What Shipped: Issue 11, 2021
Future Super is a superannuation fund that helps people use the power of their money to build a future worth retiring into. We’re building our product and brand in-house and documenting what we learn in the process.
Here’s what we’ve been up to in the past few weeks:
- Drafting notes: Going back to basics
A reflection on why note-taking before a meeting made the actual meeting x100 times better and the most productive meeting to date - Organising our data with Segment
Introducing a new tool that improves our dataflow — so our flow doesn’t look like a bowl of spaghetti (recipe not included) - What happens when Amanda goes from mastering remote work to remote work in another timezone
Amanda Yelp reviews her tips and tools
My notes: facilitating a meeting of decisions
I drafted notes for running decision meetings that I’ve stored in Asana for anyone to use on the team.
Today I facilitated a decision-making meeting and guess what — I used notes. Read them verbatim, no waffling, no missing key points. What a revelation hey?
It was a group of people who had varied experience working in the meeting structure so my intention was to help put them on an even playing field. What I found though was that sometimes it’s SO GOOD to go back to basics like as a facilitator, have notes. Importantly: I, like most people, am quite discerning of documentation that doesn’t help move things forward. I prefer 1 sentence over 5 so as you can expect run most of my regular rhythms without notes.
Today, I decided to spice it up and take notes of what I wanted to say after 40+ dry runs without them. Finding: it was the most productive decision-making meeting I’ve run yet at Future Super. My mind could focus on answering questions and moving the meeting forward rather than on what I needed to say to set things up.
Wanna give them a go? Here’s what I used.
PS For anyone that works at Future Super, I’ve turned these notes into a template task on Asana so you can use them for any decision meeting you’re facilitating.
— Grace
Organising our data with Segment
We’ve introduced a new tool to improve data flow, consistency, and availability.
As we increase our sophistication as a marketing team and increase the number of tools we’re using, the map of data flow starts to look a bit like a bowl of spaghetti 🍝.
With Segment, we can pipe all data (such as joins, account logins, website views, email clicks, and a whole lot more) to a central hub, and then send that data, wherever we want.
This means it’s now a lot easier to get data to all the different places we want. For example, we’ve just started using MixPanel which is sort of like Google Analytics with added superpowers.
The big next phase for us is to get all the data that is now coming into Segment into a data warehouse so we can easily run queries that connect it to our member data.
— Andrew
Clear eyes, fully remote, what’s there to lose?
Reviewing tips, tools, and tricks for moving from working ‘fully remote’ to ‘fully remote in a different time zone’
Just when I think I’ve mastered remote working, remote working across time zones has come along to humble me! I’ve found myself unexpectedly working in a different time zone to my team, so it’s time to learn some new skills. My goal: stay connected with my team and do great work, but also, live my life and get the rest and rejuve that’s necessary to do good work.
1.5 weeks in here’s tips & tools that I’ve tried so far and my Yelp reviews of them:
Strong team rhythms & culture. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Having a team culture with strong regular rhythms and a high degree of ownership has made a big difference in helping me stay connected to the team. Monday morning planning meetings and daily standups fall in my time zone, so I don’t miss anything that’s too important.
GCal’s ‘working hours’ feature. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Does what it says on the tin. Recommend this one.
Wisdom of the crowd. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sharing is caring. This week I’m thankful for some generous Twitter folk who shared their experiences working in different time zones; for Gitlab’s prolific remote working resource (shoutout to Grace Palos for sharing this with me) and Alana Theodor for sharing her experience and tips from her time working across time zones. Takeaway: ask for help, it’s out there.
WhatsApp. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ I’m a pick-up-the-phone person at work so being able to pick up and buzz people just like I would with my mobile is a godsend. I know this is basic tech these days but wow, it’s pretty amazing to pick up and land in another country and be able to log on with your team with minimal disruption.
Slack’s ‘status’ feature. ⭐ ⭐ Most people didn’t notice that I was using this, I’m not convinced it’s helpful, but I’m pivoting to writing my working hours into my status as a friendly reminder of when I’ll be online.
Slack’s ‘scheduled message’ feature. ⭐ Only works to schedule messages, not threaded replies, so shifting all of my messages to send during working hours in Sydney is cumbersome (for me). Won’t continue using it.
Things I’d like to try next week
Shifting my working hours earlier in the day. I’m a morning person. As I’ve transitioned to working in a different time zone, I think I’ve sacrificed working hours that work well for my body. Next week I’m going to experiment with working 6AM — 2PM Sydney time
— Amanda
