Why freee set up a global team? Share my passions as a first designer in the global team
(別記事で日本語版を読むことができます)
Hello, everyone! I’m Hal who is a first designer of the global team in freee since Jan 2022. From then, my work environment has changed dramatically such as designing new product, speaking English, and working with new team members.
I don't know anyone who has set up a global development team around me, and little information available for reference... So we are building the team by hand. In this article, I would like to share my thoughts on when we launched the global development team and where we aim as a future team.
An engineering leader in my team wrote an article about the same topic, but sorry, it's written in japanese.
Why freee set up a global team?
Delivering values to "anyone" who with ideas, passion, and skills
Our vision is “Create a platform that empowers anyone with ideas, passion, and skills to easily grow a robust and streamlined business.”
To deliver value to “anyone”, it is necessary to deliver value to diverse people.
According to a report from Japan Finance Corporation in 2021, it shows that there are about 3 million foreign workers living in Japan. As a company that provides software for companies in Japan, it is also necessary to provide multilingual support.
Furthermore, all procedures necessary for working should also be able to be done regardless of their birth or their languages. To empower small businesses to take center age, It's important to make diverse working environments.
This is a bit off-topic, but I have an international friend from my university days, who decided to go back to her home country because she liked Japan but it was not a good working environment.
I would like to solve such pains as freee. I have a personal ambition to start such a movement led by the global team.
Making a team taking advantage of global perspectives
In 2019, I've attended a 1week workshop at CIID (Copenhagen Institute of interaction Design).
At that time, I explained about our service called "freee Founding" which made it easy to set up a company for a team member. She is a Copenhagen resident, but she didn't understand why we built it.
In Denmark, it takes only 25 minutes to set up a company. So… She didn't feel the pain of setting up a company in the first place.
It was a moment when I realized firsthand that "common sense" can be changed depending on the culture and environment in which one was raised.
The biggest lesson I learned was during the workshop. There were stressful moments during the workshop, when we did not agree at all.
However, we understood each other by repeatedly explaining our opinion's background. As a result, we gradually understood each other, and exciting ideas kept coming up.
The biggest learning from the experience is "Cultural differences are key to breakthrough ideas in the phase of analyzing insights from research results and diverging ideas."
Of course, I think that it is sometimes difficult to organize opinions in the midst of gaps in awareness and cultural differences. However, I believe that interesting solutions can be found for systems that seem inefficient or complicated if we take advantage of different perspectives.
Looking back on my experience at that time, I learned following two things that will help me to organize opinions and generate better ideas in the face of cultural differences.
Tell each other what you think.
Make a relationship to express opinions to each other openly
As we build our global development team, this learning has become a point of particular importance to us.
Where our team aims to go
Share our real intention and empathize with each other
In order for cross-cultural identities to successfully synergize, I would like to create a culture within the team, rather than conforming to Ethnic Majority. To this goal, I would like to increase communication and build a team that can trust and empathize with each other and shares our real intentions at any time.
All team members can access all information
We would like to aim for the same access to information for both primarily English speakers and Japanese speakers.
The current situation is that "Japanese people are speaking Japanese to each other in abstract discussions or discussions where many technical terms that are unique to Japan occur frequently." and "In Japanese members-only meetings, they end up speaking Japanese."
I would like to make sure that all communications are conducted in English and documents are kept in English, so that people can be involved as if it were their own business.
To deliver true value to users, our team members implement the PDCA cycle by themselves
One of the reasons I joined the global team, I believe the strength of a multinational team is the difference in backgrounds. I believe that these differences can sometimes make it difficult to get the job done, but I believe that we can build a great team by taking advantage of these differences.
I believe that capturing gaps in perception, visualizing abstract concepts, and stimulating discussion is one of the strengths of designers and one of the things I would like to do with this team. I would like to contribute to the creation of a team in which all members can implement the PDCA cycle by themselves, rather than having the Japanese members implement what they have thought of.
We’re hiring designers
The current development team members are
Engineer: 2 from Japan and 3 from Philippines
Product designer: 1 from Japan(me)
QA Engineer: 4 from Japan and 1 from Philippines
PdM: 1 from Japan
The current overseas development branch is only in Philippines, but we intend to accumulate knowledge through development with this team and evolve and expand freee's global organization with reproducible results.
However, we do not have enough Designers to build the kind of team we are aiming for in global development. If you have any sympathy for the world we are aiming for in the global team of freee, please contact us even for a casual talk!
Here is my linkedin account, please text me. thx!
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