Piecing Together the “Us” in Global Business
This is a guest-authored post from Scott Armstrong, CEO of Brenthaven, a maker of high-quality bags and cases for digital products. Scott talks about how Talko helps his global team stay in sync and make better decisions more quickly.
It’s roughly 6,638 miles between Seattle and Manila, a journey that can take anywhere from 16–20 hours by jet. One way. Adding the return trip bumps this number up to 13,276 total miles and upwards of 40 hours in the air. There’s a 14-hour time difference and in any given month, the average temperature can vary between the cities as much as 40 degrees (making it very tough to pack).
It’s a journey I know well. Each month, I hit the road to spend time with the important global teams that make up my company, Brenthaven. We make bags, computer sleeves and cases, iPhone covers, and more, with an emphasis on protection and craftsmanship. We like to say that we provide peace of mind for your digital lifestyle.
With operations around the world, we need to think globally in everything we do — from our market opportunities to the way we work as a company. Our people need to stay in sync even though they sit many thousands of miles apart and are often mobile — moving from the office, to the car, and to the manufacturing shop floor or retail store. It’s a daunting challenge. While I’m an experienced international traveler, more time on airplanes is not the answer.
From employees to suppliers, partners, and beyond, our success in working together relies on great communication. When you’re so far away, it’s easy to rely on email as the primary way to get things done. Calling and conferencing can be near impossible to coordinate given the time differences. Frankly, it’s been hard for us to talk. In a fast-paced company like ours this can lead to disconnect, misunderstanding, and misalignment — which means lost productivity and strain on team culture.
We’ve used all the typical tools to combat this — texts, conference calls at odd hours, emails with photo attachments and design docs, and various task management tools. While they all have their place, they often lead to laborious email exchanges, conference calls missing key people, and ultimately a cycle of rehashed conversations. We’ve found that none of them, individually or collectively, bring us closer together as a team, keep us sufficiently in sync, or help us make better decisions, quickly.
Enter Talko.
Talko’s been a lifesaver. I have numerous teams in the app, each specific to different projects, so conversations with our global management team or various product teams are easy to find, navigate and organize. With Talko, there’s no need to use any other messaging or calling app.
I’ve even stopped texting. As someone who’s always on the move, it’s easier to just talk or ‘call’ when it makes sense to talk LIVE. I regularly have calls with colleagues in Manila, each of us using mobile phones across different networks. Talko’s removed the quality issues we’d had with Skype — everyone comes through crystal clear.
The fact that calls are recorded by default is a huge game-changer for a global team. No matter the effort put into scheduling, there’s always someone who can’t make a call at an odd time. They’re left to catch up through meeting notes and/or follow up calls. Invariably, the nuance of what really happened at the meeting — in particular, the context and color driving decisions — is only partially conveyed, leading to fragmented understanding across the team.
In Talko, any team member can be a fully informed participant, whether they’re LIVE or not. Someone who misses a LIVE call can discover and replay the entire conversation or just the key moments. They can resume the conversation to add their say, and others will be notified. Suddenly, the team is more easily aligned, and decisions can be made quickly with everyone having the same context. That’s priceless for a global team interested in communicating and operating better.
For many of us at Brenthaven, the camera integration is also essential. Whether in the field or the office, the ability to show others what I am seeing in the moment, while talking, helps in many aspects of our business; from sharing and discussing design ideas to troubleshooting issues on the manufacturing floor.
The way Talko uses the camera was so clearly designed for how we actually use mobile phones. Video calling apps work when you’re sitting at a desk, stationary, and want to talk “face to face”. But Talko’s great for showing the world, the idea, or the issue in front of you, wherever you are. Recently I was in Asia visiting some key suppliers. While touring the space, I was able to snap and share photos as I talked with the teams in Manila and Seattle. I didn’t have to stop, snap, attach to email or text, then come back to the call. Had I not had Talko, I wouldn’t have had the time to go through this process while just trying to talk with the team. Collectively, we would have lacked the shared context that ultimately helped us make key supply decisions.
Talko’s no doubt brought us closer together and transformed the way we work together. We can listen, see, and talk in a way that really helps us feel — and function — like one team. Those thousands of miles between us feel ever so slightly shorter.
Scott
