Speaker 1: In March twenty twenty, Simon Griffiths was watching as toilet
Speaker 1: paper sold out across Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. Even
Speaker 1: as the CEO of Toilet Paper Innovators Who Gives a Crap,
Speaker 1: he never imagined the same thing was about to happen
Speaker 1: in Australia, the UK and the US. But on March four,
Speaker 1: things took a dramatic turn as the Great toilet Paper
Speaker 1: was broke out across supermarket aisles. Sales rose by thirty
Speaker 1: to forty times what they would do in a regular day.
Speaker 1: Who Gives a Crap sold out with half a million
Speaker 1: buyers on their waiting list. The challenge excited Simon Griffiths,
Speaker 1: and over an eight week period, the company pushed its
Speaker 1: systems to the absolute limit. So how did Simon keep
Speaker 1: his team motivated? Who Gives a Crap donates fifty percent
Speaker 1: of profits towards building toilets and providing sanitation to those
Speaker 1: in need. So Simon knew that he and his team
Speaker 1: it was their moment to shine. Having a purpose at
Speaker 1: the heart of the company propelled the team into action.
Speaker 1: My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist
Speaker 1: and founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is
Speaker 1: how I work a show about how to help you
Speaker 1: do your best work. So I'm very excited to share
Speaker 1: this chat with Simon because I've actually known him for
Speaker 1: nearly a decade. We first met when we spoke at
Speaker 1: Tedex Melbourne together, and I remember running an idea generation
Speaker 1: session for Who Gives a Crap when they had just
Speaker 1: launched and were still working out of Simon's inner city apartment.
Speaker 1: In this chat, Simon gets really practical about a whole
Speaker 1: range of things, from how he thinks about goal setting,
Speaker 1: how he links purpose with productivity, and how he is
Speaker 1: obsessed with working on his weaknesses. So let's start by
Speaker 1: going back to March twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: It was a really interesting time for me personally. We'd
Speaker 2: had a second child at the end of January, and
Speaker 2: so I was six weeks into my eight weeks of
Speaker 2: parental leave, and I noticed that our daily sales in
Speaker 2: the last couple of days of February were up fifty percent.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And we'd sort of seen
Speaker 2: the run on toilet paper in Hong Kong and then
Speaker 2: Singapore and Japan and said, oh, that would never happen
Speaker 2: in any of the markets we're in. You know, you
Speaker 2: imagine that phenomenon in Australia or the UK, the US,
Speaker 2: It's just not possible. And then the first day of March,
Speaker 2: our sales were up two x on a regular day.
Speaker 2: The next day they were up five x on a
Speaker 2: regular day, and the day after that they hit twelve x.
Speaker 2: And then they looked like they were going to do
Speaker 2: thirty to forty times what a regular day of sales
Speaker 2: would be on the fourth of March. And so we realized,
Speaker 2: you know, pretty quickly that this phenomenon that we'd seen
Speaker 2: happen in other parts of the world was happening here
Speaker 2: in Australia and photos of empty shelves are being shared
Speaker 2: on social media, and we just had tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of social media it's coming in saying why are you
Speaker 2: buying toilet paper from supermarkets? You should be buying from
Speaker 2: he gives a crap. They sell environmentally friendly product and
Speaker 2: use their profits to help build toilets. And so we
Speaker 2: got sent viral by our customers and that was what
Speaker 2: led to this exponential growth day on day that got
Speaker 2: us to the point where we realized pretty quickly that
Speaker 2: we had to mark our stores sold out to hold
Speaker 2: onto product for our subscribers. We want to make sure
Speaker 2: never ever run out of product again, and our business
Speaker 2: customers who we knew relied on us to keep the
Speaker 2: bathroom in their businesses running, and so we marked our
Speaker 2: site as sold out. We sold out globally pretty quickly,
Speaker 2: and we turned on an email sign up so you
Speaker 2: could find out when we were back in stock. We
Speaker 2: thought we'd get a few thousand people on that waitlist,
Speaker 2: and we ended up with more than half a million
Speaker 2: people on there, which was a little bit unexpected and
Speaker 2: created a pretty serious business challenge of how do we
Speaker 2: get toilet paper to the most people possible?
Speaker 1: Wow, half a million. Do you remember your emotions, like
Speaker 1: how are you feeling day to day or hour to
Speaker 1: hour during this insane period of time?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was crazy. And I think the other part
Speaker 2: of that was I got phone calls from like radio
Speaker 2: stations at six in the morning, and we had a
Speaker 2: six week old baby at home and I was looking
Speaker 2: after our four year old son at the same time,
Speaker 2: and so I got pulled back from parental leave and
Speaker 2: basically did before week of media. So was driving to
Speaker 2: and from TV interviews and doing radio in the car
Speaker 2: and talking to journalists in between, and it was really
Speaker 2: full on kind of an amazing way to come back
Speaker 2: into the business because it was a real kind of
Speaker 2: high which was super fun. But yeah, I think it
Speaker 2: was really mixed emotions across the company. I think there's
Speaker 2: an excitement to it, which is pretty amazing to be
Speaker 2: in a business that's really humming and buzzing, but also
Speaker 2: this terrifying feeling of knowing that this is happening because
Speaker 2: there's something horrible going on in the world and that's
Speaker 2: creating a whole lot of panic that is obviously not
Speaker 2: good to have in society. And then for our teams,
Speaker 2: I think some of the growth side of the business
Speaker 2: so like this is incredible, on some of the upside
Speaker 2: of the business are like, oh my god, we're going
Speaker 2: to run out of stock. And so there was even
Speaker 2: those mixed emotions going on in our team, which made
Speaker 2: it quite hard to really keep our eye on the
Speaker 2: ball because there was a lot of emotion makes it
Speaker 2: hard to be rational, and there was a lot of
Speaker 2: emotion at that point in time.
Speaker 1: Definitely, an emotion makes decision making a whole lot harder.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, at a really practical level, how did you
Speaker 1: change the way that you approached your work during that time.
Speaker 2: What happened was we realized, in the end, more than
Speaker 2: six hundred thousand people on our weight list, we were
Speaker 2: never going to have enough toilet paper in our warehouses
Speaker 2: to be able to email half a million people and
Speaker 2: say hey, we're back in stock, because we'd sell out
Speaker 2: straight away. We have more arriving every week into our warehouse,
Speaker 2: but we'd never have enough to service all of those
Speaker 2: customers at once, and so we had to come up
Speaker 2: with a plan of, you know, how do we try
Speaker 2: to get toilet paper into the most houses possible because
Speaker 2: people don't need a big forty eight roll box, which
Speaker 2: is what they're typically buying from us. They just need
Speaker 2: a six pack today and then send more toilet paper
Speaker 2: in the future. And so we kind of broke the
Speaker 2: problem down into how do we get the most orders
Speaker 2: out possible, And we realized that inventory was the biggest constraint,
Speaker 2: and so we repacked our big forty eight row boxes
Speaker 2: into two twenty four packs so we could double the
Speaker 2: number of orders that we could ship. We hired and
Speaker 2: trained twenty five freelancers in a week to triple our
Speaker 2: customer service capacity, because we knew that if you send
Speaker 2: double the number of orders, you get twice as many
Speaker 2: customer service inquiries coming in. And then we set up
Speaker 2: an invite only version of our website and we sent
Speaker 2: just enough emails every day to sell just enough orders
Speaker 2: to take our warehouses to their absolute daily limits of
Speaker 2: the number of orders that they could pick and pack
Speaker 2: and dispatch before the wheel would fall off. And so
Speaker 2: we did that for eight weeks, sending just enough emails
Speaker 2: every day to take our warehouses to their absolute limits
Speaker 2: based on pick and pack volumes and inventory. And at
Speaker 2: the end of that eight week period, after a lot
Speaker 2: of early mornings, late nights, breaking the Shopify API, like
Speaker 2: all sorts of crazy stuff going on, pushing all of
Speaker 2: our system to their absolute limits, at the end of
Speaker 2: that eight week period, we had got through that whole
Speaker 2: email list and were able to come back in stock
Speaker 2: properly and run the website as normal. And so our
Speaker 2: team at the start of that whole process realized that
Speaker 2: that was our moment to shine as a remote first
Speaker 2: company that sells toilet paper online. It was like we'd
Speaker 2: been training for twenty twenty for the five or six
Speaker 2: years prior, and so everyone's got their heads down and
Speaker 2: worked really hard, knowing that if we got this right
Speaker 2: and we solved this problem in the right way, it
Speaker 2: would ultimately end up in this huge donation at the
Speaker 2: end of the financial which for us is the thirtieth
Speaker 2: of June. And so when we got to the end
Speaker 2: of that mailing list in June and then made a
Speaker 2: five million dollar donation at the end of June, it
Speaker 2: was the icing on the cake of all of this
Speaker 2: incredible work that had come before that. And so back
Speaker 2: to your question of how did we work through that period,
Speaker 2: I think what was really interesting was that there was
Speaker 2: two things that were really important. The first was that
Speaker 2: we framed the problem in the right way, and so
Speaker 2: getting to thective of getting toilet paper to the most
Speaker 2: people possible actually took us a long time to distill
Speaker 2: down that that was the problem that we had to solve,
Speaker 2: and we were trying to figure out, like, we've got
Speaker 2: a global toilet paper problem. How do we solve this?
Speaker 2: Do we ship in toilet paper in seven four seven jets?
Speaker 2: Like what's the right solution here, which obviously for us
Speaker 2: isn't what we wanted to do from an environmental perspective,
Speaker 2: but we're trying to figure out, like, let's look at
Speaker 2: all solutions and see what's possible. And it took to
Speaker 2: getting to the distilled version of how do we get
Speaker 2: toilet paper to the most people possible? That actually allowed
Speaker 2: us to understand what the constraints were in our business
Speaker 2: that would hold us back and how we could overcome
Speaker 2: them to ultimately reach the most people possible. And the
Speaker 2: other part of it was having purpose at the root
Speaker 2: of who we are meant that our team jumped into
Speaker 2: the problem without us having to ask them to work
Speaker 2: early mornings or late nights. I think everyone knew that
Speaker 2: because we had this huge problem in front of us
Speaker 2: and if we got it right, it would mean so
Speaker 2: many new customers coming into the bussiness that we had
Speaker 2: to dig deep and try to solve it to ultimately
Speaker 2: create this amazing donation at the end of the financial year.
Speaker 1: That is amazing. I remember reading that on social media
Speaker 1: and I'm a subscriber as well, so congratulations, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: And you said that purpose is at the root of
Speaker 1: who gives a crap? And you made the decision when
Speaker 1: you started the business that you would donate fifty percent
Speaker 1: of profits to charitable causes. And I wanted to know
Speaker 1: why fifty percent. I mean, it's a nice even number,
Speaker 1: but why not more or why not less?
Speaker 2: The original concept was a nonprofit toilet paper company, and
Speaker 2: we won a spot at a social business incubator in Boulder,
Speaker 2: Colorado called the Unreasonable Institute in the year that we
Speaker 2: did it's now called Uncharted. And while we were there,
Speaker 2: we had all of these mentors from really amazing backgrounds,
Speaker 2: corporate philanthropists, all sorts of very backgrounds, and a lot
Speaker 2: of them challenged us and said, if this is a nonprofit,
Speaker 2: we don't think you can grow it as fast as
Speaker 2: if it's a for profit company, because you won't be
Speaker 2: able to use equity investments to help you accelerate the
Speaker 2: growth of the company. You won't be able to offer
Speaker 2: equity packages to your early staff members who are probably
Speaker 2: taking big pay cuts to come and work for you,
Speaker 2: and all these other things. And so we really felt
Speaker 2: strongly about using the company to create the most impact possible.
Speaker 2: And when we zoomed out and thought, how do we
Speaker 2: create the most impact possible if we're constraining the growth
Speaker 2: of the business by the nonprofit status, then is there
Speaker 2: a version of it being a for profit business that
Speaker 2: can actually be more impactful. And we got to the
Speaker 2: place of, well, if we can grow at least twice
Speaker 2: as fast, then we can have more impact donating fifty
Speaker 2: percent of our profits if that enables that extra two
Speaker 2: x plus growth, And so that was the theory behind it,
Speaker 2: but really wanting to keep the core message to our
Speaker 2: customer that without the sanitation problem existing in the developing world,
Speaker 2: there was no reason for our business to exist, and
Speaker 2: so fifty percent of profits really sent that message home.
Speaker 2: Of the reason why we exist is because the sanitation
Speaker 2: problem is there, and we believe that this fifty percent
Speaker 2: mechanism will allow us to tackle that problem in the
Speaker 2: fastest way possible. And we think that's that's played out.
Speaker 2: You know, the fifty percent model means that we have
Speaker 2: cash flow in the business to be able to grow
Speaker 2: the business year on year. It's been able to help
Speaker 2: us now go global and we sell into thirty six
Speaker 2: countries globally today with warehousing in three continents, and as
Speaker 2: a result of kind of getting that fifty percent right,
Speaker 2: we think that we have definitely been able to grow
Speaker 2: more than twice as big, and ultimately that's meant that
Speaker 2: we'll have more impact today but importantly more impact in
Speaker 2: the long run as well.
Speaker 1: I feel like I can I can hear birds chirping
Speaker 1: in the background. Is that right?
Speaker 2: That's a real yeah. We live in our south of
Speaker 2: Melbourne on the Moines and Peninsula and it's a like
Speaker 2: a hazard of doing podcasts. Oh, I love it.
Speaker 1: It's an unusual sound that I don't often hear when
Speaker 1: I'm interviewing people, but it's probably a good segue into
Speaker 1: the fact that you are a remote first organization and
Speaker 1: you did it way before it was almost a business requirement.
Speaker 1: And I want to know, having been a remote first
Speaker 1: organization for many years, how do you balance having staff
Speaker 1: work from anywhere but making sure that they're motivated and
Speaker 1: proactive when you can't actually see them every day.
Speaker 2: What we come back to around motivation is Dan Pink's
Speaker 2: theory from Drive around motivation not being linked to money
Speaker 2: or remuneration or in this instance, FaceTime. It's linked to autonomy,
Speaker 2: mastery and purpose, and so we think a lot about
Speaker 2: how to build those three things into our business. You know,
Speaker 2: autonomy being setting clear goals and then getting out of
Speaker 2: the way and allowing people to achieve them. Mastery being
Speaker 2: working on a core skill set that someone wants to
Speaker 2: truly master themselves, and purpose being something that we're very
Speaker 2: lucky to have embedded in our DNA and have it
Speaker 2: in spades. But so we have to think a lot
Speaker 2: about how do we connect the everyday actions of the
Speaker 2: team to the greater purpose that we have as business.
Speaker 2: And so we have our thirty year b HAG, which
Speaker 2: is to make sure that everyone in the world has
Speaker 2: access to a toilet. And then we have our five
Speaker 2: year vision, which tells us where we need to be
Speaker 2: in the next five years to enable us to hit
Speaker 2: that thirty year goal. And then from there we come
Speaker 2: down to our annual strategy, which tells us what we
Speaker 2: have to do this year to set us up to
Speaker 2: hit that five year vision to get to the thirty
Speaker 2: year b HAG. And then from there we come down
Speaker 2: to our quarterly OKRs, which tell us what the company
Speaker 2: has to do and what every team has to do,
Speaker 2: and for a lot of individuals, what every individual has
Speaker 2: to do this quarter to help us hit the individual goals,
Speaker 2: to hit the functional goals, to hit the team goals
Speaker 2: to hit our annual strategy, to hit our five year vision,
Speaker 2: to hit that thirty year b HAG. And if we
Speaker 2: get that right, then it purposes a part of those OKRs,
Speaker 2: and so it kind of lines up autonomy and the
Speaker 2: clear goal setting and then getting out of people's way
Speaker 2: mastery where people are working on those core skill sets
Speaker 2: that we check in on every year to make sure
Speaker 2: that they're still the right skill set or developing people
Speaker 2: in the right way, and then purpose really understand how
Speaker 2: what we're doing today and this quarter ultimately helps us
Speaker 2: to get to that big thirty year goal that we have.
Speaker 2: And so when we get that right, the motivation just
Speaker 2: comes from there and it's not something that we have
Speaker 2: to think too much about. You know, we need to
Speaker 2: obviously check that we're moving in the right direction, but
Speaker 2: it's really embedded into how we work and so we
Speaker 2: just trust that people will do the right thing and
Speaker 2: we also want to give them the flexibility so that
Speaker 2: a big part of not being in the office is
Speaker 2: that you can do things that you would not otherwise
Speaker 2: be able to do. So you can drop the kids
Speaker 2: off or pick them up from school. You can, for
Speaker 2: me personally, go surfing when the swells good and the
Speaker 2: wind's blowing offshore, which doesn't happen all that often, and
Speaker 2: you don't want to miss those great surf days. If
Speaker 2: it's important to you, you can go to the gym. And
Speaker 2: we have this belief that if you're on a call
Speaker 2: with someone and they'd rather be somewhere else, then you
Speaker 2: probably don't want to be on that call with someone
Speaker 2: while they're thinking about that other thing that they could
Speaker 2: be doing. And so people make it clear and transparent
Speaker 2: around what it is that they're doing in the middle
Speaker 2: of the day to pick up their kids from school
Speaker 2: or go surfing and have that much the calendar, but
Speaker 2: that they'll make that up and make sure that their
Speaker 2: work gets done throughout the rest of the week in
Speaker 2: the way that makes the most sense for them. And
Speaker 2: so we have always flipped that work life balance on
Speaker 2: its head and think about it more as being life
Speaker 2: work balance as long as the performance outcomes are there
Speaker 2: and we're achieving what we need to, which our business
Speaker 2: is a big requirement because we're still growing very quickly,
Speaker 2: and that requires a lot of discipline to make sure
Speaker 2: that we get that right.
Speaker 1: So life work balance, so people are putting things like
Speaker 1: school pickup or dentist appointment or whatever in their work diary.
Speaker 1: So how else are you driving that life work balance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question. I'm sort of not going
Speaker 2: to directly answer your question here, but I don't think
Speaker 2: it's as simple as I'm making it out there. I
Speaker 2: think we also realize that FaceTime is very important, and
Speaker 2: so we started with a completely remote team initially, and
Speaker 2: I think probably two or three years in we brought
Speaker 2: everyone together for the first time and realized how much
Speaker 2: benefit there was from having FaceTime together. Now, some companies
Speaker 2: would have said, well, we need to have an office
Speaker 2: and co locate everyone and make sure that we've got
Speaker 2: FaceTime every day, whereas we said, how do we create
Speaker 2: those moments of FaceTime on the right frequency that makes
Speaker 2: sense for the teams and the company in order to
Speaker 2: get the outcomes that we need without sacrificing the benefits
Speaker 2: that people have from the flexibility that comes from being
Speaker 2: able to work remotely most of the time. And so
Speaker 2: we ended up making a few shifts. We stopped hiring
Speaker 2: people anywhere in the world and instead started to focus
Speaker 2: our hiring on global hubs. So in Australia, we've got
Speaker 2: Melbourne's our hub. In the Philippines, we have Manilla. In
Speaker 2: the US, we have LA and we've focused our hiring
Speaker 2: on those areas so that although people are working from
Speaker 2: home a lot of the time, they can still come
Speaker 2: together and do things socially or spend time in the
Speaker 2: office and for different functions, particularly in Australia, we've got
Speaker 2: more operational functions where there's more focus on deep work
Speaker 2: or headphone style work. People prefer to work at home
Speaker 2: a bit more. And so the Melbourne Hub said, will
Speaker 2: come together one day a week and we'll choose what
Speaker 2: day that is individually, so not everyone will be in
Speaker 2: the office at the same time, whereas our LA Hub
Speaker 2: we're working more on marketing and digital product and creative,
Speaker 2: more collaborative functions. And they said, we'd like to work
Speaker 2: together three days a week and it will be Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Speaker 2: so that we're all in the office at the same time.
Speaker 2: And Manila Hub said, the traffic is terrible, you know,
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense to spend time together during the week
Speaker 2: because we end up with one to four hours in
Speaker 2: the traffic to meet up for a day. So let's
Speaker 2: catch up on a weekend, and we'll do that every
Speaker 2: one or two months instead, and our China hub said
Speaker 2: we'll travel together, so we'll spend time on the road
Speaker 2: in seeing our production partners together and that's our way
Speaker 2: of getting our own FaceTime. And then we bring the
Speaker 2: whole company together for one week of the year where
Speaker 2: we launch our new strategy for the year ahead and
Speaker 2: we connect people either into the purpose of the business
Speaker 2: by taking them into the field to see the work
Speaker 2: of our partners firsthand. So the last time we did
Speaker 2: that was with Water eight in Cambodia and half the
Speaker 2: team unfortunately came to down with food poisoning, which gave
Speaker 2: them a little bit more empathy for the problem we're
Speaker 2: trying to solve than what we're expecting. And then every
Speaker 2: other year we do that in a city hub, so
Speaker 2: we've started in Melbourne. We did that in Manila last
Speaker 2: year or the year before, and then in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: we weren't able to travel, so we've got a little
Speaker 2: bit of catching up to do once things return to
Speaker 2: normal again.
Speaker 1: I really like how you've let the different hubs determine
Speaker 1: their own rhythm in terms of how much FaceTime they need,
Speaker 1: rather than dictating that from the top, Am I correct
Speaker 1: in assuming that you basically said to each hub, you guys,
Speaker 1: just figure it out what works for you and do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's correct, And I split my time now between
Speaker 2: the Melbourne hub and we're in the Los Angeles hub
Speaker 2: usually for three months a year, not at the moment
Speaker 2: because travel is not a thing, but that means for me,
Speaker 2: I prefer to be at home four days a week,
Speaker 2: but when I'm in LA I have to go into
Speaker 2: the office three days a week. They're the rules, and
Speaker 2: so the team decides that, and the team holds each
Speaker 2: other to account. And obviously there's some flexibility in that.
Speaker 2: If people need to work from home for a little bit,
Speaker 2: then of course we make that work, and then we
Speaker 2: do other stuff like there's a remote work policy where
Speaker 2: someone can apply to travel and work remotely for up
Speaker 2: to three months a year, provided that they get signed
Speaker 2: off from their manager, so they could be in Bali
Speaker 2: or wherever they want, provided they make that work with
Speaker 2: their manager and their team. So usually that means working
Speaker 2: on the same time zone. So the first person that
Speaker 2: did this actually applied to go to Ireland and the
Speaker 2: deal was that he could totally do that if he
Speaker 2: was able to make his meetings work, which meant that
Speaker 2: he stayed up until two or three am, three days
Speaker 2: a week to squeeze it all in and he was
Speaker 2: happy to do that. So it worked out well. Wow.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned okay as, and I assume that a
Speaker 1: lot of listeners will be familiar with what they are
Speaker 1: for those that are not. The stands for objectives and
Speaker 1: key results and originally came from Intel by a guy
Speaker 1: called John Duer And for anyone that wants to read
Speaker 1: more about it, Measure what Matters is a brilliant book.
Speaker 1: We use okay as at Inventium and I'm always interested
Speaker 1: in how companies apply okayrs. So, for you, bringing it
Speaker 1: back to those elements of motivation that Dan Pink writes about,
Speaker 1: do you let people set their own OKRs? How does
Speaker 1: that work in practice in terms of individuals having or
Speaker 1: setting okayrs.
Speaker 2: So we use them at an annual company wide level,
Speaker 2: and then a quarterly company wide level, and then a
Speaker 2: quarterly functional level, so that the company wide okays trickle
Speaker 2: down to the teams, and then we have them set
Speaker 2: for the teams, and then some teams and some individuals
Speaker 2: will also have their own personal OKRs, and usually there's
Speaker 2: always some work stuff in there, and usually there's some
Speaker 2: personal stuff in there as well, which gives the managers
Speaker 2: a bit of an insight into what's important for that
Speaker 2: individual outside of work. So often there'll be something around,
Speaker 2: you know, quite common to see exercise or you know,
Speaker 2: some of these kind of things that people might usually
Speaker 2: have as a years resolution creeping into their personal OKRs,
Speaker 2: which is really cool because then you get this level
Speaker 2: of accountability that I think is hard to have otherwise.
Speaker 2: And so the company, any OKRs get set between the
Speaker 2: executive team and our planning team, which are two leadership teams.
Speaker 2: I don't like that word. You should have leaders ever
Speaker 2: owned the business, not just in teams, but really they
Speaker 2: get set in collaboration and then same with the functional
Speaker 2: OKR as that happens with the teams, and then their
Speaker 2: executive rep work to sign off those functional OKRs, and
Speaker 2: then the personal OKRs usually get set by the individual
Speaker 2: with a little bit of help from their functional head.
Speaker 2: But if you're in a team with a little bit
Speaker 2: of help with their functional head or their manager, if
Speaker 2: you're a manager who's got many reports, then you can't
Speaker 2: really go in depth to set everyone's individual personal OKRs,
Speaker 2: but you want to be able to make sure that
Speaker 2: they're laddering up to what you're trying to achieve as
Speaker 2: a team, to get that cascading effect that allows you
Speaker 2: to make sure that the OKRs are ultimately going to
Speaker 2: help us achieve what we need to do.
Speaker 1: I like that you've got personal okays. I don't think
Speaker 1: i've come across that. What made you decide to do
Speaker 1: that originally?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we tried it originally because we thought that
Speaker 2: it was beautiful to have them cast aid through the
Speaker 2: whole organization. So knowing that connecting everyone's individual work up
Speaker 2: to the work of the team and the company, which
Speaker 2: allowed us to have that link of mission to metrics
Speaker 2: and that link from individual work today to the greater
Speaker 2: purpose that we have as an organization. But we found
Speaker 2: that for some people it was too much, and some
Speaker 2: teams it was too much. I think OKRs are an
Speaker 2: amazing tool, but they take a few, I would say
Speaker 2: a few years to get into the rhythm of really
Speaker 2: distilling them, the process of creating them down so that
Speaker 2: it's not so much work that it's overwhelming. And I
Speaker 2: think we found with personal OKRs that they're amazing for
Speaker 2: kind of holding to account. But for some people it's
Speaker 2: too much to have so many layers of OKRs in
Speaker 2: the organization, and so we've made the personal ones optional,
Speaker 2: and we find that some teams and some individuals will
Speaker 2: use them, whereas other teams and other individuals are happy
Speaker 2: just to use the functional OKRs and divide up ownership
Speaker 2: of those amongst their team.
Speaker 1: Do you have any personal okayrs for yourself? Is that
Speaker 1: something you've been doing.
Speaker 2: I did personal OKRs probably the first three quarters that
Speaker 2: we had them, and I found them amazingly useful. So
Speaker 2: for me, I was trying to exercise more and I
Speaker 2: set myself a goal of three to four times a
Speaker 2: week of exercise, and because they were my personal OKRs,
Speaker 2: it made it really easy for me to you know,
Speaker 2: and everyone knew them. They were shared company wide, anyone
Speaker 2: could see them. It made it really easy for me
Speaker 2: to say, I would love to have that meeting then,
Speaker 2: but I have to go and do some exercise otherwise
Speaker 2: I won't hit my personal krs. And so they became
Speaker 2: a very powerful tool for me to create new habits
Speaker 2: in my workday that everyone understood why they were important
Speaker 2: to me, because I laid out that that was specifically
Speaker 2: something I was focusing on personally that quarter. Now I
Speaker 2: have more of a rolling to do list that I
Speaker 2: look at and prioritize every quarter and set the goals
Speaker 2: for the quarter ahead. But exercise is more baked into
Speaker 2: my routine these days, and so I'm not trying to
Speaker 2: make a big shift there, which is probably why I
Speaker 2: haven't shared those as publicly as what I did for
Speaker 2: the first few quarters that we ran them.
Speaker 1: I'm inspired to suggest inventive takes on some personal okays
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: I really like that. Now.
Speaker 1: Something I've read about Who Gives a Crap is that
Speaker 1: you tell staff that you're in the business of delight,
Speaker 1: and I want to know, like, how do you demonstrate
Speaker 1: that both to people within the business and also to
Speaker 1: your customers.
Speaker 2: I think to our customers, it's just a part of
Speaker 2: the customer experience, and so it's not something that we
Speaker 2: talk about externally, but internally it's something that we come
Speaker 2: back to a lot, and so there's lots of different
Speaker 2: examples of this, but I think that it's often very
Speaker 2: easy to say, well, if we're in the toilet paper business,
Speaker 2: we just do this. But if we ask ourselves a
Speaker 2: question of well, what would we do if we're in
Speaker 2: the business of delight to how we solve this problem?
Speaker 2: Then you'll come at it from a very different place.
Speaker 2: So I think that our packaging is an example of that,
Speaker 2: where when we very first had the early kind of
Speaker 2: concept for who Gives a Crap, we realized that we
Speaker 2: weren't going to be in supermarkets, which is where most
Speaker 2: toilet paper was sold when we first got started, so
Speaker 2: we could think about our packaging a little bit more
Speaker 2: creatively and differently, and we said, okay, well, if we
Speaker 2: put ourselves in the shoes of the customer, how do
Speaker 2: they think about toilet paper being in their house? And
Speaker 2: you often see rolls being stacked up in the bathroom,
Speaker 2: and so we said, well, what if we could wrap
Speaker 2: every role individually and design the packaging so that when
Speaker 2: it's stacked up, it creates a really fun, delightful moment.
Speaker 2: And so we took inspiration from I think one of
Speaker 2: the co founders, Danny, who was working on this with me,
Speaker 2: had walked past the barbershop and seen one of those
Speaker 2: red and white striped poles earlier in the day, and
Speaker 2: so he mocked up, what would it look like if
Speaker 2: we had these roles and you stack them on top
Speaker 2: of each other, and they created that sort of barber
Speaker 2: pole effect with a red and white striped wrapper, And
Speaker 2: so that was what led us to initially say, well,
Speaker 2: what if we did forty eight different design wrappers boxes,
Speaker 2: And I said, well, our production team will kill us.
Speaker 2: We can probably do five, And so we mocked up
Speaker 2: five different roles, with the first of them being a red,
Speaker 2: orange and blue striped wrapper with a white stripe in
Speaker 2: there as well. Was one of the very first designs
Speaker 2: that we did that part of our first packaging. And
Speaker 2: so I think we have a lot of wouldn't it
Speaker 2: be cool if moments, and packaging was certainly one of those.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't it be cool if we could design something that
Speaker 2: was so beautiful our customers would want to take it
Speaker 2: out of the back of the bathroom cupboard where toilet
Speaker 2: paper is traditionally stored and put it on display. And
Speaker 2: there's probably fifty ideas that we have for every one
Speaker 2: or two that stick, and packaging was one of the
Speaker 2: one or two that really stuck in a way that
Speaker 2: was meaningful for our customer to the point where when
Speaker 2: people first opened up boxes it was so delightful that
Speaker 2: they wanted to take a photo of that and share
Speaker 2: that with someone else, either in a text message or
Speaker 2: WhatsApp or on social media. And so I think if
Speaker 2: we come back to that putting ourselves in the shoes
Speaker 2: of the customer and saying, well, what if we're in
Speaker 2: the business of delight, how would we insert delight into
Speaker 2: this moment? It allows us to think very differently about
Speaker 2: what we would do rather than just being a regular
Speaker 2: old toilet paper company.
Speaker 1: I feel like you've achieved that so well. I know
Speaker 1: within my own home. I had some people over for
Speaker 1: dinner last night, and I made sure that I topped
Speaker 1: up my little pile of who gives toilet paper in
Speaker 1: the bathroom because it just looks so cool. Now. One
Speaker 1: of the things I love about your brand is how
Speaker 1: you use humor and especially puns, which you have done
Speaker 1: from day one, and I'm personally surprised at how few
Speaker 1: businesses use humor at all. I mean, let alone use
Speaker 1: humor as amazingly as you guys do. And I want
Speaker 1: to know how do you personally encourage humor at work
Speaker 1: and with your team, because I just feel it's so
Speaker 1: core to who you are and why you have built
Speaker 1: such a lovable brand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think like this is just like
Speaker 2: a core part of our culture. I think we have
Speaker 2: this philosophy of if you can't have a laugh at work,
Speaker 2: then what's the point of being at work? And so
Speaker 2: we sort of have a culture in a way and
Speaker 2: a brand now that self selects people that thrive in
Speaker 2: that environment and want to be there, to have a
Speaker 2: bit of fun and to think about things a little
Speaker 2: bit differently. And I think the challenging part of that
Speaker 2: is really being content of crafting a culture that's quirky
Speaker 2: fun rather than dirty fun. And we tread this fine
Speaker 2: line and we say that our brand name is the
Speaker 2: dirtiest thing that you'll ever hear us say. And so
Speaker 2: all of our humor has to be witty and clever
Speaker 2: and quirky without going down the path of being gross
Speaker 2: and disgusting. And that cannot necessarily be an easy thing
Speaker 2: to do for a toilet paper company, but it's something
Speaker 2: that we think about a lot, and particularly as we're
Speaker 2: interviewing for our creative team, for example, we'd really test
Speaker 2: how people think about the humor and the brand.
Speaker 1: How do you test someone's humor.
Speaker 2: A big part of our interview processes is the homework assignment.
Speaker 2: So we have a five stage interview process, and I
Speaker 2: think the fourth stage of that is a homework assignment
Speaker 2: where we get someone to usually do four to eight
Speaker 2: hours of work and we pay them for that time
Speaker 2: because we don't want ideas for free or people to
Speaker 2: think that we're taking advantage of them, which is certainly
Speaker 2: not the intent. And with our creative team in particular,
Speaker 2: that can be a brainstorming session with our other team
Speaker 2: members to understand how they id eate and what nuggets
Speaker 2: of ideas they group together to turn into something that
Speaker 2: they think will be potentially a good campaign for the brand.
Speaker 2: And so an environment like that allows us to understand, yeah,
Speaker 2: like how someone approaches the humor of the brand, what
Speaker 2: they think is good humor versus bad humor and why,
Speaker 2: and we can find what are the kind of culture
Speaker 2: ads or the humor ads of the people that will
Speaker 2: potentially join the team. And so homeworks keep out of
Speaker 2: every role that we interview for, but especially key I
Speaker 2: think in the creative team, because you learn so much
Speaker 2: about how someone approaches their work in that session.
Speaker 1: Will you deliberately ask them like, come up with something
Speaker 1: that uses humor that would be inappropriate for who gives
Speaker 1: it crap?
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I know we've definitely asked for
Speaker 2: jokes on job applications and stuff like that, so it
Speaker 2: can become a really early filter in the process. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you've ever asked for inappropriate jokes, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I can check with the team. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: So when you're recruiting for any role, will that be
Speaker 1: a prerequisite that people I don't know, how do you
Speaker 1: learn if someone's funny and they're willing to have fun
Speaker 1: at work through a recruitment process.
Speaker 2: This is something we think a lot about in some
Speaker 2: of the more serious functions as well. So finance is
Speaker 2: a great example of this, where we need people in
Speaker 2: that function who can take really serious concepts and break
Speaker 2: them down into bite sized chunks that relate to their team.
Speaker 2: And so we're looking for the way that people go
Speaker 2: above and beyond and if someone in finance can insert
Speaker 2: humor into what they're doing, then for us, that's just
Speaker 2: like a huge win because it's a function that has
Speaker 2: a terrible reputation for being stale and boring, and if
Speaker 2: we can change that within our business and make it
Speaker 2: more fun. Then that's a real win for us in
Speaker 2: terms of how we're building a culture that rewards the
Speaker 2: right things and helps engage our team in what some
Speaker 2: people perceive as being less exciting parts of the business. Personally.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm a big finance fan, so I'd never
Speaker 2: say that out loud.
Speaker 1: I'd so like, when you're recruiting a finance person, how
Speaker 1: would you find out if they can do these things,
Speaker 1: if they can communicate complex concepts clearly and maybe with
Speaker 1: a bit of.
Speaker 2: Humor as well. So again, homework assignments here is so
Speaker 2: important and so now brief. For our homework assignments, we
Speaker 2: encourage people to use jokes and gifts and emojis and
Speaker 2: allow them to start bringing out their own personality through
Speaker 2: what they're presenting back to the team. And so it
Speaker 2: becomes a real moment of allowing someone to get access
Speaker 2: to our brand guidelines, interpret them, and then use them
Speaker 2: to create a presentation that for a finance person would
Speaker 2: typically be quite boring and straight. And if they can
Speaker 2: turn that into something that hits the right brand notes
Speaker 2: even a little bit, then it gives us an indication
Speaker 2: or a glimpse into what might be possible for that individual,
Speaker 2: and so we make all of our brand guidelines available
Speaker 2: through that process to help guide people on that journey
Speaker 2: and then see how they interpret them and what they
Speaker 2: come back with it as the end result.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of being encouraged to use gifts
Speaker 1: and memes as part of a home work assignment for
Speaker 1: getting a job. That sounds very appealing. Now, something I've
Speaker 1: heard about you is that you're someone that is very
Speaker 1: aware of your strengths and also your weaknesses, and that
Speaker 1: you're very proactive in working on your weaknesses or addressing
Speaker 1: those and improving those. And I want to know what
Speaker 1: are you currently working on in yourself to improve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, first of all, that's very flattering to here. I
Speaker 2: think it's worth pointing out that there's a lot of
Speaker 2: weaknesses still, so there's always a lot to be able
Speaker 2: to work on, which is good and bad. And I'm
Speaker 2: an optimizer, so I love finding a problem and then
Speaker 2: figuring out what the optimal solution to that problem is.
Speaker 2: When you start looking at what your own weaknesses are,
Speaker 2: this becomes a really interesting challenge for someone who loves
Speaker 2: to optimize, because you start to find what are the
Speaker 2: tricks and the tools that you can use to break
Speaker 2: your own habits and to allow you to be more
Speaker 2: efficient or better at things that you find really challenging.
Speaker 2: But it can also be very emotionally draining because you're
Speaker 2: always holding a mirror up to yourself to try and
Speaker 2: understand what's not perfect and what can be done better.
Speaker 2: And I think everyone has a lot of imperfections. And
Speaker 2: so the other thing to acknowledge here is that I
Speaker 2: think that for me, this happens in like in step changes,
Speaker 2: where I'll go through periods of really intensely working on
Speaker 2: something and being really disciplined about making progress on that
Speaker 2: thing that I'm working on, and then inevitably I'll be
Speaker 2: underwater with a project and I revert back to what
Speaker 2: my current set of habits is. And so what that
Speaker 2: means is that you make these leaps and bounds, and
Speaker 2: then you might have a stagnant period and then you
Speaker 2: do some self reflection and figure out what it is
Speaker 2: that isn't working and that you want to improve on
Speaker 2: before you start working on it again. And so it's
Speaker 2: not this linear kind of improvement that you make. It's
Speaker 2: often these big, jagged kind of step changes or nonlinear
Speaker 2: progressions with a kind of jagged line through them. At
Speaker 2: the moment, I think mobile phone is a big one,
Speaker 2: so trying to use my phone less to be more present,
Speaker 2: and so for me often the success comes from not
Speaker 2: changing behavior so much as removing the things that make
Speaker 2: it easier to slip into bad habits. So I don't
Speaker 2: have any social media apps on my phone. I've removed
Speaker 2: Slack from my phone At the moment, I run my
Speaker 2: phone on black and white to make it less addictive,
Speaker 2: and then I get locked out of all of my
Speaker 2: apps between nine pm and six am, so that after
Speaker 2: a certain time I physically can't use my phone without
Speaker 2: kind of using a jail break, and then setting screen
Speaker 2: time limits for most apps so there's a maximum of
Speaker 2: half an hour on most things, so that if I
Speaker 2: accidentally go down a wormhole, then I get pulled back
Speaker 2: out of it by my phone. So that's a big
Speaker 2: one for me at the moment. Another one is on
Speaker 2: figuring out that there's some tasks that I can do
Speaker 2: them myself, but it might take three or four hours,
Speaker 2: whereas other people who are really good at them can
Speaker 2: do them in half an hour. And so dead and
Speaker 2: so often I'll procrastinate those tasks because they're things that
Speaker 2: I find really challenging, and as a result, they're often
Speaker 2: the last thing to be done. And so the trick
Speaker 2: that I've got there at the moment is that I'll
Speaker 2: actually schedule time with someone else who I know is
Speaker 2: really amazing at that task and can do it incredibly quickly,
Speaker 2: because if we work on it together for half an
Speaker 2: hour an hour, I can get it completely done. And
Speaker 2: so that becomes a little bit of a trick to
Speaker 2: now instead of procrastinating and being worried about doing this
Speaker 2: thing that I don't enjoy doing and prioritizing everything else
Speaker 2: in front of it, now I have a time where
Speaker 2: once I get into that half an hour hour long meeting,
Speaker 2: this is the only thing that we'll work on, and
Speaker 2: by the end of it will be finished and we
Speaker 2: can put it behind us. And so that's another kind
Speaker 2: of trick for removing the thing that makes it hard
Speaker 2: to get started in the first place. So that's often
Speaker 2: how I think about trying to improve on those weaknesses.
Speaker 1: Now, I know that you're also a big reader, and
Speaker 1: I'm curious around what are some of the books that
Speaker 1: you've read, maybe in the last few years that have
Speaker 1: had the big impact on how you think about your
Speaker 1: business and the way that you approach your work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm actually less of a reader since we've had kids.
Speaker 2: I find it much more challenging now to read books
Speaker 2: than what I ever did before. But as I said before,
Speaker 2: we live in the countryside so inevitably spend a lot
Speaker 2: of the time in the car. Everything's just a bit
Speaker 2: further away than what it was when we lived in
Speaker 2: the city, and so a lot of my consumption of
Speaker 2: information outside of work now happens through like podcasts or
Speaker 2: clubhouse or other bits and pieces. So the one podcast
Speaker 2: that I've actually found I listened to the most often
Speaker 2: is actually the Wall Street Journal's daily podcast called The Journal,
Speaker 2: which is like this kind of deep dive into one
Speaker 2: topic every day that goes for fifteen minutes in total.
Speaker 2: And that's a great way of me staying on top
Speaker 2: of what's going on, particularly with sort of American news,
Speaker 2: which I think in the last couple of years has
Speaker 2: been pretty fascinating to have that snapshot into another country
Speaker 2: when we have been able to spend time there.
Speaker 1: Any other podcasts that you find that you dip into
Speaker 1: and find particularly useful.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean I'm a real sucker for business podcasts,
Speaker 2: so How I Built This is a big one, Amantha.
Speaker 2: I love listening to How I Work as well. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I kind of dip in and out of different business
Speaker 2: related podcasts, usually on one and a half time speed,
Speaker 2: so I can try to get through them quickly. But
Speaker 2: I don't have something that I listen to religiously. Go
Speaker 2: through periods where I'll listen to something a lot and
Speaker 2: then I'll stop and listen to something else. And so
Speaker 2: I think twenty VC will be in there. I listen
Speaker 2: to that for a lot for a while, and a
Speaker 2: few other podcasts along those lines.
Speaker 1: I'll link to all those in the show notes. And
Speaker 1: one thing you might want to check out that I've
Speaker 1: gotten into in the last few months is Pivot with
Speaker 1: Scott Galloway and Carra Swisher.
Speaker 2: I feel like you'd like that one, Yeah, And I've
Speaker 2: been meaning to get into Malcolm Gladwell's podcast as well. Yes,
Speaker 2: it is very very good.
Speaker 1: And any books like back when you didn't have little
Speaker 1: people occupying your time and maybe depriving you of some sleep,
Speaker 1: are there any books that were fundamental in influencing the
Speaker 1: way that you work and think I.
Speaker 2: Feel like this one's obvious now, but the lean startup
Speaker 2: ten years ago revolutionized how we thought about what we
Speaker 2: were working on, and just the encouragement to get things
Speaker 2: into market as fast as possible, knowing that they're half
Speaker 2: baked or eighty percent ready, because you don't know what
Speaker 2: you don't know, and you'll learn so much from putting
Speaker 2: things out into the world. That is just like at
Speaker 2: the heart of almost everything we do it who gives
Speaker 2: a crap. There's some situations where you don't want to
Speaker 2: launch something that's half baked, but generally speaking, anything that's
Speaker 2: customer facing or trying to get out into market as
Speaker 2: quickly as possible to try and learn from that. So
Speaker 2: that's still the number one book that I recommend to
Speaker 2: any new entrepreneur because I think it is so different
Speaker 2: to what you get taught at university or in the
Speaker 2: corporate world that people really need to read that to
Speaker 2: get used to their thinking.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. And now my final question for you,
Speaker 1: if people want to connect with you and who gives
Speaker 1: a crown in some way, shape or form and maybe
Speaker 1: order some toilet paper, what is the best way to
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 2: So we're just at who Gives a Crap dot org
Speaker 2: and shipping now US, UK, Australia, and we've just opened
Speaker 2: up European warehouse that we're shipping into all of Europe,
Speaker 2: a lot of it with free shipping, which is super exciting.
Speaker 2: And then personally I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn I'm just
Speaker 2: at Simon Griffiths on Twitter and LinkedIn something a little
Speaker 2: bit similar but I can't corre remember what it is.
Speaker 2: And then more recently a clubhouse I found really interesting.
Speaker 2: It's an app to be able to be a fly
Speaker 2: on the wall at a conference that you can duck
Speaker 2: in and out of with some amazing speakers. So on there,
Speaker 2: more and more amazing.
Speaker 1: I will link to all that in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Simon, It's been so.
Speaker 1: Good talking and learning all these new things about you
Speaker 1: that I did not previously know. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for your time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank Samantha. I feel like a long time coming,
Speaker 2: so super nice to chat and to do this together.
Speaker 1: Hello there, I hope you enjoyed this chat with Simon.
Speaker 1: If you did, and you know someone else that might
Speaker 1: enjoy it, why not share it with them now next
Speaker 1: week on the show. I'm very excited to have Yob
Speaker 1: van Dervaut, who is the co founder and CEO of
Speaker 1: remote dot Com and the XVP of Product for git Lab,
Speaker 1: and we will be talking about the world of remote
Speaker 1: working the optimal office set up, which I will say
Speaker 1: Yob setup is amazing and so much more. So make
Speaker 1: sure you have clicked subscribe wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: podcast to be alerted when that episode drops and how
Speaker 1: I Work is produced by Inventing Him with production support
Speaker 1: from Dead Set Studios. The producer for this episode was
Speaker 1: Jenna Coder and thank you to Martin Nimba who did
Speaker 1: the audio mix and makes everything sound better than it
Speaker 1: would have otherwise. That is it for today and I'll
Speaker 1: see you next time.