About a decade ago, Bitwarden CEO Michael Crandell had an epiphany about employee performance.
Walking around the office of the previous tech firm he led, Crandell noticed someone shopping online at 10:30 a.m. “I started to react,” he tells me from his home in Santa Barbara.
Then he stopped himself.
“I realized if I go after that, I’m going after the wrong thing,” recalls Crandell, whose company’s password management service aims to keep people safe online. “That what we should really be focused on is not what somebody’s doing at this moment or that moment, but what they produce and what they contribute.”
For Crandell, it was a rejection of “old factory-style thinking”—tracking butts in seats, counting keystrokes, measuring mouse movements.
“That was a moment that I said, ‘We need to default to trust.’”
At Bitwarden, Crandell must build trust with colleagues scattered across the globe. The software company, founded by CTO Kyle Spearrin, has been remote since Crandell joined in 2019. Today, it has some 200 employees in more than 20 countries.
As part of leaning in to remote work, Bitwarden documents everything it does in a shared online space so people across time zones can consume and contribute to it asynchronously, Crandell says. Flexibility is another key operational principle: “We try to be clear that team members are not expected to work all the time.”
Crandell gives the example of an employee whose flexible schedule meant she could see her child sing at school on a Friday morning. “It’s not the reason we do it, but it gets returned to the company in spades, in terms of her gratitude, her appreciation, and her commitment—and the honor system that this all depends on.”
Amazon and other companies are closing the door on remote work. But at Bitwarden, it’s “an incredibly powerful model for productivity, also for our culture and growth,” Crandell says. It helps with hiring because many people who work in software value the option, he notes. On top of that, the company can recruit from just about anywhere.
Honor system aside, Bitwarden measures performance both periodically and on the fly. Twice a year, employees do a review with their manager to assess goals they’ve been working toward over the past six months. “We encourage very frequent one-on-ones and check-ins, because you don’t want to be surprised by anything when you come to that half-yearly review,” Crandell stresses.
As for goals, everyone is clear on what they are and aims to reach them.
“When you’re working on a new software release, again, it’s not about what you’re doing on a Tuesday morning at 10:30,” Crandell says. “It’s about what you got done that week and that month toward progressing us.”
How does an emphasis on results help Bitwarden build trust with team members?
“It’s essentially treating people as self-managing adults, if you will; as professionals who know best how to manage their time,” Crandell says. Besides, he adds, almost everyone is doing the work not just because they’re required to, but also because they believe in the company’s goal: “People at Bitwarden feel like they’re making a difference in the world by keeping people safer.”
And what advice does Crandell have for other leaders and their companies?
Carefully consider what defines productivity in your business and industry. “Think about what it is that people contribute and how to measure that—which certainly should be measured—and then try to free yourself from things that aren’t really determinative of that.”
If someone doesn’t need to be available within certain hours, it’s all about working with others effectively, Crandell observes. For example, Bitwarden team members in Europe finish the day long before their U.S. peers.
“So whatever I do in the afternoon is there waiting for them the next morning to get started on hours before I would get started,” Crandell says. “If you take advantage of that smartly, work can follow the sun and be even more productive.”
A safe bet.
Nick Rockel
nick.rockel@consultant.fortune.com
