Founder’s Tour update: halftime
Earlier this year I launched my Founder’s Tour. Since the Tour is currently at halftime for summer break, it’s a great opportunity to share how it’s been going so far.
Why did I go on a tour?
I care deeply about our culture. I believe that companies’ cultures initially shape themselves after the founders and later after the CEO, chief executives, and upper management as companies scale. As long as they’re still with the company, founders generally are the epitome of the culture — they embody and demonstrate the core values.
It takes a village to make a company successful. In 2020 TrueML began hiring remote-first across the United States. As of 2022, the majority of TrueML’s employees have been hired into a new reality where they no longer meet the founders in person and, ultimately, don’t experience the company’s culture face-to-face. In essence, our True Village is remote.
As a founder and Chief Innovation Officer, I sensed it was time to innovate our culture. A tour seemed like an excellent opportunity to meet colleagues in their local cities and start to foster relationships between the local team and me as well as among themselves.
What do we do at each stop?
Our workforce (village) now spans across 35 states and 164 cities, with our largest hub in Kansas City — our only permanent office. Therefore, the core part of the plan was to travel to different cities and get as many people together as possible in a co-working space for two days, so we could all interact with each other in real-time for a change.
The second part of the plan was to spend some social time with each other outside of an office setting to help build a sense of community. And what’s a better way to do so than by breaking bread together? Dinners were incorporated into the plan.
The third part of the plan turned out to be the real highlight. As pointed out in one of my Denver posts, in 2022 TrueML introduced an Approved Volunteering Time Off benefit, which provides each employee with 16 hours a year to volunteer at organizations of their choosing. Tammy, TrueML’s People Programs Manager, cleverly suggested incorporating volunteering in my stops. After all, volunteering is a rewarding activity that helps teams bond, is perfectly aligned with our mission-oriented company, and is a great way to lead by example. When possible, some of our other executives volunteered in various cities as well.
In short:
- 1.5 days in a co-working space
- Dinner on one evening
- Volunteer event on the second afternoon
- Happy Hour (an inclusive one) following the volunteer event
Where have I toured so far?
Bonus
For as long as I can remember, we’ve had talented musicians at TrueML. In fact, over the years, we had:
- Jam sessions
- Couchella (a Zoom concert)
- Talent shows
- An all-remote music video
The visit to Denver presented a rare opportunity: to record a new music video with the TrueAccordians band, made up of talented employees who are also spectacular musicians. So a couple of local members and I rented a recording studio and recorded tracks that were later incorporated into this masterpiece: TrueAccordians — The Best.
What have I learned so far?
In-person meetings
To me, there’s no doubt that being in-person is a lot more effective and efficient than being remote. The number of conversations I had with colleagues in two days or that colleagues had with one another was outstanding. Some were professional — spending hours diving into their work in product, project management, or sales, or talking about improvement ideas for our remote culture. Some were personal — learning that they got married, had a baby, or were on their way to either. Whatever we discussed, both colleagues that have been with us for six years or two weeks seemed to gain a lot.
Office preferences
It’s apparent that there’s no simple answer for the future of offices. Some colleagues miss being in an office, and they plan on meeting at least once a month in a co-working space, similar to what we did on my tour. However, some colleagues, whose work heavily relies on collaboration with distributed teams, prefer their home offices and skip the commute altogether. The key to success is flexibility.
Volunteering
No matter the location, everyone has a big heart for volunteering. The participation rates were sky high, beyond my imagination, and there’s definitely an appetite for additional volunteering opportunities. This has also shown that colleagues usually don’t volunteer because organizing is hard and time-consuming, and that the way to encourage volunteering is by reducing the friction. Our Executive Assistant does a wonderful job organizing and setting up these events nation-wide.
Inspiration
The tour has inspired the team to use their Approved Volunteering Time Off benefit and get out in their community and give back more. The SF Bay Area team did not sit idle and have since set up a couple of volunteer events of their own:
Where am I going next?
Specific destinations and dates are not set quite yet, however we have a few metros with a significant number of colleagues, including: Cleveland, Washington DC, Dallas, and Austin.
Stay tuned for updates!
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
