Trust and Intentional Culture Build Productive Distributed Companies

Key Quotes

"I look at here comes the guide as being a massive experiment about creating a company that allows women to have as much of it all as they can have so a career that's meaningful to them where they can see that they are doing really important work and also the ability to have a life so this balance is a really important thing to me."

Meredith Monday Schwartz explains that Here Comes The Guide was designed as an experiment to build a company that supports women in achieving both meaningful careers and a fulfilling personal life. This highlights her intentional approach to company culture and employee well-being.

"The biggest mistake that people can make is to not be hiring with that mindset but when companies found themselves in that position i think a lot of companies approached it from the mindset that their employees were going to try to rip them off that they were going to not work on purpose they didn't trust in the intention of their employee and the employee feels that when you're putting things on people's computers to see how often they're moving their mouse when you're you know demanding that they log in and log out at really specific times it just all really messes with the ability for the employee to feel that they're being trusted."

Meredith Monday Schwartz identifies a core mistake made by companies during the shift to remote work: a lack of trust in employees, leading to intrusive monitoring. She argues that this mistrust undermines the employee's sense of autonomy and damages their loyalty.

"I always tell everyone that i hire i am so not interested in micromanaging anybody if i can't trust you to do the work because you care about doing it for your own self then i have no desire to do business with you so i hire from the mindset of people if they care about the company that they're working for are going to do the best work that they can do."

Meredith Monday Schwartz emphasizes her hiring philosophy, which centers on trust and intrinsic motivation. She states that she seeks individuals who care about their work and the company, believing this self-driven approach negates the need for micromanagement.

"From a work product perspective i operate on a trust but verify way of doing things right so i know the role that each person is fulfilling i know what that role needs to produce over the course of a week or a month or a quarter or a year and so we have a lot of systems in place that we've built into our own bespoke crm that allows us to get a sense of what over the course of the week now first of all i'm not judging it day by day because i don't think that's a fair judgment but we do have a sense overall of the work."

Meredith Monday Schwartz describes her management style as "trust but verify," focusing on outcomes rather than constant oversight. She explains that her company uses a custom CRM system to track work product over longer periods, avoiding day-to-day judgment.

"I hate most meetings so we meet as little as possible so that people can do the work that they need to do like my i feel like me and my leadership team our job is to give air cover to our people and then stay out of their way and so we manage everything i mean teams meet we you know we absolutely meet and connect regularly but we're really careful to say does this meeting actually have to happen are the exact right people there."

Meredith Monday Schwartz expresses a strong aversion to unnecessary meetings, prioritizing focused work time for her team. She believes the leadership's role is to support employees and remove obstacles, which includes being highly selective about which meetings are truly essential.

"The idea of morning pages is basically it's just a brain dump you get a notebook i try not to use a precious notebook i try to use a very like a very workmanlike notebook and then you just brain dump anything that is in your head it doesn't have to make sense it doesn't have to be prose lots of times i'll do listing you know i'll make lists and it's just you know she says three full pages i do one full page because it's a big notebook and it fits in my time and i'm the boss of my own morning routine."

Meredith Monday Schwartz explains the practice of "morning pages" from Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" as a daily brain dump to clear one's mind. She personalizes this by using a simple notebook and completing one page, finding it beneficial for both emotional clarity and business idea generation.

"I am a mood reader there are or there are planned readers and mood readers and i don't understand people who say here are the books that i'm going to read in december i love that for them it's fantastic i could never read like that so i'm a mood reader i always have a book going in every format so i'm always reading four books so my morning read uh one of my kindle an audiobook and then a print book so i always have four going at a time and every time i get so that gives me the ability to switch around a lot based on my moods."

Meredith Monday Schwartz identifies as a "mood reader" and always has four books in different formats (print, Kindle, audiobook, morning read) going simultaneously. This strategy allows her to switch between books based on her current feelings and preferences.