I'm a Product Manager at Swell: a flexible ecommerce platform.

How big is it?

Right now, Swell is around 60 people, and on the product side, we are a small and mighty team working on the Swell platform. Our team has 12 people including our Product Managers, Engineers, Product Designer and Architect. We also work with wider teams like Marketing to support the build.

Where are your teammates located?‍

Swell is a truly remote-first company with people located across the globe. Our team of nearly 60 employees spans across 16 different countries.

Our team of platform Product Managers, Designers and Engineers are located in Canada, United States, Brazil, Portugal and Eastern Europe.‍

What does your team do? What are you responsible for?‍

As a Product Manager, I am responsible for determining the features that will be most critical to provide value to our customers and our business. I work closely with the Engineering and Design teams to ensure we’re building the proper foundation and have the best user experience to deliver this value.

There are many, and on our global team, we have a strong people team who actively work on keeping culture front-of-mind. It means we can focus on our work while enabling each other to build connections, and we do this through: 

• Clear communication vs constant communication.
• Intentionality, as it relates to what we say, how we collaborate and how we can connect with each other about life outside of work related topics. Overall, it’s important to be mindful that the culture depends on each of us and how we show up to work.
• Connectivity and being a participant in the culture as far as team activities go. 
• Staying true to our values to align ourselves with Swell’s mission.

It’s all about communication and building trust with one another. To ensure the team is happy and engaged, it starts with creating an open dialogue. This happens with team building, being vulnerable and creating informal connections. 

Once the trust and communication channels are established, you need to dedicate effort to maintain those and ask questions if anything seems off or miscommunication spikes. At Swell, our People team puts a huge emphasis on providing opportunities for the team to create these channels – both in person through team retreats, and also virtually with planned activities.

The biggest challenge for me, especially at a new company, is understanding the interpersonal relationships and dynamics across the team. As a leader, you need to understand priorities, challenges and be focused on the people. This helps to align the team’s experiences, strategies and delivery to grow as a company and individuals.

When you are working in person, it’s easier to see how different groups interact through hearing conversations and being able to jump in and add perspectives in real time.  Being remote means making a more concerted effort to put yourself out there and build those connections.

• Our first company retreat in April was in Mexico, where the team met in person for the first time. We spent our time aligning on company goals, playing trivia (which we also do weekly, online) and learning more about who we are as people.
• Onboarding mixers to meet new hires and chat with existing team members. 
• Manager round table workshop, where our team leads got together in Mexico to learn communication styles, leadership techniques  and a chance to plan resources for team and company growth. 
• Giving back to the community. Last December, a few teammates got together to support local charities during the holiday period. We’ll do more of this as a company as we grow.

We love playing team trivia, and make an effort to do this every week as a company-wide activity. It’s a great time for some healthy competition and to see people’s faces and engage with each other in an informal way. There’s more activities to come, but so far trivia has taken the cake.

We definitely do! We realize that while sometimes icebreakers can be cheesy, they are remarkably well received from our asynchronous team who value getting to know each other. So far, the team has resonated with: 

• Ice breakers and a ‘getting to know you’ activity during Swell onboarding. This way, all of our new hires can get to know each other in addition to the existing team, where they’re from and some fun facts they want to share about themselves. 
• During onboarding mixers, we’ll set people up with a variety of icebreaker questions and send them into breakout rooms to chat through a prompt. The most recent prompt we did was two truths and a lie. The next one will be to share a moment you look back on that made you laugh the most.

Currently, we rely on Slack a lot and the tools that integrate to the platform so that we can learn about each other’s lives outside of work. We have a whole array of informal Slack channels around topics of interest–food, drinks, pets, music, travel, etc.–which is one of my favorite ways to stay connected with teammates and get a glimpse into their passions and life outside of work.

Additionally, our Culture Director rolled out a culture survey right before our initial hiring wave at the start of 2022 to learn about the culture and build off it as we grow. Going forward, we’ll be implementing culture surveys and communication tools on a regular basis to learn about our teams day-to-day in order to expand the emotional intelligence of each other. There’s lots more to come on this end.

Notion, Feedspot and the following Product Manager podcasts: Product Thinking, Product Coffee, The Product Podcast.‍

I recently signed up for LinkedIn Learning and I’m excited to dig in more there too.