 At GitLab, we're passionate about remote work. As an all remote company, we've experienced firsthand how beneficial it can be to develop and deliver software in a remote environment. From being able to attract and retain the best talent regardless of location, to working faster and more efficiently by writing things down instead of scheduling more meetings, we see a tight correlation between having the skills to collaborate in a remote environment and DevOps success. Now I'd like to welcome to the stage Laurel Ferrar, who is also very passionate about remote work. Laurel is founder and CEO of Distribute, a virtual organization development think tank and consulting firm. For the past 15 years, she has been working with organizations to unlock the power of distributed workforces. Wherever your team is landed, whether it's in office, remote or hybrid, the new normal means that we will all find ourselves needing to collaborate remotely at one time or another. Laurel is here to offer us some tips and paint a vision for building a bright future of innovation. Hello, I am so inspired by this year's commit theme of innovate together because isn't it just so representative of how we feel as a society that we are so hungry for a fresh start to think of new ideas, new solutions that will help us prevent the catastrophe and the chaos and the stress and the burden that we all have been feeling for the past year and a half. I know that in our work here at Distribute, as we are advising clients on their return to office strategy and how to build infrastructures for virtual and hybrid teams, this is absolutely the number one objective that we hear from companies is we just need to get back to the office so that we can start to collaborate again and have those spontaneous creative conversations again. We're all just so desperate to start innovating again. But why did it stop? Did it stop? Isn't an office really necessary for facilitating creativity? That's something to think about because we have been watching iconic distributed teams like Automatic and Envision and Mural and Remote and of course, GitLab, developed some of the most progressive technology in the world without offices. So in a world where hybrid teams are now the new normal, it's critical that we start thinking about how we can make creativity and innovation as location independent as our work now is. So as the world's foremost think tank and consulting firm on the topic of remote work and virtual organizational development, my team at Distribute and I are happy to offer you five tips that can help you unify your team wherever they are in the world. To bring them together for creative, innovative, original conversation that can create that magic of spontaneity and collaboration even without an office. Even if you're in a virtual or a hybrid environment, how do you bring together your people no matter where they are to have those amazing conversations? Well, to help make this information a little bit easier to remember, let's create an analogy in which building the fire of creativity in your team is just like building a fire. I personally live in rural America and we make a lot of campfires. My kids are young and they know how to build a great bonfire for roasting marshmallows. They know how to build a great fire in case of emergency because our power goes out all the time. So this is a skill that I hope you know as well in just in case you're not. Don't worry about it. I'll walk you through the steps step by step. And so you'll learn how to make a fire in real life and make a fire of creativity at the same time. But let's go ahead and get started by the number one rule when you are about to build a fire is that you need to set boundaries. Like fire, we all know that too much of a good thing can be really bad. So we don't want your flame to turn into a forest fire. We need to have boundaries about where we're building a fire to make sure that it is safe and functional. And the same thing is true for our creativity. If we are just asking people to generate ideas that can get out of our control very quickly. We need to make sure that those ideas are being generated within a specific space. So anytime you start a creative conversation, make sure that you are assigning an objective or success metric of any kind. The reason that this relates to remote work is because as we know, virtual operational models are more reliant on results based productivity tracking. And the same is true when you are having creative conversations. Designate that as productive, valuable, constructive time by assigning it a success metric that can be measured. So that all of your team understand exactly what is supposed to be accomplished. And this way you are all working together towards the same goals and you're not wasting any energy on other ideas that aren't relevant to your objective. So remember that having no boundaries can really waste a lot of time, a lot of energy and even can create some resentment. We've seen this in the entire world as people have adopted that mentality of this meeting could have been an email. That's exactly the mentality that you're going to get from your team members if they come into a meeting that it feels directionless. They're gonna say, why am I here and why shouldn't I have been doing something else during this time? So make sure that you are always giving a direction to your creativity and you're setting those boundaries like building a firing or starting a fire in a fire pit. You're creating those boundaries of where the creativity should be happening and why so that it is controlled and doesn't take over too many other head spaces and conversations. The second tip that I want to recommend to you is to always be aware of your environment. I cannot stress this enough. When we are building a physical fire, we need heat, we need oxygen, we need fuel in order for ignition and combustion to occur, right? Of course, we have to have the correct environment or else that spark can never occur. And the same is true for the environment in your team, but instead of heat, oxygen and fuel, we need to create an environment of trust, safety and acceptance. If those elements do not exist in the culture of your organization and are palpable and tangible in the environment of every single virtual or in-person interaction that your team members experience, they will not feel safe contributing ideas. Ideas are risks. Proposing ideas are risks. We have to feel safe in our foundation of security and acceptance in order to be willing and able to take a risk. So starting today, do not wait until you are ready to have a creative conversation, but starting today, start paying attention to ways that you can create that environment of trust, safety and acceptance. Think about it, what happens now when you're in a usual standup meeting or an all-hands meeting and somebody says, I have an idea or what if we did this? What is the automatic reaction? Sometimes it's positive and hey, that's a great idea. We don't really have time for it in this agenda, but how about you and I continue the conversation one to one right after this and then we can add it to the next agenda. That is trust, safety and acceptance. However, unfortunately, most of the time the reaction is not that. The reaction is we don't have time for that or no, that's not what we're talking about here. It's immediately rejected and therefore your team does not feel that they are receiving the message that their ideas are welcome. And if they're not welcome in all-hands meetings or they're not welcome in weekly syncs, why are they gonna be welcome in a brainstorming conversation? So start immediately to build a healthier culture of trust and safety and acceptance. But remember, Rome wasn't built in a day and neither can a healthy culture. This is going to take time. This is going to take consistency. You cannot be a micromanager with a toxic culture for six months in a row and then just show up to an innovative conversation and be pleasant and kind and send gifts and expect that everybody's going to immediately change their opinion and feel safe contributing ideas. So make sure that you're starting today to build this foundation and create an environment that will felicit, felicit, solicit creativity in the future. Okay, so we've set our boundaries, we've checked our environment. Now we're getting ready to actually start building the base of this creative fire. Now pay attention to the fact that preparing to build a fire is not actually building the fire. We had to do so much to get ready to even start collecting supplies. So that's what we're doing now is starting to collect those supplies. So when we're building a physical fire, that means we need a variety of different components. We need the tinder, which is like leaves, dried leaves or newspaper or something like that that you crumple up and that's what catches the flame really easily. And then on top of that you layer kindling. Kindling are small pieces of wood that will catch the flame but hold on to it a little bit longer. They won't burn out as quickly as the tinder will. So they hold on to the flame long enough to then spark on top of that the firewood, which is our logs or large pieces of wood that will then burn for a long time and provide that long-term sustainable flame that we're looking for. But if you don't have all three pieces, it's not gonna be sustainable. You can't just hold a match up to a log and expect it to catch on fire. It's not compatible. And likewise, you can't just light a piece of newspaper on fire and expect it to burn high and hot for the next four hours. That's not realistic either. You have to have all of the components in order to create a sustainable flame. And the same is true for your creativity. But instead of tinder, kindling and firewood, here we want our three components of people, headspace and tools. And if you don't have the right people, the right headspace and the right tools, this flame will never catch and continue. So make sure that you are inviting the right people to the conversation. Are they relevant to the objective? Are they, do they make other people feel safe, right? Are they going to be nurturing and accepting of other ideas? Are they going to bring creative ideas themselves? Make sure that the investment of a meeting, because meetings are expensive, make sure that the investment of a meeting is worth it and that you're bringing the right brains to the table. And there's not too few people and there's not too many. Too many people, if you have a big group of 50, it's gonna be inspiring, but is it gonna be creative? That's a different, that's a different goal, right? So we wanna have a group of five to seven, maximum 15 people so that everybody has a voice and everybody can participate in a very active way. Same thing with our headspace. I like to say that burned out brains can't brainstorm. And this is a very, very common scenario in our current world, right? Socially, we're overwhelmed. There's been so much happening on a personal front that we are exhausted. But then professionally, this is the same. We have Zoom fatigue, right? We're going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting all day, every day. Are you gonna have the headspace for a deep strategic creative conversation after you've had 15 meetings back to back for eight straight hours? No, of course not. Nobody's gonna come with a fresh brain in that circumstance. So make sure that you are creating the space, a buffer zone around your creative conversations that allow people to come with good headspace. They're coming with asynchronous ideas already prepared. Be thinking about this for a week before so that you can come prepared with ideas or block out an hour or two prior to the conversation to say, hey, everyone eat a good lunch, go for a run, do whatever you need to so that we can come with really, really active minds. Do what you need to in order to make sure that your headspace is preserved and protected so you're working in an ideal mental environment as well. And then finally, think carefully about your tools. We here in the tech world know that there are fabulous tech tools out there that make creative collaboration so much more efficient than it used to be. Trust me, I've been working remotely for 15 years. We did not have those tools back then. And yes, it was very difficult to have a creative conversation over a long distance. But now we've got great whiteboarding tools and visualization tools that really help us share our ideas effectively just as if we were in that conference room together with those whiteboard markers and post-it notes, right? Those are fabulous resources. However, don't get caught up in the tools too much. Don't expect the tools to do the work for you because actually those tools can often become a hindrance. If your team members don't have proper training on the tools prior to jumping in, they get lost in the tool instead of lost in their ideas. They're thinking about, well, am I the porpoise or the porcupine or, ooh, I wanna be the dolphin or I wonder who the crab is or how do I make this purple or I can't double click this? They're getting so lost in the functionality that they are not meeting the objective. So use tools to your advantage but don't forget to diversify them and to simplify them as much as possible. All right, so now we've built the base, now we're ready to ignite a flame. So how do we get this fire going? How do we actually start this fire of creativity in your team? Well, as always, we're gonna light a match or create a spark of some kind, right, in our physical fire and the same is true in a creative fire as well. We all know that moment where we kinda maybe start out slow in the meeting and we're all just kinda navigating and feeling like, okay, where is this conversation headed? Whether it be happening synchronously or asynchronously. But then eventually somebody says an idea and somebody else says, oh, I like that and then they add another idea and then another idea and all of a sudden you have this flame of creativity, of inspiration and imagination that everybody is excited about and that all of that energy has combined to create this flame and that's in a very, very exciting moment. So how do you make sure that that flame actually turns into a fire that it catches on this base that we've built of people and headspace and tools? Well, in the research that we've done here at Distribute, the number one complaint that people have when asked the question about what makes or breaks creativity in a virtual or hybrid environment, the number one complaint is facilitation. By far no questions asked. Everybody says, yeah, we just can't have a creative conversation if there's not somebody there to nurture it. And this is a classic concept in building real fires too, right? We need a bellows, we need somebody to blow on that flame so that it gets larger and catches new layers of the base that we've built and the same is true in creativity. We need somebody there to nurture the flame and a facilitator is absolutely critical in that. It was critical when we were in a co-located team sitting in a conference room with our trustee whiteboard, but it's even more important in a virtual environment. The reason for that is, is that in our daily lives, screens are defaulted or have a association in our minds of consumption. We are used to information coming out of screens and just being washed over us. Think about social media where we just sit back and we just scroll, scroll, scroll, or we go to a movie theater or watch Netflix at home and there's movies that just project onto us and feed our brain with absolutely passive activity in our own minds. So the concept of leaning in and engaging with a screen to connect with our team members to contribute ideas to the screen requires a bit of intention and a bit of unlearning. We need somebody there to help us break the habit of consumption in our relationship with screens and move it towards a habit of engagement. And this is not an easy hill to climb. So having somebody there to yes, facilitate the conversation and yes, confirm equal participation and engagement, but more so somebody to be a human on the other side of the screen so that people feel comfortable connecting to another human. They feel like they're giving their ideas to somebody that can catch them as opposed to somebody that is just an avatar on a tool and they're actually not a real person at all. So give them a human experience, create emotions, create experiences, facilitate laughter, do whatever you need to help people lean into that experience and bring their human ideas to a human space. Okay, last but not least is step five and this is where we're going to stay fueled. We all build a fire with a purpose. Sometimes it's a campfire to roast marshmallows. Sometimes it's more functional when you light a fire in agriculture to clear the weeds and rejuvenate and nourish the soil. Sometimes it's a fire to destroy something and change the chemical balance. Each fire has a different purpose but we don't ever build a fire just to build a fire. I don't know, maybe you do. We all have a little bit of pyro in us but typically we don't build a fire just to build it. We build a fire with a purpose and you set that purpose way back at the beginning of this exercise. Back in step one, you set those boundaries and set an objective in a success metric but the mistake that most companies make when having a virtual conversation or a hybrid creative conversation is that they extinguish it too quickly because we're in the mindset of virtual meetings which have a strict beginning, a strict end and within usually have a pretty structured agenda. We're so used to that mentality that it's hard for us to take a step back and just have some open space. So that's what you need to do when thinking about how you are now going to manage this creative fire in your team. The wrong thing to do is what we built this fire and now you're just gonna pull out the fire extinguisher and put it out and walk away. No, you built this fire for a reason. How are you going to leverage it? How are you going to use it? So make sure that your creative conversations just aren't ending when you click end meeting but they're ending with a buffer zone after the creative conversations. That you're making space in people's schedule for them to keep thinking of ideas or to stew about and analyze the ideas that they thought of when working together or to create research opportunities or whatever, don't let the conversation end in a meeting because the ideas are not going to end in the meeting either. So use those ideas, create a space for momentum for the imagination to carry through outside of the meeting and integrate the ideas into assignments and sidebar conversations that will carry through into the rest of the virtual operations experience. Don't cut it off in the meeting, embrace the ripple effects and make time for those and time equals headspace. So don't let people just jump straight back into a day of back to back to back meetings that's going to completely extinguish creativity. Give them space and time for deep work, for creative thinking that may or may not have a deliverable result. Sometimes we need to recognize that just thinking is the result, that is the goal. We don't always have to have a tangible deliverable for our time to be well spent. Okay, there you have it. Five tips that can help you and your team think more creatively as a virtual team or in a hybrid environment. You can set boundaries, check your environment, build the base, spark and ignite, and then stay fueled. Those tips and strategies will help your team think more creatively wherever you each are located. Because in the past year and a half, the world has discovered what GitLab and the rest of our remote work community have been championing for so long that work isn't somewhere that we go, it's something that we do. So isn't the same true for innovation? It's not sitting in a conference room with 54 colors of whiteboard markers and piles of post-it notes that makes your team innovative. It's your team. So those incredible people with a beautiful diversity of unique ideas and perspectives and experiences, uniting them and uniting and leveraging that shared knowledge, that's what fuels imagination, not the room you're sitting in. So as long as we can connect to each other, we will always be able to innovate together. Good luck.