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Work journal, entry 6: we have teammates in Canada, Nigeria, Kenya, and USA. It’s a low density, remote team. My priority in my founder role is to plan for long-term resilience of each team member because our likeliest execution risk is low morale, less but more impactful: trauma
Here’s what we are doing so far:
- opening access to an exec coach. We use @lauren_adelle_ (five stars, would recommend always). We are on a budget, but this was something we weren’t willing to cut during this pandemic and it’s after affects.
- opening access to an exec coach. We use @lauren_adelle_ (five stars, would recommend always). We are on a budget, but this was something we weren’t willing to cut during this pandemic and it’s after affects.
We have been working with her since it was just four founders. She helps us as learn and practice skills for reducing the likelihood of burnout, non violent communication, and how to disagree constructively. This is not something I/we are willing to cut, ESPECIALLY now.
- $100 wellness credit per month. No roll over, must be spent on something that makes you feel good each month. It’s small, but we hope it gives people some sort of self care ritual to look forward to each month.
Each person on our team has a Brex corporate card so we don’t run into the struggles, delays, and weird power dynamics that can come along with money movement. We give basic guard rails, and each person can spend as they wish without any fear of judgment.
- speaking of money: @bmlyon (CEO) and Kirk (COO) make sure they load the canons extra early each month in case one of our teammates needs an advance or urgent funding. We use @transferwise borderless bank. It’s the fastest we’ve found for CA, KE *and* NG.
No questions asked, they will make sure you get money within a day. Takes a little more accounting but WHO CARES WHEN THERE IS A PANDEMIC HAPPENING. For our four US team members, @GustoHQ solved this for us with their cash out product (bye payday loan industry #ilovethisproduct)
- asking for help. This is tough for me, because 
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👋" title="Waving hand" aria-label="Emoji: Waving hand"> imposter syndrome, my oldest friend. We must, though. It is required for us to survive this as a company. I’ve looked to @bmlyon as an example of how to best do this. being a CEO can be extremely isolating, but...
I see him directly asking for more help and strengthening/investing in a community to support himself (and therefore us) through this. He talks with mentors and stakeholders consistently and with vulnerable truth.
- lastly, we use monthly board meetings to generate ideas on our toughest problems. Give context to the problem, talk through the “how might we” ideas, take those hypotheses back, prioritize and start experimenting, report back next month how it went and what we’ve changed.
Our board member @VicaManos has been instrumental in helping us build this muscle. She and @SpeakMouthWords have encouraged brainstorming together without fear of retribution or shame for not always knowing the answer. We wanted them on our side for hard times, not good.
Point is: who sits on your board and how you engage them really matters. We kind of lucked out on this but next time round I’ll deliberately ask myself “if there were a pandemic happening, will this person help me calmly lead and execute? Or will they increase my panic?”
