Creating a company and culture without an office. Distributed leadership, teams and the future of work.

1. IS WORK A PLACE?
@quiip @alisonmichalk
Creating a company & culture without an office.
Distributed leadership, teams & the future of work.

2. About Quiip
• Founded in 2010 by Alison Michalk
• Specialising in online community and social media management.
• Team of 22 + partners (HR, Finance, PR, Legal)
• Distributed “micro global” organisation, no central HQ.
• Operate 24/7 (social media, analytics, monitoring, engagement)
• Based in Australia; Australian staff have work from Iceland, Costa
Rica, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Canada, UK, America.
• I met one our employees (of 5 years) for the first time last year!
• Our clients — SEEK, RealEstate.com.au, CBUS, Origin Energy, BIG W,
MYOB, AMP, BWS, ReachOut.com, SANE, NSW & Vic Health, State &
Federal Government and more.
@quiip | @alisonmichalk

3. Start Up
Progressive
Organisation
@quiip | @alisonmichalk
Who can benefit from this talk?
Traditional
Organisation

4. • There is more to remote work than ‘working from home’.
• Running a distributed company was intuitive & intentional
• Don’t confuse autonomy with “alone”.
• Many of the issues re: remote work are related to the
central office attitude, not the remote workers.
@quiip | @alisonmichalk
“Remote” vs Distributed

5. @quiip | @alisonmichalk
Myth-Busting Remote Work

6. Reduces
stress
Increases
Productivity
Happier
Healthier
Employees
More time for
life & family
Reduces
Absenteeism Attract &
Retain
@quiip | @alisonmichalk
Show me the… benefits!
Work
smarter
= High Performing Teams
No
commute
“The future of great workplaces lies in helping
employees fuse their personal and
professional lives in ways that position them
to deliver their best work.”

7. Bums in seats!
• Sitting in front of a computer no longer predictive of quality work.
• Big discrepancy between the science of what works and what we do in workplaces.
• Modern workplaces are based on principles of scientific management made popular
in the early 1900s in factories.
• We live in a complex environment where knowledge is the product.
• 9-5 is not effective, efficient or conducive to quality work.
• Removing the “40-hour scaffold” is revealing and brings real contributors to the fore.
• Focus on OUTCOMES not HOURS.
• Have a jog, take a nap, pack the dishwasher. Access Restorative Spaces and
Minimise Cognitive Reverberations.
Where do you do your best work?
@quiip | @alisonmichalk

8. Managing “radical flexibility” -
critical management skill
• The term flexibility is mis-used. Not to be
confused with standard employee rights.
• Managing distributed teams is a CRITICAL
MANAGEMENT SKILL.
• Requires a focus on performance and
collaboration.
• Requires new systems & processes.
• Requires different structures, let’s look at ours.
@quiip | @alisonmichalk

9. @quiip | @alisonmichalk
Structures
• Not a hierarchy or flat, but networked structure.
• Very agile. Form teams around projects.
• No one works full-time.
• No one has set hours in their contracts
(exception being our shift work).
“Encouraging employees to build a schedule for
meeting goals instead of requiring that they sit by a
computer to meet a predefined schedule sends a
powerful message of trust and sets the stage for
sustained performance.”
- Ron Friedman, Best Place to Work.

10. @quiip | @alisonmichalk
Culture
• Don’t confuse perks with culture
• Culture is formed either intentionally or through neglect
• Culture is about how you work, how you interact, your
expectations and what you reward (and punish)
• Increasingly we’re Working Out Loud (WOL) which is
about making work observable and narrating your work.
• Culture of trust is key to distributed teams

11. @quiip | @alisonmichalk
Tools & Asynchronous Workplaces

12. @quiip | @alisonmichalk
“When we provide them (employees) with the flexibility to
succeed in both their personal and professional lives, we achieve
more than an extraordinary workplace. We create an
organisation that performs at its very best.” - Ron Friedman

13. @quiip
@joolliee
Thank you from Quiip.
Partnering with Australia’s leading
brands for online community success
@quiip | @alisonmichalk
Some days you’ll find
me working here!