Staying Connected Through a Screen

Cameo doesn’t have an office, you’re a fully distributed workforce. Why did you choose to be a fully distributed workforce? And how do you make it work? I know you’re sitting in an office right now, but it’s really a temporary space that you rented for a short while. How do you make it work?

So, number one, right before COVID, Cameo had 125 employees spread throughout Chicago and Los Angeles. We were an in-office culture, everybody was there every day. We were one week away from signing a new lease and our office lease in Chicago…

Wow!

...On April 1, 2020, and on March 10, 2020. I had this Spidey sense that COVID was going to last way longer than anyone thought, and by summer of 2020, we announced that we were going to be a fully distributed company with no offices. And some of the things that have been critical to the infrastructure of remote work.
Every week, we do all hands-on Tuesdays, it’s an hour and a half meeting, an hour of content, 30 minutes of Q&A. Every week, I don’t look at the questions, anyone’s able to ask anything about the business. That’s really helped me understand what the employees are thinking about.
I’m a huge believer in daily check-ins, so I have a morning stand up with all my direct reports every single morning, and in a remote world, if someone’s just a one-hour block in your schedule and they’re a team member, that’s not enough, you have to be in more meetings with people.
So, I’ve tried to fit to do cool things where Monday is themed by…like, we’re going to talk about people in legal on Monday, and Tuesday is going to be product, and Wednesday is going to be…You just have different themes for that and then you try to get everybody at the company thinking that way. So, I found that to be helpful.
But lastly, it’s also just setting really clear expectations with the employees on what the expectations are. We’re in time zones all around the world, you know, are we expecting synchronous conversation? What are your group norms? If someone sends you an email or a Slack message, are you expect to respond immediately, or there’s a buffer, a tab? And it’s making sure that people have understanding of how are we going to collectively work as a group together. And we’re not perfect at that yet, this continues to be a huge experiment for everyone, but we’re learning and trying to get better every day.