and a part of the team. But with more communication comes a greater risk of miscommunication, so clarity of messaging is absolutely essential too.

• 4. Learning the skills to successfully manage remote teams

◦ The prevalence of remote work means that many managers have suddenly needed an entirely new set of skills. Employers need to work to support managers with this shift to ensure they are properly equipped to manage a fully or partially remote team. Communication processes and emotional intelligence skills need constant attention and empathy must be made a central pillar of how we lead.

• 5. Every employee is different

◦ No two employees are the same, or will respond to an event in the exact same way. We need to keep this in mind as we manage and avoid falling into the trap of one-size-fits-all thinking. Some employees will find remote work to their liking, for example. While others will find it difficult to be apart from their peers every day. Some will be more motivated, and others less so. As managers and leaders, we have to work with our individual employees to help them remain engaged and motivated as the workplace changes around them.

Based on your experience, what can one do to address or redress each of those challenges?

• Think of someone who stumbles across a new business idea, but fails to check if there’s a gap or demand for it in the market. They may feel personally excited about it, but it isn’t going to resonate far and wide. Well, the same goes for team culture and taking care of your employees. The only way to stay on top of what they really want, need and expect is to regularly ask them, “How are you feeling about this? What can we do better? What can we do differently?” Rather than coming up with solutions in a vacuum, the key is to collect regular, anonymous feedback from employees and use that to help inform the actions you take to help bring out the best in your teams.

In my experience, one of the trickiest parts of managing a remote team is giving honest feedback, in a way that doesn’t come across as too harsh. If someone is in front of you much of the nuance can be picked up in facial expressions and body language. But not when someone is remote. Can you give a few suggestions about how to best give constructive criticism to a remote employee?

• When it comes to giving constructive feedback, it’s essential that the conversation is two-sided. Ask questions and give employees space to talk before you jump in and give more feedback. If you are speaking on a video call, make sure that you take the time to ask them how they are feeling and use your judgement to decide if now is the best time for this conversation. After the conversation, allow some time for reflection, but do follow up with them to make sure the feedback has landed in the right way. Keeping that channel of communication open is important, especially when people are dispersed, as there’s a greater risk that the feedback could be perceived to be bigger than it is in reality.

Can you specifically address how to give constructive feedback over email? How do you prevent the email from sounding too critical or harsh?

• It’s partly to do with knowing your employees. Some do better with constructive feedback and want it, while others have a harder time with it. You have to work with their unique personalities, and judge your use of words wisely. The written word can be easily misinterpreted. So when writing a sensitive email, take great care not to sound too abrupt. Be sure to praise achievements and point out positives, as well as areas for improvement. Ensure that you use evidence-based examples, as that will help the individual reflect on the feedback in more detail. And before hitting send, consider if a video call would be the better option instead.

Can you share any suggestions for teams who are used to working together on location but have been forced to work remotely due to the pandemic. Are there potential obstacles one should avoid with a team that is just getting used to working remotely?

• Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve been recommending that leaders over-index on communication and empathy. Make sure that you check in with everyone on your team on a regular basis and ask them how they are feeling. It’s also important to have the right platforms and processes in place for success. That may include an instant messaging tool like Slack, or a task manager to help everyone stay connected to the project in hand. And, of course, a platform through which employees can safely leave regular feedback.

What do you suggest can be done to create a healthy and empowering work culture with a team that is remote and not physically together?

• Get creative and have fun with the process. Maybe you can have an online festive party, regular fundraising events, or team quizzes. This is a strange time, so we all need to get a bit creative and make the effort to connect. But online events aren’t for everyone, and the appeal can start to wane after a while. So be diligent to create a broad range of activities to attract everyone’s interest.

• Part of our job now is to recognize the stress and worry people are experiencing and to provide them with reassurance, as well as the means to focus, engage, and grow. Now more than ever we need to recognize the needs of the individuals we work with, and to ensure that work continues to really work for everyone — no matter the uncertainty and turbulence around us.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I would love to continue momentum for enabling hybrid and remote working models that help drive flexibility, inclusion, wellbeing and ultimately work that works for people. The world has pivoted and we can’t go backwards. There are some amazing examples of remote businesses, but most organizations are now just catching up and figuring how to be effective. Of course, businesses still need to be efficient and productive, but engaged talent is critical for driving that productivity and future business success.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

There are some amazing and inspirational quotes that I hold dear. However, it might sound strange, but one thing I always share with my teams came from the Disney-Pixar movie Finding Nemo. And that is to “just keep swimming”. For me it highlights the importance of resilience and perseverance, and embracing change. Sometimes in HR, you just need to have courage and belief in the direction that you have set out in. It is not always an easy journey, especially as we have people at the center of what we do. Also, it’s quite a light hearted quote, which is reflective of my style and personality!

Thank you for these great insights!

Rick Kershaw of Peakon: Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage a Remote Team was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jeffrey Fidelman: Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage A Remote Team

Interestingly enough, Fidelman & Company was built with the intention of creating a fully remote management consulting firm 5 years ago. It was my opinion then, as it remains now, that remote work is absolutely the future of how so many teams in the professional service industry will operate. The COVID-19 pandemic has simply accelerated that adaptation. Since we are not bound by geography, we believe our remote management consulting model allows us to source the best consultants for the job. Our remote model also allows more cost-effective delivery and value for the client.

As a part of our series about the five things you need to successfully manage a remote team, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeffrey Fidelman, CEO & Principal Consultant at Fidelman & Company.

In 2015 Jeffrey founded Fidelman & Company, as a result of his diverse investment and entrepreneurial background. Jeffrey’s investing experience began as a Partner at a VC in NYC and continued through his work with institutions and family offices seeking operational assistance with portfolio companies. His banking experience includes working at Morgan Stanley, running their syndication group for Private Wealth Management, and HSBC, where he collaborated with internal partners to increase revenue within the bank’s Manhattan branches. Jeffrey’s Real Estate experience includes co-founding a commercial/residential brokerage and working with a number of funding sources to provide short and long-term capital for real estate and other hard asset-based financings. His start-up experience includes founding a crowdfunded gift registry, management consulting firm, and co-founding a commercial real estate residual value insurance company, and a start-up conference series.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is your “backstory”?

I have quite an eclectic background which in retrospect I believe is ideal for a consultant. I started out in real estate as a buyer’s broker, working with a founder that was brilliant in marketing. After working together for some time, I left to start my own buyer brokerage firm with a few partners, representing buyers coming from outside of the US to take advantage of the 2008/9 crash. That business grew to include a property management firm. While I enjoyed working in the real-estate world, I realized I was more interested in the financial side of the dealings which led to my departure to banking. I spent the next 5 years between Morgan Stanley and HSBC in a variety of roles responsible for trading, syndication, portfolio management, lending, and people management. While at HSBC, I was recruited to join a Venture Capital firm that had a crowdfunding portal called Onevest. There I headed up investor relations and had the opportunity to work with incredible founders of both the firm and the companies we were funding. It was there that I realized I loved working with the entrepreneurs and really getting down to the nitty-gritty aspects of their businesses. Specifically, I appreciated helping them better understand their business, creating a business plan/model, and helping them grow and implement their business strategies. Applying my expertise in a variety of industries, I began Fidelman & Co., a remote-based management consulting firm that specializes in presentation advisory, growth services, financial modeling, research and analysis, and design. What has followed has been an incredible journey of building a dynamic and growing firm and working alongside some of the smartest and most driven consultants and entrepreneurs I have had the pleasure of meeting.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

I will always remember when I first started in Real Estate. Barely out of college, I had spent the weekend updating my wardrobe from my standard jeans and white t-shirts to suits and white button downs. I wanted to give off the right impression and look as professional as I could. I remember looking at the mirror as I passed through the lobby on my way up full of confidence and a sense of premature accomplishment that barely lasted through my first showing. I found myself standing across from my first client, who was probably in her mid-60s. She looked at me inquisitively and asked, “have you even been bar mitzvahed yet?” I flushed red at her lack of confidence at my age. I realized no suit could masquerade my lack of experience at the time. I remember thinking in jest, maybe a beard would help? But in all seriousness, that first experience made me realize how important expertise was. I may not have had the experience initially, but I was sure bent to develop the expertise to back up my position. I think about that story a lot when onboarding and training junior consultants, who may be nervous about giving advice to those more senior and or with greater industry experience. Trust in your expertise and lead with that.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I am a firm believer that every mistake leads to growth and change. I learned a lot of lessons when I first started working as a consultant and continue to do so with each project. One funny story in particular comes to mind from when I first started. I was tasked to create an operating model behind an idea that quite frankly was no more than an idea scribbled on a napkin. It was our job to create a business presentation, lay the foundation of the business, and eventually help launch its initiatives. A fellow consultant and I set out on the project early Monday morning. We had an initial brainstorming session after which we decided to “table” some of the more critical aspects of the business and instead focus on some potential names for the company. And well we kept brainstorming names for the next two days, coming up with a potential logo, the whole marketing and design element. Three days in, I remember just laughing. I had fallen into the same entrepreneurial trap I see so many clients fall into. So many clients get caught up in the design aspect of the presentation, marketing, and branding. Those aspects are important of course, but it is so important to have a clear business model, operating plan, and set of policies and procedures laid out first. At the very least, it is critical to align all the main company stakeholders on what the business model is. You would be surprised at how many CEO’s, CFOs, and COOs at Fortune 1000 companies provide radically different answers when asked the simple question of how their business works. Getting everyone on the same page creates an internal process that allows for proper growth and scalability.

What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?

Keep them engaged. One of the toughest challenges as a business leader is keeping your team(s) engaged while working on a deliverable or in the downtime between clients. It is understandable that as a business leader, you are constantly thinking about how to drive growth, but keeping the people that are helping you do just that (your whole team) in the loop should be a main priority. This can take the form of weekly/monthly one-on-one calls, monthly/quarterly company-wide updates; anything to let them know that you (the leader) are not off having the time of your life, while your people are anxiously waiting for the next sprint. Assure them that your core focus is business development, growth, and continuously figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Simply stated — let them know that you are in fact part of the same team and that you are holding an oar just like everyone else trying to row in the same direction.

Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Some companies have many years of experience with managing a remote team. Others have just started this, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Can you tell us how many years of experience you have managing remote teams?

Interestingly enough, Fidelman & Company was built with the intention of creating a fully remote management consulting firm 5 years ago. It was my opinion then, as it remains now, that remote work is absolutely the future of how so many teams in the professional service industry will operate. The COVID-19 pandemic has simply accelerated that adaptation. Since we are not bound by geography, we believe our remote management consulting model allows us to source the best consultants for the job. Our remote model also allows more cost-effective delivery and value for the client.

Managing a team remotely can be very different than managing a team that is in front of you. Can you articulate for our readers what the five main challenges are regarding managing a remote team? Can you give a story or example for each?

First off, organization. Both team and individual organization within a company is critical in managing on time delivery. This can be challenging in any setting but particularly when managing remote teams. Remote consulting forces each consultant to really stay on top of their schedule, thoughts, and deliverables. Similarly, communication is a critical aspect that may prove more challenging when managing a remote team. Given that our consultants are situated across the US and Europe, finding a time for a catch up can sometimes prove more difficult than if we were all sharing the same office. Thirdly and relatedly, collaboration is crucial within remote teams. While everyone may be in different locations, it is important to continue to work as a team, communicate with one another, and collaborate on projects. Engagement is another critical challenge that many remote teams face. It is important to keep team members engaged within the company and in sync with company values and beliefs. While team members may not physically share a workspace, it is vital to keep a positive and engaged workplace atmosphere that will help motivate consultants to produce top-notch products for their clients. Lastly, transparency is an important challenge to consider when managing a remote team. Again, transparency can be difficult in a remote setting in which seemingly everyone is hidden behind their own computer screen. However, transparency is so important within a company and helps mitigate misunderstandings or other potential conflicts that may arise from false expectations.

Based on your experience, what can one do to address or redress each of those challenges?

In terms of organization, it is important to set task reminders for virtually everything, especially those that can be set as recurring such as billing and weekly internal meetings. Set up calendar events, utilize google drive, and make sure everyone has access to the information they need at all times. Organization is all about setting your team up for success. When addressing communication challenges, it is important to set up weekly check-ins with your team. I cannot stress how important it is to touch base with every member of the team on a weekly basis. You would be surprised at how many mishaps or mistakes can be caught before they occur just by having a weekly update and touching base along the way. Communication really goes hand in hand with collaboration. We invite all team members to a project specific slack channel and google share drive so that each team member is fully aware of each aspect of the project. This allows for a frictionless onboarding process from research analyst to designer. We also send out a monthly internal newsletter that outlines current client engagements, last month’s accomplishments, this month’s goals, and next month’s plans to keep everyone engaging as a team. This also falls in line with engagement, our newsletter is just one way in which one can address the challenge of engagement in a remote setting by keeping all consultants aware and vested in our companies growth and goals. In addition, we strive to keep our consultants engaged by exposing them to a wide array of industries and projects that promote individual growth alongside company growth. Lastly, by providing all company members with full exposure to our active engagements, expectations, and objectives we believe we achieve a level of transparency that promotes a mind-share approach to our client’s goals.

In my experience, one of the trickiest parts of managing a remote team is giving honest feedback, in a way that doesn’t come across as too harsh. If someone is in front of you much of the nuance can be picked up in facial expressions and body language. But not when someone is remote. Can you give a few suggestions about how to best give constructive criticism to a remote employee?

I think the best advice on how to give constructive criticism to a remote employee is to utilize technology. Video technology has grown leaps and bounds and has enabled us to replicate much of the nuance of face to face interaction. Utilize it. Do not hide behind the computer. Beyond that, when giving criticism to an employee, always offer support. Remind them of the structures within the company set in place that can help them going forward. Point them in the right direction of potential tools or team members that can help support them. Always point out what they are doing right within the same conversation. It is a balance of positive reinforcement and negativity.

Can you specifically address how to give constructive feedback over email? How do you prevent the email from sounding too critical or harsh?

Echoing what I just said, I would say avoid giving constructive feedback over email. Schedule a video conference to go over feedback and employee reviews on projects and deliverables. Jump on the phone at the very least.

Can you share any suggestions for teams who are used to working together on location but are forced to work remotely due to the pandemic. Are there potential obstacles one should avoid with a team that is just getting used to working remotely?

I would be wary of too much freedom. In my experience, allowing too much autonomy can result in delayed or incorrect delivery. Again, effective communication and collaboration are crucial aspects to working remotely as a team. It is important to set weekly check-ins and keep each team member appraised on what each consultant is working on, deadlines, and expectations. One interesting communication challenge even for those used to working remotely due to the pandemic is the sudden influx of shared space co-workers in the form of loved ones and pets. It is important to carve out some space and time for oneself to communicate with your team and principals effectively over video or phone. Organizing this time for communication and collaboration is critical to success. At the same time, too much micromanagement can drive your employees to feel like they are back in grade school again.

What do you suggest can be done to create a healthy and empowering work culture with a team that is remote and not physically together?

I think a lot of times people only talk about team camaraderie in terms of team building, which is important of course, but I think empowering each employee with the proper tools and support to enable them to produce tangible client impact is perhaps even more important. I find that providing meaningful work and empowering our consultants with the tools to produce an exceptional product motivates them to continue to work hard and see the results of their efforts in real time.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” — Albert Einstein. I always loved this quote and it has definitely guided me throughout my career and working with my clients. I always tell them to get straight to the point. What is your elevator pitch? What is your bottom line? If you can’t explain what it is your company does, what problem does it solve, what does it add in a sentence or less than you probably do not understand it well enough yet. The details add flair and finesse, but people tend to get lost in them. If you find yourself needing to use industry specific wording or profundities, then distill your explanation down further.

Thank you for these great insights!

Jeffrey Fidelman: Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage A Remote Team was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.