Reimagining Creativity and Management in a Remote Work Era

Adam  00:00

Welcome to This Anthro life where we unravel the complexities of the human experience and explore the intricate webs that connect our lives or work in societies. I'm your host, Adam Gamow. Today we're diving into a world where creativity meets technology, where the boundaries of work are redefined and where talent transcends geography. So join me as we journey through the story of Supersite. It is a organization around innovation in the digital landscape. And we'll be talking with its founders Fredrik Thomassen . Now, today, our workplaces aren't confined by four walls, but instead are surrounded by the vast expanse of the internet, we might say. I mean, even if you work in an office or a lab or a classroom, chances are you have colleagues in other parts of the world who connect or work with you remotely. The thing is, well, online digital work is becoming more of a norm, equitable access and comparable pay across geographies, countries and places are not Givens. And the technology might be there, but without also accounting for human well being culture or our willingness and ability to adapt. The move to global digital work looks more like a techno utopian dream for a few privileged countries or tech firms. And this is a problem that Fredrik sets out to help solve. It's a world where your work opportunities are not limited by where you live, but by your talent and your drive. The Supersite Fredrik is not just building a design agency that brings in top talent and makes it available to other organizations and companies. He's crafting a future where work can be truly global and inclusive, shattering the barriers of traditional employment and opening up a universe of potential for creative minds around the globe. But how does such a vision come to life? You know, what challenges lie on the path revolutionising work? And more importantly, how can we ensure that this digital transformation brings about a more equitable and accessible world for all? So today's episode will take us into the heart of the future of work itself. So stay tuned as we dissect the digital evolution with Fredrik Thompson, exploring the interplay of technology, culture and creativity, and shaping a world where anyone anywhere can contribute to the global canvas of innovation been

Fredrik Thomassen  01:54

starting the company, I was actually living in Indonesia, and part of building an E commerce company there and worked with a lot of incredibly talented people and thought to myself, you know, these guys take it a bit more magically teleported to the US, they would make 1015 times as much. And then, obviously, you guys over there in America are building walls and, you know, keeping people out of your country, right. And so it's like, the only solution would be the internet. And I felt very strongly that one of the greatest transitions of the 21st century would be work moving online, and I just wanted to be a part of that one way or another. And I think it's been a really interesting journey, it's still very early but every year now there's millions of people joining the online workforce from all over the world and creating an equal an internet is helping create a more equal equal playing field and, and our mission is to create more equal opportunities in the world by helping to accelerate this this transition to online online work. And so I had personally always been working in marketing and sort of worked as a journalist for a while I worked in consulting and didn't primarily marketing activities there and worked in E commerce did marketing for within an E commerce and it always we were always bottlenecked by design and creative. And we're always waiting for the designers to finish up, we were always feeling that we could have better performance of our marketing programs, if the creative was better, faster, you know, more volume, there's always like new channels, new segments that you want to target, but but all it's just waiting for for the creative, and it's not the designers fault. I mean, they in my experience, they've always seemed you know, overworked and tired and, you know, always under deadline and stress and all they want to do is is make cool stuff and not be allotted bother, right and, and so that just felt like an unnecessary situation. And it felt like it would be possible to solve that. And so we start to build Supersite which aims to help marketing and creative teams, you know, get more get more done and bottleneck design deliver greater performance on creative campaigns. And so yeah, that's, that's basically the the Genesis

Adam  04:21

Now that's really interesting. And I think that you've said a lot of things that really kind of strike my brain as an anthropologist and a former design educator and design teacher, that you know, oftentimes the there is the kind of creative artistic bottleneck in terms of how fast can we produce intention with the idea that like, I want to take the time to you know, make the perfect design the perfect kind of campaign out lay the perfect kind of graphic or motion design. And, you know, there is this interesting tension back and forth. I hear you articulating that is between the idea of speed and quality, right, but then there is this, you know, not not magical at this point, but it still kind of feels magical, right? That the power of working online and remote work right We can, in fact, connect across time zones across places in the globe. And, you know, so the anthropologist side of me is, you know, the heart is warmed in terms of the day of how do we democratize access to work, and well paid work, right. And we make this area in availability, you know, you know, often open to more kinds of people. And so, I'd love to kind of think about this, you know, obviously, we're in a, we're in late 2022, or we're recording this. So we're gonna if we can say we're a post pandemic, but we're, you know, towards the latter stage of understanding and living with something that has made so many people locked down, right and moving work online. Right. I'm curious how that idea has also kind of shifted some of the thinking did it that it kind of helped launch Supersite even further? Or is this something that like you you felt ultimately prepared for, right, because you're already in a remote space, that we can deal with kind of geographical challenges in different ways.

Fredrik Thomassen  05:51

And COVID has been fantastic for accelerating the world's transition to online work. I think that's fair, fair to say, and a huge tailwind for for Supersite. And, and just an incredibly important proof point that it is possible to actually do work from home, you know, people are actually working, when they're at home, it's not like, you know, people aren't, aren't just chilling around and, you know, doing yoga and playing music, you know, having a good time, people are actually working, and maybe actually people are working more when they're working from home. And so I think increasingly, people are seeing that it's possible to build better companies in a fully remote context, or it's at the very least, possible to embrace that as a strategy to get access to more talent. I think a lot of companies out there are feeling constrained by the lack of access to talent in their local labor markets. And so if you're a company in Oslo, for example, which is where I live in, you know, mid sized capital in in Europe, it is just no chance, you're going to have access to all of the skills that you need to build internationally competitive company within marketing and sales and creative like, you need specialists from from every field. And maybe there are few large urban agglomerations in the world that can allow that, that network like you have San Francisco Bay area, I don't know 10 15 million people all working and thinking about technology. And I'll New York, London, and some of the sort of Chinese press, you're not perhaps but like most other places, you just wouldn't be able to get the level of access to talent to a reasonable level. And so I think remote is the only strategy for an ambitious technology company that is started in other places and these large, large international tech clusters.

Adam  07:51

I think that that's really interesting in a powerful point that, you know, if we are if we're competing, like in a global stage, and how can we because yeah, there are these these big giants. And some of the tech behemoths in the United States can make it very difficult, right? They can they gobble up talent, you know, but this idea in terms of that remote, opens it up not only for I think the two sides, right, there's the there's the talent side, right? Like what access do I have as a creative to look for work. And then the other side, to your point is like making a better organization that can be more agile and work more quickly? And?

Fredrik Thomassen  08:23

Yeah, exactly. And, Elon, what's surprising to us is that the companies that have been fastest to embrace our service and fastest to embrace online work in general, are the kind of existing technology companies, you know, like 70% of our customers are technology companies, and we would definitely be like a great solution for a, you know, a mid sized company in a smaller city, where are you the access to talent wasn't necessarily as good, but we nevertheless see kind of MORE and MOST our demand coming in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and, you know, maybe that's a cultural thing. Maybe it's more early adopters, there, you know, maybe in in San Francisco, New York, particular, like, kind of wages in the local labor market, ours are so insanely high that it's people find it hard, maybe it's hard to find talent in those in those places. But nevertheless, just a bit of a parceling situation that we were mostly embraced by the people that kind of strictly speaking needed the least. Yeah,

Adam  09:32

that is interesting, I guess I mean, thinking like putting on your marketer hat to that from your other life as well. How can we think about that, like, what is it? You know, are there ways to help, you know, bring the conversation to smaller markets in Norway or smaller markets in Tanzania, you know, or Jakarta, that we can kind of familiarize ourselves with this this type of working with with kind of liquid super teams we

Fredrik Thomassen  09:54

might say. I mean, I think technology obviously lends itself perfectly well to like this attributor Sway, because the endpoint that you're delivering is, is digital. And so distributed is fine. Like, if you have a factory and so on is it is, it is it is harder, and you definitely see more traditional industries resisting this transition to remote work more, I think that's a huge opportunity for people that want to break. Break out of, of that to be, to be perfectly honest, for a, you know, a consumer packaged goods company, or a retail company or whatever, you know, to have significant parts of the organization globally distributed, I think that's a huge opportunity. And I think we're gonna increasingly see companies or large companies embracing that as kind of a competitive competitive edge, but it will take time, but no, the curve is exponential. Every year, you know, millions of people over the next decade, two decades, we'll probably see a few 100 people fully move online. And so, you know, these exponential curves, tend to, you know, start small, but then suddenly become pretty massive and feel like wholesale revolutions that across across all of all of society. So it will be it will be interesting to see what it's, what is it going to do to kind of the Global Mobile culture or, you know, global culture in general would be very interesting to see. Yeah,

Adam  11:23

no, I agree to it. It's always as this interesting conversation, where it's like, how do we think about or like, how do we imagine the stories that we can tell right about what the future can be, you know, and in, you know, one of the ideas that that comes out of your work and Supersite is that, you know, the internet has helped making like remote workers help to make talent more about merit, and not like, how close am I to an office, right? And so I'd love to think about this with you and kind of talk about, you know, you mentioned the idea of democratizing access to top talent into into work. And so, let's break this down. Like what does it mean that we now have kind of a broader ability to make our work about talent versus like, Am I close to some some certain place? Well, it means

Fredrik Thomassen  12:02

Tomlin? It's a great question. And it's an especially means a lot to people that were previously discriminated against. Right. And I think there's a lot of groups that have smaller or larger labor market discrimination issues, I mean, they've the male female village, wage gap is, you know, often talked about and is always, you know, still persistent and pretty big even in, you know, Norway and the US, like reasonably, you know, mature economies on the internet's you actually don't see that difference in you know, you look at data from the payment provider, Payoneer or from Upwork and these large platforms and you basically see gender wage gap across skills is basically non existent. You see many examples and our goal in companies is a case in point of, of people with various you know, attitudes are free you know, the LGBT community people with like various you know, behavioral or people that really wants to be at home like all these type of people that are in handicapped or be so whatever, like adware historically like massively discriminated against in in the local labor market are now seeing just massive amount, they will be like, relatively speaking the big winners on the internet because she's just working on this person remote, and it's async in some Google Sheet, and once in a while you log on to her, like, why would you care, you know, like, there's no reason to discriminate anymore, like all you care about is getting the best people to do the best work and, you know, when you when you are then applying this, this very kind of systematic data driven, meritocratic approach to screening talent. It turns out that you just get this like rainbow of people. And, and that's, that's fantastic now and so. And for us, it's like, one of the most fulfilling new parts of building this company is seeing this incredible diversity that we've built up. And it's not been by design, and I can understand why people are like, annoyed when we need quotas for these things and library. Understand that that can be like people can be in opposition to that. But we haven't designed our company to become diverse, right? We've decided our company to become high, highly performance, like we've designed our company to be very, very rigorous in the way we assess people and then the outcome of that is, you know, this should be a diverse company and of 800 people in 75 Different countries with all kinds of shapes and sizes and colors and hair colors and hairstyles. It's it's always a yellow it's always like a surprise Do not go into some video call and just see like 10 people, and it's all accent looking. So I'm so different than and I think we're out there to prove that, that that's just a great way to, to build a business, right? I think the story is, it's much, it's, it's, it's very important to, to not tell the story that it's kind of bad for business, but we still should go out and hire more women, you know, like, if you start to have that story that sort of tends to retain that particular group, or tends to kind of, say, a woman are less talented, and then men, but we're still gonna like that, that has that implicit bias in so I think it's much more important to say, actually, it's, you should revisit the way you're hiring people, you should revisit the way you screen people. And if you do, and if you do it in a fair, data driven way, the outcome will most likely be a pretty diverse company. And if you don't have a diverse company today, that's probably a result of implicit biases that you've built into your screening process. And it's sort of like a data and measurement error. So that's a little bit our approach to it. And

Adam  16:11

that's really interesting. I love this idea to kind of like, it's how do we widen that conversation but but also be serious about the fact that oftentimes, if organizations have a lack of diversity, it's actually often implicit bias of their screening processes, right of how they're like getting talent and looking for folks in the first place, and tending to have like a, a confirmation bias for I want to hire someone that looks like me, even if I don't think I'm doing that. If I'm, if I'm screening people based on names and how the interview process goes, like they did thinking about this as a data error, too, that's it's, it's a nice a nice kind of additional piece that we could think about that it's it's like a flaw in our in our kind of models using our human minds versus versus different kinds of data, different approaches that are not based on some of the more subjective qualities that people kind of implicitly carry in their, in their heads. And I think also this, this idea, I think it really stands out important too, is that, you know, as you noted that diversity tends to be a, like natural outcome, if we can say natural, you know, but just like a common outcome, when you're using the different kinds of data, different approach that's like premised on, let's get the best talent, right, and the best kind of folks that are that are able to provide the best services. And I think that's really interesting and important, as a way to help wake up, I think other organizations too, in terms of there are better ways we can hire, and that we can screen for work, and it can be based on doing good work, right? And not get stuck in these, these kind of typical resume boxes of you know, hit these five marks, and then ultimately, let me interview you, but I'm gonna get the person that looks the most like me, or that reminds me of me, even if that's implicit, right. And I mean, that's one of the other kind of insidious parts we find with interviews. Absolutely.

Fredrik Thomassen  17:40

I mean, I think there's lots of problems with with resumes, and it's very hard to avoid looking at them, right. But it's, at best, like a weak correlation between, like the pedigree of your prior institution, and the actual, you know, quality of the job that this person will, will, will perform. And, and we've made the mistake, a lot of times of hiring, this, like classic archetype from Yale, or Harvard, or some other prestigious place, and you're gone to a consulting firm, and like, it might be good, but it might not ignite, like, they're hard to say. And I think our approach was really to believe in is to place a much greater weight on evolving our capabilities to test skills, and test abilities and values in a more structured way. And so we place a much greater reliance on case assessments and various other structured tests, that we're doing a new place a great deal of importance on screening for values, and it's something that's we're trying to do in an explicit way, but it's obviously, as you know, as an anthropologist, it's not, you know, hard to, like, assess people for for values, but something we try to think about, you know, our number one value in societies is to be kind and so and so. So, that is something that we try to, like, understand through, like, inter process and try to, you know, elicit from reference checking and, and Assan. But, but it is obviously, you know, very hard because most people are generally, you know, behaving pretty nicely into context. So, yeah,

Adam  19:34

you have to give him like little little stories, right, like and read the story and then see who would you help and how would you help them? Yeah,

Fredrik Thomassen  19:40

there's like ethical puzzles. Yeah, you know, you have the Traminer and five people are moving your pilot and then on the other tracks, I don't know, but I guess our recommendation is to really put a great amount of thinking into standardized testing. Standardized testing has gotten a very bad wrap it because it's basically in people's mind means the sa t or something. And sh t probe has a lot of flaws or IQ testing and IQ testing programs a lot of flaws, right and so, so but it's a little bit of that doesn't mean it's not possible to create structured assessment frameworks, it just means that we need to evolve beyond it is beyond IQ testing toward more sophisticated ways of, of testing. And that's what we're sort of constantly working on and trying to improve and trying to make into our, one of the kinds of key company IP stuff that we have. That

Adam  20:41

sounds great. And I think that that's really a valuable point to where, you know, oftentimes, it's like the anthropologist and ethnographer Trisha Wong, you know, talks about that oftentimes, like one of the challenges when we try to quantify and measure things that sometimes it'd be more subjective things like a value, right, it's that we can put the numbers on the wrong things. But then the flip side of being also what you're saying here is that we're trying to measure what actually matters to people. Right. And that's, that's what we need to do. And that, I think I take your point, it's well said in terms of the standardized testing, tends to get a bad rap because it didn't like PSAT or, you know, different tests per grade for students that don't tell us much about the, you know, the ability for someone to succeed in a space, right? It's more just like, Can you can you answer these questions in a way that is satisfactory to the test, but, but your point, like, why couldn't we have all those kinds of questions, right, and we do that all the time with other in other industries in other areas, you know, I mean, the example that comes to mind is the biological anthropologist, Helen Fisher, Dr. Helen Fisher, has done a number of really interesting studies, both for match.com, the dating website, and chemistry, they're their parent company, on and how we ask standardized questions of match and mate finding. And so it's like, these sites actually have some of the best ways of engaging with people, you know, but in part, because they're designed qualitatively, like with, with, you know, this kind of, I think I'm biased, but my anthropological mindset, you know, in terms of how do we ask questions that really get to the heart of what people value, right. And then if we do that enough, over time with data, then we actually can begin to see patterns, right, and build some correlations. Absolutely,

Fredrik Thomassen  22:08

absolutely. And it's also like, kind of a discredited field historically, where we have, you know, the MBTI, and the big five, and these things, which is like both, both would like serious methodological problems. And also with this, like, pretty fair criticism, in my opinion, which is, it sort of like takes a human and reduces it to like this, these dimensions when animal animal that takes this test is like, does it like fully, adequately explain me special my special self to have like, extrovert introvert, like thinker, feeler, like the or, you know, is that like, a useful way and so, I strongly believe that there needs to be lots of innovation in this particular field of assessing value match with an organization because it is incredibly important, both for you as an individual, and your own well being like, what what is this place? You know, like, will I be happy here, you know, what are these guys talking about, and for the organization, as a whole, you tend to see just and this is our, our experience, and I think a lot of other people's experience, what I think we tend to see that it's just so much easier to collaborate, if you share a set of values, and if you are aligned around a common vision for, for the future, but it's still just so hard to assess. And we just constantly make mistakes, right, and I would say nine out of 10 times that we make a hiring error. It is because of, of values, it is not because of performance, it is someone that it doesn't necessarily like to work harder, isn't necessarily that nice? Or, you know, isn't truth seeking political or like we have all of these values that we care about, obviously, but and so if we would be if we would improve our ability to assess values, we would dramatically reduce number of hiring mistakes, which would be better for us and obviously a lot better for the people like most of the times when we've made these hiring mistakes, then this person is goes on to have like tremendously, you know, like a successful career else elsewhere where there's just a better a better control cultural moment.

Adam  24:35

Yeah, that's a really I think it's really fascinating point too. And you know, especially on like the the employee or the talent side when you're looking for an organization to work at or with it can be often hard to assess that value question right? And like will that line up especially because there's a lot of you know, as we know, uncertainty and emotion in the process of applying for for a job traditionally to right, you know, the interview process, the resume, whether you're doing case studies, you know, to kind of how you're how you're going have vetted. And there's a lot of a lot at stake in terms of that. Oftentimes people, I don't know, if I have to say lie, but like a lot of people will like stretch how much they care about something, or because they want to get a job, not because they're trying to like be untruthful, but just like, it's also important that I get paid, you know, that I can I can sustain myself, you know, so there's an interesting, like, conundrum there. I appreciate the line of thinking here. And how we

Fredrik Thomassen  25:24

know for sure we're open for sure. And that's the type of thing right, yeah, you present someone with like a big five questionnaire during a job interview. And then surprise, surprise, everyone is like, incredibly conscientious all of a sudden. And so yeah, it's it's easy, there is to be ways to like assess it, that doesn't rely on this requirement to to feel the urge to place the candidate under under in this position, or where they feel that they need to lie for her.

Adam  25:54

Do you think that like something that stands out to that, that how supersized talks about the kind of work that you do is that like you have, you know, one of your missions is like creating jobs that are like equal opportunity, we've kind of we've kind of been talking about this, obviously, remote is an important part of flexibility there. But also the deal of happy like that the employees can be happy and feel good about that work. And so I feel like that the value question and the cultural question that we're talking about here is really important to that part. But I'd love to hear, you know, are these the elements? Are there other elements as you think about? How do we know what makes a job happy for people? And how do we help, like, provide that

Fredrik Thomassen  26:27

that process? Yeah, look, I mean, I think it's important thing, it's important for lots of people this question on, on values and mission and working for a company that cares about that. But at the end of the day, there's, there's also a lot of pretty basic things to people, you know, people really want to get paid on time, every month. So that's really nice. If that happens, people ideally want to kind of make more overtime. And if you work hard, you want to get promoted, and you want to know if you're doing a good job, or not. And you want that feedback to be given to you in a professional way by a manager that cares about your well being. And so these are kind of the basics that I think is a lot more important for people and many of these other things we've been speaking about, like, Yes, it's nice that the company cares about the mission and the vision on the future of work and all things but like these things, you know, if my boss hates me, or if I'm afraid of coming into work every every Monday, because, you know, my boss is terrible that, you know, that's obviously, you know, much more impactful and much worse for you. So we really tried to focus on getting all of those basics in place, and just doing a really, really good job around providing people with a very clear, and ideally, very rapid career progression. And so our primary is a pitch to candidates, it's actually more around suicide being the fastest possible way for you to accelerate your career. And so, if you are ambitious, and you are looking to learn and grow as quickly as you can, you, you can join Supersite and then within three, four years, you can for your 5x your your salary rise, which is pretty, pretty incredible. And you provide a bunch of resources to be able to do that. And, and really, we're incredibly passionate about our ability and the tools, the training and the infrastructure that we provide, that allow people to grow so quickly that within a few years, like, imagine an educational institution that you join, and then you spend three years there and then you make five times as much on the other side, you know, that's a pretty that would be a pretty incredible university at most. Yeah, most cultures like you basically just like play beer pong for four years, and, you know, hang around with the frat bros and you know, you'll learn a little bit. And so we're a bit skeptical about higher education in general, I guess especially within a field like design, which is such a field that is that is such like a craft field like apprenticeship field. And where we're where we feel if if you do it in a structured and good way in in a sort of learn on the job type thing. You can massively you can massively grow and so, so that's that's really what we're, we're the most passionate about. And I think that when people feel personal growth, and when people feel company growth, that kind of solves all problems, almost all problems like and I'm not saying that all those things aren't important but like At the end of the day, you know, company doubled every year, like what supplier has been doing over the past three years. Almost nobody leaves, right. If you yourself every, every year you improve it. So like I think, you know, you work in some traditional agency every year going down like 5% 5%, like TVs, like less and less advertising. You know, it's you're struggling to hold on to clients, it's getting harder, harder, like there's no room to grow. Obviously, those people are looking for, for alternative places to grow to get better opportunities. And then, so then we're seeing this like, yeah, we're seeing this massive influx of applications and people looking to escape the agency world and, and working in place where you get personal and company goals.

Adam  30:49

That's fantastic, too. I mean, also, just congratulations. That's incredible to hear. That's kind of doubling over the past the past three years. And with like, such low to no turnover is also incredible, right? Because that's one of the big questions we're seeing in organizations now. Right, is that, especially because of the pandemic, there's been a huge amount of turnover, right, as folks are great resignation, some people call it murder, the great rethinking or whatever it is, yeah,

Fredrik Thomassen  31:09

just the new group of Lincoln Alumni Center of rights, just so yeah, yeah, right. Yeah.

Adam  31:17

That, that says something really important, I think that folks are kind of sticking with it. And that is a testament to kind of the, the space that's provided. And I also, you know, I like the way that you have kind of broken down these two sides, where there is the bigger picture have the right kind of cultural fit and values. But then also there's, there's a lot of this concrete, we might say, right pieces of getting paid on time, but then also, are we helping people feel like they're growing, I think that is also one of the big thing, that's one of the big reasons that we see people have resigned so much over the past few years to is that they, they don't feel like they're getting anywhere in their job and don't have definition of how that they're gonna get anywhere. And the number

Fredrik Thomassen  31:48

one reason people state in surveys, why they don't like or if wherever, when they're not happy with the job is, is that they don't like the robot. That's the number one thing and so, yeah, it's obviously a very hard as an organization to control but it's again, this like, values thing. And then creating like, very clear requirements for bosses to follow, like managers everywhere in our organization have a very clear set of, of obligations that they need to adhere to, toward their their individual team members.

Adam  32:26

I think that that's a great point, right? Because oftentimes, people can get promoted into management without having any management experience. And then there's no clear ways of how to manage that. Like, that's oftentimes where you'll see the train. derail? For

Fredrik Thomassen  32:37

sure, but I mean, I'm not totally you know, I'm not sure if I'm like the best boss ever. I think propria for everyone, it will be some people like you're good forum, some people that you don't you're not going for it. It's like all as like little bit chemistry kind of, kind of question. But no auto, what I wanted to say is like, I think it's actually not necessarily that hard to like, move into management, a lot of people make a big, very big deal out of that. And a lot of people when they become managers for the first time, they just try to do all this kind of stuff, you know, like, but it's not necessarily needed, like most people are reasonably good at their job, want to be like, more or less left alone. And when they have a problem, they will come and say, Hey, can you help me this thing, and then you and the boss needs to then help with that thing and say, good job. And that's it. You're not it's not that complicated. But a lot of people kind of make it out to be way, way too complicated. So we're, we're trying to her in our kind of internal management training is just trying to simplify, simplify and align around this idea that as a manager, your primary objective is, is to help when, when needed people will come to you for for problems. Yeah,

Adam  34:02

that's really interesting. And I think an important point, right, though, we can frequently kind of overcomplicate the story, because it's like, I have to do all these things. Now I have this kind of new role. But then sometimes it's like the idea of Occam's razor, right? The simplest answer, it can be the best, you know, it's like, be there to help and support and help them then get to the next the next stage themselves. Yeah, the the follow up question I was thinking with this is the the kind of importance of psychological safety right in the workplace, and how this is important, especially for kind of the two things I've seen. Supersite kind of talk about is like the importance of the psychological safety for things like speed and creativity, right, that I can kind of take creative risks, both as a designer creator, but then also I think, as an employee, too, right? And then speed in terms of how the question of productivity and what kind of work I can do. So I'd love to kind of hear your thoughts about about this, this idea of this framework and how this plays into, you know, kind of supersites Super growth, we might say, you know, how do you think about this idea?

Fredrik Thomassen  34:54

So we have a value in suicide, which we call seek the truth and we feed it into The blend, incredibly important, and we feel it permeates the organization and, and has really become a pretty powerful part of our of our values of our culture. In order to seek the truth, you need to have a lot of curiosity. You need to have people that challenge each other, you need to have lots of people asking stupid questions, almost always. The questions that push add a discussion to the truth are simple, stupid questions about why why are you doing this? And in order to have everyone dare ask those questions, there needs to be a great amount of psychological safety. And I feel very often organizations that taught that they are sold truth seeking tend to build cultures that are and deliberately like on overtly aggressive towards people that are challenging authority. And that definitely backfires. And, and I don't think you can have a truth seeking organization without having authority, or being massively open to criticism, and to challenge us to your, to your authority. And, and so, so that's hard, right? It's like, I don't know what kind of intelligence briefings Vladimir Putin is getting from his like cronies, in his intelligence services about how things are going really like in Ukraine, like maybe his vision was that he's, you know, winning and everything's going super well. Like, it's hard to say, it's hard to create, like, a truth seeking a truth seeking culture. And, and so, for me, it's, for me, it's something that I sort of constantly, constantly think about them. And feel that is, like, one of the most important responsibilities for me and, and also for, for all of our management to, to try to create a culture that that constantly challenges us and tells me, Hey, this is bullshit, you know, like, this, this idea is not a good idea. I disagree with this. And the way we try to do that. Because I think we can be a lot better i like most people don't like it when people say that my ideas are bad, right? And so very tempting to go against it. But but the way we're trying to do that, and I personally had to the heart, believe that I am, that I really enjoy being with people that challenge the challenge me. And I tend to think much more highly of junior people like people that report to me, when they say that they disagree, when they openly in a big meeting, say hey, I actually don't think this is good. And I'm like, Okay, well, this is, this is the guy like we need to keep, we need to keep this person around and gives us more. So I think, yeah, so I think that's the most important piece to like, constantly reward, that kind of behavior. And then when people see, hey, this person there, you know, got promoted twice. And but it's constantly like, going against the CEO than that, hopefully, that sort of sets an example that that's the way to behave in in an organization. So that's, that's how we, in theory, think about it. And then, you know, again, it's never fun when people disagree with you. Yeah,

Adam  38:43

but it's also the that's, that's a well said area, because it's it is both difficult, but at the same time, I think it's nice, because it's really up to leaders, right to model that right? It's okay to dissent, as it were, like, respectfully, of course, you know, but but to kind of say I, you know, respectfully disagree, because I'm thinking about this this other way, or something that we saw, we saw evidence that the another approach can work to or something, I think, is really important. And so, it seems that, you know, today more top leadership is is also gonna be open to this right. And obviously, it's like the great example of like, political leaders are the ones that are most not open to this. So yeah, kind of need business to kind of help us rethink that.

Fredrik Thomassen  39:17

Absolutely. Absolutely. And conflict, this conflict is unnecessary connecting. My style is, personally my style is relatively confrontational, which I guess a lot of people feel probably intimidated by, or maybe just annoyed by but it's, it's to me, also pretty important to like push, push through to a level where, you know, you kind of get comfortable with conflict, you know, you get calm you get comfortable with this is where we are with my co founders where we've been shouting at each other for for seven years. It feels just incredibly comfortable. So and it doesn't stress me out when we have disagreements I know it's like part of the method to seek the truth. And so I think kind of conflict avoidance and being true, or avoiding confrontation is, is pretty antithetical to truth seeking, as well, but have to be done in a, you know, kind and respectful way, of course,

Adam  40:24

because it's I feel like I hear your journalism background peeking out here. Yeah,

Fredrik Thomassen  40:29

I mean, I was just working in like a regional newspapers. I didn't get to do like that much like critical undercover journalism. But no, definitely. Definitely a really cool occupation journalism. It's, I think, anyone working in journalism as a very envious, it's a very envious job. I really respect that profession for sure. Yeah,

Adam  40:57

no, totally, totally. It is, it is one of the I think one of the hardest jobs on the planet. But it's important. I mean, it's based on truth seeking. So I think this is this has been a really, really fascinating piece to see that like how that can also help us ask questions, in this case of like, what are we doing in the C suite? And how are we as leaders, Premier organizations to selling to that's really powerful. This has been a really fascinating conversation. And I'm super enthused, you know, to share the kind of the world of suicide with folks, again, especially a lot of the design community in focusing will be really excited to get a sense of what's happening in this space. And that there's, there's opportunities for both well thought out employment, and also like the idea of kind of talent based work that we can really lean into and not be too worried about more traditional biases of hiring practices and things like that, but then also having an organization that is, is premised on this idea of kind of seeking the truth. And this is interesting, because a lot of designers, you know, when I was teaching design a few years ago, you know, folks want to make beautiful things. But at the same time, too, there's some there's some kind of truth in the right kind of design that would find a lot of students talk about, you know, and so, I think it's interesting, too, that the field in which Supersite is functioning, you know, both in terms of the design service is that design itself can be a way of kind of revealing that truth, or hiding it, depending on what you was trying to do. Episode, it's

Fredrik Thomassen  42:10

Yeah, I mean, I think there's no shadow of a doubt in my mind that there is, you know, objectively good and bad art and will actually give them bad design. I think it was definitely, like, this whole postmodern period in humanity was definitely like a side track. And we clearly say, No, we, we clearly see that and I mean, it's just simple things, you know, like, you know, around symmetry and around the logic of things and alignment and color composition. And it's like, there are some loss to it, and are there are differences and, and so we we really believe in, in that obviously, like lots of room for in subjective interpretation and creativity and so on. But there's, there's definitely, it's definitely a craft, right. There are some things that you can learn right on.

Adam  43:02

And I think craft is the right word. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm a product. Honestly, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. This is really, really fascinating conversation. Super, super enthused to hear about your organization and the work and learn about all the great stuff that you're doing and excited to share this out with the with the good people.

Fredrik Thomassen  43:15

Thanks a lot for having me really great to be here and exciting to meet you.

Adam  43:19

And there we have it a deep dive into the world of Supersite. Touching on the intersection of global talent, remote work and the transformative power of design. It's fascinating to see how in the midst of rapidly evolving work environments, companies like supersites are not just adapting, but they're thriving. They're challenging traditional norms and paving the way for a future where work knows no geographic bounds. Fredrik's journey from the world of journalism to revolutionising the creative and marketing industries underscores a critical insight that the future of work isn't just about where we work, but it's how we work together and supersize mission to democratize access to top tier talent, regardless of their location stands on this belief in the power of the Internet to bridge divides and create opportunities on a global scale. And yet, as we've explored today, this journey is not without its challenges, questions of management company culture, in truly equitable opportunities still remain at the forefront that reminds us that as we chart this new territory, the technology might be ready. But it's the human factors, right, our values, biases and our willingness to embrace change that will determine the success of a virtual workforce. So this conversation with Fredrik Thomassen  offers not just a glimpse into the operations of an innovative company, but also into the evolving dynamics of work itself. So as we wrap up today's episode, let's take with us not only the story of supersites founding and growth but a reflection of our own adaptability and openness to the future of work. After all, in an increasingly connected world, our greatest resource is not just the technology that we create, but the global community that we can foster. So thanks for tuning in to this episode of this Anthro life and remember, the future is now and it's up to us to build it. I'm Adam we are well and until next time, keep thinking keep questioning and as always, stay curious. Go bye for now.