Engineering an Autonomous Work Culture with Marissa Goldberg

Susan Boles:
00:04

Micromanaging is way too much effort for me, and, honestly, it's awful for everyone. It's not good for the team members. It's a huge time suck for the person doing the managing, and oh yeah, it's like the least calm, most toxic way to operate ever. Hey there. I'm Susan Boles, and this is Beyond Margins, the show where we deconstruct how to engineer a calmer business.

Susan Boles:
00:31

And right now we're in the middle of a mini series where we're exploring the common elements of a calm business. So essentially, what makes calm companies calm? I believe there are 8 elements that when implemented actually build a calm company and I explain this using my CALMER framework. So each letter stands for a particular element. C is for clarity and we talked about this in the last episode, so if you haven't listened to that, I highly recommend you go back and listen.

Susan Boles:
01:01

A is for autonomy. That's what we're getting into today. L stands for lens of care, so calm companies approach things from a people first mentality. M is for margins, so spacious margins throughout your company. That might mean operations margins, financial margins, energetic margins.

Susan Boles:
01:23

Margins are important. E is for efficient systems. R is for rest and reduced urgency. So if you want a kind of deeper overview on that model, you can head back 2 episodes in the feed where I kind of give a little bit of an overview on it. Today, we're gonna geek out about that autonomy element.

Susan Boles:
01:44

We'll get into what an autonomous work culture actually looks like, why this style of work is such an important element of building a calm company, and we'll talk about how to apply this in your own business. But before we get into it, let's actually define what I mean when I talk about autonomy so that you have some context kind of heading into this conversation. The way I like to define autonomy is that it's the ability to make your own decisions without being controlled by anyone else. It's essentially the ability to self govern. And calm businesses prioritize autonomy and autonomous decision making.

Susan Boles:
02:19

Because if you are micromanaging someone or you have to make every single decision in the business and wear every hat, well, that sucks. It's not calm. It creates bottlenecks, it slows down work, and just generally makes taking action way harder. Now the most common example we currently have of an autonomous work culture is really that asynchronous remote work environment that a lot of us are familiar with. So if you think about companies like SparkToro or 37 signals, they are great examples of this type of environment.

Susan Boles:
02:51

Everyone is kind of off in their own corners, their heads down doing their work, and they own their areas of the company. These are companies that have employees in a bunch of different time zones, they default to often primarily written communication versus having lots of live meetings, but essentially they empower employees to make decisions at their particular level. Now that kind of company isn't the only kind of autonomous work culture. You could certainly do this in an in person company by reducing meetings, emphasizing clear communication, empowering people to make decisions at all levels of the company. There's nothing that prevents in person companies from doing this.

Susan Boles:
03:29

They tend to be a little bit lazier honestly when it comes to proactively changing their work styles and frequently they just default to meetings. So for that reason, today we're mostly gonna talk about remote async work environments, but everything we're talking about could absolutely be applied at any company. These are good practices to put in place regardless of the style of work you do. Now my guest today is an expert in async communications. Marissa Goldberg is the founder of remote work prep which offers fractional COO services and courses and she helps companies successfully create healthy effective remote work environments.

Susan Boles:
04:07

She is a fellow operations nerd and someone who's been thinking and writing about asynchronous work for quite a while.

Marissa Goldberg:
04:14

I'm the founder of Remote Work Prep. I've been working remotely for close to 10 years. And in 2018, I started a fractional operational services company, for specifically remote teams. So we work with innovative companies that wanna do work differently. So typically, agencies and, creator teams and startups.

Marissa Goldberg:
04:36

2020 hit, my business exploded, and here we are. So

Susan Boles:
04:40

So speaking of the pandemic heyday of remote work, we really did have this real move towards remote work in the last few years, primarily due to the pandemic. But it does seem like things might be swinging back the other way. We've seen all of these return to office mandates from the big companies. So talk to me a little bit about what what do you think is behind that shift or the kind of boomerang effect here?

Marissa Goldberg:
05:08

It's definitely layoffs in disguise. So what I'm seeing from my end is that the data is coming out and seeing that remote jobs are staying at the same level that they have been for a while now, instead of dipping any longer. So that's what we're seeing there. I think it's layoffs in disguise, people overhired during the pandemic. I also think it creates this huge morale decrease as well because you're basically saying, oh, you've been working remotely just fine for close to 5 years, but I'm going to take away those privileges and just hope you're okay with it.

Susan Boles:
05:38

No. It's been interesting, especially the layoffs in disguise piece, I think, because I think what's happening is they're laying off such a huge percentage of their staff expecting the remainder to be able to pick up the slack. But if when you're laying off a third of your company, it's unlikely that the remaining 2 thirds can do those people's jobs. Like, that was not insignificant.

Marissa Goldberg:
06:02

Absolutely. Especially with the morale decrease. What you can do when you're feeling amazing about your workplace is very different than what you can do if you're afraid for your position, or you're feeling like there isn't a lot of safety in that workplace. So

Susan Boles:
06:14

So talk to me a little bit more about the safety aspect and how that impacts overall productivity.

Marissa Goldberg:
06:21

Yeah. So this kind of puts you in a fight or flight mode. It's basically putting you in a mode where you're thinking short term because you're in preservation mode, you're not going to try new things because you don't want something to go wrong. So those companies are going to innovate less. Yeah, it just puts the company and the individual in bad positions for the future of the workplace.

Susan Boles:
06:47

So in this whole returning to the office debate over whether remote work works better, in person works works better. A lot of the companies use this excuse that in order to collaborate effectively and be productive and innovative, that you have to be in person to do that. I'm assuming you have a different perspective. So what's your take on that idea that you have to be face to face to collaborate effectively?

Marissa Goldberg:
07:19

I think it's interesting that this narrative comes from those companies who are so large that they have global offices and technically work remotely in one regard because not everyone can be in one, you know, meeting room. I think we see that over and over again. So we see it with the remote companies that have been around since pre pandemic, how amazing they're doing. And then also with these global companies that have multiple offices, they are technically working in a remote fashion. So it can work and it is happening.

Marissa Goldberg:
07:49

I think that people got very used to one way of work for a long time and things are changing and that can be hard. But I do think that collaboration can absolutely happen remotely if you are intentional about creating an environment where it can thrive. And, also, it allows you to work with the best people all around the world.

Susan Boles:
08:07

I completely agree. I actually think asynchronous work, while it is kind of a different skill set that you have to develop to be able to communicate effectively, asynchronously or in a remote environment or in a primarily written perhaps format. It's a different type of management. It's a different different skill set. I think it's actually more effective than in person communication, in person collaboration, particularly with people who tend to be, like, marinators, like the people that want to take in information and then think very deeply about it and then communicate back.

Susan Boles:
08:48

The asynchronous format, I think, really allows people to communicate in the way that is most effective for them to communicate. You know, you can leave a voice memo or you can write a written reply. So I would posit that asynchronous work is actually more effective when it comes to collaboration.

Marissa Goldberg:
09:12

I absolutely agree. So asynchronous work allows the adaptability that's needed for each individual to have the time and space to come up with their best ideas and to communicate it effectively in their own way.

Susan Boles:
09:24

Oh, I love that. So in general, I think particularly business wise, the default communication style for almost all companies is meetings. Like, we assume that meetings is what we have to do in order to get our point across, in order to update people. All communication, by default, tends to sort of happen in in meetings. But is that really the most effective way to collaborate, to communicate?

Susan Boles:
09:54

What what's your take on meetings?

Marissa Goldberg:
09:56

I'm not a fan of bad meetings. And I think bad meetings are just way more common than good meetings right now because we use meetings as a default for everything. I don't think it's good to use them as a default. So instead of using meetings as a default, it's important to look at what are meetings actually good for versus what is async first communication great for. So for synchronous communication, it's great for speed and relationship building.

Marissa Goldberg:
10:23

So speed because you can get an instant response. So I'm with you right now. If I ask you a question, I'm gonna hear your answer right back. It's great. So, like, when things are on fire, I need to have a call and I need to get this figured out.

Marissa Goldberg:
10:35

And then relationship building because we like to create experiences together. So calls are great for that. Seeing people is great for that. You can also use async first measures for both of these things. But meetings, I think, are better for when that's the purpose, speed or relationship building.

Marissa Goldberg:
10:51

But now you think about like, how many things are on your calendar, where those are the priorities, the number one priority is speed, the number one priority is relationship building. Not as many. And that's when I think that by using meetings as a default, it's a detriment to the entire company and to the entire team, because we're using a format that just isn't made for that, whereas async first formats be better.

Susan Boles:
11:15

Yeah. And I think it sucks up so much of our available time because the assumption for meetings is that it's gonna take half an hour. It's gonna take an hour. Like, we program them in specific default blocks of how long do we think this thing is going to take, when in reality we might be having a meeting about something that takes, you know, it's a 5 minute email, or we can go back and forth over Slack and get it done just as efficiently, just as effectively without actually blocking off all this time on our calendar that we feel like once we're in a meeting, we have to, like, use all of the time of that meeting.

Marissa Goldberg:
11:52

It's a huge time suck. It's a huge energy suck as well because you're talking about the preparation that needs to happen before the meeting in order for the meeting to go well, the then Zoom fatigue that you might have if you're forced to be on video all day during these calls. It doesn't lead to you being able to have space and time to think through, was this actually a good decision? Or did I just say it in a meeting off the cuff and that's the direction we're going in because that's the time I had to make the call?

Susan Boles:
12:23

You said something a few minutes ago about good meetings and bad meetings. What do you see as hallmarks of bad meetings and vice versa?

Marissa Goldberg:
12:34

I think the biggest thing to look at is how do I feel when I leave this meeting? Do I feel energized or do I feel depleted? If I feel energized, that was a good meeting. That was probably something where like the speed or relationship building aspect, we utilized it to its full potential. I was able to come prepared.

Marissa Goldberg:
12:52

I wasn't feeling very rushed. I come out and I'm feeling depleted. And I feel like I didn't get enough use out of that time. Like, a lot of times people go into meetings and they're like, this could have been an email or this could have been 10 minutes. Those are bad meetings.

Marissa Goldberg:
13:07

And, unfortunately, I think those are the majority right now.

Susan Boles:
13:11

I tend to default to being an introvert myself. I default to, can we do this via email? Because if we have a call in the calendar, then I have to be anxious about the call for several hours ahead of the time to make sure that I don't forget about the call or log in too early or make sure that my hair looks good. And then afterwards, you're right. Like, I have to refill that bucket of energy because I've spent time, you know, monitoring myself on Zoom or making sure I'm making the right facial expressions.

Susan Boles:
13:45

Yeah. It's draining. Meetings are the default when it comes to work culture norms. They're inefficient and a subpar way of communicating for most circumstances. But they really don't have to be.

Susan Boles:
13:59

We're gonna take a quick break to hear from our sponsors but when we come back we're discussing the alternative, an autonomous work culture. We'll talk about what this is, how it actually creates calm in a company, and how to engineer it into your own company. So let's talk about what makes an autonomous work culture. What does that actually look like? What does that feel like?

Susan Boles:
14:29

You work with Async First Companies, which is how I tend to operate as well, and I think Async is an autonomous work culture. But let's look a little bit more broadly at what does that look like, feel like inside a company?

Marissa Goldberg:
14:47

So in an autonomous work culture, it's basically the difference between proactive and reactive. So in the default work culture, we're reactive. So we see a message in Slack, and we have to, like, instantly respond. And our our meeting calendar is stacked to the brim, and we're going from one thing to the other. And it basically puts us in this firefighting mode of just responding and having and and we can't we can't do things like implement measures that would cut down on the fires or catch the fire before one becomes a spark rather than a full blown, it's taking over the town.

Marissa Goldberg:
15:24

Instead of going into firefighting mode, where everything is an emergency, we're thinking very short term as well because we have no capacity to think long term. In these cultures, we're allowed to just have space to breathe and have space to think and have space to do work in the way that works best for us individually so that we can show up for our team in the best way.

Susan Boles:
15:50

I love that. And for me, I think autonomy means the ability to self govern and to have individuals on the team be able to own their work, be able to make decisions about their work, and I think that requires context. It requires an understanding of what's happening company wide. And I think, at least for me, one of the most important aspects of being able to work well remotely, particularly, is having that culture that does prioritize autonomy. However, I think that is a really big struggle for a lot of business owners.

Susan Boles:
16:30

The ability to let their team own their work, let their team determine or advocate for themselves in how they work best. So have you seen that in your work with clients? Why do you think that is?

Marissa Goldberg:
16:46

There's a balance that needs to be had, and it's really hard to find that center if you've never experienced before. Going into an autonomous work culture requires intention. It requires clear expectations. And honestly, the default work environment does not. So people use And

Susan Boles:
17:06

it's all about control.

Marissa Goldberg:
17:07

Right. It's all about control. And it's all about showing up for things in the moment like they happen because you're in this reactive state versus, oh, I have to actually be clear about this is the direction the company's goal going. These are the explicit goals that we are trying to attain. This is what I think that your role should be, and what I expect from you.

Marissa Goldberg:
17:28

A lot of team members, when I go into a new company, and I'm doing a optional COO work, one of the first thing I do with the team members I'm looking at is I'll ask them, so what is expected of you? And then I'll ask their manager, what is expected of this person? Very rarely do those lists align because it hasn't been explicitly communicated. That's just something that is required, and it's a skill set, and it's something that you have to be intentional about creating.

Susan Boles:
17:55

How do you help business owners learn to trust their team members? Because I think in an autonomous work culture, that element of trust, that element of respect, the idea that you hired people who are good at what they're doing, and you need to let them do it because, inherently, they're probably gonna be better at it than you are. How do you help business owners kind of navigate that shift?

Marissa Goldberg:
18:24

I take kind of a firm approach. So, basically, I go to them and I ask, why did you hire them if you can't trust them? If you can't trust your team member, it's not a problem with them. It's a problem with your hiring practices. You not onboarding them correctly, you're not giving the resources they need, and you're not giving those expectations.

Marissa Goldberg:
18:43

So they're on completely different pages maybe than you because you haven't set them up for success. So to me, when I hear that there's a trust issue going on, I see that more as the manager's problem.

Susan Boles:
18:54

Absolutely agree. And that clarity piece is so important, and it's it is a piece that is requisite for building an autonomous work culture. I don't think you can build a culture where you are able to trust your team, where you know that they're gonna make the decisions that you would make in their situation. If they don't have all of that context, if you haven't given them clear expectations, if you're not clearly communicating what is happening at the company and what your goals are overall, I think it's a super critical element that is a prerequisite for an autonomous work culture.

Marissa Goldberg:
19:39

Absolutely. And managers have to shift how they judge work as well. So in the office, a lot of people used external measures. So you'd often hear advice like dress for the job you want. How much does how you dress really relate to whether you'd be good in that additional role?

Marissa Goldberg:
19:56

Not much. Right? But people relied on those external measures and whether people showed up to the office on time. It it was more about were they looking like they were working rather than were they actually doing the work. So looking productive versus being productive was seen as the same thing versus 2 different things.

Marissa Goldberg:
20:14

And now in an autonomous culture, you can't use that as a crutch anymore. So you have to be very explicit that judgment is no longer about those external measures. It's about the quality of work. And how can we judge the equality of work without being clear on what's expected from the individual? If you're clear about it, it's very easy.

Marissa Goldberg:
20:32

You have a list. You go check, check, check, and they succeeded in all those areas. We're like, okay. So that's the judgment then. They have succeeded.

Marissa Goldberg:
20:39

But you have to shift your mindset and recognize that you might be using that crutch from office days.

Susan Boles:
20:44

Yeah. For sure. I love the expression LARPing your job Yeah. Live action role playing your job. I have a 100% LARPed my job before.

Susan Boles:
20:52

Talk to me a little bit about that reevaluation or shifting your mindset around how you evaluate someone's work. So in an environment where you might or might not even work at the same time, that people that maybe you supervise work or people you collaborate with work, you know, as we move to a more global workforce, there's a very good chance you collaborate with people that you literally never work at the same time at. So how do you move from the benchmark of somebody's Slack dot is green or their butt is in the seat in the office to real qualitative measures of, are they fulfilling their role? Are they doing quality work?

Marissa Goldberg:
21:42

One of the ways that I typically implement when I'm going into a new company is a My Week channel. So instead of having a daily stand up where everybody has to show up, and then they're reiterating, like, oh, I'm doing this this week, and they basically say the same thing over and over and over again. And nobody's getting much use out of those meetings. Instead, I have something called a my week channel in Slack or Teams or whatever tool your team is using, and it basically says what I plan on doing this week, and then it lists them out in bullet points very short and to the point and what I did last week. And the trick to this is that is that you copy and paste the this week one to the last week and then you add emojis of green check mark or x.

Marissa Goldberg:
22:23

And if it's an x, then in parentheses, you say, like, why what you planned didn't get done. This allows me to see things like, oh, does this person have too much on their plate? Do I need to adjust my expectations? Things like that as a manager. As an individual helps them get better at planning exactly what they can actually get done versus what they want to get done, which are 2 very different things.

Susan Boles:
22:50

I think human beings are universally really crappy at that.

Marissa Goldberg:
22:54

Absolutely. So that's why this works better than when we're gonna stand up and we're just regurgitating the same thing all the time and not really actually visually seeing. I said this last week and then I didn't get it done and this was why and we can start addressing that. So it's a very visual method of seeing exactly what people are planning on doing, seeing exactly why they couldn't get it done or exactly what could get done. You can then use this measure for, performance management later on in the season because you have like this written document of everything that was done and things that you might have forgotten are just right there.

Susan Boles:
23:30

The element of that that I think is so useful is the built in training, where you are consistently training people and helping them build skills about estimating work or planning their own work and helps build more autonomy into the work culture, but also helps them build the skills to exist in that kind of work culture because at least for me in companies where we are async first, that is a very different environment for new employees to come in. You know, if you have been in a high control environment or in a micromanage y kind of environment, the shift from that to something where all of a sudden you're treated as an adult, you're expected to manage your own time, you have the autonomy to choose how and when you actually accomplish your work, it can be very, very disorienting for people who are new to that environment.

Marissa Goldberg:
24:35

I actually call this overwhelming freedom. So everybody wants freedom. And it seems like, oh, this is so exciting. But then you're in the moment and you have to make all of these decisions. So like, what am I going to start work?

Marissa Goldberg:
24:46

How am I going to get things done? What priority am I going to give all these things without someone hand holding me and forcing me to do it their way? So it is a good thing if you know how to handle that overwhelming freedom. Because if you don't handle that overwhelming freedom, you end up with decision fatigue, and then you end up freezing. So tools like the MyWeek channel help to build accountability to just show this is what we're planning on doing.

Marissa Goldberg:
25:12

So at least there's one decision off your plate of just figuring things out.

Susan Boles:
25:16

Yeah. I've also found it to be really helpful to build in a lot of self management skills into onboarding at async first companies. You know, here's how we address work. Very clearly as we discussed. Here's what the expectation is in terms of you doing work.

Susan Boles:
25:37

Even something as simple as a line in your onboarding that says, we don't care if you're Slacklight's green or, you know, some cultural expectations around how work happens, I think can help people integrate into what can feel like a really different kind of work culture.

Marissa Goldberg:
25:57

Agreed. And honestly, one of the questions I get the most is how do I build culture in an async first environment? So with all this autonomy when people aren't in meetings or calls and I can't really do those like social events that I'm used to, so how do I build culture? I think people forget that culture is built more from how you work rather than from having a, you know, coffee talk chat. It's like in the office, like, if you were in an environment that was micromanaging and like a toxic work environment all day, but then they had a happy hour at the end.

Marissa Goldberg:
26:29

Was that a culture built there because of that happy hour? Or was it because of how you worked all day? And it's the same thing remotely. How you work plugs so much into that culture. So things like onboarding need to be incredibly intentional instilling that from day 1.

Susan Boles:
26:48

Yeah. One of my favorite pieces of onboarding from a previous company was that there was a section in the handbook that, like, explained the inside jokes. Either there's a phrase they use from a meeting 6 years ago or, you know, there's a special emoji that means something. And I found it so helpful as somebody coming into the team to have those things really explicitly explained. That is culture.

Susan Boles:
27:16

There is a culture there, but it is incredibly helpful to have that culture made explicit, to be very direct. And I think that is beneficial for everybody coming into the culture And especially, like, being led into the inside jokes as part of the onboarding, I think, at least for me, made me feel more invested in the company. It made me feel like the company actually did give a crap about whether or not I was part of something. As you mentioned, it's important to do it intentionally, and I also don't think you can be too explicit about any detail of how work happens or how you approach existing as a company and as people within that company.

Marissa Goldberg:
28:04

I agree. I think that it's incredibly important to be a direct

Susan Boles:
28:09

So how have you found this clarity, this autonomy? How does that actually contribute to a company then feeling calmer? Like, you're an ops nerd like me. Our goal is always to make things, at least for me, as boring as possible. I want things to be boring.

Susan Boles:
28:27

That is my goal in the world of operations. So from your perspective, how do you see some of these processes contributing to that feeling of calm?

Marissa Goldberg:
28:38

I love comm companies. It's one of my favorite things to come out of this. Async First culture that's been building is more companies that say no to the hustle culture and say yes to the comm company culture. And there's typically 3 questions I ask to determine like if you're in a comm company or not. And the first is, can you take a vacation right now without things burning down?

Marissa Goldberg:
29:03

That's the first one. Do you have time for maintenance and experimental tasks? And 3, do you have the Sunday scaries?

Susan Boles:
29:13

Those are fantastic questions.

Marissa Goldberg:
29:15

Those questions will help you determine, like, do I have a calm company or not? So the first is like vacation without things burning down. That requires you to put processes in place and communications in place and have things like reference docs around common questions you get and not be needed as you might be in a more meeting first culture. The maintenance and experimental tasks, those go out the window in the typical work culture because they don't have time for it. They're in constant meetings, they're in that reactive mode that we talked about earlier, firefighting all day, and they don't have time to address a tiny spark when there's this huge forest fire right next door.

Marissa Goldberg:
29:52

So maintenance is things that just get swept away until it becomes a big issue. And then experimental things that could help blow your company right up, like make it huge, because you address something very new and, experimental. They just don't happen when you're in this reactive mode because you don't have the space to think long term for short term. Then the Sunday scaries is you don't have that time, you feel like you're constantly going, going, going and you have this frantic energy in a traditional culture versus at a con culture, you you have margin. I think it was Justin Jackson from Transistor FM who talks about having margin.

Marissa Goldberg:
30:29

And so you have margin for error, so things going wrong, so you can try things and you can still fix things without being like, oh, my goodness, this is going to take the whole company down if I try something new. And you have a margin for life. So life happens. Things are going to come up and you're going to need to address them. And in comm companies, they have the space and the time to be able to address it without it becoming this huge thing.

Susan Boles:
30:54

I do like Justin's approach to margins, but I think that it's not quite comprehensive enough. Though I really do agree that margins is a critical component in creating calmer companies. That's why it's the m in my calmer framework. For me, margins means space and building that space into every part of your business is such a big part of engineering something calmer because the goal is to have about 40 to 50% margin in all your areas. So not just your financial margins, but also your capacity and operational margins, your energetic margins, your emotional margins.

Susan Boles:
31:33

The goal is really to be operating in all areas at no more than 50% capacity Because when you're working at a 100 or a 150 percent capacity, you don't have any room for surges, which means you don't have the energy or the bandwidth to absorb them when they happen. And they do absolutely happen. It's a business after all. You have to kind of expect the unexpected. But when you're regularly operating around 50 or 60%, you still have plenty of room to surge, deal with the unexpected, and then come back to your baseline.

Susan Boles:
32:09

Line. But often, unsurprisingly, there can be pushback to having these larger margins. So how do you respond to these folks?

Marissa Goldberg:
32:17

The rebuttal that I typically get from people who want to cling on to this traditional work culture, They're like, Oh, you know how many people I would have to hire if people were operating at 50%. And the thing is, if you look at comm companies, revenue per employee is much, much higher, because they have space to make good decisions. And people underestimate how valuable that is. And if you think about most roles in a tech based company are information based, it's all about making informed decisions. And if you're in a reactive culture versus a proactive culture, you don't have that space.

Marissa Goldberg:
32:54

So you're constantly making decisions off the cuff, and they're not the informed decisions that you want them to have. And that translates to things like revenue per employee and having to overhire.

Susan Boles:
33:09

So say people are listening to this, and we have convinced them that autonomous work cultures are the way to go. They are the wave of the future, and they're on board with it. Where do you think they should actually get started on building some of this into their business?

Marissa Goldberg:
33:27

One thing that I want to bring up is that a lot of people get excited about this, and then they try to switch everything overnight, and everything falls apart. So I want to encourage people not to think that they have to do everything all at once. Instead, target just one bad meeting to start. Just look at your calendar and pick one bad meeting that you have influence over and try to make the switch there. Because what happens is you see companies going in and when they're switching to an autonomous work culture, and they'll just delete the calendar, they'll do something called a calendar reset.

Marissa Goldberg:
34:00

And they'll be like, oh, we're we're getting rid of all the meetings and everybody will go, yay. And then a month later, their calendar is full again, because they didn't actually build any of the habits they need to keep things off the calendar. So target one meeting and figure out what can I do here? Can I first look at the, what the target of the meeting is? Is it something that needs speed or relationship building?

Marissa Goldberg:
34:23

Perhaps you can use a different method if it doesn't. Or can you adjust the timing? Can you trust the frequency? And then if it's a recurring meeting, make sure all of your recurring meetings have end dates. So do not set a recurring meeting without an end date or else it will stay on your calendar for the rest of all eternity.

Marissa Goldberg:
34:43

So those are some areas where you can get started.

Susan Boles:
34:46

Awesome. So where do you see folks getting tripped up the most when they start to make this shift? For me, it's the all or nothing mindset. We're gonna do everything all at once. What do you see happening?

Marissa Goldberg:
35:00

That's the number one thing is just trying to overhaul everything at once without taking a moment to instill the good habits that you need in order for this to be a long term transition. So doing the calendar resets like we talked about where delete everything all at once and then hope that you now have no meetings. But the thing with the calendar reset is that the employees who needed them to communicate because they didn't know how to communicate otherwise still need them to communicate. And managers that were using it to gauge work and seeing if it was done are now frantic because they have no way to see and they're thinking nothing is getting done. So instead of just switching everything overnight, start with the good habits of being very explicit.

Marissa Goldberg:
35:43

So creating that documentation we were talking about where everything is clear and direct and laid out explicitly. And then moving from there, one of the things that I do is I go into a new company, and I will model the behavior that I want them to learn. So I'm doing things like I am using a document called a read me document to say, like, this is how to work best with me. This is what you can expect from me so that I'm doing I'm being very direct and clear upfront so people know how to work with me without just guessing like it has been. Then I also have something like a personal q and a where most frequent questions that I'm getting, I can refer people to so they can check that before being like, oh, I need a meeting with her.

Marissa Goldberg:
36:29

They can get answers instantly because anytime I'm asked something more than twice, it's in there, and it's easy to search. So model the behaviors that you're trying to instill in your company.

Susan Boles:
36:40

I love that. Is there anything you think that we should talk about that we haven't really touched on yet?

Marissa Goldberg:
36:47

I think one thing I want to touch upon is that the difference that you're switching to is going from a business first mentality to a people first mentality. So when we're in a business first mindset, we're thinking about, hey, how do I give value to shareholders? How do I make the most money? All that kind of thing. Where in a people first mentality, we're seeing that the number one resource we have is our people, is our employees.

Marissa Goldberg:
37:12

So how do we set them up to be their best self and do their best job? And honestly, people think, oh, but if I switch over, profits are going to go down and, you know, the business is going to crumble. But what you see happening is that the people first mentality ends up being business first because those people are supported. They can do their job. They are not going through burnout cycles over and over again from being in a reactive environment.

Marissa Goldberg:
37:39

So people first ends up being the most business first thing you can do. Switching to a comm company, switching to an autonomous work environment is not saying no to having a sustainable business. In fact, it's going to make it even more sustainable in the long run.

Susan Boles:
37:56

I agree. Comm companies really do approach work from this people first mentality, where they prioritize the well-being of the folks that work in and interact with their business. I call this approaching business through a lens of care. You can also call it that people first approach. It's the L in the CALMER framework, and that's actually the topic we'll be covering in the next episode.

Susan Boles:
38:18

So thank you so much for that really fantastic transition. Building an autonomous work culture isn't something that happens overnight. It requires you to first practice being super clear and explicit. So clear communication, clear expectations, and then you have to gradually work towards handing things off and that can be really challenging for a lot of folks. It requires some trust, but it also requires a lot of dedication to things like documentation.

Susan Boles:
38:47

When you explicitly communicate how to do something and why it needs to happen, it's a whole lot easier to hand it off and to trust that the process will be followed. But honestly, it comes down to this. You hired the people you hired because they were good at their thing. If they weren't good at their thing, you would not have hired them. So your role as a business owner is to make sure that they have the resources and the training that they need.

Susan Boles:
39:13

You need to make sure they have all the information and the context about the big picture and their role in it so that they can be empowered to make decisions. And then your job is to get out of their way because, well, it's calm art that way. Big thanks to everyone who supports Beyond Margin. If you are a listener, a sponsor, or a partner of any kind, I absolutely couldn't do this show without you. If you're looking for more ideas and stories from me about how to build a calmer business with comfortable margins, head to beyondmargins.com.

Susan Boles:
39:47

While you're there, you can sign up for my free newsletter. I send it every week, and it's all about one thing. What does it actually take to build calmer business? Until next time, stay calm.