At Stampede, employees and apprentices enjoy our monthly mental health benefits. There’s always room to do better and be proactive with our wellness approach. Early this November, we organised an on-site mental health and resiliency workshop for everyone in Kuala Lumpur, as part of a 6-months long care program conducted by Humankind.my.

In planning this, Stephanie, our UX designer, worked closely with psychologists from HumanKind to tailor the program to our team’s unique background, career journey and challenges. Thank you for your labour of love, Steph!

Developing psychological flexibility

Throughout the two days, we learned to be still and observant towards our feelings when facing stress and to develop awareness of our fight/flight/freeze/fawn response to stressors.

Self-awareness is a recurring theme; developing it is a journey that takes individual willingness and accountability.

To lead others, you need to lead yourself first.”

Another hallmark session was how resiliency as a leader starts by tuning to your core values as you prepare yourself to lead others – something many future leaders in Stampede could relate to.

We also discussed psychological flexibility techniques that help us to work with others who don’t share the same values, a grossly underrated part of any professional relationship.

The sessions were laced with art activities, which is when the enthusiastic children in us emerged. From turning our worries into picturesque drawings to scrapbooking to communicate our values, it’s the most fun we’ve had with scissors, crayons and coloured pencils.

Many thanks to HumanKind for their excellent curation of content and the space they created in the two days for our team to connect at a psychological level.

What started as a workshop felt now like a team-building exercise, with plenty of safe moments to have honest and mind-nourishing conversations. To us, this is how we look out for each other and set a strong foundation for where we want to go next. 🚀

The post Building Team Resilience at Work appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

Stampede has been fully remote since day one, thanks to our early beginnings with clients primarily from Europe, United States and Australia. We take great care of our people and promote a healthy remote culture, enabling people to do great work together despite the distance.

Going against the grain

While working remotely is the norm in many jobs today, the same cannot be said when we began in 2006. Despite internet penetration already being high in most countries, the shift towards remote work was slow.

One of the more vocal proponents for remote work, Jason Fried of 37 Signals even argued that working from an office was counterproductive on his TED Talk: Why work doesn’t happen at work | Jason Fried

Iwan, a longtime member of the Stampede team since 2010, recently reminisced about the early days of remote work. Back then, programming was done without Git and calls and meetings were handled through Skype. An internet speed of 8Mbps was considered sufficient at the time as most work was done offline, with occasional online uploads and calls. According to Iwan, working from home did not feel deficient compared to working in the office, but it did require a higher level of self-discipline due to the absence of physical supervision.

As technology improved, new tools such as Git, Figma, and Slack emerged, which Stampede adopted after allowing them to mature first. Iwan also recalled that remote work was less common back then, and some people had a hard time grasping the concept of working from home. All that changed overnight though, as know it, with COVID-19.

Our remote culture

Being remote has allowed us to tap into the pool of talent and capabilities unlimited by location. It is astounding how many talents and wonderful people have joined our rank thanks to this conscious decision to treat location as a strategic tool (we still do plenty of on-site at client locations) but not a necessity.

But having a fully remote team is just the beginning. In the next edition, we will look into what makes Stampede’s remote culture, the true workhorse of our success.

The post Stampede Remote Work Origins appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

Leyte is an island in the Visayas group of the Philippines, along with other major islands such as Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol and Samar. The island is further divided into two provinces, (Northern) Leyte and Southern Leyte. The major city is called Tacloban. Leyte is famous for its role of reconquest of the Philippines in World War II, which bring me to the above picture.

Let me tell you about the picture. It is of General MacArthur Shrine, located in the municipality of Palo. It was built in remembrance of Douglas MacArthur, an American general of the Philippines army, who landed in Leyte Gulf with the goal to recapture and liberate the Philippines from Japanese occupation in 1944. With his persistence and leadership, the event eventually led to Battle of Leyte– the largest naval battle of World War II. The Japanese eventually surrendered three years later.

About Santa Fe

I am currently based in Santa Fe – not exactly a town, more like a municipality. It has a population of about 20,400+ people and is located about 23 kilometres away from Tacloban City. Largely the folks in Santa Fe are rice farmers, since Leyte is the biggest rice producer in Eastern Visayas. Rice, like in Malaysia, is also considered as staple food in the Philippines.

Every year around August, Santa Fe will hold its very, very colourful town fiesta called Pamilipig festival. The whole municipality would take their whole families there where we would eat, drink and watch the competition of the traditional Pamilipig ritual dance.

The dance is to take back us to the times when there were no rice mills before, hence people would need to dance on the rice to separate them from their husks. The contestants would hold their dance on the grandstand, where each contingent would try to outdo each other through frenzied-pace dances, sychronised movements and acrobatic acts.

It was a pretty intense and exciting, and every year we look forward to it.

Language

Tagalog might be the second most used language of the country (English being the first), but here among my family we speak the native dialect called Waray-waray. It is the third most spoken language among the Visayan people. Although it is a dialect, Waray-waray is widely used in television and radio broadcasts. Print? Not so, as most regional newspapers are published in English.

If you want to learn to speak Waray-waray, here is a very useful basic tutorial!

Getting around

There are three types of public transportations to get around Leyte – buses, vans and my favourite, the jeepneys!

Colourful ride Riding the jeepney is not for the shy and timid.

A jeepney is one of the most popular means of public transport in the Philippines. It looks like one of those military jeeps the Americans used in World War II, only much livelier as they are painted with bright colours and each jeepney is personalised accordingly to suit its driver’s preferences.

In a jeepney, passengers would sit on two cushioned benches on both sides, ranging from 10 to 20 seats facing each other. You would get up on the jeepney first according to where you want to go, and a conductor will ask money from you for the fare.

Riding a jeepney, in an essence, is not for the shy and timid. This is because you always need to call out attention to yourselves amidst the roaring of the jeepney’s engine and riding in the busy street filled with cars and pedestrians. There is no designated stops for jeepneys, you have to yell out loud, “Stop!” if you want to alight somewhere. Someone shy will probably find himself being taken to the end of the journey and not knowing where he is.

The fee for a jeepney from Santa Fe to Tacloban would cost about 20 pesos, and it will take about 45 minutes.

Food

There are two staple food of the people of Leyte that I know of. The first one is called Suman Moron. It is basically a rice cake, made from glutinous rice, coconut milk, brown sugar and added with some lye solution for the flavouring. Normally it is served with ‘latik’  sauce and I love to enjoy it with coffee or hot chocolate. Some people also add grated coconut as the topping.

Suman has been my favourite since it is the food that I grew up with, and my wife and mother always make some good sumans!

Another favourite of mine is called binagol. It is made from a root crop called ‘talyan’, along with a mixture of flour, sugar and milk. They are then cooked and packed on top of a halved coconut shell and covered with banana leaves.

Remote working in Leyte

Remote working in Leyte is general is not something new, since I know a lot of school friends who have worked from home for the past few years. However, unlike me who are attached to Stampede, they are mostly freelancers who do a bit of front end development, programming and accounting for other people and companies. They usually do these jobs on top of their day jobs at the office. However, to see it more flourishing more than side jobs would probably take a while.

I felt like the reason remote working hasn’t exactly flourished in Leyte is because it is not a tech-oriented city. Leyte is an island famous for agriculture and rice farming, and the geography is mostly heavily forested and mountainous. It makes for a good view if you need a little escape from the city life.

Another reason is perhaps due to the fact that the Internet facility is just average. We get 2-3 Mbps speed for a single user, although in my part so far it hasn’t caused any major inconveniences.

This is also my first time working remotely for an agency. I used to work in an office in Cebu, commuting every day from home, braving the traffic and coming back home with less time to spend with my family. Working remotely for Stampede has taught me to be more focused and become better at time management, at the same time having more time to be with my family.

I have also been given so many challenging roles in Stampede, such as being the team lead and dealing directly with the client. Although a bit nervous, I am very delighted to be given such opportunities.

The recent earthquake

If you have not heard, Leyte was involved in a recent 6.5 magnitude earthquake last month. During the quake, I was in the midst of doing front end on a project for an Australian client. It wasn’t my first time experiencing earthquake. My first time was in Cebu many years ago, but it was still just as horrifying.

As it happened, I ran out of the house to join others in the streets, for the fear that the quake might cause some debris of the building to fall on top of us. The quake happened for only about 5 minutes. Fearing for the aftershock, I stayed with the rest of the neighbours outside until it was confirmed that everything was OK. I was so relieved that during that time, my son and my wife were at my mother-in-law’s house, and they were already safe.

Everyone in my family was safe and our belongings were intact, but the earthquake got the power got cut off in the island as the geothermal power station shut down during the quake. Because of the lack of electricity, I was unable to come to work for about a week.

Luckily, the Stampede team offered to get me a generator so I could share with the neighbours, and also so I could come back to work. I couldn’t be any more grateful to have a team who support me in times such like this.

If you are in Leyte…

If you can see, Leyte is not a big, modern city you see in televisions and movies. But if you want to escape the bustling life you get in cities, Leyte is one of the places you could come to. You get to see views such as this…

… and going on a kind of sensorial adventure riding on the jeepney while having as much bingol as you can  – Leyte is the place to be.

I’ll be more than happy to be your tour guide. Salamat!

Photo credits:

• Halalan 2016 (for the MacArthur Shrine photo)
• Gerryruiz (for the Pamilipig festival photo)
• Imgur (for the Jeepney photo)
• Wikipedia (for the Suman photo)
• 8magazine (for the Binagol photo)
• World Bank Photo Collections (for the Paddy Field photo)

The post A City of Our Own X: Leyte appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

What is energy?

Energy can be thought of as a resource needed for constant physical or mental activities. Like many other resources, energy is finite, meaning that it will deplete throughout your day.

Keep yourself nourished

At all times, you need to keep yourself fed because food is a direct source of energy. In most work places, we are given an hour for lunch to unwind and nourish our bodies.

But when times are hectic and deadlines are crucial, have you ever felt a sense of guilt when it’s time for lunch? Sometimes you just choose to skip it and dedicate that time to completing your work. The truth is that, in the long run, this type of behavior is not sustainable. You will eventually become tired and frustrated, and eventually lose the will to work.

So make sure you make the best of your break time. Eat, socialize and take your mind off work.

Get enough sleep

While sleeping is the most common way to recharge, some of us neglect it in order to get more done in a day. Sleep plays an important role by allowing your body to go into downtime while it repairs itself. Depriving yourself from quality sleep not only affects your energy but also your health. People with insufficient sleep are at a higher risk for high blood pressure, stroke, and diabetes. Also, not getting enough quality sleep also leads to a decrease in attention span and an increase in risk of accidents and injuries.

That being said, too much sleep is also a bad thing. The side-effects are similar to the deprivation of sleep. When you wake up after having a good number of hours of sleep, try to get yourself up slowly and not fall into the trap of napping. Follow a fixed sleeping schedule and stick to it. Doing so will cement your biological clock making you feel sleepy just before your sleep time and getting up naturally after hours of rest.

Master your mood

We’ve all been there. Getting stuck in a traffic jam, having a minor disagreement with a loved one, or even just getting up on the wrong side of the bed. All of these happening before work even begins. Not the best way to start the day, but one that is fairly common time to time. While events and people can bring us down, the final decider of your mood is still your own self.

It’s convenient to get swept up by everything and getting down with all that has happened. You need to be self-aware that you can indeed control how your outlook is, even if it’s for a span of time. When you’re all bummed out, the likelihood of you wanting to do anything has severely plummeted. This kind of negative behavior affects your energy as dealing with these emotions will slowly sap it all away and nothing will get done.

We’ve all been there. Getting stuck in a traffic jam, having a minor disagreement with a loved one, or even just getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

What you can do is to always keep in mind that you are the master of your own emotions; your mood. This isn’t as simple as it sounds as each of us have our own thresholds for dealing with stress. Try to think positively and keep solving problems in your mind. Eventually, the tension from all those problems will feel insignificant and you can easily brush it aside.

Quality over quantity

It’s not all just about the amount of time we work though, as quality matters just as much. What it means is that our effectiveness matters even more, and is largely influenced by our energy levels. We need to create opportunities to create more energy throughout the day.

Instead of stacking more things to do in the free-ish slots in your day, it is better to use that time to accomplish what we’ve gone through so far; staying nourished, getting enough sleep and mastering your mood. Always remember that your energy is finite, and that you can only accomplish so many things in a day.

Always remember that your energy is finite, and that you can only accomplish so many things in a day.

Prioritize the tasks that are important, that are time-sensitive, that are creating a bottleneck for others. When you have done so, stack the less important items at the end of every day, spread out during the week. By doing so allows us to focus on quality productivity instead of burning more hours trying to complete everything.

The remote side of things

If you’re a reader of our blog (thanks!), then you probably know that the team at Stampede work from various locations around Malaysia and the rest of the world. The act of managing your energy when you don’t have a physical office can be tricky. ‘Our offices’ are always at our fingertips and this means that we can move in and out of work fairly quickly.

While having flexible hours is a great, it also means drawing the line between work and personal time can be a challenge. Sometimes we get called in out of our usual work hours to get certain tasks completed due to time-sensitivity and urgency.

Thankfully this doesn’t happen very often, and the times it does is when there is a major issue, like a website going down. If we worked in a physical office, we’d have to ask one of our developers to drive into the office and problem solve the issue there and then.

We hope this article sheds some light on why you should focus on managing your energy instead of just solely managing your time. If you have something to share with us, or just want to say hi, drop us a comment down below and we’ll be glad to respond.

The post Manage Your Energy, Not Just Your Time appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

However much time I spend away from Budapest, the moment I come home it always feels complete. It’s a comfortably sized city with nearly two million people. Everything that matters happens in the center, and once you’re in there, nothing is too far away.

Just walk around the century old buildings to soak in the rich history and take part in the vibrant life. Most of the historic center and its monuments were built in the late 1800’s, and the architecture is an eclectic mix of many period styles.

Some of the most run-down buildings waiting for redevelopment are taken over by temporary drinking spots known as ruin bars, and decorated with street art giving the town’s nightlife its quirky charm. And don’t forget the thermal spas, where you can soak in pools of hot, healing thermal water, and play chess with the elderly.

Working remotely from Budapest

Image from Madal Cafe

With an average broadband speed of 25Mbps, working remotely is a breeze. Cafes in the city offer fast WiFi internet and are not very crowded during the day. But when office hours finish and the evening buzz starts, it’s time to schlep somewhere quiet with the laptop. If you’re after a more focused work environment, you’re in luck because co-working spaces are popping up like mushrooms. Budapest is a popular destination for digital nomads (people who work remotely from abroad,) so you’re likely to meet quite an international crowd. The cost of a monthly membership is usually between 1-200 euros. This is about the same as what you would spend all month drinking and snacking at a cafe.

Getting around

As with any other major city, finding parking in the city can be a pain. In Budapest however, you can easily get around with public transport, and buy a monthly pass for 35 euros. If you’re not in a rush, you might as well walk because the streets are very pedestrian friendly. Your other option is to go around on a bike, and you can even pick up one from a public rental station  and drop it off at the next one. It’s no Amsterdam, but riding a bike here is not just for the daredevil.

The people of Budapest

Image courtesy of Craig Hull Photography

Hungarian people are often criticised for being rude. This is a little bit true, but on the upside, when they are nice to you, you can be sure that they genuinely like you. Budapest is home to lots of hipsters, and everything they go hand in hand with. For instance, artisan coffee, healthy street food, independent designers’ shops, and barber-shops, so this is the right place to buy that beard oil.

The dogs of Budapest

Image courtesy of Craig Hull Photography

Many Hungarians can’t imagine their lives without a dog to care for. But having a dog is not just about the relationship with the dog, but also with other people. Walking a Staffordshire terrier shows people you are a tough guy, a whippet says you are chic, and walking a Labrador retriever says you live in a detached house with a perfect lawn and two beautiful children, and just walked off of a detergent commercial. But whatever dog somebody walks, it’s always a perfect excuse to strike up a conversation with them.

Summer and festivals

Image courtesy of Craig Hull Photography

Hungary has a continental weather complete with 4 seasons, a freezing cold winter, and a hot hot hot summer. During summer city’s the streets of the city come to life, and lots of music festivals pop up around the country. The most famous one being the Sziget Festival in August. Sziget means island, because the festival takes place on  an island on the river Danube, that is huge enough to accommodate the festival’s some 200.000 visitors. The festival runs about a dozen of big stages catering for all sorts of tastes in music, from mainstream music with superstar headliners, to alternative genres. The festival attracts a very mixed international audience, camping and partying on the island for a whole week.

These are some of many things that you can experience and enjoy in my home, Budapest. If you’re flying over to Europe, why not drop by in one of the world’s most colorful cities.

The post A City of Our Own IX : Budapest appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

And I am Superman. (I’m sorry, let’s get to the point…)

Honestly, in Payangan we do not have much points of interest if compared to other towns in Bali, let’s say Ubud, which is the neighbouring city of Payangan. We don’t even have fiber optic internet yet, due to lack of demand. In 2010, our population was only estimated to be at 41, 164 people.

However, small towns like ours do have their own strong suits. I mean, with a name like ‘place for the gods’, it’s quite neat for starters.

Place for the gods

The word Payangan came from the word Parahyangan, which means ‘place for the gods’. In the history, there was this guy called Rsi Markandeya, a Hindu priest, who did his pilgrimage all the way from Jawa to Bali. In his journey, he built many holy places (parahyangan) to worship the gods. To honour his journey, the place is called Parahayangan, which soon turned into Payangan probably to make it easier for people to pronounce.

In the past, Payangan was very well known as the source of lychee. We used to have a lot of lychee trees, including those in front of my parents’ house. According to my father, lychees from Payangan were very good and sweet as the seeds were imported directly from China. They were gifts from Chinese immigrants to the King of Payangan. However, it has changed a lot these days – we have not much lychee trees anymore. Which is sad, because, who doesn’t love lychees?

However, you can’t beat the scenery in my city. Payangan has this wonderful scenery of paddy fields – large, green ones. Easy on the eyes. It has become such a big advantage to the tourism industry as some of big hotels located in Payangan are built around the paddy fields to use them as the point interest. Payangan, as you can see, is not as famous as Ubud, so the amount of tourists who flock here (I am not sure if flock is the right word) are not as much and specifically come because they already know of Payangan.

Another thing is due to obscurity of Payangan, these hotels would publish their location as Ubud, instead of Payangan. I am sad and feel this is unfair because one, it is misleading to the tourists and two, because Payangan by itself is a beautiful city with its own places of interest, so we should be able to magnify those.

The weather in Payangan used to be chilly, although not as cold as the temperature in Kintamani. However due to the climate change, after 2010 onwards, Payangan’s temperature could reach 28 C or even more. It feels quite stuffed and humid, like we are in Denpasar now.

Food I grew up with

It wouldn’t be complete to talk about one’s city without mentioning its staple food!

As for me, Balinese rice porridge is my favourite breakfast. There is this stall near my house that sells the most delicious Balinese rice porridge ever, one that I had been frequenting since childhood. What we usually have in the porridge are shredded chicken, roasted coconut, wild ginger, lime and scallions. It is the best comfort food one could have.

What’s special about Balinese rice porridge is that it is placed inside one big piece of banana leaf. There is no need to use a spoon while eating Balinese porridge, as another banana leaf is rolled to form a spoon!

My second favourite is  a snack called Laklak. They are some sort of pancakes made of sticky rice flour, mixed with coconut milk and the extract of suji leaves, smothered with brown sugar. Laklak is best eaten with hot tea during the evening.

Another one of my favourite is called Nasi Jinggo. Often sold in the night market near my place (the night market is called Pasar Senggol Payangan) Nasi Jinggo is made of fist of steamed rice coupled with slices of tempe, shredded chicken, noodles, tasty shredded coconut, and unbeatable spicy sauce (sambal) and all this is covered with banana leaves. Most Balinese waroeng (stalls) sell Nasi Jinggo, but what makes it special is the quality of sambal each stall makes.

The illustration above should be able to explain the ingredients inside every Nasi Jinggo packet.

Remote working life

Remote working in Payangan is not exactly easy if you don’t have your own Internet connection at home. There are no cafes or restaurants that offer wifi connection much, as we are a small town with modest population.

However, if you are up for co-working, the nearest town that can offer that would be Ubud. It is about 10 km, which would take about 20 minutes away from Payangan. There will be loads of cafes and restaurants offering wifi connection, as well as this nice co-working space called Hubud.

It also isn’t easy to buy computer stuff in Payangan. The nearest city that would offer loads of computer stuff with its own mall, perhaps, will be in Denpasar. Hence I prefer to shop my computer gadgets online. It does come with one disadvantage still thought – delivery services like JNE and TIKI do not deliver to my town. They only deliver all the way till Ubud. So what I do is I would let them to drop my delivery at a relatives’ place in Ubud, and I would go pick up from there.

Will you come?

Well, that’s a glimpse about my town, Payangan. Although a lot of things here make you struggle more than living in the big cities, Payangan does have a lot of its own advantages – quiet nights, beautiful scenery, happy, genuine people, so it will not matter where I go I would always take pride in this place for its beauty and calmness.

If you are ever in the area, let me know and I will show you around!

The post A City of Our Own VIII : Payangan appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

• 

  Hi Iwan and Tony! Thank you for taking the time to sit down for this interview which only both of you are qualified. We know that you guys have different routines to do your job well. Can both of you share your experience before and after being a father?

• 

  I’ve been working remotely even before my daughter was born. So back then I could focus myself solely on work. It was only after my first child was born did I have to change the way I work. So instead of working on a task for a long period, I have to portion it out into shorter work sprints.

  For example if my daughter starts to cry and if no one can attend to her, I’ll comfort her. Once she’s off to dreamland, I’ll take around 30 minutes to re-focus myself for the task at hand. This is a big difference before and after having a kid.

  Now with my kids around, I have rescheduled my hours to begin work at 8 AM and continue until 5 PM. In the past I’ve tried several different work hours, but so far this is the best arrangement for me.

• 

  Before Nauly (my daughter) came into my life, I was working at an office in Jakarta. My usual mornings involve me having breakfast made by my wife and getting to work by 8 AM. On the seventh month of my wife’s pregnancy, we decided to move back to Surabaya, her hometown. I made a request with my employer at the time to work remotely. From then on, I’d be working from my living room.

  After that, I joined Stampede and started working remotely full time. When I wake up early in the morning, the first thing I do is taking care of housework such as washing the dishes and preparing hot water. My wife takes over the rest when she wakes up. Once I log in at work, it’s hard to do anything else. So I do these things before I start work.

  At the start it wasn’t much trouble because Nauly slept around 20 hours a day on average and this went on for another 4 months. My wife is a homemaker, but there are times when she needs help with taking care of my daughter. At the home where I live and work, my wife’s siblings are around, but they are too young to properly care for Nauly. The times where I actually have to step out of the work cycle and do emergency parenting are the times when my wife is sick.

Nur Ainina HusnaIwan’s daughter, affectionately nicknamed Cuna.

Nauly SanjayaSay hi to Nauly, Tony’s daughter.

• 

  I understand that taking care of kids is really a full time job. So when you find the time to sit down and start work, what time is the most productive for you?

• 

  I adjusted my biological clock to work in the morning. Before this the best time  for me was at night, because there were no distractions, talking and ambient sounds from outside. When my baby came around, I had to change my time to look after her. After testing a few different time ranges, I found that early mornings gave me similar results. The temperature was still cool without the glaring sunlight and the noise was still quite minimal.

• 

  For me, the most productive times for working is when my daughter is asleep, or is being looked after by her mom. During this time, I can completely focus on my work since there are no distractions. In the mornings, I am already busy with household chores and baby stuff so my most productive moments tend to be only after that time.

• 

  What kind of task is suited to the situation where you are multitasking work and looking after the baby?

• 

  The time where I can really focus is when Cuna is not around. So in the morning I leave her to my wife so that I can focus on work. Once she goes to work, I will take care of the baby. So the multitasking part comes in when I’m looking after the baby. Meetings and discussions which aren’t as taxing when compared to coding and can be done while looking after the baby. One more thing I use to my advantage is my daughter. Whenever I’m feeling down or stuck on something, I’d just spend some time with her and somehow everything feels better.

• 

  Whenever I’m working, my daughter is usually not around me. When she is however, she’ll be pulling at me and making babble sounds. I can handle both work and my daughter’s antics for lighter work, but if it’s serious work, I need to focus on it alone. Instead of multitasking, if there is an emergency, I’ll put my work down for a bit and attend to it.

• 

  There is some common understanding that some men, when they become dads, they leave it solely to the wife. You guys are rare. How do you do it?

• 

  Working remotely helped me become this way. I feel that I experience what most fathers don’t because I’m around to see my kids beside me. It is definitely life changing for me.

• 

  When my wife is tired and I noticed that, I try to help out wherever I can. At times working remotely in your home can become a bit stressful, because there will be times when the baby will start crying during work hours. Also every now and then, my wife will have her ‘alone time’, for example going to the salon, and this is the time where I will take over. When my wife is not stressed out, then I can do work more effectively. As Shaza puts it, “A happy wife makes a happy life”.

Tony on break with Nauly

• 

  What are the pros that both of you benefit from this setup, working and also parenting?

• 

  One of it is that I get to spend more time with the kids. Most importantly I do not have to get my baby looked after by a nanny as there have been issues recently and also can be pretty costly. Fortunately my wife is only working 4 hours a day and we take turns looking after the baby.

• 

  One of the pros is that I can help my wife to take care of Nauly. Before getting married, me and my wife agreed that she didn’t have to work and instead look after the household and the baby. So now we both take turns parenting. Taking care of children is not easy as it looks. You need much patience and a lot of willpower. I’ll try to lighten my wife’s tasks wherever I can.

• 

  How supportive has the company and Stampede team been to your setup?

• 

  Stampede is very supportive and they love kids, so this helps a lot. This flexibility makes me feel comfortable with Stampede, sure you can get flexibility elsewhere but not at Stampede’s level. My colleagues have no issues whenever I need to take a break and they love to see my kids. Indirectly they have made me what I am today, an awesome dad.

• 

  To me Stampede is very supportive. As long as I complete my work tasks, the team supports me. If I’m falling behind a bit, they’ll be concerned and ask me if anything is wrong. Other places may say that, if work is not finished it is because my baby is distracting me..

• 

  Is there any advice or something you guys want to share with other dads who might want to work remotely?

• 

  Plan your time for work before doing any parenting. Clear all the important tasks before the period because trust me, you won’t be able to focus much. For example, feed the baby and make her fall asleep before a meeting begins. Raising children is a handful but don’t see it as a negative. Find a way to take advantage of your situation like how I use Cuna as a stress reliever.

• 

  Manage your time well and be responsible for your work. You will want to work out a plan with the wife. This way you know when to focus on work and when to focus on the baby. Lots of commitment needed and most importantly be there for the family.

Cuna at Work

• 

  Are there any particular apps that you use for your setup?

• 

  My wife uses a baby feeding app to track Cuna’s feeding schedule. I myself use an in-built feature in my Samsung smartphone which can test someone’s stress level by putting the finger onto the phone. I use it to gauge the mood of my baby to check how she’s doing.

• 

  I use a baby log app called Baby Daybook. When the baby drinks I will log it down, and this also includes things like when she poops. This is so that I can review what she did for that day. This acts as an early indicator because if a baby doesn’t pass motion consistently, something might be wrong with her.

Thank you dads of Stampede (probably good for a band name). So how about a little verdict? When you’re working remotely and have to keep an eye on the kids, anything is possible with a little bit of time management and prioritization. At the same time, working out a schedule with your significant other gives you the time to focus on your work without neglecting your child.

For constant updates, head over to our Facebook and Twitter channels. Also, we have our very own Instagram account now, so be sure to check that out.

Are you also a remote-working parent like Tony and Iwan? If yes, how do you handle parenting and working at the same time? Share your own experiences here!

The post Dads of Stampede: Parenting and Remote Work appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

In our workplaces, we have habits that we are quite fond off. The good ones can visibly improve your productivity while the bad ones can seem like procrastination. Here’s a list of productive habits that you should know at your workplace.

Start work early, plan your day

Get into the office earlier than usual, give or take 15-30 minutes. Using this extra time, plan what you need to do just for that day.

For many of us, the first thing we do when we come into the office is to go about our morning ritual of settling in. This usually involves making a cup of coffee, having some small chit-chat with your fellow co-workers, all while waiting for the computer to start up. This whole ordeal can sometimes take about 30-45 minutes right at the start of the day. While it is not necessarily a bad thing, it just goes to show how much time we use just to actually get something moving.

Define a goal, then break it down

Before you start your work, identify what you need to get done. Keep it focused but not too general, something like reviewing a stack of documents in two days. Once that’s nailed down, sit down and figure out how you can break this goal down into smaller goals.

One method is to split the workload across multiple days within the time frame you have to complete your main goal. When your goal is broken down into smaller ones, it lessens the impact of tackling a large endeavor and provides you a state of momentum to work at a steady pace.

As an added bonus, attach rewards to some of these goals. For example, if you complete a sub-task then you can have your next cup of coffee. If you finish the next one, go for a 5 minute walking break. This will gives you extra motivation to continue your day.

Know the difference, identify important and urgent matters

This one can be a bit tricky because when it comes to work almost everything is urgent, but not everything is important.

Enter the Eisenhower Box, a time management principle which helps you define how you should act accordingly depending where the action is sorted in the box.

Image taken from James Clear

Strategized by the famed US President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Eisenhower Box is a decision matrix which splits tasks into 4 possibilities:

• Urgent and important (tasks you will do immediately).
• Important, but not urgent (tasks you will schedule to do later).
• Urgent, but not important (tasks you will delegate to someone else).
• Neither urgent nor important (tasks that you will eliminate).

The challenging part in using this principle is understanding what tasks are considered important or urgent.

When you’re in the office and a phone call comes in for you, the first reaction you’ll do is pick up the call regardless of whether it is important or otherwise; this is what we label as urgent, tasks that you feel you need to react to.

Create behavior chains, turn it into a routine

Line up all your tasks that need to be completed within a given day and chain it all together. By doing so, you’ll create a progressive tempo that will help you focus on your work and will curb other non-productive behaviors from cutting into your work flow.

Behavior chains are a series of tasks that are completed one after the other. If you are doing A, you need to complete it before moving on to B, it’s as simple as that. The difficult part is keeping it going without getting distracted. Behavior chains are not limited only to the office. You can even apply the same idea to routines you have outside of work.

Be organized at all times, carry a notebook with you

If you work at a desk, sort out the clutter (if any) on your workspace and arrange the items by its relation. For example, pens, markers, staplers and other stationery should be placed in one area. Documents and papers can be placed in another area, but ultimately the goal is to be able to access whatever you need, whenever you need it.

Carry a small notebook with you wherever you go. Whenever you have a meeting, take it out and start taking points. This is to ensure that you don’t have to ponder too long on what was said during that session. Using your notebook as well, list down your tasks for the day and refer to it often as this will keep you on track.

You’ll discover that staying organized and taking notes will vastly improve your productivity.

Get enough sleep, keep your mind ready

Don’t be this guy.

This goes without saying, if you don’t get enough sleep your brain won’t be running at maximum efficiency.

Sleep deficiency can impair your cognitive functions and negatively affect your behavior, you won’t be able to get anything done. The inability to make rational decisions and muddled body activity can be seen by others which may cause others to speak of your indifferently.

Make it a habit by setting a fixed sleeping time that gives you a minimum of 7 hours of sleep (recommended 8 by some sources).

Putting it all together

Creating a good habit is difficult, I myself deal with this on a daily basis. The only time we fail at this is when we give up, so don’t. Keep at it and eventually you’ll feel that it’ll become second-nature to you.

Do you have productive habit that you follow as part of your office routine? Drop us a comment, we’d love to hear about it!

The post Productive Workplace Habits That You Should Know appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

As in the words of Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos:

Our number one priority is company culture. Our whole belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand will just happen naturally on its own.

With teams in a physical workplace, most companies tend to disregard the exercise of building culture with the assumption that it will naturally happen. That should not happen with remote teams, when everyone is distributed across places and timezones. It is hard to gauge everyone’s level of happiness and satisfactory when you could not see them face-to-face, therefore, setting things right as much as possible on the first try is crucial.

Here are six things we have learned on the journey of building the culture for a remote team.

• Hire the right people
• Use onboarding for new hire success, and quick assessment
• Invest in technology and tools for work and fun
• Organise in person meetups
• Provide perks & professional development
• Be transparent and cultivate trust

Hire the right people

A client once told us, that every one in our team has this Stampede DNA that makes us gel well together as colleagues and friends. What is this unspoken Stampede DNA that she speaks of? We ourselves don’t know, but upon years of hiring, we know what kind of people we do not want.

At Stampede, we hire based on this order: good attitude, willingness to learn & skills more than possessing the skills, followed by the rest. We understand that it’s tempting to bring on board someone with the technical skills to immediately get down to work. But any skill can be trained, but things like personality and temperament have a huge effect on how someone will meld into your team and perform for your clients.

Hiring for attitude ultimately opens up a wider pool of candidates. Also because the technical requirements for business are constantly evolving, you can’t anticipate the hard skills you will need several years out. Which is you should always be on the lookout for someone who is hungry to learn and know more when you are hiring.

Onboarding & assessments

We take great care when we are welcoming a new Stampede-ian onboard. We want to make sure that their first day leaves a good impression (and with better impression the next few days and weeks, because we are overachievers that way), that everything they need is ready and most importantly, they will not be bored or be left wondering what they should be doing on the first day.

In order to make this happen, we have checklists on what the new Stampede-ian should be provided, briefed and walked through on the first day.

On top of this, in order to ease them into our culture, they are also included in internal meetings and some client meetings for observations. This shall also help us to assess how well they get along with the team and clients, and how well they perform in social situations.

Another thing we learned is that to assess new hires as frequent as possible. Do not wait until the end of the probation to provide feedback. Keep a spreadsheet of weekly observation of how they perform, and discuss the progress every week on how they are doing and how we can help them to perform more should there be problems.

For the hires requiring technical skills (coding and programming), we assign weekly coding assignments on top of real projects and encourage them to ask for feedback as soon as they have problems. This way, we are able to see their initiative to problem-solving, and that it is okay for them to get help if they are stuck.

Tools for work & fun

A physical office develops its own personality through inside jokes, shared experiences and a collaborative environment where you can just walk to someone’s desk and do all of these. However, when it comes to a remote office, we do not have such luxury, so we shall make do with something similar.

We spoke in Part 1 of how much we use tools to automate our work as well as to motivate each other in a remote setting. When we speak to the team members who had worked in a physical office before, they admitted they get more things done than before and our inside jokes are pretty legendary too.

Here are some of the tools we have been using.

• Slack: Virtual office and gif ping-pong
• Basecamp: Project management and client communication
• ResourceGuru: Scheduling
• Bitbucket: Hosting version control repositories
• Google Apps: File sharing, to-dos and many more
• Dropbox: File sharing
• DoneDone: Issue tracking for maintenance projects
• LastPass: Password management
• Toggl: Time tracking and employee timesheet
• Bonus.ly: Peer-to-peer bonuses program

In person meetups

To be honest, we troll each other in Slack every single day it is almost we are in the same office together. So what happens when we gather everyone around for a couple of days at least once a year? Peak action potential happens 🙂

The in-person meetup includes loads and loads of food, jamming session, LAN party and also so much trolling and laughing like no other. Just an extension of our virtual office in Slack.

Perks & professional development

Earlier this year we have started to implement more and more perks to our full time Stampede-ians:

• Everyone in the team gets 3-month free membership of gyms of our choice.
• 2-week paid leave on top of the compulsory leave
• Every team member gets to propose any local or regional conferences they want to join, and most of the time, we let them go and pay for their expenses too!

We learned that by doing this, the team members return to work more motivated and always ever ready to share their experiences!

Another new thing we have done recently is subscribing to online learning programs. They are really convenient and everyone can learn at their own pace and time. Now every team member has a Lynda account of which they can use to delve more into their related skill sets, both technical and soft skills.

Transparency and trust

Since we are a distributed team, we learned to trust our colleagues in order to get the job done. But in order to do so, everyone is responsible to make sure they are worthy of trust. There is no one in the team to hover around each other to make sure everyone does the right things, so it starts with the first point – hire the right people.

What’s wonderful is when you learned to trust your team members, oftentimes they will amaze you. With the trust, they continue to feel empowered and do good things and beyond. Give your team members the benefit of the doubt and you will learn that most people just want to do amazing things as you do!

Conclusion

This is by no means a definitive list. As we grow as a remote team and as remote working gets even more popular, we shall learn more and more things on how to build culture around a remote working team. When we find out interesting things, we shall be sure to share with you.

To recap:

• Hire the right people
• Use onboarding for new hire success, and quick assessment
• Invest in technology and tools for work and fun
• Organise in person meetups
• Provide perks & professional development
• Be transparent and cultivate trust

If you are also part of the remote team, what are the things you have learned about building the culture for a distributed team?

While you are here, please also take a look at Part 1: Running a Remote Team.

The post Working Remotely Part 2: Building Culture in a Remote Team appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

How do you run your team remotely?

Over 10 years, we have employed a number of wonderful people across Malaysia and a couple of other countries. We do not have to worry about the availability of resources, as we employ good people internationally. On top of that, we allow our team members to travel while working (or working while traveling, whichever works best!) and it had been such an eye-opener experience every single time.

On the spirit of sharing, we’ve decided to start our own series of Working Remotely to answer some of questions on how we got it to work. Rather than setting this as guidelines on how to run your team remotely, we shall have this as a sharing session of things we have learned about remote working for the past ten years 🙂

How It Started

Stampede had its humble beginnings starting with just two individuals, Shaza and Dov. Over the course of time, we attracted clients from the Netherlands, USA, Australia, UK, Spain, Canada and Russia. Many of them are still with us to this day, marking 10-years of partnership with Stampede. Initially some of them required design only, but pretty soon everyone wanted to join in on the HTML/CSS bandwagon.

The decision to hire like-minded individuals came to mind when Dov and Shaza started to experience an increase in workload. While they had the option to say no to new requests, at the time, they were learning so much from the work. The business and the clients were all too exciting to miss out on. The partners loved their life in Langkawi but realised the chances of finding a web developer for Stampede was slim in the tropical island. As with today where the debates are still ongoing, many people were skeptical with remote jobs, thinking it was too good to be true.

The timing was right however, because in 2005-2006, web development was entering a transitional period in Malaysia. Many young people were enthusiastic about the Internet but they didn’t yet know where they would fit into the greater scheme of things. Some were already holding a dull job, others were at the last definitive phase of their studies. A few were brave enough to give the position a try.

The first job posting was quite a good hit. Several people tried out and we hired our first front-end developer, Renee Chung, because she was humble to admit her knowledge wasn’t perfect and was open to learning new things. Renee has done several freelancing gigs in the past so she wasn’t new to remote work and she was able to work under minimal supervision.

Since then we received applications from fresh graduates too, some of them not even aware that we’re a remote company. Shaiful for example, was intrigued enough to decline a job offer from Shell and has been with us now for 8 years.

Over the course of 10 years, we have hired and also, unfortunately, let go some of the great people who had been with us. We understand remote working is not for everyone. But the ones who had been with us had contributed immensely to our experiences of building and managing a remote team.

Recipe to Run a Successful Remote Working Setup

As with many recipes, the ingredients listed are the utmost important ones: ready for everyone to tweak and add on to suit their business and team needs. Over the years, we have learned that there are four basic ingredients in running a successful remote working setup: Technology, Team, Tools and Process.

1. Technology

Mobile technology enables remote workers to do anything/everything other co-located workers can, sans cubicles and distractions. Before we jump onto the other ingredients, technology is the most basic thing needed in order to do the job and keep the lines of communications open with the rest of the team. While this might seem obvious, we often stress this often to our new hires before they come onboard.

Internet

We all know that the Internet is certainly the driving force when it comes to mobile work. In fact, remote working’s rapid growth in the last decade, can be directly attributed to the growth in home broadband Internet availability and the maturity of online services and applications. The Web fuels all the technologies that make working away from the office possible and easy: email, instant messaging, video conferencing, file sharing etc.

As such, it is self-explanatory that the Internet needs to be fast and reliable to avoid any disruption when we work remotely.

A computer

Another very obvious necessity: a team member needs to have a computer that is as powerful as possible to suit their needs in the team. A designer especially, needs a powerful desktop computer with very good processor, SSDs, sufficient RAM and a good monitor to be able to support the amount of interface design work at a given time. The same applies to programmers and front end developers.

Though the majority of work will be done primarily on desktop or notebook computers, the team members should also be ready with other mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets for quick work on the go — as well as conducting internal reviews for responsive designs.

2. Team

A remote working setup will not work successfully without a wonderful team. As mentioned earlier, remote working is perhaps not for everyone. Therefore, it is important to build a team whose members are capable of functioning in a remote setup. Here’s what we have learned:

Hire people who are self-initiated and self-disciplined

In a physical team, a manager can always monitor the progress of every team member. Far away from the hovering eyes of a manager, a team member in a working remote setup knows what needs to be done, once they are given the proper training, clear instructions and guidance. There is no need to check in with them every hour of the day, they will make it happen on their own.

Hire people you can trust, and trust the people you hire

It is almost impossible to work with someone you do not trust, even in a physical setting, much more in a remote one. It might get tempting to worry about what the team members are spending their time on or if they are actually working — start the process right by hiring only the people you can trust, and show trust in the people you have hired.

Hire people who can write, or train the team members to write better

Understandably, in a physical office, a lot of communications can be done face-to-face. However, in a remote setting, a lot of communication will take place in writing – email, Slack, Skype etc. It is easy to get misunderstood when you cannot convey your information via writing properly. Which is why, the team members need to be able to write properly – and if they are lacking a bit in that department, you need to train them.

Keep track of the team temperature

Remote workplaces are less social than physical ones. It is easy to get lonely when you have no co-workers to have a ‘water cooler’ banter with. While it is crucial to hire people who are able to cope without a social workplace, cabin fever tends to set in as we work far away from our social setting. Watch how the team members are faring, and if needed, find a way to help them to overcome this problem.

3. Tools

In a physical office, you can always round up everyone for a quick meeting around a desk if the need arises. However, in a remote setting, we automate as many things as possible to project manage our team. Fortunately, these days there are tons of online tools available to help us do these.

Here are among the tools we have used on a daily basis to run our team.

Slack

Slack is our virtual office. This is where we announce when we sign in to and sign off from work. This is also where we discuss work, Diablo, communicate during internal reviews,  praise each other for good work, coordinate get-together plans and many more.

As we are so much into organisation, we decided to create multiple channels for both work and fun. For work sections, we have channels such as #design, #code, #content, #UX, #readinglist and according to projects we are working on. For fun, we have channels such as #diablo, #gym-buddies, #ideas and also #random, where sometimes we share cat jokes, new movies trailers, trivia of the day and some tech news, among others.

Basecamp

Basecamp is our main project management tool, which we have been using since day one – we decided to stick with Basecamp 2 and not upgrading to Basecamp 3 because we felt the second version fit our team and business needs better.

This is where we have the repository of all our projects – internal and external. As for external projects, the ones involving clients, we will loop in clients as well for communications. As Basecamp 2 comes with to-do lists (we love lists!), notes, messages, and the ability to categorise between team and client, they are very useful when it comes to communicating between teams in internal reviews. We have a feeling that no other platform could top Basecamp 2 for now for us.

ResourceGuru

After a few years working remotely, we felt like we needed to have a holistic view of everyone’s workload. While Basecamp has the calendar feature, there are no options to allocate everyone’s working hours and the amount of available hours every day for everyone. So we were on a hunt for a platform which could do this for us.

Enter ResourceGuru, which was recommended to me by Brett Harned after I did a little #lazyweb asking on Twitter. Internet is so wonderful.

Bitbucket

For the programmers, we signed them up to Bitbucket, a system for hosting version control repositories.

As we work with multiple clients and thousands of lines of codes for every project, Bitbucket helps code management as it changes over time. It allows past versions of the project to be saved in case new changes break things. It also has quite a few other features and is often quite complex but as a simplification you can think of it as a way to backup code and share it between different people the team.

Google Apps

We run Gmail as our email host, we are also on Google Apps. With the myriad of products, we found ourselves creating spreadsheets, write-ups and presentation slides and just sharing the files across the team by notifying them through the email. We can also share the links with anyone outside the team, with the option to either view, edit or both.

So instead of scouring through our folders looking for the documents, we can just enter the keywords inside Google Drive search and find our documents easily.

Other tools

• Dropbox: Centralised file repository. We do not know how to live without Dropbox now
• DoneDone: Issue tracking especially for maintenance projects
• LastPass Enterprise: Storing all our services and websites logins
• Toggl: Time tracking and employee timesheet
• Bonus.ly: Peer-to-peer bonus rewarding system

4. Process

More so than processes, we shall treat this as how we work and what have we learned from the years of running a remote team. Having a process in place is good to make sure that there are organisations in the team. They are bound to change so most of the time we tweak these proc — I mean, how we work — in order to suit our team.

Checklist checklist!

We have a list for everything – onboarding, internal review, client review (we even train clients to do this too so it will be easier for them to keep track), ideas and many more. Thanks to Basecamp 2, it makes it easy to list down and document as many ideas and processes as possible, so we will always have our thoughts written down.

Automation

Whenever possible, we automate a lot of things. On top of saving time, it can also save cost since we can keep our team small without having to hire someone to do multiple tasks. It also keeps our team members focused on their work since we do not have to go to meetings all the time or manually fix lines of codes which could be done globally.

A culture of accountability

Deciding on keeping the team small and focusing on more meaningful projects, we decide to assign team leads for projects. This way, the team lead will be responsible to foresee the success of the project from start till finish. Once the projects are signed off, the team leads and their team members are properly celebrated (usually involving food). This could also nurture the sense of leadership and time management in all our team members, whichever our role is.

Training and sharing sessions

In the spirit of encouraging everybody to their best potentials, we decided to get everyone a Lynda.com account and devise training goals and a training syllabus based on everyone’s needs and skills. The results shall be assessed in a series of questions, scenarios and presentations. While we do have training goals for each team member, these sessions are held light-heartedly and often end in a high note.

Culture

Culture is the highest priority for us when it comes to running the team. When hiring, we often make sure that the new guy/girl will have a good cultural fit with us. That being said, more so than expecting them to blend in, we also provide a fun and a safe environment for them to be successful, fail and be themselves.

• Happy Things: Weekly sharing session where we would all share what makes us happy and grateful for the previous week
• Constructs: Useful HTML, CSS and Javascript techniques microblog, ran by Jared.
• Curated: A microblog celebrating design, the processes and the people behind it, ran by Zana.
• Blog and social media: Everybody is required to write a blog post on a rotation on the topic they are good with. Some of the blog posts had been garnering over 11,000 views so far!

Perks

Just like other companies, we offer tempting perks to our team members. The list below is just a sliver of how we reward the team and let them know how wonderful they are.

• Gym membership: 3-month gym membership – Shaiful’s favourite!
• Conferences: Every team member are able to propose any conferences or workshops that they want to attend from the management – and we usually let them go and even pay for them!
• 2 weeks extra paid leave: Applicable for those who had been with Stampede for over a year.
• Yearly get-together: Includes loads and loads of food, jamming session, LAN party and also so much trolling and laughing like no other.
• Team vacation: Langkawi! Phuket! Kuala Lumpur!

Conclusion

To be honest, a lot of these were not decided on early — and over the years we are always looking for ways to improve how we run our team. Despite lacking of physical setting, our team members are extremely close knit and with the transparency we practice (this shall be in later blog posts), we often get encouraging feedback on how we should run our team and business remotely better.

So if you ever decide to have a remote working team, keep your mind open always for feedback and suggestions, learn from others and be open to experiments! Good luck!

On to Part 2: Building Culture In a Remote Team

The post Working Remotely Part 1: Running a Remote Team appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.