Our remote working team eats your office team culture for breakfast
I’m sick of hearing from executives that remote working doesn’t work. Of course they would say that. Of course the insights don’t support this, but hey — when you control the insights you can twist the narrative.
Let’s consider the average exec. If you had a massive corner office, enjoyed chauffeured travel to work, thrive on giving your borderline psychopath Type A personality a daily ego supercharge from all the sycophants on your payroll, and get a buzz out of escaping parent duties — wouldn’t you want to be in the office, like every single day? Yeah you would.
So when I see Elon Musk and his 0.0001% getting emboldened about forcing idle presenteeism to stomp out the hard-won work-life balance victories earned during the pandemic, I have to share how I know them to be wrong.
You see, it’s not about the ‘creative buzz’ you get face to face in a depressing glass cubicle. That cubicle merely takes us back to where the loudest or most aggressively ambitious voice in that space, takes up all the air. Gone is that blessed ‘can’t talk over each other’ rule on Teams or Zoom. But I digress.
Creativity truly sparks amid the genuine connection you get with other humans, when everyone feels safe, protected and encouraged to contribute — knowing they’ll be heard, that their voice matters too. And that happens when the capability (and yes, the EQ) of your leader, is advanced enough to sustain a daisy chain of connection across each contributing member of your team, group or organizational dynamic — where everyone knows that respect and humanity come first. That’s where the best work flows.
How do I know this? For three years since the pandemic, we’ve sustained that nourishing team vibe, across 7 countries, 5 cultures, four languages, three time zones and two continents. Even now, most of us have never ‘met’. Yet at a recent online farewell, there were genuine tears. Key features? Give everyone the chance to contribute. Hold daily stand-ups for human connection. No idea left unconsidered. Elicit feedback from everyone, on what’s working or ‘might work even better if’, every 2nd Friday. Compassionate leadership, drawing out the quieter voices on team calls. Reminders to be human. Embrace difference. Empathy first. Family first.
And you know what? Nobody ever needed to be chased up about the expected quality, timeliness or scope of the work being produced. Reminders of “top priority” requests, or deadlines that had to be met, or to ‘keep on top of things’, were fluidly dispensed in stand-ups with great humour and some expertly timed GIF action. Yet, we operated as a world class product and consulting team which revolutionised how employee experience could be reimagined, for a global organization of over 100,000 employees. Talk about practicing what we preached.
So don’t listen to the billionaires, the CEOs, the office junkies. If your experience of work is happier at hybrid, know that it’s entirely possible to build, run and grow a highly effective business with a global team, without having to spend your days in the same dull space of someone with a personality like Elon.
