Why voice messaging beats Slack & Zoom – with Yac CEO, Justin Mitchell

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Earlier this year, I finished building a course called Escape the Office. Its sole objective was to help professionals like you and me convince their boss to let them work remotely. It would seem my timing was both inspired and doomed to fail. After all, it’s the bosses who are now demanding their staff work from home…

So for now at least, my course is available for a song on Udemy. But this global lockdown won’t last forever, and when staff are eventually called back to their concrete towers, some will surely rejoice, but many will resist. Thousands will be desperate to stay home permanently, making Escape the Office more relevant than ever.

This is part of what Yac CEO, Justin Mitchell, and I discuss in this week’s Remote Leaders session. We’re witnessing the largest and fastest paradigm shift in the workplace in modern history. Almost overnight, millions of lives have been changed, creating a powder keg of disruption to traditional norms.

Some of this disruption is welcome, and many employees are finding that they’re less stressed, more focused, and happier than ever. They’re also delivering higher quality work than was ever possible in their distraction-filled office.

But many companies are struggling. Not just financially, but in the way they’ve chosen to implement remote work practices. In their haste (and ignorance), they’ve tried to overlay traditional metrics onto their remote workforce, where visibility is valued more than productivity, where being online all day is mistaken for being ‘at work’.

What all this opens is a rich line of inquiry into why the old methods and metrics have failed, and why we need to adopt asynchronous voice communication so people get the context they need in the most compact form possible, while boosting their output and effectiveness.

We’ve all been caught in those endless back and forth email, Slack or chat loops. Or we’ve had our morning hijacked by a Zoom call that stretches well into ‘Are we there yet… are we there yet…?” They’re all woefully inefficient, and it’s about time they changed. That’s what Yac does – it’s asynchronous voice messaging for remote teams with a powerful twist.

My conversation with Justin is packed full of true stories and powerful insights from a CEO who’s ascension in the remote work field has been rapid. Justin is clearly passionate about the remote work landscape, and what it means to businesses, individuals, and their financial, physical and mental health.

We discuss topics like:

• Why remote work isn’t a problem to be solved
• How being ‘available’ on a collaboration platform means you’re not working
• What Yac is all about, and why voice messaging plus content delivers the missing link – context
• The ‘rubber duck solution’, and why Justin encourages it
• The power of distraction and verbal riffs
• The benefits of accessing a global talent pool
• Working from home and the dangers of blurred lines
• Why once you’ve tasted the good life, you’ll never go back
• Challenges (and solutions) with remote teams, firing people, the future of remote work, key advice to businesses thrust into the current reality, and lots more.

As I always say, the best way to learn a new skill and expand your thinking is to listen to experts and examine what they’ve done and how it might apply to you.

Justin knows his stuff, and he articulates his knowledge in a way that’s interesting to listen to and easy to digest. If you’re a business owner or C-level executive, I would ignore his advice at your peril.

Click the play button above and join my conversation with Yac CEO, Justin Mitchell. I hope you enjoy listening to him as much as did.

 

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More on Justin Mitchell and Yac

Yac Website
Yac on Twitter
Justin on Twitter
Justin on LinkedIn
Justin on Email

Other Useful Posts

Matt Barnett, and the best remote customer engagement tool in the world – Bonjoro.
How a pandemic is crushing old beliefs and our irrational fears of a better life.
Working from home might save your life (and not just because of Coronavirus).
How Working from Home Helped me Connect with my Kids

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