 Hello everyone my name is Katka. I am a manager of customer service team in EMEA working at Red Hat and I would like to talk to you about manager swap about my experience. What did the swap you might be thinking is it something like a wife swap or well kind of similar but I guess with a different purpose more noble one. The manager swap is a disruptive idea to blur the boundaries between regions and teams and it kind of enhances our Red Hat open and inclusive culture. So the customer service department especially is presenting our culture to the outside world. So managers of this very team were the obvious choice when choosing the first people to try the first round of the swap. So our team used to be a small local team only taking care of regional customers but then we became global and not only that we had to collaborate with our US and Indian and APAC colleagues teams but also we had to work from one big backlog of customer requests aka global queue. So you can imagine being global it requires lots of consistency and suddenly there was a lot to learn. So it was me and my colleague Ashley in US serving as guinea pigs for this first swap and I got out of my control control comfort zone when I became a newbie in the US team and I definitely started seeing things from different perspective. So the original goal that we agreed on was that we will basically attend each other's team meetings. We will have one-on-ones with all the team members weekly and also the underlying goal was to identify some opportunities maybe for better collaboration and also how to improve our processes. In the first week of the swap I immediately saw that the dynamics of my newly adopted team was a bit different. I detected some really crucial differences between EMEA and US cultures. See the European way of communication is definitely more direct. Slightly blunt maybe even harsh you might say. We don't really do small talk much. We really prefer to address the elephant in the room and this was a challenge for me. At the beginning I was really trying hard you know to fill the diplomatic mold and I was getting lost in long sentences and in complex phrases and as a result I always forgot to smile as well. That's strike two. That's another problem. You have to smile when speaking to American. If you don't smile you might come across as impolite even or rude. So we don't really dance about uncomfortable truths and let's say the sugarcoating is not our forte either. So what to do. I am just wondering now imagine how much time you would have if everything was addressed directly. I mean you would say this meeting is meeting last and we are wasting everyone's time. Instead we have to say I would suggest we postpone this meeting until we have further details and some structured agenda to cover. So yeah I don't know about you but I always prefer the direct way of communication back to my newly adopted team. So first week we got to know each other. We kind of established our communication ways and we shared our life stories. We shared the career journey as well. It was great. It was all virtual obviously but I got to travel to Panama, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Venezuela all in my imagination. So it was great. They were all smiley and polite but still I felt we were still kind of shy to each other. There was still some kind of boundary and it was as late as the second half of this walk when I finally felt people are starting opening up to me. They started sharing actually their actual ideas and opinions and this constructive feedback that was the real gift and me by stepping back and simply listening to all that, I realized some practical implications as well. So for example as we became a global team and we wanted to be globally aligned, I realized we have to have some globally aligned new hire training as well. Before we were four teams on boring people, always in four regions. So that was one big Yurika moment or aha moment for me and we should also not concentrate on processes that much but also on the inclusive culture during that new hire training. Secondly I realized we need to encourage more interactions between the regions. So after the year since the swap happened, I can tell a lot of things have changed for the better. We do have consistent and globally aligned new hire training now. We have established stronger collaboration. We meet also not only with work related topics but we have some regular virtual games and virtual meetings. For example we had some cooking shows where we got to learn how to make an authentic Italian tiramisu or our colleague from US was showing us how to bake fantastic banana bread. So I honestly believe anyone on the team could benefit from a swap, not just people managers but it could be easily an individual contributor as well. So if you feel that you know better than your colleague across the ocean, you might be a perfect candidate for the swap because there is nothing better than than trying that and walking in someone else's shoes to see their perspective and to understand their ways. I promise it's an eye-opening experience. Thank you. And now we can open it for the questions. Any questions? Yeah. Or experience? Yeah. There's a quick one. You talked about like international swaps but what about inter-departmental work and tasks? You can still apply? Definitely. Should be the question for you. Oh yeah sure. So I was talking about international swaps from the same type of team but the question is if it can be applied when the managers are not managing the same teams? Yeah, development versus production. I believe there will be some value that you can find there because if you are struggling with some other team, some collaboration is not as smooth as you would wish, it's definitely great to find out, you know, to try to be in their shoes for a certain time. So yeah. Yeah. How long was the swap? A month. One month. Yeah. So. Was it too short for long? It fell too short for me because as I said, they started opening up only in the third and fourth one-on-one which was like end of the swap before it was all, it was interesting but it was all kind of polite and very, not formal, how to say that. Yeah, I feel like it got, we were getting to the interesting stuff only too late. Yeah. You need to build a trust. Sure. I'll say like on performance, I think that manager change might affect things or it's a short period of time or because it was a similar type of team, it did not with any thoughts in that. The numbers were pretty much the same but the effect is, like my team is still contacting the other manager because they know each other, so the collaboration is more efficient and smoother this way. So, but in terms of how many requests did we do or something that no, it did not have any effect. Surely there's a learning curve, right? Yeah, absolutely. I highly recommend it. It's uncomfortable but great. Yeah. And so it's like a one-to-one swap? Yeah, this was one-to-one swap. Yeah. That's another version. Like, yeah, there is no, I have to say, yeah, it can be freestyle. Yeah, Milan? Yeah, so we actually wrote a blog about it. So, because I know you're from Red Hat, you will be able to read the blog. Yeah. Of course, she loved it as well. And everything was shining and bright. As I said, I think it's a great experience for everyone. I am encouraging now our team leads, our SOLs, like other functions, because I think it brings value. As long as you work for a global team, I'm sure there are some differences between the regions that could be understood better. So, go for it. Yes? Yeah, one month is too short for this. And also, just to explain, we did not have access to the HR stuff. So, we were just kind of not on the surface, but we would not be able to, you know, go deeper to the other team's data. So, it was this way, it was just just our agreement and experiment. Yeah. Well, I think Ashley was focused more on the personal side. So, I was the one who was always trying to talk about work. I think Ashley was just relaxed and they talked more, they were focusing on getting to know each other as humans more. But, yeah, it was overall positive. Yeah, she did not mention any of this. Yeah, maybe it's an elephant in the room. Yeah, let's see. Yeah, one thing I totally admired, how well they can connect, like, how they had really great team building ideas. For example, they have game night every Friday after work. They do some picturing, which is a game where you draw something and the others are guessing. And it's a simple thing, but we never did such fun things before. So, we learned, we adopted this. And now we are actually doing the pictionary with them together. So, we have one joint team building with the American team. It's really nice. Yeah. So, unfortunately, we're out of time. Thank you. I'm sure that probably we have to discuss at the house with you later. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.