Lori Walsh: Some South Dakota companies have struggled with the decision to allow employees to work from home. Others were ready for action before coronavirus had a major impact on their community. John T. Meyer is owner and CEO of Lemonly in Sioux falls and he's joining us on the phone today to talk about helping your employees make the transition, best practices for working from home and leadership during times of crisis. John T, Welcome. Thanks for being here.
John T. Meyer: Hey, Lori. Happy to be here. Good to see you.
Lori Walsh: So Lemonly made the decision to go remote entirely fairly early in this game. That's something that you were prepared to do partially because of the kind of business that you are, but partially because you wanted to take a stand early. Tell us a little bit about that decision making process.
John T. Meyer: Yeah, you bet. So we do a weekly Wednesday leadership meeting every Wednesday, that's redundant, and last week we sat there and said, "Look." We started to take the survey of the landscape and South Dakota, we're looking okay, but we decided, "Let's be bold and let's make the move early and show people that we can all figure this out as a business."
Now granted, as you said earlier, we're fortunate. We do most of our work online. We do have meetings with clients, but those can move to video calls, phone calls. So we understand that's a privilege and so we recognized that first. But we wanted to say, "Look, for those of you who probably can do it but haven't tried, consider it." And also I think our policy last week was to everyone, "If you're not feeling well, certainly work from home." And I think that just puts a lot more stress and decision making on the team. And so we finally said, "Let's set a deadline." We set Monday, that's yesterday. And that gave everybody a couple of days to clean up their desk, take any hardware that they needed to take home and just kind of mentally prepare. And so as of yesterday, everyone was on a video call and we're trying to do business as usual.
Lori Walsh: Yeah, we had our, it's not our first Skype meeting, but it was a Skype meeting with a large number of people today and I remember thinking as we did this, "We really are going to keep this kind of thing in the future." So talk a little bit about, as people navigate and learn how to work remotely, we're also taking time to realize that some of these things are things that could be innovations that we implement for best practices in an ongoing basis.
John T. Meyer: Yeah, I already saw the cartoon, right? The guy staring at his computer and he said, "Oh my gosh, I realized that all those meetings could have actually been email." And so I think some people have said, "Remote work is going to have it's moment right now." Some out of necessity. It's going to go great for some companies and they're going to realize this is something we can do. It's not a scary thing. I actually trust my employees and it's going to be really hard for others. Some companies just weren't prepared or ready. And so I feel for those organizations and the remote experience might be very challenging.
And so yeah, what I usually say and in our world has changed in about a week or two, but I normally tell the companies, "Just try it." I always say, "Use the 'e' word, which is in experiment." And so whether you say, "Let's just try one day a week," or, "Let's try the first Thursday of every month and let employees try it on for size and feel it out." And then what I say to employees then is, "Go home and work your butt off." Be very productive, very organized, be effective and show your team, your boss, your manager that you can do it."
Now I realize all things can change. Schools are closed, kids are at home and companies are being thrusted into this whether they like it or not and I think that's the hard part. So a few best practices. I always suggest you really need to over-communicate, whether you're using phone calls, conference calls, Slack, whatever it is, you need to be over-communicated. And that's really where it keeps the trust going, where it keeps the communication lines open. So hey, I'm jumping offline to serve. Even I, I have my four year old here, so she's on the call with me right now.
Lori Walsh: Perfect. A great example, yeah.
John T. Meyer: Exactly, yeah. Tell your team what you're doing and if you're busy. What? And I'm going to go to work. Thanks Margo. Sorry about that.
Lori Walsh: No, I'm not, because we've had that before where we'll have a radio conversation and somebody's kids or dogs will come in and I'm like, "No, we're setting the example that they're part of our lives right now. They're part of our community." So hey!
John T. Meyer: Yeah, this is real, right?
Lori Walsh: It's real.
John T. Meyer: We are all going through it and honestly that's the part that's probably... I know how to work from home. Lemonly knows how to work from home. But doubling as an employee and as a school teacher has been challenging.
Lori Walsh: And for a lot of people, and not to break this down to a gender role, but a lot of women really struggle with allowing themselves to say, "Yeah, I'm taking care of my kids right now" too. So it's a good example for you to set to just say, "This is what we're doing and this is the new normal for a while at least." So be super productive and over-communicate. What are some other best practices, John?
John T. Meyer: Yeah, I think setting the culture and mindset around the remote work, I think we get too obsessed with the tools. So thinking about, should we do Zoom? Should we do Skype? Should we do Slack? Should we do... The tools are there and they work, but the tools will not be a cure all. You need managers, leaders, CEOs, you need to embrace the idea of remote work. I'll get a question if I give a talk about this topic, "How do you know your employees are actually working?" Well then I usually say, "If you don't trust them, you probably shouldn't have hired them in the first place."
And so I think that's one of the first thing leaders and managers need to let go is trust your people. Trust them. If you think you hired the right people, you hired them for a reason, let them work. But also everyone deserves a little bit of grace right now. Things are stressful. There's a lot of uncertainty and it feels like every decision you're making as a leader right now has a 24 hour expiration date. It just seems like the facts keep changing. First it's no events more than 250 and then it's 50 and now it's 10. These are hard to operate and so I think everyone also should give leaders grace that a decision is a decision for now and maybe not etched in stone as a new policy. Hopefully in a few weeks we can all get back to our offices.
Lori Walsh: Knowing that going in. And you also said in a Facebook post and a video that you posted that you don't know what the future is for Lemonly right now. You don't know what the future is for your employees, for yourself. You've still got a brick and mortar space that you have to pay a lease on, or I'm assuming... There's still bills to be paid and even you don't really know the future, but you're stepping into this role as leader saying "We're figuring out this future together." I thought that was really inspirational. I needed to hear that, that message at that moment. I don't even work for Lemonly.
John T. Meyer: I think what I recommend right now to any business owner, any person, any organization, is to really put your customer, put your customer, your family, put whoever you can first. Operate from a place of giving. And it's not a sales pitch. It's not a, "How can we make money off of this? How can this affect our bottom line?" You're exactly right. I don't know what Lemonly looks like in 2 or 6 or 12 months, but I know we're going to get through this and it'll probably look different in some way, but I think our world is going to look different forever after this. And so right now, you have the opportunity to really give first.
And I find that leadership can be lonely and sometimes I get my in own head when I'm by myself and so if I can be calling people, checking in on people, giving, checking in on my team and our customers and reaching out and just saying, "How can we help you? I have nothing to sell you. Just, what do you need right now?" Because not only is that the right thing to do, but it's a time where you can probably gain a customer for life because when we get through this, and we will, on the other end, we're going to have a new way to work and a new way to do business and those people will remember that you were there for them.
So I love seeing restaurants stepping up and saying, "Hey, this is scary, this is hard, but we'll do delivery. We'll do pickup." I got a text message from Parkers', that's a place that my wife and I love to go, that said, "Would you want to order carry outs?" And this is Parker's, like fine dining restaurant in Sioux falls. So the rules of the game have changed and you need to be able to change with them.
Lori Walsh: Right. You also say, "Just control the things that you can control." And you quoted Frozen in your video, so I really... or Frozen 2! Which is this wonderful message of, "All you can do is the next right thing." Tell us a little bit about making those leadership decisions, which people in the past maybe have thought stand for longer than 24 hours or even 12 hours or 20 minutes depending on when the next federal press conference is. Understanding that going in and saying, "All you can do is the next best thing. The next right choice is the choice to make."
John T. Meyer: I'm a big believer in a concept called stoicism, which is the idea that you can only control your thoughts and feelings. So someone cuts you off on the freeway, you can get mad at them, but who knows what's going on in their life and their world, what type of day they're having. So what you can control is your thoughts and reactions and emotions to that moment. And I think that's something we all could practice a little bit right now because I've read the articles that say six, eight weeks, like the interview before [inaudible 00:09:59], who knows? And you can get to a dark place when you really start worrying about those things that, frankly, you have no control over.
So what can you do right in front of you? If it's going for a walk and getting some fresh air to clear your head, just sending a text message or making a phone call to a loved one, just checking in to see how they're doing. That's probably the next right thing that you can do. And for now that's all we can focus on and if you can do that and just take it one day at a time, we'll get through this.
Lori Walsh: John T. Meyer is owner and CEO of Lemonly in Sioux falls and I've been tuning into your Facebook video. So more of that, I think, helps people even beyond your own staff with some of those messages. So we appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time.
John T. Meyer: You bet. Thanks for having me. Be well, take care.
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