As you're managing remote or even co-located teams, try to see yourself as less of a director and more of an Unblocker.

What you're really there to do is accept feedback from your direct reports and then unblock them and as fast as you can, and let them run as fast as possible.

Welcome to the super managers podcast, where we interview leaders from all walks of life to tease out the habits, thought patterns, learnings and experiences that help them be extraordinary at the fine craft of management.

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Today's guest is Darren Murph.

He's the head of remote at get lab, a company that is famously known for being one of the largest.

All remote companies in the world prior to get lab.

Darren was the managing editor at Engadget and the director of Global Communications at Dolby.

What's really interesting is he holds a Guinness World Record.

Curd as the planet most prolific, professional blogger.

And we dig into that with Darren, it's quite the interesting story.

In today's episode, we talked about and actually get an inside view of what life at get lab is like their core values.

What it means to be transparent by default and so much more.

We also talked about this concept of hiring to fill your weak spots and how as Leaders we can unblock are direct reports.

And Empower them to do great things.

Last but not least I was super curious to learn.

Darren's take on asynchronous communication you know get lab and Darren have really written the play book on this.

And so his views are particularly useful.

In this time, we talked about how get lab does these meetings, and how they actually promote diversity and belonging, and how they work with the culture of acceptability.

This is a great episode for managers looking to improve their craft And take remote working in Remote Management to a whole new level.

So without further Ado, here is dared Murph on episode 42 of the super managers podcast.

Darren, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks aaden.

Yeah.

It's it's really good to see you again.

You know, we've done, I remember in the beginning of the pandemic, we did a session with you and it was just so good that it said, we have to have you back.

On the podcast.

I appreciate it.

That's that's high, praise.

And you've had some pretty amazing folks on the podcast.

Shout out to job at remote so happy to be amongst the crowd on the show.

Yeah, definitely.

So I mean there's a lot that we're going to talk about today, but I thought a really great way to kick this off, is to ask you about something that is like highly unusual when I first read it and I'm like, wow, that's actually really cool.

So you have the Guinness World Record as the planet's most Prolific professional blogger.

Yeah, what a title that's accurate.

It is it is surreal.

The plaque is on my wall.

Yeah.

So the crazy story.

There is I was managing editor at Engadget.

It's a consumer technology.

Publication, it was really the Golden Era of tech blogging.

I started writing about tech the year before the original iPhone came out.

So as you can imagine, once the iPhone came out, that was the see changing everything ology became cultural.

Culture became technology.

There was a lot to write about.

I fell into my Niche.

That was my superpower distilling information.

Writing it down really quickly but also in gadget was one of the earliest, all remote teams.

We have people scattered all over the world and we were very, very efficient working as a distributed team.

And what's interesting looking back on that is I didn't really consider it unusual at the time, it was just the way were was done.

It was only later that I realized.

Oh, Office Centric Minds.

Don't really do a lot of the things that you have to do as a remote team.

So to capture the record I wrote and published an article every two hours.

24/7 365 for four consecutive years.

That's what it averaged out to.

So when the record was bestowed was about four years into my tenure seventeen thousand or so articles.

6 million words, it's up to the 25 30 thousand range.

Now well past 10 million words, And the record still stands.

So happy happy to say that.

Wow.

And it still stands.

That is incredible.

I guess you were just publishing a lot.

Very quickly versus you weren't staying up every night for four years.

Yes, that's correct.

So, there was some some intense bursts and I actually want to back up and say, it's really hard to get a Guinness World Record.

So, when I actually applied for this record, I had to be persuaded by a colleague to apply for this.

I just kept blowing him off and he says, listen either.

You're going to I for it while I stand over your shoulder and watch you do it or I'm going to apply for it in Forge your name but I'm convinced that you've written more than anyone else in the world and I absolutely want to see this thing for.

So to get us team reach back out to me and said, hey this seems like an interesting record.

We're going to put a team of people on it to scour the internet to try to disprove your claim and they spent six months trying to do it and they required all of this back-end data from our CMS to make sure that every article.

School was authentic.

And how many words were on each article and that it was a human and not a machine and all of the stuff and six months later, they finally said.

Yeah, you've done it.

But I will say there were some late nights.

I did sleep less in my younger years.

I don't think I can pull it off again but also there was just an incredible amount of efficiency in our team.

Our tools were perfected to work as a remote team.

We had Engineers that work on some of those tools that if they could say One click, they would spend weeks to get it, one click faster because in the blogging game speed was everything quality of course, but once you ride quality speed was the next metric.

So beating our competitors by even one or two seconds, it was a big deal on Google.

Wow.

That's what a story.

Yeah.

And what an honor to actually meet the person with the record I can say that.

I actually know who he is.

That's amazing.

So Darren there's a lot to talk about you obviously talked about Engadget and you've Been at many other companies in leadership roles.

And obviously, today, your head of remote get Lop.

So you've had a, you've come across a lot of leaders, a lot of bosses and, you know, being at Engadget, you probably interviewed many of them.

And so, I guess, one of the questions I had is from like, all the people that you've kind of come across either reporting to them directly or just coming across them, has there been someone who's been most memorable weather, whether that was like in a very positive way or something very - who's the most memorable boss?

You've come across.

Yeah.

Tim Stevens by far.

He was my boss at Engadget and that was an interesting time Engadget.

Almost fell apart.

We had almost the entire team left to go form.

Another publication there was only a handful of us left and we decided that we were going to rebuild it essentially built it From the Ashes and Tim was in lockstep with me on that vision and we had to hire and recruit and train and right.

And run the business.

We had to do all the things like suddenly we were a start-up all over again.

And so being with a manager through that trial, by fire was certainly a kind of a crystallizing moment.

The magical thing about Tim is that he was, he was such an Empower, he recognized my strong suits, he recognized my flaws, he recognized how to steer me in the right direction and focus energy in a positive way, but didn't micromanage got out of the way.

Let me make some Eggs pointed them out to me with Grace and was always always there to connect dots in my career and be a mentor but also expand my network by leveraging his Network.

I just appreciate him so deeply for that and I have tried to internalize many of those things as I become a manager.

Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense.

So, how long did it take for him to get to know you at that level to be able to, you know, recognize where to focus your He like, did he just get it right off the bat or it?

Was it something that got better over time?

It definitely got better over time.

I would say, six to nine months, there was an obvious in built trust between Tim.

And I and what's fascinating about that is our personalities are actually very different.

Tim is very introspective calm and quiet, very, very still presence.

I'm generally much more charismatic and bombastic and just want to get out there and get after it.

And so, Were different people but I think when you, when you couple those things, what we realized is that we complemented each other very well, that has been critical for me as I've grown as a leader.

Where I look for my weak spots, I look for the spots where I don't necessarily have an innate passion and I will try to hire to fill for that so I will actively try to build a team around me that specifically does things that I don't like better than me and that's That's easy to say but as you look around the world of managers it's not very easy to practice because it requires a certain amount of vulnerability and transparency that I'm not great at everything.

Some things that I don't actually want to be great at but I would rather hire someone that's great at that and then unblock them as fast as possible to make these some greater than the parts.

Yeah, that's really interesting.

And if you don't mind me digging a bit further, what is something that you have realized that you know, Might not be great at and that you've hired for in the past long-term project, choreography anything, requiring a Gantt chart.

So if we're trying to wrap our heads around this massive 6 to 9 month project where you're going to need to coordinate dozens potentially of people with with with a very syncopated list of due dates, where things have to happen for another gate to open and then another gate to open I'm great at putting together the vision of that and What the outcome can be and some of those early first iterations.

But I would much rather give it to someone who is in the weeds and they thrive on making sure each one of those Gates gets lifted at the right time and that people are plugged in at exactly the right moment.

And where I thrive is being able to live in that Visionary World, coupled with someone, it's very tactical and can make sure things get done.

Yeah.

And so, how long do you would you say it took you to figure?

Out that that, you know, that was, that was a right way to play it.

And, and the right type of person to have to surround you 10 years, forever forever.

I mean, when I was at Engadget to some degree, it was necessary for all of us to be a jack of all trades.

So, what I found myself doing was being an individual contributor, in many, very important things because I knew how to do it and I was capable of doing these things, but I didn't love.

Love it.

So sometimes I would do it but it would, it would be at the expense of a lot of energy because when you're doing something that you're not necessarily called to do, or your you're not in your Zone, even if you have the intelligence to do it and you can do it, it's much more draining.

It's much less life-giving, so a lot of that was necessity, but it did take me a long time to realize, What might be a better use of time.

Is to train someone up and give them all of the information but hire someone that specifically wants to do that and it's not an energy vampire for them and then just Empower them to do it their way, teach them all that, you know, and that Empower them to do it their way.

And now being a get lab, what has really crystallized for me here is that we work in draft, we work in public and we have a low level of Shame.

So See people sharing very early ideas early and often and asking for input and feedback and that allows people to grab hold of an idea early and run with it in their strong suit that has been a game changer for me where you don't really have to wonder is this someone strong suit if you share an idea early enough that they can contribute their specific feedback early.

Wow.

So what's interesting about that?

And what I wanted to emphasize is that It is usually, I mean, you said it, it took a decade.

And you know what's interesting is like, you know, I feel if we do this podcast 10 years from now, you'll probably have even more to add because it's the sort of thing that you just like the more you're in your career, the more you realize almost you, what are the things that are the most fulfilling.

And it might not be obvious.

And you might not have necessarily spent time on this other thing that you don't even know about yet that might be even more fun.

Like, and so that's really interesting.

But I did want to dig in on this this concept of ideas and public.

So how does that work practically?

As an example, is there something that recently you have a story to tell about?

Yeah, absolutely.

The get lab platform was built by a remote team for remote teams.

So to give you some context, get lab is a devops platform.

We have 1300 people in more than 65 countries with no company-owned offices ever.

Ever.

So it was designed from the ground up to leverage the benefits of a remote team, instead of it being this thorn in your side or this challenge to overcome, a lot of transitioning companies are Reckoning or they're having that Reckoning right now.

So that's the organizational design concept.

So, get lab.

The platform enables us to do collaboration across the entire company, our legal team uses.

It our comms team uses it, our marketing team uses.

It, we centralize all of that information in one Central hallway, One Central heartbeat, where all work happens.

So it's transparent by default.

After this podcast, I could go peek around and get lab.

And within 10 seconds, tell you what anyone in the company is working on without having to interrupt them, or bother them or call a meeting that is the beauty of transparency.

But the critical part here is that visibility and transparency in work has a direct link to belonging.

As a member of this company, I feel like I belong because the work and the workflows are transparent.

So it's critical for leaders to empower their employees to work in a transparent way on a transparent platform.

But that's only 50 percent of the equation.

The other 50% is culture, so it get lab.

We have a values page.

That is incredibly comprehensive and robust.

We have six core values.

But what's more important is the substantiating Use the sub values underneath all of those and I mentioned a few of these earlier.

No ego, we explicitly work with no ego short toes, no one can step on anyone's toes.

It get lab because we all have short toes.

So this empowers people and design to chime in on things we're doing in h.r., onboarding.

For example, the other thing we say is everything is in draft.

So we share things early and often and one of our key values is iteration this is The hardest value to learn.

But the most impactful if you truly embrace it, so we say, if you share a piece of work or an idea, just a sliver of an idea out in a public slack Channel, or in a gitlab issue where you can ask others for input and feedback and you have a little bit of embarrassment in doing it, then you're exactly on the right track.

If you're embarrassed about how infantile that first idea, is you're doing, Exactly right.

Conversely.

If you spend three or six months, packaging up this idea into the Perfect final polished product.

And only then, do you share it with someone even if it is, right?

It's going to be frowned upon because what if it was it you want to give people the chance to give you input early, so that if you're off course, it's only going to be one or two degrees, it's really easy to fix.

If you hold something in a silo for six months and then ask for a fee, Feedback.

What if it's 40 or 50 or 60 degrees off?

Then it becomes a one-way door, not a two-way door.

It's very hard to reverse very hard to undo you end up having to do an entire, a new project.

Just to offset the old one, but it requires a culture of acceptability, a psychologically safe atmosphere where you can share things without fear of Retribution or worrying.

That someone is going to say.

You didn't think all of this through.

That's exactly the point.

It's exactly the point, of course, I didn't think all of this through.

I wanted to share very early so that people smarter than me can make it better while they still had a chance.

Yeah, there's, there's so many interesting things that you said this concept of and I feel like these things go hand-in-hand, right?

So this concept of short Toes, that means that people in, you know, obviously have ideas for even different parts of the company and they're not worried about, you know, stepping on someone's toes, but also just by pre framing it And telling people that we want you to feel embarrassed almost with the nation, see of your ideas that would obviously encourage people to contribute more.

So I guess one of the questions is so there's that kind of encouragement for people to put out ideas.

How do you what do you do?

I guess advise people on the receiving end.

So if you're on the other end and there's all these ideas being generated, is there ever a situation where it feels Like, well, we have all these ideas but we don't execute on enough of them.

Yeah.

So the counterpart to enabling everyone to contribute proposals is that you have to respect the concept of a dri, a directly responsible individual.

This is the counterbalance.

You can't have one without the other.

So every major or even minor project get lab has a dri if we're incubating on an idea and it becomes obvious Is that we want to move this forward by even a day or two?

Let's keep exploring this.

Before we do it, we assign a dri.

A single person who is the ultimately responsible individual for that?

The beauty of that is the dri doesn't owe.

Anyone an explanation.

So a recent example, here is our CMO was working with a third-party Agency on a brand messaging video and instead of getting it all done in a back corner, we share the earliest possible draft of it with the Tire Company we shared a link to the video.

We opened up a get lab issue for input and feedback we said, hey everyone watch this video, we're going to timebox the feedback, you have a week but all of your thoughts in here, by the way, none of this required.

A meeting, all of this was done asynchronously so you Empower 1300 people to give input at a time that works for them while spending zero minutes on meetings which is the other superpower when you really Embrace asynchronous but then at the end of that week, the CMO is Is the directly responsible individual.

So it's possible that there's so much input to see Mo can't even read it all.

And it's and no one who is contributing feedback.

Feels like they're owed a response.

That's the only way it works.

Both ways.

Otherwise you're directly responsible individual would be so underwater.

So overwhelmed by having to comment back on every possible.

Comment that they would never actually get anything done.

But here's the beauty and doing that, let's say that we move forward on this project.

There was a comment that was delivered We just got a dick Schaap buried somewhere and it doesn't exactly go like we want it to go.

So then we say, all right, what can we learn from this?

How can we iterate on it and make it better?

Someone who left that comment could say ah actually anticipated this happening.

You can go see this comment here time-stamped and everything because it was documented and in and delivered in a transparent way.

Now our next iteration we have a shortcuts like oh, this person already knew this was Going to happen.

Now, this person needs to be a key collaborator in the future iteration, so we would pull that comment out.

We would start a new discussion and that would be the foundation of what the next iteration would be.

So that's why it's important to allow people to contribute, even if you don't act on it immediately because it can still be useful information in a future iteration.

Hey there before, moving to the next part of the interview.

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And with that said, let's go back to the interview.

Yeah, that yeah, that's super interesting.

And I love this this concept of not like people just know that not every comment is going to get a response and they understand that this person is going to make the decision.

And and sometimes it might actually be a very unpopular decision in might go against the grain, but but I guess like it's nice to have both ends of that.

So you did mention this.

This one thing that I did want to dig in on is this concept of a synchronous meetings.

So I'm curious for you.

For example, how many synchronous meetings?

Do you end up having in a given week or like what kind of meetings would you do synchronously?

And what kind would you do a sink?

So there's a before times in after times.

So before covid, I did very few synchronous meetings after covid, obviously there's been a huge Spotlight on get lab being an all remote company in in large part, we're guiding the world and making this transition.

So there's been a lot of opportunity to connect with people synchronously to then scale that knowledge in a big way.

But even now I try to keep it to less than half of my day.

I just find as a leader that my energy starts dropping precipitously in the quality of work.

In the quality of my mood goes down.

If I commit more than roughly half of my day to synchronous meetings, thankfully we work in a place where people can be honest about that and they can block time in a way that they can manage their their energy.

Yeah.

So I guess like from Called perspective.

Like are there categories?

I understand that you would be having a lot of maybe external meetings but safe or you know someone who doesn't have a lot of external meetings and they're working internally and they're trying to make the decision of should this be a synchronous or asynchronous meaning?

Do you have General guidelines around how that works?

We do, we actually did a three-month project.

We are were dubbing at a sink 3.0, it will not surprise you that we have an entire handbook, page devoted to it.

So anyone listening and dig into all of the details, but we canvassed the entire company and we asked managers around the company.

How are you using async to make your team more effective?

And then we collected all of those ideas and we shared them out so that we have this cross team visibility and other leaders were learning from other leaders on how they were using asynchronous workflows in a very unique way.

But I want to give you some some context to a sink especially at get lab.

The global conversation on a Egg is generally captured in two ways.

One is it sink versus a sake as if they are mortal enemies?

When the other, is people generally look at a sink as a productivity measure, can we move towards more asynchronous workflows to become more effective and productive and if you aren't familiar with the term async simply it means moving work forward without two or more people needing to be online at the same time.

So email is a great time.

Term for a sink and a phone call where both people have to be on the phone.

At the same time is an example of synchronous, but what we do and get lab is it instead of having it tied to productivity or efficiency as a metric?

Our bias for asynchronous communication is actually a substantiate, ER, of our diversity inclusion and belonging value.

People are when they first hear this too, like what does a sink have to do with diversity inclusion and belonging The reason we put it there is that we want to focus the conversation on the reality that moving work forward without demanding.

Someone to be on the zoom at the same time is fundamentally more respectful of their time if you put in the effort to tee up work so that someone else can contribute to it and move it forward without needing to be in your office at the same time.

That's more respectful of them, that enables them to spend about 30 minutes with their family, or going for a walk or staying in a state of flow, on a piece of work, they're already working on, and if you reframe the async conversation around respect, it's much easier to get buy-in across the organization.

Everyone wants to be respectful of one.

Another, we all want to work in a respectful work environment.

So if you take the focus off of productivity efficiency and and all of those things we could debate that for years.

And you put it on respect can we be more respectful of each other?

It becomes a lot easier to get it ingrained in your culture.

Yeah, I love that and I don't know exactly when it will be out but regardless the remote handbook from.

Gitlab you all have made it publicly available and you're updating it all the time.

So whenever you do check it out, you will see the latest version.

And I think that that's that's amazing.

I look forward to reading the 3.0 version.

A quick tactical question on that.

Do you actually say it's a recurring meeting?

You would actually block off time.

But all that means is that's that's almost like the deadline by which that has to be done, but does it also exists in people's calendars?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean there are some recurring instances where we want to keep like stand-ups is a great example.

If you want people to contribute status update, status updates, meetings are the like the first to go.

There are certain meetings that are just more Edible to being a synchronized and status and stand ups are great example, but for many people, they still want, dedicated time to do it asynchronously.

So, we would encourage people to put a block of time in your calendar, some time throughout the week that works for you to provide your updates asynchronously because the issue there is if you convert everything to a sink but then you don't actually devote time to contribute asynchronously.

It's tough to actually do it, so then people end up reverting back.

Back to the old behavior of.

Well, this just have a meeting, but what you should do is just block the time because the meeting blocks the time and then you put your inputs in at a time that's convenient for you.

It does require you to be a manager of one.

That's a profile that we look for at get lab and being ruthless about your calendar and being dedicated and devoted to blocking it to make sure that you reserve pockets of energy to get meaningful work.

Yeah, I love that Darrin.

We're just coming up.

Time here.

This has been incredible, so many great insights always love chatting with.

You, one question that we asked everybody on this show, which is for all the managers and leaders out there looking to get better at their craft of leading teams.

Are the resources books, tips, or just any parting advice that you would leave them with?

Yeah, check out all remote dot info.

That will take you straight into the remote section of the, gitlab handbook.

You can download the remote, Playbook are out of the The office report, we have lots and lots of insights, they're all of, which will be useful for managers trying to wrap their heads around how to manage and lead in a remote World.

Also point you to Coursera you search for remote team management at Coursera.

We've poured it a lot of our manager training into a Coursera course.

It's totally free to take.

There is an optional paid certificate at the end but it's totally optional so dig into that.

That's all of our best knowledge on management and I'd say oh no.

Personal level as you're managing remote or even co-located teams.

Try to see yourself as less of a director and more of an Unblocker.

What you're really there to do is accept feedback from your direct reports and then unblock them and as fast as you can and let them run as fast as possible.

And in a co-located spaces, might feel a little awkward but in a remote space, it's by far, the best way to manage it.

Really sets the tone for empowering your people and in this remote world, try to deconstruct The old office Norms, don't just copy and paste what your office Norms were into the virtual world.

I look at my family now and my wife and I were able to adopt a newborn two years ago, a huge advocate for open adoption and that was made possible largely by the flexibility of a remote role.

And I had a manager that fully supported that going out to these meetings at 2 or 3 p.m.

because that's when the agency was open and a letting me work, a more nonlinear work day.

More unconventional schedule so that we can grow our family in an extraordinary way and the impact on my life and many other lives in generations to come, has been massively impacted by a support of manager that embraced, that flexibility instead of holding it against me.

And I look now at tens of millions of people going remote, if even a small percentage of those think, well, I could use this extra time to Foster or adopt, we can solve the orphan crisis overnight.

So as a manager, you're really in the driver seat of empowering people and a society to do things with their time that were not possible before and really Empower us to leave a positive Mark, and a positive Legacy on the world.

And as a manager, you change hearts and Minds one person at a time.

So I would say in your next one-on-one, ask someone.

What do you want to do with more time?

If your remote now really what do you want to do?

Start making a plan.

Look at the impossibilities of last year.

Start writing them down.

It is a fun time.

A manager when you get Empower people to have that much more flexibility.

So I'll leave you with that.

And if anybody is interested in adoption and wants to connect with me, you can find me on Twitter at dermer.

That's amazing.

As some great advice and great place to end it.

Thank you, Darren.

Thanks aaden, thanks.

All for tuning in and that's it for today.

Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the super managers podcast.

You can find the show notes and transcript at www.fafsa.gov apps / super managers.

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