Despite many companies’ having misgivings about remote / hybrid work, this working arrangement brings multiple benefits, including increased productivity, better work-life balance, and more engaged employees. For an organization to harness these benefits, having a culture that emphasizes transparency and accountability is more important than ever. Having a decentralized workforce means that opportunities to meet in person are rare or even impossible, and managers will be unable to personally supervise their team’s work.
California-based software company CuraeSoft has experienced these benefits firsthand, having transitioned to a hybrid model even before the COVID pandemic. Once lockdowns made it necessary for everyone to work from home, it was easy for CuraeSoft to make the switch to fully remote work, and it has remained in that mode ever since, allowing its employees to work remotely (aka become digital nomads if they so desire).
This transition was made possible by CuraeSoft’s flagship product – coAmplifi Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution. coAmplifi enables organizations to empower their remote or hybrid teams with the tools they need to communicate and collaborate effectively. Keeping track of teams and project goals is challenging enough when everyone is in the same office, having a distributed workforce further complicates that. Through its various team organization, project management, and analytics modules, coAmplifi allows organizations to stay on course and objectively assess progress and workload allocations by functioning as a virtual operating headquarters.
According to CuraeSoft Founder and CEO Mark Parinas, the company uses coAmplifi to manage its own distributed workforce, a practice known as dogfooding. By using its own product internally, CuraeSoft demonstrates its trust in coAmplifi’s effectiveness, as well as takes further ownership of the product. Having tested the product in a real-world setting, CuraeSoft has valid real time data to improve coAmplifi’s features in a more informed manner.
Parinas adds that coAmplifi’s emphasis on accountability and transparency is guided by CuraeSoft’s own internal culture. He calls it “call-shot culture”, referencing the rule in pool sports where a player must call out their shot before taking it, stating how and which pocket the ball will go in. Failure to call one’s shot can cause the player to lose their turn.
“All of the members of the CuraeSoft team, including leaders and myself, have to put a lot of thought into what we bring forward, whether they are concepts, plans, and objectives,” Parinas explains. “This prevents us from just coming in with an idea that we pulled from thin air, without thought on how to achieve it. We have to think it through and be able to explain it in concrete terms. If we’re proposing a certain goal, we have to be able to structure it such that there are clear deliverables to achieve that goal, and we also need to show what needs to happen to meet those deliverables. We are a flat organization and everybody is encouraged to be vocal about their thoughts. In a call shot environment, it doesn’t matter what your role is, you can share your opinion, as long as you are able to hold your argument in a respectful way.”
This is reflected in the coAmplifi platform’s breaking down of larger objectives into strategies, and tactics, down to each individual’s workload. Being able to quantify and operationalize each task results in greater objectivity and accountability.
“As we all know, the loudest person in the room isn’t necessarily the one who’s doing the most work or the highest quality of work,” Parinas says. “By implementing a call-shot culture and reinforcing accountability through coAmplifi, it becomes easy to find out who is following through with their commitments and who are falling short. They can’t bluster their way into a raise or promotion, because they need to back their words up with action. This creates an atmosphere of trust because everyone knows that everyone else is pulling their weight and contributing towards the organization’s goals.”
