We Built A Slack Channel For YELLING

mirror that my friends made for me. Love it. And all my records and random— I'm a knickknack hoarder. That's what I am.

Love that. Uh, how do you organize your apps in your phone?

Gosh, do you not?

It's funny, I don't know the last time I've clicked on an app. I always just pull down and search for it.

No, I was actually having this conversation just 3 days ago and we're judging people what they have at their bottom and people were saying like, this says so much about you. I have First camera, then WhatsApp, phone, and then Spotify. Cause I'm always taking photos first and foremost, but then calling people is like notoriously what I do right after. And music is my fourth thing.

I've got Arc, iMessage, Notion calendar, and Superhuman email.

Yeah. I also am the kind of person that has 20 backgrounds and I actually change them very often, which I think is obvious based on everything about me.

I haven't gotten that advanced. I don't know how to make different backgrounds.

I feel like iPhone's got pretty intense, like, I don't know, in the last couple years where you can change focus modes and different backgrounds and all this stuff. And I'm like, I feel like an old person. I'm a boomer.

I do have the different focus modes, but real quick, how do you organize your apps?

Yeah, I've got Hue as well. I changed it for studio lighting today. How do we feel about it? Does it look any different?

It's a different background than normal though, right?

No, this is my desk. It's just, it's always blurred. Oh yeah. I mean, I, I've got that angle simply because, and I kid you not, if my laptop is literally 1 foot away, the internet doesn't work right now cuz my extender died. But if it's right here, just like 12 inches difference, it's fine. So let me know if I start cutting off as well in the hallway, which isn't great comfortable like place, but the wifi is like incredible. It's just until my extender gets fixed.

Amazing.

Don't touch it.

Yeah. So how do you guys usually start these things?

Oh, we've already started. I'll, uh, I'll, I'll kick it off, but I, I do love a little piece of like, I don't, I don't know the right way to say this. Oh, you know, where it's like a little, a little piece of you that like maybe is like controversial, but you love, like, but you can't really quite see it or tell. I've got some cigars right there in the background.

I've got, I think what's probably the most controversial for mine. Is I have like a, right here, it's first of all, it's a self-portrait because I'm that obsessed with myself. But then right below it is what's called the Devil's Dictionary. And it's a comedian who wrote it in the 1950s, I think in the, in the US. And he went and wrote the definition of so many words as a joke instead. And it's just hilarious. It's one of my favorite things for people to come into my house and just pick up and be like, 'What is this?' And then they just kind of go through it. Um, so yeah, if you're like in my house for long enough, you start finding little things, and that's the point. I just never invite anybody over, that's the problem. But once they do come, it'll be really cool.

It's amazing. I don't know if I've shown these, but have I shown these? When Kayla and I were on a vacation once at a resort We did like a day of day drinking and then we, there was wine and paint in one of the rooms and we just walked in and this is actually being painted with wine and these are our dogs. Like the actual color is the wine.

All right. Let's guess. I think you did the one with the ear up. I think that's your style.

No, Kayla did this one.

Oh, cheeks.

I did the cheekito. He has very white teeth. That's why his teeth look like that. And they're always.

I think you found your retirement activity.

Your calling. Yeah.

Or yeah, maybe it's just your calling. Welcome to the Notion State of Mind podcast. I'm your co-host, co-founder of Notion State, Josh Redd, joined by my co-host and co-founder of Notion State, Bryan, joined by our colleague, Sherihan Hassoun. Actually, I don't know how to say your last name. Can you just tell me how you say your last name?

Sherihan Hassoun. Yeah.

Oh, I got it right.

You got it right. Did I? Okay. We're global officially.

Yeah, I just gotta go for it. Well, yeah, we're excited to have Sherihan on the podcast and we're gonna talk about all things global, remote, async culture, how important it is in our work culture and all the other stuff, including the small talk.

Let's dive in. Let's talk about culture as we're exhibiting culture in itself. It's actually a big point of this call is actually to talk about the importance of preamble and just kind of the small talk. Everyone kind of hates on small talk, but I actually disagree. That's my semi-hot take. It's not like a really hot take, but it's kind of a hot take.

I think it's the most important part of every conversation.

I think so too. Wow.

You know, I would've, I would've disagreed, uh, 10 years ago. I hated small talk. I was very, you know, my, my social, I don't know, skills, I don't know if I have social skills, but they were very different. Uh, and so I, I hated small talk cuz I was like, who cares about the weather? Like, let's talk about something deep, you know? Yeah. Like, let's talk about like the origin of evil, you know? I, I understand small talk now.

Of course, in my early 20s, I was like, I just wanna go deep, super quick. And now whenever I meet somebody who's in their early 20s and they go straight to that topic and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I get what you're doing. I wanna talk about the weather cuz it's really affected me today actually. But yeah, true. I was, I was thinking about this and like what got me to, you know, why was I so excited about this topic and everything like that. And I think there's so much. Skill set that goes behind these kind of elements. And I think it's something that's often sort of brushed off as like, oh, soft skill, you know, something that can't be taught. It's just whether you have it or you don't. And I actually totally disagree with all of that. And it's like, what are the aspects that teaches like all of us? Like what made, you know, Notion State's culture the way that it is? Um, and it's actually a lot of little things that I think maybe you guys don't even realize that you do that has really affected that. So I'm really excited to dig in.

Can't wait to fish for compliments.

That's— fishing for compliments with me, it's like throwing in a dynamite in the pond. It's really easy. I'm full of compliments. Until you reverse them, then I can't handle it. And then I will leave this call. But, uh, I mean, I think we can just—

yeah, go ahead and say more about that. On the soft skill piece.

Start with actually like, what is culture? You know, like, let's, let's, let's take a huge step back before like work culture, because I think a huge piece of my qualification from being a personality hire since 2012 is mostly because I was born into 3 different cultures, right? So what is that? And then how do we apply it to, to actually like work? I think culture, the very basic description is just like shared set of beliefs, like, you know, what are, what are the customs, what are the behaviors that are accepted? And I think this is both good and bad, right? Because sometimes things are not accepted, or, you know, it throws you off a little bit. What is okay at work? What is not okay at work? Different countries have different aspects to it. So, I'm kind of curious to, like, even outside of work, I think with a remote, you have to really think about culture really for what it is. It's what characterizes a whole group. I think that's just to start off for those who are listening, my qualifications, Being born in Brazil to a Lebanese father, raised in Montreal and then Vancouver means that you're constantly translating between languages, but then also like, what does somebody mean? I guess I'm curious, when did you guys even start thinking about cultures? Was it when I started traveling or when you had your first job? I mean, Josh, you were on tour. You must have experienced this quite intensely.

Yeah. So many questions and I don't wanna forget them, but I'll try to remember them. As for me, yes. I mean, traveling for sure. I mean, you know, I'm a Midwesterner, you know, basically raised in Kansas and started leaving the country. Especially for me, it started in, uh, honestly, like youth group mission trips, getting to see different cultures. Like, first Mexico, but I think I was a little too young for that one. But when I went to the Philippines when I was a junior in high school, I just opened my eyes to like, oh, there's not just like different cultures, but different struggles, different, you know, realities that people go through. Uh, so there's that piece. And then Of course, when I turned 18 and for some years after that, I was traveling all over the world playing drums, but I was kind of touch and go. I'd get to see and experience the culture for a couple days maybe, or maybe even a week at a time in different cities and then move on. So, it was more of like a little charcuterie board than a full meal of the culture. But yeah, it was good exposure. So, on that, what's your take? So, you kind of talked about kind of being raised in multiple different cultures, and in my experience, the only people that I knew that were missionary kids, they were, you know, kids that their parents were American, but then they raised them in a different country, so they kind of felt torn between two cultures, kind of like, I think they're called like third culture kids. I don't know if that's a term that you would use, but how was your experience kind of growing up in different cultures? Was there tension there? Was there like something Okay. Yeah. Say more. Yeah.

Lots, lots of tension, lots of different rules that you had to adopt. So I mean, the most basic of it all is language, right? You're having to switch from Portuguese to French and then you have to have the right French accent and then English learning that when I was like 13, I spent a long time getting rid of my accent just as an FYI. I used to have a very thick accent before. But then also understanding from there that was really difficult to begin with. But even both my parents, right? They even come from different religious backgrounds. Backgrounds. So what that meant in the household was that you were constantly paying attention to what somebody is actually trying to say. Just because you're using the same word doesn't mean that you mean the same thing. And that took me a long time to figure out. I think I was into like 18 when I realized I'd get upset when somebody would say a word in one language because there was so much connotation of that word in English. For example,, in Portuguese when you're talking about your wife, you say mulher, my woman. And in English when you say that, that can come off a little bit not great, right? But one language it's endearing, the other language is it's got more baggage to it per se. And so that's when I started developing a much better affinity for like, okay, how do I culturally translate what people actually mean? And I was lucky enough, somebody gave me really great advice or a quote. It was We judge ourselves by our intentions, but we tend to judge others by their actions. And how do you reverse that when you're kind of engaging with folks, right? So, trying to translate by intent instead of what they actually said. I think this is huge when it comes down to global remote-first companies, because what somebody is saying, like, I mean, I live in Germany now. You think Brazilians and German folks discuss things in the same way? Like, it takes 3 hours for Brazilians to say goodbye. Germans want you to get to the point because that's kindness out of respect of their time, right? So understanding what somebody actually means by being straightforward can be caring, and somebody staying at your door for 3 hours continuing to chat is also caring, but it just manifests in very different ways. So how do you understand the intent of somebody's actions despite the actions being very different than what you understand? What is normal to you. And I think Josh, as you were talking about your experiences of charcuterie experiences, I think the more you experience different cultures, different people, the more you realize that what you think is normal is normal just for you. And how do you suspend that so you can kind of get to what the person actually means? I love that. I love that process of kind of digging. So I find that really exciting.

You just reminded me that one of my biggest takeaways when I was traveling was less about learning other cultures, it was learning about what do we do that I took for granted as normal that is not normal, right? So strip away all of the things and, you know, if we can get to like the, the core of what can bring people together, it's like we're all human, you know, and we all just express ourselves in different cultural ways. But yeah, I just remember almost getting more culture shock coming back to America than when I went somewhere else.

I think really inspired by this conversation already, but I think there's an interesting thing when it comes to remote work and how we're operating that takes it one level further, because it's just two-dimensional screen that we're looking at all day, and then we have just Slack messages, right? So it's like we have very little time to understand tone and understand the individual cultures that people are bringing to the forefront. So how do you reconcile remote work with this, this concept?

Man, yeah, I think I made a joke to Leslie that I was like, Leslie, I'm going to focus on this talk about how important gifts are to remote culture. But there's actually so much truth to that. Think about Notion in itself and how they design their office, right? They actually have a team dedicated in designing how the experience of the office is. So, how do you take that concept and then make it digital and like have an infrastructure even though it's two-dimensional? And one of the aspects that I loved in my previous jobs was when we had a team of more than 20 people, somebody would play music as like an intro for us to come in. And then you realize One thing we all do, you know, to your point, Josh, like we're all human, is we all tend to listen to music, or at least most of us do. So that's kind of an easy connecting. It immediately like brings everybody in a similar experience and you're watching the same thing, you're engaging with the same thing, and it just gets people sort of in the same wavelength. So I guess the question is, is like, how do you design a digital infrastructure, even though it's two-dimensional, but to make it human still. Of course, you're missing that water cooler talk. How do you create that in specific ways? That's why, like, Unleash Rage as a channel is a concept, right? Because you go to that channel with the sole purpose of yelling, and you've created an aspect where, like, this is a behavior that is approved within this channel, because otherwise it's not. If you yell on Slack, all caps, you're worried the person's gonna interpret it differently. So, that's an aspect of like, okay, how do I create a human space where that's okay to do it? Because the kitchen in the office is okay to chat. All right, let's create a channel for that. Another aspect for me sometimes, because a lot of, you know, my team, they work on the West Coast, and so, when I'm working after hours and I don't, like I'm on the go, but they need an answer really quick, I don't want to send a message that's really short just because I'm commuting between things, then I send voice notes, and I've talked about that with them. I'm like, hey, are you okay with voice notes when I'm on the go? I just don't wanna send you a message where you're going to misinterpret my tone. I want you to hear my tone. So, how do I bring my humanness right up front? And I think that's something that you guys do really, really quite well. And I think that's the responsibility of a manager to do well, to exemplify as well. It's like, how do I bring my humanity into this two-dimensional world? Add stickers, like I used, I'm, I'm from Brazil. I use stickers all the time in my WhatsApp messages. It's just kind of adds that spark. So how do you think of an office space digitally and how do you create space where those behaviors are not only accepted, but in fact encouraged?

Love that. Um, also I think it's incredible.

Yes.

Incredibly thoughtful of you to ask and ensure that they're comfortable with voicemails. I feel like getting thrown into the European life, it's just been thrust upon me. 7-minute voice memos. I have no idea how to keep track of all the things I'm supposed to respond into in this message. But I completely agree though, like being able to differentiate between time zones and make sure that people are cared for across those and making it work for everyone is such an important piece about it. You mentioned Unleash Rage. What are some other things? I mean, you've been responsible for a lot of them. What are some of the other tools and techniques that you're deploying across our organization to help bring this to life?

Yeah, I mean, I talk about music quite a bit, so Tunesday is a thing, so that's a Every Tuesday, kind of realize that Tuesday are always like a really hyper-focused day, no matter what office job you have, like forget what you've done for work on the weekend. You remember on Monday, you panic, and on Tuesday you work really hard. So I was like, okay, how do I, that's a repetitive pattern. How do we alleviate this moment? How do we bring each other together? So every Tuesday I ask, you know, the team to share a song that they're listening to. And for a while that was just it, right? We're like, okay, let's just, whatever song you're listening to. And then I felt sometimes you need a box to paint outside of. So what can I do for the team? Like give them a theme, right? It's kind of give them inspiration. So now I started to do it like specifically with a theme, whether it's express your teenage angst or celebrate love because coworkers are getting married or just felt like dancing and what's the vibe for that? And it's just having that prompt and asking people kind of an aspect of their own humanity. Like, I wanna know that. I know that we work well together, but I'm more than your coworker. I'm curious about who you are as a person. So, that's a big one as well. I think keeping things light. I think one thing that we do really well as well is the no meetings on Friday. This was a really big thing for me when I started at Notion State. I came from a work environment where that was not really the case, and I did start booking meetings on Friday because I was just so excited and anxious to prove myself and make sure that I'm doing a good job with my clients. And as soon as I did book something in, I was kindly called in to think about that and being like, if you start booking that in, you're setting the standard for the rest of our team that that needs to be met. So just reflect on that kind of thing. And I was really happy to think about that and be like, okay, cool. What does that look like to just focus on other things on Friday, whether that is deep work or taking an afternoon off. Like Bryan, you've shared photos of you in a Barcelona plaza on a Friday. That, like, I think the moment you did that, I was like deep into work and I was like, you know what, it's sunny here. Bryan's right. I'm gonna go outside right now. Or Ava's done that with her cycling. So that kind of like fun spark of just sharing a little bit more about life and how that inspires work and how work kind of allows us, like, by being remote to do those things as well. I think that's huge. So, yeah, having aspects of life where you're comfortable to share at work, not pushing to do it, but comfortably to do so.

We have, we have 168 hours or so in a week, right? And we could fill up all of those with work if we wanted to, and our clients would take all of those hours if we were willing to give it. But if we're willing to put guardrails around them, to protect our sanity or to protect our fun. They respect that. Being willing to put up those guardrails gives you the ability to take advantage of those happy Friday afternoon moments.

But it's interesting because I think the space that we're in is really curious in the sense that everyone at Notion State is already obsessed with the tool and the product, and we're really excited about solving problems. And so what happens is, is most often than not, like, I know that we all use Notion in our private lives. Whether I'm off on a Friday or not, I'm creating event pages for my friends and organizing them. And so allowing myself space to be continuously curious and have fun with it allows me to show up better at work. It allows me to show up with like enthusiasm and curiosity to meet my clients in a way where I'm like, I get to sit there and hear about their problems and solve that. I feel like a tech therapist. It's the best thing that I could experience, you know, it's like, oh, let me just solve this for you and something that I'm already doing on the weekend anyways, you know, so it's kind of how I've applied some skill sets in my personal life to get organized is actually coming back in. So it's It's not necessarily a work-life balance in the say that there's a split as much as Germans would love me to keep that split. I love that aspect of their culture, but it's also something that inspires the other. Like even in my application, I think what I submitted as a project was the fact that I planned my 30th birthday in Brazil with 30 of my friends, and I used Notion for that kind of thing. So it's like, how do you allow life to bring you more momentum at work, but keep you light and then realize how it all fits in together. Because as much as work is separated from life, work is part of your life. We're here for what, 30, 40, 60 hours a week plus, you know? If I'm not happy in my life, then I'm not that great to work with, I'm sure. I imagine. You guys can let me know.

Absolute joy to work with. One of my favorite people I've ever worked with across all of my 13, 14 years in career.

Good. That'll go straight to my ego. That's what I need.

This, this kind of brings up, um, uh, thought that I've been kind of wrestling. I don't know if I'm wrestling with it. Anyways, the question is, is it possible to manufacture/create culture? I mean, we talk about creating culture and, uh, you know, there can be probably a good and a bad way about it. So how do you do that well?

Yeah. Now I wanna preface this that I'm a, I'm a strong believer in non-hierarchical organizations. I definitely have been taught to just like take ownership when you feel like you're ready to take ownership. And as a manager, I don't really, for context, I've been managing teams since I was 20, way too young, but they trusted me and I've been doing it ever since. And I really wanna break down that concept of hierarchy. That being said, That is not like some people, you know, look at hierarchy in a way of like mentorship and wanting to look around the room as they are onboarding, being like, what's okay, what's not okay? There's like that fear of I wanna do what's right based on this group that I'm joining. And so, this concept of manufacturing culture, I'm coming back to this, is the aspect that it does come a lot from top down, even though I don't like this idea of top down. So, the way that I look at it, and I always have, is this inverse pyramid. My job, as a manager is to support anybody who reports to me, to unlock them. I don't wanna be limited by my own brain. I'm not a dictator of ideas. I'm not somebody who thinks that they have all the right answers. Like, in fact, I'm, you know, I wake up with myself, I go to sleep with myself, I'm with myself all day. I wanna hear what other people have to say. So, that's why I love being a manager is I get to push other people to be like, please expand my ideas, please teach me something new. And that aspect of culture, if you are creating a sandbox for people to play in, I think that's the only thing that you can do to manufacture is actually nurture. It's a garden that you're inviting people to play in and joining in on all of that. And I kind of wanna bring this back to, to something that consistently happens at Notion State, which I think is why we have a health— well, from my point of view, a very healthy culture is 2 things are always stemming at Ocean State, and it's curiosity and humility, because curiosity is more important than being right. And we're so much more committed to solving a problem than we're committed to a solution. And that's all driven around this concept of, I'm excited about this project. I'm excited about how we solve this. It's not about coming in and being like, oh, my ego's at the front. It's not about, I know what the right answer is. And I don't know that that was intentionally manufactured by the two of you, but it is something that you guys constantly prove. I remember in my first month, I forget what it was that we were in a call for, Bryan, in a, in a meeting, and you made a point to give me credit for an idea that you and I had discussed, even though you developed the idea further. And as a woman in tech, I was just so gobsmacked about that. I was like, I can't remember the last time somebody did that. Usually I have to fight for my voice to be heard in that room, but because you do that, Ava does that all the time, it's this idea of we're in it together. We don't care so much about ego. It's more about passion and curiosity about what we're actually trying to solve and learning from each other. And I do think that has come from the folks who have been around Ocean State for the longest. And I don't, again, I don't know if it's intentionally manufactured, but that definitely is nurtured really well. And so, I think you can have some intentionality behind it. You can't fake it. You have to be yourself as well. So, there's a balance there.

That's well said. I think, uh, it leaves the door open for, like, it leaves the, the picture door open for other people to kind of sprout their own cultural components of, of Notion State. And, and at the same time, you still have to garden it. You still have to maintain it. You still have to, you know, in a sense, like keep your own self accountable to some of these qualities. Or, you know, if you've got a really good culture, like have a culture where people can hold you accountable and it's actually out of care and not about hierarchy. It's about like, I actually want you to succeed and this is hard, but because I actually care about you, I'm going to do something uncomfortable and, and help you hopefully become a, a better person, a better career person, or, you know, whatever it is. I I see this thing, I could be wrong, I'm willing to be corrected, and, uh, I'm gonna step out on a limb and, and maybe correct this. Not that we're like in a corrective culture that we're always doing that, but we really wanna build each other up, I hope. Um, anyways.

Um, no, 100%. I think when you're leading with curiosity instead of hierarchy, it means that you're like, oh, okay. Like, I, I'm curious to why you did it that way. Explain it to me. And then the person who's receiving the feedback is curious about getting better as well. And when that's the first emotion, you don't feel so personally attacked either. And we're all calling each other in, right? It's, uh, it's this whole concept of like calling out versus calling in. It's like, I'm so excited about what you're doing, and we all care about this more than we care about our ego. How do we make this better? And if you've got enough humility yourself, and I think when giving feedback, it's like very reasonable. I can't imagine anybody within Notion State taking feedback badly if it's delivered, you know, properly because we're all a bunch of nerds, let's be honest. Like we're all kind of excited about what we're building anyways. So, I don't know, when I hear feedback, I'm like, oh my God, I can do that. Like Ava's my counterpart in so many ways and we're so opposite in the way that we present ourselves. Which excites me so much because I think she's so goddamn brilliant. Sorry for swearing, but like, she's so incredible. And it allows me to be like, wow, I get to learn from that. So any feedback that comes in, as long as I trust her intent, which I do, because it's with so much care there, then I'm only going to be better for it. And I think that's the spirit of like, the feedback is, as long as it's delivered in that sandbox, that garden, then it allows for things, like you said, to sprout differently. And we don't, I think that what I'm curious about in startup culture is where the line balances between how much guidance you give it, kind of dance on the line of the manufacturing, Josh, that you're talking about. How much guidance do you give somebody so that they feel comfortable onboarding versus how much do you let them be entrepreneurial and do it themselves as well? Like, here's a garden, go wild. Blank canvas can be, as we know, opening up a new Notion page can be overwhelming. So how do you balance that out culturally? How have you guys found it in the aspect of like, okay, you know, we're, we're starting a new company. We want people to build it with us. Where's the limit between, I want to give them some guidance because we uphold to a very high standard for our clients. But also I want to give them the ability to grow themselves.

I love this question and I don't know that we're going to have a very concrete response that it's like we were formulaic around it, but I think something that Josh is always really good at and something that I've started to adopt from Notion and from Josh is breaking everything down into the concept of first principles. And actually I always talked about this when, when, when Kayla and I were talking about having kids a long time ago, like. How would we raise them? And she would always talk about these things. And I would always think it comes down to the foundational elements. Like if you teach them integrity or if you teach them agency or you teach them these concepts, then the rest will kind of grow into itself. And that's been something that I've been pretty intentional about with how I've tried to approach Notion State. And I think Josh, you're pretty aligned in this. It's like if we find people that exhibit the values that we hold true and we are true to all of the things that we say. We can expect that or start to see everyone else mirror this. And it's the idea of the culture of feedback. If we give feedback in a constructive manner, we expect other people to give that back to us in a very similar one. Or if we're constantly curious and encouraging, we kind of expect that. And that's, I think, how we've tried to approach this over the past few years. In my mind, it's always a we thing. It's never an I thing.

Yeah.

And it's so important to, in my mind, to always approach things like we are a team. It's never just one person's idea or never just one person's thing. We do approach this all together and like we succeed together and we fail together and we learn and we continue to grow together. And I want everyone to have that sort of cohort-based mentality because we're so remote, we're so isolated. We need to feel like we have support structure to go and go out on the limb. And I think that's all comes down to the first principles piece here in my mind. Josh, would love to hear your thoughts on if you're aligned to that or if you had a different approach.

Yeah, it's funny because we've joked about, we oftentimes say the same thing, but it takes the first person to kind of rough it out and then So as you're talking, I'm like developing a picture. I'm like, oh, okay. Uh, so to give you credit for the beginning of this, anyways, I'm painting this picture in my head of concentric rings. And, uh, in the middle is like our core culture, and this is like the floor. This is like the, the non-negotiables, you know. These are, I think, fairly simple, although simple but not easy, uh, you know, things like integrity and honesty and work mentality, maybe ownership. So these core things, and then outside of that, you've almost got And I'm still developing this so you can disagree with me, Bryan, but maybe some of those core values that we even just talked about last week where we're trying to think through what actually makes our company a little bit more unique than just the quote unquote permission to play values that you should expect anybody in this kind of atmosphere. So maybe that's the second ring. And then that third ring is almost like kind of that let loose wild garden approach. You know, Sharon, you're kind of mentioning it's like, what do people bring that's super unique that we can never manufacture that really highlights the uniqueness of the people that join our team. I'm really a firm believer in the emergent qualities. When you put things together, like 1 1 doesn't equal 2, it equals 3 or 5 or 700. And so I'm really excited about that part of, of culture. We'll never succeed perfectly at this, but I, I'm always thinking about like the idea of when we hire people, always being a, a net positive to our team in terms of not just their skill, but their culture. And this is where the different people on our team can always bring something new. Sherri-Ann, you're talking about Ava, like always learning something, you know, from her. And I think that's such an important part to me when I think about hiring somebody, is that we always have somebody that might not— they're not going to be the best in every part of their job. They're going to have that thing about them that is just really unique and that everyone can, you know, hopefully like find some sort of inspiration from. You mix it all together and You get something emergent that you can never actually manufacture, but you still, it's, I don't know, it's almost like alchemy. It's not chemistry, it's alchemy. It's like a black box. You put it in and you sometimes don't know what's gonna come out.

Yeah. And you kind of hope for the best. And I think just remembering that people are just that we're all just so humans. And I think one of the aspects I have really seen really fosters that kind of care. And I think you guys see it in the big calls. I'm just so quick to like, self-deprecate or be honest about my life and just like, this is what's going on. And obviously without, you know, sharing too, too much, but it's just these aspects of being like, I'm, I'm a human and I'm going to make mistakes. And if I accept this about myself and accept this about you, we get to create something much more beautiful. And so how do we kind of, you know, especially when you're put into a leadership position, how do you take the first step in showing that bravery and that vulnerability to folks and to inspire that kind of work? I think something I've been thinking about a lot lately. You know, you were talking about your values and you were talking about the concentric circles. That reminds me a lot of the Simon Sinek Golden Circle, the why, the how, the what, you know, I think I look at that a lot. It's like, why are we here? You know, we're curious, we're excited to solve problems, we'd like to collaborate. Everyone I think I've interviewed with Notion State has always talked about wanting to work in a team. It's like, okay, cool. How do we do that? Right? We're remote. We don't have an office. Well, how do we create space? I have a pod call. Just for two folks who are not working on the same project, that there's a camaraderie there. We talk about the same things or same patterns. How do we do that? We talked for half of our call yesterday about AI and poetry together. Great. You know, that inspired something different in instructions and how we're doing agents. But creating that space of like, okay, well, that's the how. What it looks like is then the Slack channels, it's the gifts, it's the food for thought that we have once a month where we take some time to just specifically not talk about work, but it kind of does come back into inspiring us, all these things. But separating these things, you know, I think the why needs to be very strong with everyone, that needs to be quite aligned. The how is where we get to learn from each other. Eva's how and my how, I think, are very different.. I think that's what excites me so much about having her on my team. And then our what actually ends up being, you know, quite similar. We end up at food for thought, chatting, using, you know, little things in the calls, whether it's emojis or anything else to kind of engage in that. I think that's always really exciting to kind of separate and look at it in that way for, for myself. Yeah, and leading with, I think with humility is huge. I think that's one of the biggest things about Notion State. And we're not just humble in the sense of like between each other. I think we're humble in the face of the work that we're doing as well. If we weren't, I think we wouldn't be as good at our job. I look at problems and I go, "I'm excited to learn about what it is I need to learn to fix this the right way." A lot of the times we already know a lot of the solutions 'cause we get to work across so many projects, but it doesn't scare me to have project that is new because the industry we work on, our tech is changing every week as we go along with it, right? So, how do I adopt? If I wasn't curious, if I wasn't humble, stop saying that because I'm starting to sound really unhumble, but you know what I'm saying?

I'm so humble.

Guys, I'm so humble. No, but you know what I mean, right? Like, if we're not secure enough as a team to know that one of us is going to support the other, in the face of it, we wouldn't be able to take such big challenges. And I think I'm just a product of a much bigger team because I definitely have a ton of shortcomings and good things, but it's because you guys are around. And as a team, we get to have all these angles. We get to have people that have different experiences, whether it's with music or design or, you know, software engineering, like all these different mindsets from all over the world. Makes us able to meet the problems where they're at, even if that's totally different than, you know, what the problem is today, what it's going to be in a week. Like, think about where we were just a year ago without agents and how that's evolved.

It's 100% accurate. And I don't think we've ever articulated these words before in the way that you just did, but if we didn't approach our clients with humility and when it comes to what the correct solution is or the correct tech stack to deploy it, then I think we'd be Lying to them, honestly. The primitives that we bring to the table are being able to dissect and understand a workflow and a solution and bring experience from hundreds of other clients to figure it out. It's not to deploy the right solutions, to be able to figure it out. Like, we trust in having the experience and the right questions to get to the right answer. And if you approach it with, this is the only way, then you're leaving a lot of opportunity out on the table.

Exactly. Yeah, I think really putting the human first and understanding our clients, what their needs are, and that starts with like each other at work and then having that confidence to do it with clients as well. I think it's, it all spills out, right? It kind of grows in, in itself. Because otherwise, with how quickly things are changing, it's hard to just apply the same solution from last week to this week. Something new's changed. I want to make sure that I'm hearing what is actually giving you anxiety, right? It's the whole like Ford example. Faster horses or a totally different design? As tech evolves, as you hear problems, you get good at this dissecting and asking the right questions to really get to the center of it all. And I think you have to have your humanity first there. No, not bashing on agents, but they also just work on our content and they're predictive and they're trained on our stuff. So it's kind of how do we engage? With that. And no experience is too far-fetched. Like if you're a barista, you understand what customer service is like better than most people. Absolutely.

I mean, I think having you and Josh both on this line as both being baristas can attest to it. It's 100%.

This, this conversation is interesting. I think what's, what's like starting to materialize for me is actually like a stronger connection between the culture of our team and our skill at being good consultants in the way that we in particular do consulting, which is like understanding the problem and long-term partnership, I think is actually more connected to the culture component of our team. And so if anything, it redeems a little bit of the term like a culture hire, which I think can be very wrong in some cases. But there is like real, I guess, in my mind, connection between if our culture does represent all of the good qualities that we kind of have in mind and we hire somebody in line with those, then actually they're probably going to be a skilled consultant, not because they have the rap sheet. That's probably the wrong way of saying that because they have the resume, but, but because like they're the kind of person that makes them good at actually what we do, which is being a, you know, a human-to-human connector and problem solver.

Yeah. I think that's, for me, that line is so strong, allowing myself. Yeah, like I said, the team is what gives me the confidence to be able to show up. I am one person. But I'm part of a collective. And I think a lot of Notion consultants that end up being at Notion State is looking for that. It's like that collaborative spirit, the building together and how you foster that, you know, again, kind of going back to like, how do you make that office space within a digital infrastructure? It's just making sure that you are putting yourself on a similar wavelength as you can, understanding their time zones, connecting over World Cup, or like being aware of what's happening, you know, if there's a, a tornado out in the Midwest, like checking in on you guys, or if there's a heat wave here in Berlin, like, again, back to the start of this call when it talked about small talk. That's what that does. It creates a space where you're like, we can all relate that raining makes me a bit more sad and melancholy, but also maybe happy in that way. And then you get to talk about those experiences. This is what I think about music in this way, or this is who I'm cheering for in the World Cup. And it just creates this moment where even though we're worlds apart and hours away from each other, in that space and time, we're in it together. And small talk has that power, which builds you up to bigger topics and builds the confidence and it builds the trust because you have that with your friends in different ways by existing in the same space. Um, but you do need to be a bit intentional with that in a remote-first company. And that could mean celebrating what it is you're doing with your remote-first privileges as well. Understanding that for me, remote-first means I get to visit my sister as my nephew is being born. It also means understanding that, you know, parents on the call have to deal with different circumstances and that there's children on the call as well, which is super exciting and such a cool window into their lives. So yeah, how do you bring those things in to connect to each other and understand Oh wow, this person is living in a whole different world and how do I build bridges and understand and empathize with them, which are the exact skill sets you need to empathize with your client being like, all right, you're working in an industry I haven't worked before, but I'm gonna ask you questions about understanding what it is that you deal with every day. What is the experience from expectations to entering, to engaging, exiting, and extending that I need to focus in on? To understand what I need to do to make your, uh, life better. So it really is the same practice of, of skill sets.

I think something that I really like about what you just brought up is when you have this sort of culture internally and you build and you encourage this sort of behavior and camaraderie internally, it does become kind of infectious in your client work too. And you start to find your clients turned into friends or turned into team members or partners. And it's not just a purely transactional relationship of you need Notion services, I build Notion things. It's we understand your issues and we understand where you're coming from and we work together to solve this for you and your organization. And I think that that's a really great compounding benefit of when it looks good internally, it feels good externally too.

Yeah. One thing I'm thinking about while we saw some time here is also I've been really positive on this call. I'm trying to think about aspects about the negativity of like what brings in, you know, what could destroy culture as well. And I think, trying to think of the infrastructure that has to go in place, 'cause it's the calling in, as we talked about, is also a difficult thing to get right. How do you protect somebody who might be a little bit more quiet, but needs to share their ideas in different ways? How do you make the workspace safe for everyone? No matter what cultural background that they come from, and how do you deal when, you know, maybe something is affecting that? I think, again, leading with good questions and patience is really important. So, same thread, same skill set, but I think taking the time to always look at what needs to be protected as well and paying attention to what gives people anxiety, I think, is quite crucial. I think that's a really big responsibility of managers. It's not just reaching OKRs and this is what we need to do and these are the numbers we need to hit. I think for me, every team I've managed, the number one thing I ask myself is, what is my team feeling anxious about? And is it anxiety with excitement because they're excited to grow? All right, we can, we can deal with that. Or is it anxiety with overwhelm because I'm not setting up clear steps? What is it that I need to do here to protect my team from that? Is it taking on a little bit more of the labor? Is it taking more time for more one-on-one meetings? Is it proving to them and showing to them that I don't need them to be perfect? You know, let's start with an MVP. Let's go with that. Do I need to mentor or step back? Maybe I'm micromanaging a thing.

Is it saying no to the client or saying, saying we need to prioritize, not do everything?

Yeah. Yeah. So I think I love the gardening metaphor because all relationships take work, but the concept of a garden means that you're removing some plants, you're protecting other aspects, you are making sure that things are working harmoniously, right? And a healthy garden is not one that's just a monoculture. That's not about everyone being the same. It's about it being feeding its own healthy ecosystem, but making sure that, that is, that balance stays and taking into accountability what, especially if you're perceived as somebody who has to lead other folks, then you have to be even more careful because what you say goes potentially further for other folks. Again, I don't think anything I say should go further than anyone else, super non-hierarchical, but I understand that that might be perceived like that simply because I've been around for an extra year or whatnot. I think taking the time to consider that at least on a healthy cadence is really important. How that's done looks differently in every space, but if it's left too long, then you might leave it to problem for things to solve that becomes unsolvable, uh, or not as easily solvable. So questioning yourself. Out of care for others, I think is super crucial.

I really like the gardening metaphor as well, because in addition to tending it, overwatering it causes an adverse reaction as well. So there is a balance that you need to get to help grow the ecosystem that you're trying to cultivate. I have a question for you, Sherri-Ann, on this thread. Appreciating small talk and building camaraderie and focusing on constructive feedback. But it's non-hierarchical and it's team-based. We bring each other up. Those are all incredibly important components to building a strong team, but for scaling a business and helping people grow intentionally, focusing on performance management and taking that sort of lens adds a different layer, I guess, to the garden that you're trying to cultivate. And I guess a question for you that is not very well directed is how do you reconcile those two?

Yeah, yeah, I guess because when you're thinking about scale and growth, you're trying to create a system that is fair and just across the board with a bunch of different folks and with, you know, different ways of working. And so, I think there's multiple ways of it. Scaling culture, I think, is an aspect of demonstrating what it looks like on a day-to-day basis. Give your coworker credit where credit is due. Celebrate wins, call in feedback in a lighthearted way, and remind them we can do this better because we're passionate about it, but, you know, this is the intent. It's not to make anybody feel bad. And then about performances, it's like you kind of have to have somewhat of a rubric at times to make it just across the playing field across the whole team. But there's a conversation about equality and equity and how do you meet the people where they're at, right? So I think it's a Having honest conversations continuously being like, where is it that they see that they could grow? Where is it that you see from an outside perspective of where they can grow? What is your role in that? How do you hold yourself accountable to create that system for them? I think consistently checking in around the same metrics over time, it's almost not relevant about the metrics itself. It's about making sure that you're seeing progress or And again, not progress in just like a productivity capitalistic way, but progress in the sense that somebody feels good that they're going where they wanna go. And so hitting those milestones, hitting those metrics, it's more about the trellis of the vine to continue in the garden, you know, it's like, how do you provide a system where they can see the differences and how they're relating to that difference themselves, I think is really interesting. I think progress meetings every 6 months is the minimum. I think that's a really important thing just because it's the intention to dedicate about not work, like, how are you feeling? Where do you want to go? What are things that excite you? What are things you're insecure about? Let's bring it out so we can demystify it and take away the stigma around it. I think that intentionality is very important and having it structured is important so that you can repeat that and then look at the comparison for yourself. What that structure is, a reflection of the values that as a team you agree on. But I do think consistently doing that is very, very important, remote, in-person. Yeah, offsite's also really important, I think, not that I'm pitching this yet, but like, I think just from my— I'm waiting. It's like the humanity of it all being like, I mean, I've already let the cat out of the bag. I'm not as tall as people think I am. I give a lot of tall energy, but it's always fun to see people at offsites being like, "Oh, I didn't expect this of you," or, "Oh, you know, you listen to— those are the stickers on your phone case. I love that." So, those kind of things also really nice.

Amazing. Well, I know we're running up on time, but this has been an incredible conversation, Sharon. We really appreciate you, one, being a part of our organization as a leader in it and helping build and cultivate the culture that we have and helping make sure that we still continue to bring humanity to a work environment and bring and lift one another up on a daily basis, and give us the chance to yell in Slack.

Yeah, yelling is important. All feelings are valid, just gotta be channeled, pun intended, the right place. So, all right, well, thanks team for having me. First podcast, so, for those who are listening, feedback and calling me in, very recommended, and excited to listen and read those those comments, if any.

Caps.

You crushed it. Thank you so much.