Welcome to RemoteThatWorks, a weekly newsletter hand-typed by the Valentina Thörner, the Empress of Remote herself. Proudly non-AI, and proudly all-opinions-my-own. To work with me, find me on MentorCruise.
I love conversation card decks to quickly go deep when meeting new people. One of my favourite questions: When making a decision, do you ask “why” or “why not”?
(And I won’t let you get away with “that depends”).
There’s an equivalent question on an organizational level: Do you treat information as open-by-default or closed-by-default?
Do you require justification for putting something public?*
(* public as “accessible for everyone in the company”)
Or do you require justification for keeping something gated?
This question is important, because it defines internal conversations.
It also heavily influences who can take part in these conversations.
Unintential barriers to keep out those who don’t feel like they belong
Imagine you decide to offer a book club in your company.
You loved a specific book related to your domain (e.g. the Product Momentum Gap by
) and want to discuss the findings with other Product professionals in your company.In a closed-by-default system, you create a private channel or space, adding the people who you assume are interested in the book - mainly the product managers and Scrum masters.
Maybe you mention the new book club in an all-hands-meeting, so people can ask to be added to the channel / space.
It sounds super inclusive, and yet…
You are effectively putting extra work on the people who are not part of your pre-defined “in-group”.
They now have to justify (even if just to themselves) about why it makes sense for them to participate.
Asking permission to be part of the book club out of curiosity - is that good enough?
Reading along potentially insightful discussions out of interest - is that active enough?
The result?
You lose potentially really interesting voice.
And you accidentally close the door to learning for those who can’t commit to full immersion just yet.
The people you excluded may well be a product designer who doesn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, or an engineer who’d love to learn more about business decision making - and doesn’t feel like they are close enough to “product” to be part of the book club.
A connected world needs connected brain power
Same situation - in an open-by-default environment.
Again, you create a channel, or a space, open for anyone to join. You invite a couple of people that you think could be interested, and you announce the book club at an all-hands meeting.
People can simply join, they don’t need anyone’s permission.
Some join after the initial announcement. Some find the channel while browsing the channel-list. Some get added by other members, who want to see them included.
The channel isn’t mandatory (not for everyone anyway).
It doesn’t require to be hidden, though.
Discussing a book, a framework, a platform decision, a marketing plan, a website design, a customer insight - most of the conversations that happen day to day within our companies do not require a closed door policy.
Structure matters - choose your tools wisely
If you complain about the lack of serendipity and watercooler moments outside an office environment - why do you silo conversations into closed environments?
If you mourn the absence of “human connection” - why do you frown upon open non-work related channels that connect humans (like an open book club)?
Helping employees discover colleagues with similar interests / sense of humor / ideas / worldviews is a feature, not a bug. Feeling connected at work decreases churn, increases trust and psychological safety, reduces friction, and frankly - adds a lot of fun to daily interactions.
So, when it’s time to reevaluate your tools, think about communication permeability: open-by-default or closed-by-default?
Want more insights into how to create a flourishing remote (product) org? Get in touch on LinkedIn, or find me on MentorCruise.
Or reply to this email - I’ll definitely read your reply and it might spark another newsletter :)