Good question, hard answer.

First, it all starts with the fact that I have a function, which is being the facilitator of the management of the organization. I also like to call it the organization’s legal representative. And it starts with the belief, and the tension and discomfort, that a year and a half ago, in 2018, or even 2019, I did not believe it would be possible for a remote organization to have the same kind of result as an organization with in office work, in work where all the people are in the same space.

This is what I thought.

Angry Ventures begins with a process of principle development, perhaps already in the first or second year of its existence. And we begin to create a methodology that supports us in our daily lives. The methodology arises essentially for us to become more autonomous and more responsible, making each one of us have a kind of ability for action, or response for action, regarding everything that happens in the organization. When challenges arise, they are not only brought to one person, but are usually brought to more than one person.

What comes with this Covid question, and what comes with this question that we somehow need to change the way we work? Giving here a little context, we were two years in Praça de Espanha, we were two years in Cais do Sodré, then we changed in the last two years to Rato. In the last two years at Rato, I want to believe that was the best space we had. We had an open space, in my opinion a very big one, of 100 m2, and it took us about 6 months to a year to assemble it. It took a lot of work, because we had to set up from scratch almost everything, from air conditioning to systems for the presentations, and also find a way for us to make the dailies with the people who were remote, since at the time we already had some people working remotely.

And what happens, how does Angry Ventures get somehow 100% remote? Angry Ventures turns 100% remote because we were actually forced to be. And the tension or discomfort that I felt from the beginning was that it was not possible. And it was that there was a fear, at least on my part, that I thought, through an insight I had, that we had a kind of common energy or frequency that would replicate much more easily through personal than digital means.

The truth is that we, being forced to work remotely, thanks to this pandemic, realized that our adaptation to the moment of not working together in a room for a moment when we are working digitally, each in their own homes, was less problematic than we thought.

What happened was that, because there were some systems that were already helping us in our daily lives, that somehow, without much fuss, made us what we were, the transition was too smooth.

It’s not that people were working harder, or presenting a better result, but the truth is that people were proud of the fact that they could be working from wherever they wanted. And people liked (and like) the model. And because it gives them more freedom, it gives them a greater sense of control, and because it gives them more, it creates a responsibility on the people’s side that makes them animate that way of being, too.

Angry Ventures stays 100% in remote model, because it starts from an obligation. We didn’t prepare telework in a reactive way, it was without knowing it, but we prepared a way of working that, regardless of being telework or not, helps us through our methodology to continue to be what we want to be.

And in fact, teleworking as an obligation, also changes a set of beliefs and turns beliefs into truths. And these tensions or these discomforts that are created through fears, and through soap operas or movies that we made, or that at least I made in my head, turn into a truth that no matter what happens, or no matter what is happening, in fact people are much more excited now. So, because we want to continue to give strength to that spirit, we are not going back to the office. And that was the main decision.

Now, the truth is that we always have a possibility, the truth is that we can always do anything. And if we want to, we go back to the office. We don’t have an office anymore, but we get one. Or we get something else. And I think that’s the beauty of the possibility, of adjusting to what the challenges bring us.

In this case, the 100% remote came to us from an obligation, which yesterday created a tension, today creates a mood, tomorrow I don’t know what will create. But tomorrow we will be here, excited to try to understand what is the obstacle of this.

One of the consequences of this spirit is that we began to realize that  the fixed cost that we had with a space allows us today to give more back to people, because we use this money almost as a kind of fund, fictional and internal, to make retreats. After 4 or 5 months of working in telework mode, we realized that we needed to do more retreats. And we already did them, and this gives us great conversations at six in the morning in a jacuzzi somewhere. And it also gives us the ability to blur to focus. And it also gives us the ability to contribute more financially to people. It gives us the possibility to think ahead about what we want to do in the future.

Do I recommend teleworking? No, I recommend that we first learn how to work. Because teleworking is a consequence of work, remote is a consequence of work. So first we need to learn how to work and only then we can do remote work.