The Future of Work is Distributed, But Not Easy. One Company Shares Their Playbook.

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Operating in a distributed fashion is increasingly viable, but it nonetheless remains very hard to get right. Most companies that try it still fail. I spoke with Zapier co-founder and CEO Wade Foster to learn how they made this model work with such spectacular success.

. Talent deserves to be supported and unleashed, regardless of physical location. I spend a lot of time thinking about the jobs, workplaces and tools we’ll need to empower workers over the coming decades. In considering the Future of Work, the distribution of talent is one of the key recurring themes.

KM: Did you get pushback from advisors, potential investors or other stakeholders when they found out you were running a fully distributed team?We were certainly met with skepticism. We heard whispers that, “No big company has ever been built that way.” But we have few investors, so we had the freedom to run independently and stick to our convictions. It’s been funny to see how much has changed in terms of perception. In Silicon Valley 2012, building a fully distributed company was very rare.

With candidates who are skeptical, we talk through the concerns around specific tasks and issues and explain our models for addressing them. I also make sure they know the few use cases where being distributed doesn’t work. The most common failure pattern is among people whose social interactions are predominantly work-driven -- those people who go to lots of happy hours and fill their weekends with co-workers, making them very addicted to the work. That’s obviously not our model.

KM: Have you done anything to make sure those burnout situations don’t happen? And more broadly, how do you make sure distributed employees feel connected to each other, despite the physical separation?Obviously, we’ve put a lot of thought into this and have invested heavily to build a strong culture where employees feel connected, productive and engaged.

 

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