Applying Open Culture Practices across Distributed Teams
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00:00
Open setGoodness of fitOpen setRoundness (object)Computer animation
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Open setWechselseitige InformationUltraviolet photoelectron spectroscopyOpen sourceSelf-organizationContent (media)Enterprise architecture
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Open sourceOpen setGame theoryOpen sourceDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Office suiteGroup actionComputer animation
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TelecommunicationShared memoryCuboidProcess (computing)Computer animation
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Open setSoftware developer
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Local GroupGroup actionOpen sourceDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Self-organizationData structureIntegrated development environmentRegulator geneSoftwareGoodness of fitComputer animation
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Open setCollaborationismConsistencyOpen sourceType theoryComputer animation
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Data typeControl flowFeedbackExecution unitInterrupt <Informatik>MiniDiscContext awarenessNP-hardRotationComplex (psychology)Real numberCompilation albumReal-time operating systemGame controllerTelecommunicationDependent and independent variablesAsynchronous communicationSynchronizationMultiplication signGoodness of fitInterrupt <Informatik>CodeEmailFeedbackFocus (optics)BitDifferent (Kate Ryan album)
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Time zoneoutputLattice (order)Different (Kate Ryan album)Time zoneMultiplication signFeedbackShared memoryTelecommunicationComputer animation
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Open setInclusion mapLattice (order)Extreme programmingEmailDependent and independent variablesPoint (geometry)Multiplication signProcess (computing)Structural loadDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Decision theoryComputer animation
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Open setVirtual realityPlot (narrative)Time zoneGEDCOMProjective planeBlock (periodic table)Open sourceLattice (order)System callLatent heatPlanningData structureFitness functionVideoconferencingProcess (computing)SpreadsheetTouchscreenSelf-organizationComputer animation
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DialectLatent heatBuildingOpen setVideoconferencingSystem callInterior (topology)Multitier architectureLattice (order)Data conversionBuildingSystem callState observerComputer clusterVideoconferencingMultiplication signBus (computing)Computer configurationRemote procedure callInteractive televisionCASE <Informatik>Formal languageBand matrixComputer animation
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Structural loadOpen setSet (mathematics)BitArithmetic progressionPoint (geometry)Context awarenessShared memoryRevision controlRegular graphDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Multiplication signWorkloadExpected valueData structureInformationAsynchronous Transfer ModeTime zoneSingle-precision floating-point formatDependent and independent variablesComputer animation
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DemonoutputDiscrete element methodDecision theorySoftware frameworkSlide ruleOffice suiteSoftware developerOpen setData managementoutputLattice (order)Projective planeComputer animation
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Integrated development environmentImplementationError messageIterationIntegrated development environmentMultiplication signMathematicsTunisPlanningComputer animation
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Atomic numberOpen setAngleDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Self-organizationRevision controlOnline helpProjective planePhysical systemSpontaneous symmetry breakingShared memoryControl flowVirtualizationBitVideoconferencingMultiplication signRule of inferenceLink (knot theory)RandomizationFile formatThumbnailMultiplicationGame controllerTelecommunicationSet (mathematics)Design by contractData managementSlide ruleExpected valueClosed setComputer animation
24:48
Open sourcePoint cloud
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:05
All right, so good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to the Cloud Zone Community Dev Room this year. I think this is our fourth year running the room, so we're really excited to be here. Thank you. Our first speaker this morning is Kat Novakovic from Red Hat,
00:21
and she's going to be talking to us about applying open culture practices across distributed teams. A round of applause for Kat, please. And so just a quick introduction. So my name's Katrina Novakovic. I work as a business architect at Red Hat, and I'm really passionate about just sharing open source practices
00:41
and how enterprise organizations can apply them internally. As usual, I've got too much content and not enough time, so I might skip through some of the last slides, but if you have any questions, feel free to contact me afterwards. I'm happy to continue any discussions that we have. So today we're going to cover what is a distributed team, the common challenges that distributed teams face within organizations,
01:03
and then we're going to look to apply some open source principles to look at how we can overcome those challenges. So what actually is a distributed team? It's when you work with a group of people that are located in different locations, so you're not all together. And this could be where you're in different buildings, in different offices.
01:22
It can be when you have some people that work at home remotely, and it can also be if you have an outsourced company or a partner. And the teams that you work with, they can either be within the same country or within different countries. So what are some of the common challenges that distributed teams face? I've just listed some of them here,
01:41
but the main one I think is really about communication or miscommunication. I've just put it in the middle here. So when you have communication within teams, a lot of this is that you don't know what other teams are working on right now, you don't know what they've done before, and you don't know what they're going to do in the future. And a lot of this also can lead to these other kind of problems. So if you ask somebody, what are you working on right now,
02:02
and they tell you, you might think, why are you working on that for? And they say, oh, that was a priority. We raised that last week. That was what we should be focusing on. And you might say, yeah, that was a priority for last week, but things have changed now. And it's because of that miscommunication that you're not sure what you should be working on. And it also links to knowledge sharing. You're not really sharing what people should be working on.
02:21
You're not sharing those priorities. And oftentimes that can cause people to think that distributed teams are unproductive, the first box there, when actually distributed teams aren't not productive. It's just the processes and the way you're working that's making them unproductive. And there's all kind of other issues, such as control, culture, language, and isolation.
02:41
And so now we're going to look at how we can overcome some of those challenges in some more detail. But first of all, I just want to point out this quote that says, people are looking for solutions without asking, why do I have the problem in the first place? And this is a quote by a guy called Peter Krohn, who has nothing to do with software development. He deals with kind of the subconscious mind and how people think.
03:01
But I thought it was an interesting quote. So if you kind of look at why do we have that problem in the first place? Why is there miscommunication? Why aren't we sharing knowledge? What's all this about? Well, because this is a short talk, I'm going to give you a simple answer, and it's culture. So culture is the main problem that we have within distributed teams.
03:20
So what actually is culture? Culture is a group of people that when together, they form certain mindsets, behaviors, habits, and values. And it can influence how we act and how we communicate. Within an organization, you can have an organizational culture, and you can also have subcultures. So that's when you have different teams or different groups within a team
03:40
that kind of have their own culture. And cultures are unique. So you can't just take a successful culture from one organization and think, right, this is great. Let's try and apply it over here to this different organization. It doesn't quite work like that. And so an example could be if you look at a bank or a nuclear power plant, they kind of have a strict rigid structure.
04:00
They have regulations in place. And if you compare that to kind of an agile software startup, it's kind of different environments. So something that works in one might not work in the other. But having said that, when we look at what cultures are kind of good for distributed teams, immediately open source communities come to mind. That's basically how open source works. People are working and distributed all around.
04:23
If distributed teams didn't work, then open source wouldn't really work. So what are some of the common values of open source communities? Hopefully you're all familiar with these. So we've got adaptability, collaboration, community, release early, release often, transparency, all these types of things.
04:41
So I'm now going to look into a few examples of how these values can help distributed teams to improve how they work. But first of all, I just want to point out that there's two types of communication. There's synchronous communication and asynchronous. Synchronous is real time when you get an immediate response. So this can be if you're having a phone call,
05:02
if you're having a face-to-face meeting with somebody. And asynchronous is non-real time. So there's intermittent delayed responses, such as email or you're commenting within a document. And I wouldn't focus too much on the tools because people use tools differently. So if you think about email, some people send an email and they want a response within two minutes.
05:21
And if they don't get that, they'll chase you up to get it. And also chat messaging on WhatsApp. If you send somebody a WhatsApp message, some people want an immediate response. As soon as they see those two blue ticks, they're like, where are they? Why are they ignoring me? What's going on? Because other people will delay, and they'll wait a while before they get a response. So don't really think too much about the tools. Think about how you use them and the intentions behind them.
05:43
So synchronous real time communication. That's good if you have a complex discussion where you need to discuss something in detail. So you might have a lot of questions, and there's a lot of back and forth to really clarify what's going on. And it can also be useful for socialising. You're getting that quick feedback, so it's very easy to have that discussion that's needed.
06:01
A downside of that is if you're constantly checking emails, you're constantly checking messages, you're constantly getting people walk up to your desk talking to you, that's a lot of interruptions within your working day. And it can be hard for you to focus and to really concentrate on what you're doing, especially if you're trying to write a document or focus on programming a bit of code or something like that. Asynchronous communication.
06:21
And that kind of gives you back that control of when you communicate. You don't have to respond immediately. You can choose when you want to do it. And it's very useful for kind of thoughtful and high quality feedback. You have that time to think about what you want to say, so it stops kind of knee-jerk reactions. And the downside to that is that it can be misinterpreted. So if you send an email to somebody and they read it,
06:43
they might assume something, and they might not necessarily ask you that question to clarify. So you have to be careful around that. And this kind of leads on to time zones. If you're talking to people within different time zones, think about the communication style that you're using. So when I Googled it, there were 40 different time zones
07:01
around the world, which is a lot. So when you're in a distributed team, do you know what time zone everyone's in? And if you kind of set up a synchronous, real-time meeting that's going on, when are you planning those sessions? Is it within your own time zone that's convenient for you? And are you kind of excluding other people? And just ask yourself, is it causing any issues?
07:20
Could you rotate meetings to accommodate for other people? Can you host different meetings at different times, one within, say, APAC hours, one within EMEA hours, one within NA hours, something like that? Or if people can't attend a meeting, can you seek feedback prior to the meeting? So can you ask people to jot down their notes within a document, and then you can discuss those during the meeting.
07:41
You can record the meeting and then share that back with participants as well. And this kind of leads on to well-being and inclusion as well. So if you take the example of people working in different time zones, some people might feel isolated. There's a meeting on at 2 a.m. I don't really want to join that, so it's not within my working hours,
08:01
so I'm not going to. However, during that meeting, loads of important decisions were made, and then you kind of feel like, well, I wasn't included within that. Or you can have the other extreme, where you kind of had burnout. And this can be like, I'm going to join that meeting at 2 a.m. I'm going to respond to all those emails that are coming in at 10 p.m. at night. I'm going to be reactive. And you kind of have those two extremes on how you can react.
08:22
And so one kind of example I thought that was personally nice about being isolated and inclusion was I had a meeting where everyone was a distributed team. Everyone was working different areas. And it was done at a certain time where I couldn't attend. So I said, I'm really sorry. I can't attend the meeting, but I really want to get a discussion around this topic.
08:40
I don't really care what the response is. I just want to raise discussion to hear people's points. So they said, okay, fine, and included it within the agenda. And they said, I'm going to record the meeting and send it to you afterwards. So I was like, okay. And then when I got an email saying we've recorded the meeting, here it is. I just thought, oh, now I've got to watch a 40-minute meeting. Great. This wasn't a good idea. I'm going to waste my time.
09:01
But when I pressed play to record the meeting, at the start, they said, you know, chitchat, hi, everyone. And then they said, hi, Katrina, sorry you couldn't be there. And I thought, oh, that was really nice. They kind of thought about me. And then during the meeting, they said, Katrina raised this point. And then they went through the details. And then they said, this is what we decided. Kat, if you're not happy with this, let us know afterwards. And it kind of made me feel included
09:21
in that meeting. And again at the end, they said, bye, everyone. They said, bye, Kat. Hope you have a nice day. And I just thought, oh, that was really nice. You know, you can make people feel included without them being there. And it doesn't take a lot of time and effort. You don't have to change all your processes. It's just those little things that can really make a difference. So I'd ask about yourself.
09:41
How isolated do you feel at work in distributed teams? And then also think about other people. Are other people doing loads of meetings at different hours and you aren't really aware of it? You know, look out for yourself, but also look out for your teammates. And then two tips here. So think about, is synchronous working really necessary? Do you have to have a live meeting?
10:01
Can you operate in a different way? Or can you get people to put input in before these kind of meetings happen? And then also, most people have an online calendar. There's normally a setting where you can choose your working hours and then you can block off time that you're not working. And do put time when you're kind of busy and when you're not busy. And then when you schedule meetings, just watch out for when people
10:20
are available and when they're not available. So open source is all about communities. How well do you know everybody on your team? The first step is really just looking at the org chart, the basic structure. Do you actually know everyone's name? That's you're kind of working with on their team? Do you know their job roles? What's their expertise? What are their skills?
10:41
Where are they located? What's their time zone? And what are their working hours? So that's kind of just the basics that you can get to. And then how well do you know them personally? Do you know anything about them? If you're kind of chatting to them on IRC or on calls or something, do you ask them, you know, how was your weekend? Have you got any plans for the upcoming weekend?
11:01
You can chat about hobbies and pets. I'm not really a pet lover, but when I see two people that have dogs, they kind of go mental and they love it all. So if you've got a pet person, that's always a good way to connect with someone. You can ask them about holiday plans or you can even ask them about their desk setup. Like if you're working remotely, what chair are you using? What screen monitors have you have?
11:22
You know, just find a way that you're interested in and connect people. And the next one here is goals. So this is where everybody within an organization and within teams should have a shared common purpose, the shared common goals that you're working towards. But then also ask people about their individual goals. Do you know what their career aspirations are? What are they trying to achieve?
11:41
What kind of projects would they be interested in working on? And this can be useful if you're kind of in different meetings that they may not be involved in. Something could come up when you think, oh, that person would be perfect. They've got these skills and they'd love to do that. Or a selfish reason, if somebody gives you a piece of work that you really don't want to do and it's boring, but you know somebody else loves that, you can palm it off to them
12:01
and you can work on something more interesting. So it's kind of spreading around, making sure people are working on what they want to work on. And you're only going to do that by knowing these people that you work with. And then what do you do as well to socialize with people within your teams? Do you have virtual coffee breaks? So this could be where you kind of have an IRC chat or you can have a video call where you just take 10 minutes,
12:21
block it out and just say, we're just going to chat about general stuff and talking about those personal things, those hobbies, or just general things about work if you want to. But it's not really about projects or anything specific. And you can start a book club. These seem to be quite popular. This is where, say, every two weeks, you grew in a book to read
12:40
within like a month or two months or three months. And every two weeks, you meet up and you discuss a few chapters. And it's just getting people interested in certain topics and, again, socializing in different ways. Or 30 day fitness challenges are quite popular. So this can be online. You can get like a squat, a planking or a yoga challenge or running or something like that. And you kind of have a spreadsheet
13:00
and you can track your progress. And it's just another way that you can connect with people. So, you know, think about what interests you and how can you get to know people in your teams. But, you know, pick something that's actually relevant and interesting to you because if it's something that you're not interested in, then it's a waste of time, really. And video calls is often a question that I get asked about.
13:20
So, oftentimes, if you want to connect with people, the best way is actually to see them. And it's amazing how many times people have kind of said they've worked with people for years and have no idea what they look like. They could walk past them, they could sit next to them on the bus so they wouldn't know it was them. So, you know, having that face to face interaction is important. And I've kind of had mixed feelings about whether people like conference calls
13:40
and showing their face and people that don't. So, if you're kind of running a meeting and you want to encourage people to have conference calls, there's certain ways to go about it and there's the wrong way. So, the wrong way is an example. When I was on the call, somebody had good intentions and was like, yeah, let's see each other, let's interact and have this kind of relationship building. Everyone put your cameras on now. And, you know, everyone was a bit hesitant
14:01
and didn't want to put them on because you don't know what people are doing. So, my kind of advice is if you want to introduce this to your team and your team are reluctant, ask them in advance of the call. So, you know, you can say, okay, next Thursday we're having this team call and just be open and honest. You know, we want to try something new. We want to try and build relationships within the team and I've put some benefits here
14:20
such as you can observe people's body language if you're discussing something. You can see if people are interested in not in it and you can kind of build that relationship and just have a friendly atmosphere. You know, so ask people, please put your cameras on for this call on Thursday morning and if people are really hesitant, just say, just for the first 15 minutes and then after that you can turn it off
14:40
for the rest of the call. So, you know, try and get people participating and it depends how open or closed they're being and then see how that goes. If it's on for the first 15 minutes and people are quite comfortable, you can leave it on for the rest of the meeting. If after that 15 minutes all the cameras go off and shut down, maybe that wasn't working and maybe it's not the right approach to take but the thing is you're never going to know unless you just try it
15:01
and so just give it a go. Just start really. If it goes well, you can have a preference within your kind of department where you say the preferred option for video calls is that cameras are on but do understand there's certain circumstances when cameras are off. So if people work from home, you often get people assuming oh, they're in their pyjamas, they haven't done their hair,
15:20
that's why the camera's off but it's not often the case. Oftentimes there's bandwidth issues or, you know, people might be travelling in cars or on public transport. They could be kind of doing something on the side and just listening to this call so, you know, don't make assumptions if people have got their cameras off that they're not working or not doing something as well and do take that comfort into consideration.
15:40
Another question I often get asked is around co-location and remote working. So this is when you kind of have five people that are all in the meeting room located together and then you have some people remoting joining in and they kind of say is this disruptive? Should instead everyone just sit on their desk with their camera remoting in so it's all kind of equal and fair? And my answer to that
16:00
is that it depends. Are there any issues with this kind of way of working? So, for example, ask the people in the room and also those remote if there's any issues. So the people in the room might not be able to kind of see slides, they might not be able to comment on documents if they're all kind of sharing things but they may also kind of have side conversations and dominate it
16:20
and not let those remote-y speak but there may not be any issues so you have to kind of ask and see what's going on. And then also if there are issues the solution isn't just to put everybody separately dialling in. So, for example, oftentimes there's one or two people that are more vocal when they speak up so if they're doing that within the room if you just put them by themselves they're still going to do that.
16:40
So there's other methods you can do by asking the quieter people to contribute first before you let those other people speak. So you've really got to see what the problem is and then how to solve it and not just jump to conclusions. I think I'm getting a bit short on time so some of these I'm going to go in a bit more detail. So over communicate. You can't really communicate enough
17:01
and so the two main points I really document. Document everything. If you're working in distributed teams you don't really want to rely on the same people and so oftentimes people work in different time zones and different teams is an issue when you really need some information you need it now and that person isn't available so you shouldn't really have that single point of failure. If you document things
17:21
and people know where to go to they can access it they're not kind of permission restrictions and that can really help and also share drafts share things early don't just wait and share the final version have it work in progress documents that are happening and provide as much details and context if you can don't assume people know things assume they don't know it
17:41
and also preempt any questions they may ask and then kind of just some general points make sure there's regular updates know people's workloads and set expectations so again if you're working in that synchronous or asynchronous mode what is the deadline if you're asking somebody to do something they might just ignore it if they've got a lot going on so say please respond by Friday
18:01
please provide the document by the end of two weeks time or something like that tell people when you want to have that and have check-in points to ensure things are progressing self-service is important you have to know where to look so it's no good just documenting things if you don't know where you need to go and then having some structure so have a meeting agendas write up
18:20
those minutes afterwards put those somewhere just communicate I'm going to skip through this slide but this is just about transparency and how you can make decisions are you making them openly or are you doing them behind closed doors there's an open decision framework that can help in how you can make decisions more openly and there's also about
18:41
meritocracy and career development because sometimes people on distributed teams feel like they're at a disadvantage if people are co-located in the office with their managers they can feel like they have more career opportunities and ambition so it's all about getting to know in your team and seeing how they operate but also when you're given these opportunities do participate
19:00
do share your input but when you're hosting a meeting or running a project do get that input from other people so it's a two-way thing so how do you implement changes I always look at the fail fast culture so first of all it starts with like safety you want to create an environment where the team feels they're able to kind of try things out
19:20
and experiment in a blame-free environment and there's not going to be any negative consequences for doing so so if you try something out like the video thing and it doesn't work you're not going to get people laughing at you for the next three months about the big failure that happened you kind of want to have an encouraging collaborative environment and this needs to be set up within the culture you want to do structured experiments so as I was saying
19:41
you don't just want to do something kind of fly and kind of see what happens you want to kind of plan what you're doing in a controlled way and if it doesn't work you want to see how you can improve that and make it better or just scrap it all together Mindset so you want to kind of see failure as fine tuning so you need to change what your kind of perception is of failure it's not the end of the world
20:01
it's just that experimentation so you're kind of trial and error you're trying something out you're expecting it not to work so you can make improvements and then ultimately achieve a better end goal and then just start if you see something here and you think like I want to change something within my team what's the best way of doing it work in small iterations so we say fail fast
20:20
but also fail small don't try something out for nine months and then at the end of that nine months think oh that didn't really work out do something soon as you don't waste your time doing things so fail fast and fail small and then I just want to leave some time for questions because I think with this topic there's so many different angles that you can discuss and oftentimes I think it's the audience
20:41
and people here that kind of have those questions within their organizations or want to know more so who has any questions that they want to ask there was someone at the back I don't know there is a microphone here handsome has got a question if you keep your hand up
21:01
and go to you thank you hi thanks very interesting and I was I was curious about the virtual coffee breaks
21:20
like normally like going to take coffee is something like super spontaneous like just go to the coffee machine and you meet random people how do you like virtually like how do you because you don't never know like if someone is having actually a break or is currently super focused so you have a channel like I'm taking coffee
21:40
someone wants me to join or have you used like any any techniques like that so there's different things you can do oh should I repeat the question this is just basically about how you can do coffee breaks and the virtual coffee breaks how does that work so there's kind of different methods that you can do and it depends on kind of what tools you have available where people are what they're doing so as you were saying you can
22:01
have like a different chat channel where you can just chat about social stuff and keep it separate from projects and then anyone that wants to talk and talk in that channel and you can do it where you just if you're in a chat you could just say anyone fancy getting a virtual coffee I'm just going to put my camera on send a link to kind of your video thing and say if anyone wants to join they can if no one joins it's just you that knows so it doesn't matter at least you've tried it
22:21
or you could say I'm going to have a break in half an hour does anyone want to have a chat then so it's kind of a scheduled thing and gives people a bit of time or they might say oh I'm busy but let's do it in 45 minutes instead so you kind of got to as I was saying just start experiment try things out see what works for you and your team are we out of time or do we have any I can take
22:43
one more question I think there's some at the front that had questions I'm just coming with a microphone yeah it's maybe too complex for
23:00
three minutes but I was kind of thinking how or do you have any kind of rules or thumbs you can use situations where it's not a single team working for an organization but you're a distributed team across multiple organizations and you're kind of relying on everyone to add or contribute to the community in their own time and people kind of can be very present and then drop away for two weeks because they have
23:20
a deadline and kind of you know how to manage kind of culture and communication and teams where you can't really have control of people's agendas I guess yeah so that's just got a contract they have to deliver to that contract and I don't really care how stuff works and how it's done and so that way it's getting to know
23:40
those individuals rather than just seeing them as like an outsource third party it's getting that kind of close relationship and getting to know how people work and then as I said in another slide it's setting those expectations you know I need this done by this date or by this date we need to have a draft ready and especially these kind of different organizations getting that kind of sending drafts out rather than the final version is a good way
24:00
of doing things. Can you share things early share them often and they're kind of the two tips so hopefully that helped. Just got one final question here. Sorry it's not a question it's a comment for the person asking about how to do coffee in a distributed way. In 2013 Nesta in the UK set up a system
24:21
of having random coffees and so you have a random set of names each month and you get paired with someone and it's your obligation to make a date with that person at a time of your choosing and the idea was to harness serendipity to make sure that you get the chance to meet somebody in a completely unstructured format you're not focused on a goal you're getting the chance to
24:40
know them as a person and that might be easier to set up for distributed teams because you can schedule it in advance. Thank you.