Creating Artificial Collisions in a Remote Workplace with David Wald of Aclaimant

2022-05-19

A big push for people to return to the office is the argument that spontaneous interaction is critical to the growth of the business. The fear is that people are not communicating and it has hindered innovation. However, let’s look at the number of fully remote companies who have been thriving throughout the past few years. The big differentiator is the structure and setting up interaction channels to foster communication. Mastering the interview has been more challenging as it is often difficult to read nonverbal cues and interactions. As we have grown more comfortable with this method of interviewing, the structure of consistent interview questions has been the single most important element in hiring success.

However, let’s look at the number of fully remote companies who have been thriving throughout the past few years. The big differentiator is the structure and setting up interaction channels to foster communication.

Mastering the interview has been more challenging as it is often difficult to read nonverbal cues and interactions. As we have grown more comfortable with this method of interviewing, the structure of consistent interview questions has been the single most important element in hiring success.

Guest Bio:

David Wald is cofounder and CEO of Aclaimant, an insight driven workflow solution for safety and risk management. As CEO, David’s primary focus is driving the company’s vision, identifying and executing strategic partner and customer relationships, and growing the Aclaimant team and investor base. The company has been remote first for the past 8 years!

Prior to Aclaimant, David spent time with the Lightbank Venture Capital fund in Chicago on both the investment team, and as an operator and EIR. He was also a management consultant at Bain and Company. David graduated from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and currently resides in Chicago with his wife and three kids.

Today we discuss:

What's critical in a remote work/interviewing environment
How to fuel communication away from the watercooler

Hiring Story:

Intro to our top candidate's brother's high school friend…
Series of comedic events
Got drenched on the way to the meeting
He took the job anyway, now is their department head

Challenges today?

Artificial collisions- bumping into people in the hall, watercooler conversation across departments
In a remote environment there are no collisions that aren’t preplanned
Creating a knowledge transfer in a remote environment
- Zoom is not good for rapid collaboration
- More than 4 people in a meeting
- Create feedback loops
- People feel disconnected

Why is this important to the company?

Cant have passive actors in a remote environment
- I was waiting for….
- Proactive collaborators
Remote vs scaling
- Onboarding is challenging remotely
- A lot of time spent

Rick’s Nuggets

Communication must be fueled by leadership
Daily huddles (connection)
- Not mandatory, but everyone shows up

How do we solve the problem?

Tooling:
Slack- internal connectivity tool
- Every team, project & customer have their own room
- Sole service purpose in every room- avoid the noise
Zoom
- candidates , customers & internal
Zoom interviews
- Scientific method
- Each person testing on different topics
- Prep the candidates
Notion - collaboration tool
- Documenting every process and keeping it clean
  - True information source & driving everyone to that location
Dedicated team connected hours
- Office hours for every team (meeting) once a week
- Happy hour, game day, trivia,
  - Informally stop and chat
- Team members end up city hopping!
Deliberate information distribution pathways
- Information needs to get out
  - Surveying tools, function specific data,
  - all hands meetings (4-6 weeks)
  - Daily standups
Feedback Channel
- Every manager & director is plugged into the right sequence of events to gather feedback
- All very deliberate
- Everyone in the know

Rick’s Nuggets

Remote (Zoom, Teams) interview
Rules of engagement
- Start on time, end on time
- Interviewer questions assigned
  - Must gain evidence to support decision
- Must take objective notes
- Clear decision to move forward or release
  - No scorecard
- Feedback

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):