CEO: Work Hard Anywhere

Running team remotely during COVID19 and earlier.

Saving the world has never been easier. Stay at home, Work from home. While most of the companies and organizations are recently shifting their operations online and encouraging their team members to work from home due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Good City Foundation (formerly known as Future City Summit) has been running operations quite remotely since the very inception.

Good City Foundation team members and Team PearlPay during Annual Meet-up in Hong Kong

With the motivation to serve the bottom of the pyramid and work for the Emerging Nations, Good City Foundation (GCF) has always been a multilateral development organization which is independent of location, region and domain . This is a Hong Kong registered Development Organization but the activities of the organization has spread across Asia, Africa, Middle East, Europe, Australia and more. During this global pandemic, the GCF Founders, Board of Directors and Advisors are currently in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Australia and the United Kingdom respectively and the Executive Team members are in GCF regional offices in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Good City Foundation team members in Bali, Manila, Bangkok and Yogyakarta.

The Foundation has built a robust virtual working structure and strong organizational practices which have helped the team to run daily operations very smoothly from everywhere. As long as there is a laptop and WiFi, GCF-ers are good to work for fostering cross-sector collaboration, making deals and running the development saga across the globe.

Good City Foundation team members and partners during meet-ups in the city (Bangkok, Yogyakarta and Hong Kong).

Here is a deeper insight about the work tools of the Foundation:

• Daily Communication: Slack does not slacken, rather fastens the day to day communication of GCF. The team maintains proper channels and communications threads for daily internal communication. Slack helps the team members to save and share files easily, maintain communication loops and stay close.
• Milestone and Task list: The morning starts with a hello to the Trello! The foundation maintains separate boards for each department. Each board has multiple cards of tasks with proper mention of the task, deadline, designated person and necessary resource materials are added.
• Documentation is the key: The foundation of the Foundation lies on the strong documentation culture of the team. Maintaining proper mail culture, sharing documents through google drive, noting down meeting minutes and multiple other documentation activities have made work easy for the team.
• Meetings: Why spend hours and hours in face to face meetings when things can be done with equal efficiency in a shorter time? Most of the meetings are done online in the foundation. Before the meetings, clear agenda is set, the meetings involve everyone’s perspectives and minutes are noted down for next steps. This saves time, gets work done and keeps the organization running.

During usual days, the Good City Foundation members travel for work from a city to another and have to work from anywhere, anytime. The people in the organization have developed this strong location-independent mindset which has helped the organization to establish its influence across regions. The team members make extensive use of online platforms, everyone is just one call away and the members are tech savvy. While travelling between cities, the GCF-ers make the optimum use of co-working spaces in their respective cities. This helps the Organization to work from any city, at any time.

Here are some of the benefits the Good City Foundation has been enjoying while working based on this #WorkHardAnywhere mindset:

• Travelling and working made easy: Because of this remote working culture, the team members can travel and work easily. The team members are not required to be based in one physical space and maintain a 9–5 work culture. Rather, it is a 24/7 growth mindset and travelling can never hamper daily work. Whether at the airport, hotel, train or cafe, the GCF members are always cracking deals and getting the work done.
• Unity in Diversity: The team members come from different regions, different backgrounds but are always connected. These features give the organization a very unique benefit of utilizing diverse knowledge and expertise in daily operations, setting the vision of the organization and expanding networks in a large spectrum.

Diversity is the future. A bunch of global citizens during the reception night at KPMG in Hong Kong.

Time efficient: Getting internal meetings done through a phone call, getting the work divided through a mail and getting the deals done online have always brought faster results than physically opting for these. Thus the team members can get a lot of work done within one day which keeps the team lean and very agile.

• Future Ready: Future is digital. We all could predict that works will be done more online than offline in the future. The current “work from home” culture because of the COVID19 has made the process faster. As more and more organizations have started working remotely these days, GCF has been practicing this culture since 2016. The team members are highly adaptable to new changes. This gives the team competitive advantage of being ready for the future digital wave.

Work from home, Work for growth. Hustle never stops. (Oxford-Singapore-Dhaka-Melbourne).

Working remotely has been fun, fast and super productive for the team. And meet-ups become more fun when the GCF-ers land in a city together to get the work done and get the chilling done right! While working all day for making the world a better place, taking a break for some Pad Thai, Jollibee, Gudeg or Hot Pot isn’t a bad idea.

Team members and partners out for exploring the city and cuisine (Bandung,Yogyakarta and Shenzhen).

Team Good City Foundation and Rainmaker Ventures out for exploring Manila.

Good City Foundation team members, partners and portfolios at University of Chicago Booth School of Business in Hong Kong during the Annual Meet-up.

It seems hard in the beginning, by hardwork it gets easier and through team effort & consistency it all happens. Good City Foundation started with a very clear vision: work for the bottom of the pyramid and build cross border collaboration. This is a dream which keeps the team members motivated and pushes us to wake up every morning. Tools and technology can make work easier and bring the world closer. But knitting the team through common dreams works like the fuel to get the work done. This is the very core.

Often startups invest a lot on setting up big offices, buying latest gadgets and hiring a big team. But to keep the work pace fast, to expand work around the world and to keep making impact, team spirit plays the main role more than anything else. 2020 is here and the world is facing a global pandemic. We are in this together and we will have to fight to get through this together. While we are in lockdowns, it’s a good chance for all of us to think what has not been right in our way of working, what is the future of work culture, how important it is to take the whole world as the market place and to not stay confined in just one country. While technology is here and the world is moving fast, we believe future is borderless and its the right time to take a leap for that.