Adapting Product "Best Practice" That Works for You

Nazish Zafar, Henny Melvina, Jill Quek, Sigit Adinugroho, Christine Wang, Catherine Madden at UXDX Community: Singapore. Video: https://youtu.be/g_0u4HmNIiU

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Introductions and the topic

[00:00:00] Catherine: My name is Catherine, and joining us on the panel today we have a wonderful lineup of people. We have Jill from Automattic, we have Henny and Naz from Grab, Sigit from Shopify and Christine also from Shopify. Thank you all for your patience and for your time on everything. We'll start off by introducing you, but I'll introduce the panel first.

[00:00:26] The topic of today is best practice, and best practice means a lot to different people, to different teams and to different organizations. What works for one company, whether you're a small startup, might not work for an enterprise. So the goal today is to hear the thoughts of the teams here, to find out what has worked for them, and whether it can be applicable to you, the audience, and to give you some thought. We have companies that are renowned, like Netflix or Shopify in Europe, as being a global best practice, but in reality does that work for you? We're hoping the insights from the team today will really help you figure that out.

[00:01:13] I'll get the team to give a short introduction to themselves first. I'll list you off, so Jill, I'll ask you to say hi, who you are and a little bit about you.

[00:01:30] Jill: Hi, I'm Jill. I'm a senior product designer at Automattic, working on WooCommerce, which is the e-commerce product on WordPress.

[00:01:39] Catherine: Great.

[00:01:40] Christine: I'm Christine. Hi everyone. I'm China user research lead at Shopify.

[00:01:48] Catherine: Great. And Henny.

[00:01:50] Henny: Hi, I'm Henny. I'm a research ops at Grab, from the design strategy and research team.

[00:01:58] Catherine: Great. And Sigit.

[00:02:02] Sigit: Hi, I'm Sigit. I'm the senior product designer in the money and channels team at Shopify.

[00:02:09] Naz: Hey there, my name is Naz. I'm from the design strategy and research team at Grab.

[00:02:14] Catherine: Great. And yet all of the team have a different background, everything from research ops to product design. We'll start off with Jill, if that's okay, just to talk about your team split. We're going to talk about three different areas so far: team structure, productivity and recruitment. Each of the team will talk briefly on their team structure. Jill, you've quite an interesting team split. Could you describe how it's made up?

How Automattic's product teams are structured

[00:02:50] Jill: One thing to remember about Automattic, which is pretty unique, is that it is a globally distributed team. It has been globally distributed for the last 15 years, so there is no head office anywhere in the world. That definitely informs a little bit about how we work. Our product teams typically include a product manager, a designer and maybe five to ten developers. It really varies across the teams, and a lot of the teams are given a high level of autonomy to operate in the way that they see best. Again, given the very distributed nature of the company, that autonomy is somewhat necessary. So yeah, that's a breakdown of how the teams are structured.

[00:03:39] Catherine: Great. And what's the dev... you have quite a high dev ratio.

[00:03:45] Jill: Yeah, I think that might partly be due to the fact that WordPress as a platform is very developer-centric. So for a lot of the products that we handle, that input and that leadership from the developers in our organization is also extremely important. Additionally, the developers are expected to wear a lot of different hats, so they are kind of expected to be fairly proficient in design and product as well, and I think they are very much empowered to take on those roles and explore those roles even as developers.

Shopify: digital by default, organized by mission

[00:04:33] Catherine: Brilliant. Christine, if you could talk a little bit about Shopify's structure. You've already got a remote-by-design approach. Can you tell those who don't know what that structure is like, and the team globally?

[00:04:52] Christine: Yeah, so Shopify since last year became a digital-by-default company. By saying digital by default, we mean remote. And then last year we had a big reorg, so after that all the teams globally are structured by function. For example, Sigit, he is in core, so core is the core product for Shopify. That's one group, and the other group, like myself, is at growth. Growth focuses on the top of the funnel, so that's another big work group. Inside of each work group we have UX divisions and R&D divisions.

[00:05:33] However, inside of the big group, because we are a remote company, the whole structure is more driven by mission, so everybody inside of that big group actually is driven by its mission. My group, growth, is to increase active merchants. That is our mission, and therefore the people inside of that will divide into smaller product teams or project teams. We work pretty collaboratively. Each smaller group will have a product PM as well as a UX designer or a UX lead, as well as researchers, and will also partner with everybody around the world. So that's our structure.

[00:06:26] Catherine: Great. And Sigit, do you have anything to add on that? Just how does it work for you and your team?

[00:06:35] Sigit: Yeah, so as Christine mentioned, we are a very globally distributed team with our own mission, and we are also unified with the whole Shopify mission. There's a high degree of autonomy as well. Because we're naturally distributed geographically, there's a lot of emphasis on being in that specific geography. We put high importance on putting a local lens into our products. So for example, if we are located in Asia, we are naturally mandated to contribute to defining the direction of the product in terms of the local markets. That's also part of why we are interested in this kind of topic as well.

Grab's research pods

[00:07:32] Catherine: Great. I'll move on to Henny, still talking on the team structure. Your team and Naz's, I will follow up with you on this, but the team is mainly based out of Singapore. Could you share with the audience more on the team structure and how that's worked, because that's quite different with your pods? That's for you, Henny, but Naz will jump in if not.

[00:08:03] Henny: Maybe I can try to explain a bit more. Right now in our teams we have different pods working, for which it's a specialty. So there are pods with a specialty, specialized in merchants and specialized in deliveries, and also specialized in food. Maybe Naz can explain more about the team structure, but I will explain more about what the research ops are working on. Research ops actually work across these pods in our teams, so we support each pod and make sure that we achieve efficiency in the research operations.

[00:08:51] Catherine: Great. And Naz, can you talk more on the pods, and then a follow-up with the business priorities as well, of how that works?

[00:09:01] Naz: Sure, sure. Our team is primarily based in Singapore and Indonesia, so we're across two countries but we're serving Southeast Asia. We are quite centralized as a team, more or less between Singapore and Indonesia. We have divided ourselves into four pods. This is what's working right now. No one is to say, hey, this is how it should be or how it ought to be or how it will be, but today that's what works for us.

[00:09:26] One pod has about four to five researchers, three to five around there. One of them will focus on financial services right now, so all the business verticals that have to do with financial experiences, like GrabPay, insurance, wealth, investments. The researchers in this pod can synergize across those business verticals, do the research, and connect the dots about the users in a way that connects with the stakeholders that cut across all those different verticals. That's a pod based on business verticals.

[00:09:56] We have another pod focused on merchants as a user group. Why? Because we thought it wasn't efficient to have one researcher focusing on Grab Food merchants, another researcher doing GrabPay merchants, another researcher doing deliveries merchants or advertising. So, hey, why not have one pod where we're all together and we're studying the same guy? It's the same merchant who's using all these services, and we're in a unique position to connect the dots, because we don't want to expose our organizational structure to the users at the end of the day. That's what this pod is about: harmonizing those insights and then translating that across the different verticals.

[00:10:34] So we have two more pods. One is more, we call it the central pod, focusing on cross-business topics like customer retention. It doesn't matter what business it is, we have so many businesses, but that's the larger topic that applies across. Engagement: how do we promote engagement? And then one pod will be about maybe food and maybe customer support. Those business focuses may change, but the point is we have pods and then we re-evaluate. Is this still the right focus? Should we still be focusing on these areas as a team of researchers? Because the world isn't static, neither is the company, and so we adapt with that through our research structure.

Aligning the business and the team

[00:11:15] Catherine: It's a very interesting way to work. There must be difficulty in aligning the business and the team at points. Does anyone else... Jill, how do you work on business and team alignment, particularly having so many developers?

[00:11:35] Jill: Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I definitely think that in order to make sure that your business goals and your product focuses are in alignment, I do think that ultimately — this is a bit of a standard answer, I guess, but it is true — I think ultimately both need to be focused on the customer. Both need to really get a lot of input and a lot of feedback and listen really closely to what your users are saying. I think that if both the business folks and the product folks can do that, then hopefully they would all be in alignment. I guess in an ideal world, that's the dream.

Productivity when the team is spread across time zones

[00:12:24] Catherine: Christine, moving on from alignment and the team to more on productivity. You've worked in the past for quite a number of companies, you set up your own accelerator. How do you balance the Shopify process, which is quite flexible, with quite a rigid background? Do you struggle with it or do you embrace it?

[00:12:58] Christine: I have to be honest, at the beginning there definitely would be struggle, because originally we're not a remote company, but since last year everybody is forced to work at home and then gradually we become a digital-by-default company. So the first struggle is there is no work and life boundary, as everybody experienced.

[00:13:23] And secondly, right now, because our team is more structured at the parts of the funnel, my team actually, the people closely work with me, they're in Canada, and then I'm in Taiwan, and then there are also people in New Zealand I need to work with, also people in Singapore. So basically there's no "okay, I start my day from nine to six". It's more like, through the day, I'm separating time to talk to different people around the world.

[00:14:03] I think there will be the struggle in terms of how we restructure our life. I felt like in this kind of setting, the way to keep people to be productive has to be mission driven and then outcome driven, instead of time driven or efficiency driven. And Shopify actually provides a very good system to keep people feel curious and also feel motivated by themselves. Therefore we actually are very self-driven to do good work, and I think that's how the company keeps moving in a very nice and efficient way.

[00:14:51] Catherine: That makes a lot of sense. And if anyone, just a quick stop, if anyone has any questions for the audience — please do ask on the Slack channel, "ask the speakers", so please join there. You would have received the links in your emails. It is really a tricky one.

[00:15:12] Sigit, how do you find it? Because Christine talked about setting up calls at 10 a.m. and 10 p.m., and it's quite challenging. It can lend itself to a certain personality type. How do you find it?

[00:15:31] Sigit: I think communication is definitely a challenge now that we are all remote, even in the same country or the same time zone, but we've been driving on asynchronous communication. What that means is that of course we do meetings and other synchronous communications, but since I joined, actually I spend more time documenting things, writing things down, rather than designing, for me. I think it's important to build alignment through this form of asynchronous communication, either through document writing or video demonstration, for example.

[00:16:12] That helps a lot. It builds contact with people, especially in a difficult time zone from us, and it maintains a lot of trust. If you see productivity as in making sure people are working, then I think that's one way to solve it. But I think the way we measure productivity is more around what the outcomes are, like Christine said, and those outcomes are centered around merchant value: what kind of value you are going to bring to the merchants, who are the users we ultimately serve.

[00:16:47] Catherine: That's a really good point. How do you look at that, if the company is focused on the outcomes versus anything else in particular, not so much on the features? Jill, do you have anything to add on that, with how your team at Automattic works?

Hiring and interviewing through writing

[00:17:06] Jill: I just wanted to echo what we've been saying about asynchronous communication, and writing things down as part of your process as well, and it being a very integral part of product development for distributed teams. But I guess for a lot of teams, because of COVID, it definitely emphasizes that feeling of writing more than designing. Automattic, as I mentioned before, having been distributed for 15 years, definitely has built a culture around this kind of asynchronous communication.

[00:17:43] Interestingly — and I was mentioning this to Catherine before — the vast majority of our interview processes and our hiring process is actually just through writing. Some of my colleagues mentioned that they went through the entire interview process, they were hired, they joined the company, and then like two months later they spoke to somebody with their mouths. Through the entire process they were just writing and chatting, and writing and chatting. It's really a very intentional process that has been designed to prioritize that kind of communication and to make sure that you are comfortable communicating in that way, even as you are developing products and ideating on features and all that.

[00:18:35] Catherine: Yeah, it's interesting. And I will throw this out to either Christine or Sigit, or Naz and Henny — I shouldn't do that, but I will in this instance. I can't imagine hiring and not speaking to somebody at all, and going through that process. I'll start with Sigit, if that's okay. Would you be comfortable with that, at Shopify, hiring anybody?

[00:19:04] Sigit: I cannot really speak on behalf of Shopify, but if I were the one who is hiring, maybe not 100% yet. I know probably some companies do that, like Automattic, but I think there are some nuances that we need to get from real-life conversations. But I think it all depends on what the company is. If they value thinking more than verbal speaking skills, or maybe because they are naturally a distributed team so they want to make sure that people can document their writing, then I think it's in all fairness.

[00:19:50] Catherine: Yeah. And I guess, Naz, what was the hiring process like? What is the hiring process at Grab?

[00:19:58] Naz: We do virtual, we do Zoom calls. Prior to the C-word, pretty... yeah, I mean, quite traditional. Prior to that, of course, with me, in person. So maybe two or three rounds. We bring people in and have a conversation, and each round is about different components you care about. One might be, hey, first of all, do you have the skills and the interest for the role? Then we really have a focus on culture: what are your cultural values, in terms of feedback and hunger and your drive, and various components. So it was always in person, but after that we just switched to Zoom. Very traditional, just flipped from in-person interviews to Zoom interviews. Nothing too radical.

Release speed and experiments

[00:20:48] Catherine: It's very interesting. So to summarize the two approaches, in particular Automattic and Shopify: both companies are very autonomy driven, so you put a lot of ownership on the teams, if I am correct in saying, and on the individual, but in two very different ways. Christine, do you think that you have got better personality types because of the way that you hire people? Of course they're laughing and saying yes, of course you do. But does it lend itself... what is the retention rate like, what is the outcome, how fast do you release at Shopify?

[00:21:39] Christine: You mean how fast we... what do you mean by how fast we release?

[00:21:44] Catherine: How fast, yes, sorry, in terms of your products and your features. How fast would the developer team — and I know it's not your particular area — how fast would you get your product out there, and your updates?

[00:21:59] Christine: Okay, so it actually varies, so I can answer and then Sigit probably will have a different answer, because my product is in growth. So growth product, it's natural we want to run quicker sprints, therefore we do a lot of experiments, and then from the experiment we go to the next stage. In a way we release pretty quickly. Usually for one MVP it could take, for example, like one month or a couple of weeks to release. But if it's a pure UX[?] or so, it's just web design, and then we can do quick changes, you can release in a week or over a couple of days as well.

[00:22:50] However, we always do A/B tests, therefore it's not released to the mass market. We'll separate a specific target and then match that with our data to run the test, and then gradually enlarge the pool to the audience, into the market.

[00:23:11] Catherine: Great. Sigit, did you have anything to add to that?

[00:23:16] Sigit: Yeah, so I think it depends on the teams inside Shopify. Some teams ship faster than the other teams. I think it depends on the skill and the level of the product as well. But generally speaking, outside of being outcomes, we are also trying to ship things in new time, so we are not really a truly waterfall company where you can drag along and learn later. We prefer to ship something now and learn now, even though the shipping means learning. I think it's better to at least learn something from it, even though it's just research, for example.

Design-driven products with a high developer ratio

[00:24:06] Catherine: That's interesting. Jill, I'm going to ask you a tough question. You've worked for both Automattic and Zendesk, two very different processes. Zendesk would have a lower ratio of designers to developers versus Automattic, if I'm correct. So the first question is, does Automattic, are they design driven if they've got so many developers, and how does that work? And the second one would be, which would be your favorite to work for, which process? At Automattic, would they have a design head on them, or how does that work when you've got such a large developer ratio, that a lot of people would argue is not ideal?

[00:25:03] Jill: Yeah, I definitely think that that is an interesting question, particularly as a designer. You do think about, like, is our product design driven? Which I think is a little bit of a self-serving perspective to take, I feel, particularly if you're a designer, you're in the design team. And I do think that it's true that if you just have a lower percentage of designers, your products may naturally become less design driven, if you define that as designers taking the lead in certain things.

[00:25:42] I would say, as I mentioned briefly before, I do think that we have a lot of developers who really are very passionate about UX, and I think I've seen that maybe more often at Automattic compared to Zendesk. Not that the Zendesk developers are not passionate about user experience, but I think at Automattic they sort of have to be, because they really may not have a designer working with them at all. So I think they are very much empowered and free to explore their interest in UI and UX. I think you do see a lot more developers who are wearing all the hats at once, just because there maybe isn't even a design resource for them to talk to.

[00:26:28] In terms of your second question on which do I prefer... okay, this is a bit of a cop-out, but they both really have their pros and cons. I think when you have a very big and influential design team, you definitely have opportunities that you may not have in another company as a design org, and additionally you can learn from so many more people, just because your design team is bigger and maybe more mature. But when you're in kind of a scrappy environment like Automattic is — even though it is a fairly, you know, it's not a new company, but it still maintains that kind of very scrappy, self-driven environment for everyone in the product development process — I definitely think that that kind of autonomy to explore different things and to try out different roles that you may not have been able to try out, different areas of the product development process, is super cool as well. So yeah, I like both.

[00:27:45] Catherine: That's an absolute fair answer, and probably a good one publicly. Naz, I'll ask you, just regarding Grab and the team and the pods, how have you found the release times there? Is it faster than other places you've worked, or better or worse, or just different?

[00:28:09] Naz: I would echo what the others have said about how the shipping time really depends on each product and how it's scoped, with the engineering effort that's involved. Similarly, we do a lot of experiments prior to releasing. We release to different cohorts as well, A/B test, to ensure that there's no negative consequence, or that it's not affecting the experience in a way that doesn't work within our targets or metrics. Some efforts are broken up across quarters, some are faster to ship.

[00:28:45] As a research team we are primarily working with designers and the PMs, a little less with the engineers. The engineers work with us insofar as we invite them to be a part of our research and workshops, to collaborate on ideating the ideas, to be able to see the customer problems, rally around those problems and brainstorm how to approach them, with engineering constraints and with the business constraints. The content strategists will be there, designers will be there, so we're all in the same space doing that research together to find a way forward. And then from there, what comes out of that, what features, what product ideas, that goes down the pipeline. Those timings are very varied, I would say, based on the feature.

Pace, focus and learning at Grab

[00:29:40] Catherine: Great. And I'll circle back to Henny on productivity. You've worked at very traditional research organizations outside of the tech industry up until now. How do you find the pace at Grab, and the workflow, in terms of deep focus and deep thought versus being almost in a virtual open-plan setting?

[00:30:11] Henny: Yeah, actually, if I compare to my previous companies, it's quite different from Grab. As Naz mentioned before, I'm in Jakarta and Naz is based in Singapore, so we are based in different countries. And how do we still communicate with each other and make sure that we align on our goals and things other than that? It will probably be the most interesting experience that I had, working in Grab, because I learned that the culture is very supportive. As a team we support each other and we learn from each other, and that's quite an interesting way for me to grow.

Tools for tracking experiments

[00:31:11] Catherine: That's really interesting. And it is a good point, it is about growth. Sigit, you're on this Slack channel and I wanted you to clarify or go into a little bit more detail on the question that Rory asked, which was what tools you use to track your experiments and cohorts. You have your own internal tool. Could you explain why you went down that approach?

[00:31:45] Sigit: In terms of the reason why we use internal tools, I think it's been going on for a few years, even before I joined, so I couldn't say the reason for that. But yes, we do use a couple of internal tools that we build ourselves. I think that helps us to make sure that the tools that we use conform to how we do things, and also conform to the purpose that we want to use it for. We also use third-party tools, but I feel like we use the best of both worlds. So I think it depends on the use case as well.

[00:32:34] Catherine: It is interesting. And both, I guess, Grab and Automattic, do you use any tools, or are they internally created? Like, as in to track your experiments, apologies. Is there a tool that you use internally that you've built, or is there any tool that you use to track your experiments, that works, and your team processes?

[00:33:06] Naz: Yeah, similar to what you mentioned at Shopify: Grab, we have our internal tool to run and track experiments that everyone can tap on, so it's accessible Grab-wide to any PM to use.

Burnout and setting boundaries

[00:33:21] Catherine: Great. And I will go on to you, Christine. There's a question on burnout. Is there a risk of your team getting burned out with the always-on mentality?

[00:33:41] Christine: I have to be honest, potentially yes. But I think in a way...

[00:33:56] Catherine: I think Christine has frozen. Sorry, Christine, I don't know whether it was on your end or our end, but if you could just repeat the question, because it froze there for a second.

[00:34:08] Christine: Okay, how's that? Is it working now? Okay. I think there's the potential to be burnt out, but the pressure comes from ourselves, because our work is very self-driven. However, Shopify is very famous for doing less and choosing the work which is to be impactful. Therefore we don't have to always be working, or work a lot to prove ourselves to be valuable, but to choose things that we feel are most meaningful for ourselves as well as for the company growth.

[00:34:50] In a way we don't have to be burned out, as soon as we find a way to schedule our own life. Because in a way nobody will force you to join an 11 o'clock p.m. meeting unless you want to. You could be creative, to create an async way to communicate with other members. It's really back to your own hands. Therefore, if one person like myself sometimes felt nervous or felt burnt out, I realized the pressure actually comes from myself, and then in a way I can train myself to be a better person, to control my own time and then to cultivate the relationships that I felt actually are important to me.

[00:35:39] Catherine: It's a really interesting one, and it goes down to autonomy for the individual. I've worked, and I've mentioned this on the call, like for example Jovi on the team, I would imagine very self-driven and self-motivated. She takes on a lot of challenges and runs with it. But there are other people, not on my team — just to clarify, because all of our team are wonderful — but there are other people I've worked with in the past, for example, that need that structure, and they won't thrive in that same environment. Are you missing out on that person, because they also have value to add, as well as somebody who's self-driven? Both Naz and Jill are nodding furiously, so I'll go to Naz first. What would you think on that topic?

[00:36:38] Naz: I was just nodding because it's an interesting question. Once the pandemic started, and work and life started blending in ways that many of us were not used to, there was a lot to adapt to. What I actually appreciated was that the Grab team, the people operations team, they sent us a guide on how to hold a conversation, about how to communicate with your team members. They encouraged us to meet and talk about what are the best ways to communicate with you, what are the hours that work with you, what are some of your needs — maybe you have kids and you absolutely need to be off from 5 p.m. and maybe you'll come back at 10. How fast is your response time? To really set expectations and boundaries with one another.

[00:37:18] And having that conversation — I mean, it seemed like, okay, we'll just have a conversation and talk about it, but it sensitizes us to one another a little bit more, it creates a bit more empathy for what everyone's going through. That I think helps a little bit with managing something like burnout, because we don't expect people to be pinging you in the evening or night, unless there's a certain scenario that comes up. So I do personally value the ability to switch off, and I think everyone should have that space to be able to do so. How do we ensure that's possible, how do we ensure bandwidth? So really, how you set boundaries, and how can you, as a lead of a team, help everyone else understand that it's okay to set boundaries as well. That's how we cope through it.

[00:38:10] And I think the thing about being in research is sometimes you can't get out of your research mode, you're just in it. You're in the field, you're doing interviews end to end, you're analyzing it, you're writing a report, and then you're presenting, and you have to get it done by then. So there are peak moments, and then also recognize and give yourself the off-peak moment, acknowledge it for what it is, and speak up when it's not working well, and see what we can do to negotiate what's on your plate. That's my take on it.

[00:38:44] Catherine: There is a lot of sense there. It is a good topic, so I was very keen to hear from Christine. I think you're right, you said it for yourself, but it's also about how you set that with one another as well, because we do work together, whether it's asynchronously or not.

What structure means in a remote company

[00:39:04] Catherine: Sorry Christine, I was just going to say, continue.

[00:39:07] Christine: Oh sorry, yeah. I just felt it's a very interesting topic, because last time, since you mentioned about structure, I keep asking myself what does it mean. I feel like in a remote setting, structure needs to be redefined, because we used to be... the old structure is very hierarchical in lots of big corporates, so people know when to go to work, who is around, then what to do. But if you deconstruct that concept, the structure actually defines: hey, everybody knows their mission and their objective, so they know where to go, what to do.

[00:39:51] Then the other layer actually is who is around you, so our structure is defined by the people around us. Therefore Shopify, although it seems it doesn't have a very strong structure, however we still have a clear definition of the people around us, and then even give you the freedom that encourages you to build your own network and circle, and to charge the trust battery with people around you. Therefore actually it's a stronger network in a way.

[00:40:28] Then the third thing inside of structure is your everyday life. Therefore for a remote company it's very important to set up the rituals. The rituals actually will help your employees to define their everyday life. Therefore, back to your question: will a person who really needs a structure feel lost after he or she joined Shopify? I don't think so, but however there definitely will be a time that he or she needs to readjust. But the company does do a very good job at creating that virtual structure to support all the people working.

Companies we admire

[00:41:13] Catherine: It would be interesting to hear what the audience feels as well, on an individual basis, of what their personality types are like, and if that lends themselves to a specific company that they would thrive in. I think it's worth noting for future growth. But I guess with that, because we do have to wrap up shortly, I wanted to ask each person: what would be a company that they would admire, from a team outside of their own, from a team and culture and productivity and product perspective, and briefly on why? Christine, I'll ask you first if you have any thoughts.

[00:42:12] Christine: Of course I would say Shopify will be a company I feel admired. But actually, to be fair, I admire all the companies still alive and being really positive and trying to create impact to the society. The companies that I will admire will be the ones that have a very clear mission and then are really honest to the mission and to what it wants to do. Because I think a company actually is the business, so the business is to make money, however you can choose the way to make money. And it also relates to all the people working inside of a company, because it keeps us getting a salary, therefore we can support our own family. However, the way they treat their people actually will impact thousands of lives.

[00:43:16] So in a way I do admire Shopify, because I actually felt quite happy after I joined, and I felt inspired every day. And then when I think about Monday I don't feel sad, actually I feel quite excited, because there are new questions for me to solve and new things for me to learn.

[00:43:37] Catherine: I think that's really valuable. I think owning the mission, what you said, I think is really a strong point. And then the final, for both the individual and the team — on an individual level, I think going to work every day happy is really lovely. But one thing I'd add is that it's up to the individual as well, to say if they're not happy and to be that change, rather than hoping that the company will change for them. Too often you see people sitting and they don't do anything about it. But I think more companies are — I don't know what other people think on that — but more companies are leaning towards that mission approach, and whether that be trying to do better for the environment, whilst obviously making a business benefit on revenue, as you've pointed out, Christine. Jill, did you have any thoughts on that?

[00:44:34] Jill: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. Actually, one thing that came to my mind when you asked it was, I think when you and I were chatting before this and you were mentioning that you want to build a community of, I think you mentioned, kindness. I do think that that is a value that I connect very strongly with, across different teams and different organizations. I feel like it's very clear when that is a value of the team or the leadership: kindness and respect towards one another. I feel like that's something that I was...

[00:45:12] Catherine: Does anyone have any companies that actually align with these missions, because they are all really great? And the answer can be no, if it's not out there yet. I do think that there are companies that are evolving into this. You hear more talks on thinking about the longer term of building. Shopify, I believe your founder, he's a designer, and he thinks about the next 100 years, if I'm correct, not just in the moment. Could you maybe talk more on that, maybe Sigit?

[00:45:48] Sigit: Yeah, so I think Shopify is committed to be a hundred-year company. What that means is that it does so by building a sustainable business. And with regards to your question, what kind of process, product or company is ideal, I think this is one of them. In a way, if I would summarize it, a company or a product should care about the people. You can see people as being the customers, or maybe people who work inside the company. So by focusing on the people I think we can be more sustainable, and it enhances Shopify's mission to be a 100-year company. I think it makes sense.

Q&A

[00:46:37] Catherine: I think it's a really valid point. We do have to wrap up, but this is the last question, because it's from a member of the audience and I think it's a nice finish. It's based on the Singapore community. It's from Artem, and he says: do you think a vast majority of Singapore software development companies utilize team empowerment and a supportive management style, or is it command and control? So is it this empowerment that you talk about, or is it command and control? I think it's a heated question. Maybe Henny or Naz could answer that.

[00:47:18] Naz: Yeah, I don't know if I'm sufficiently familiar with the vast majority of software companies, so I will refrain from speaking to that. Whether it's a supportive management style or command and control, to be honest I have no idea. Just going to be honest there.

[00:47:35] Catherine: Christine, did you have thoughts?

[00:47:39] Christine: I have to say I'm not familiar with all the Singaporean companies, especially the software companies. I can only speak from my past work experience, comparing traditional big corporate experience from myself, as well as for example right now this experience working with Shopify, which is a Canadian-based global software company. Traditionally, the last generation, yes, it's more control and then very demanding, straight. And then people are, in a way, they are efficient and great, because of that strict organization structure as well as very strict way of management. So to our boss we always feel respect, and then we choose words to speak, and then we need to spend a lot of energy to understand how to live in the corporate politics.

[00:48:52] However, I think there are more and more software companies in general started by young and ambitious and also inspirational entrepreneurs, and for those companies a lot of them are software companies, and then I can see for those companies they actually use a new way to manage the company. So I think in general it's not like a Singaporean company or an American company or a Taiwanese company, it's more back to the company itself and the people who started it.

[00:49:30] But from my personal management experience, I actually believe a mission-driven company, and also a company driven by autonomy, and also by positive energy, and also by giving the power back to all the individuals — although maybe in the short term it seems kind of scary and not as efficient as before, but in the long term actually you're going to be more profitable and then can last and be more sustainable for longer, like 100 years.

[00:50:12] Catherine: Yeah, and I think that's a really lovely note to end on. Thank you all so, so much. To the audience: the team have a phenomenal background and are really individually great at their work, so if you do have any questions, please do ask the speakers, and we can forward them on to email and get a response, or they can respond directly to this.