Remote Work and Company Culture | 120 Seconds to Better Leadership

*Video Transcription*

So, I want to touch again on the work-from-home policies that companies are playing with and toying with.

Of course, I get to observe a lot of different organizations and a lot of different policies, and I've seen the pros and cons kind of become evident. I've got one client; I think that's 100% back to work, no exceptions.

And honestly, their culture is going back so well, even though I know that can't be a popular policy right now. But the culture is just rebounding, and productivity is really high. And I think it's been a great thing. Now, whether that's the charisma of the leadership or the quality of the leadership, or whether that's the policy, there's no way for me to tell that.

But they're doing quite well. And most of my other clients are sort of a hybrid, right?

Some days you have to be in, some days you don't, and most have a little bit of flex built in.

The interesting thing that came up, though. I have a client where they're doing it, dividing it by function. Right. So some functions have a hybrid. Some functions are 100% work from home.

And there's strong advocacy in both of those functions for the policies that they have in their function. And what was interesting about this conversation that I had is that, you know, if the functions are interdependent, in this case with this client, they are in sales versus more of like a technical kind of backup support.

And, of course, the technical people all want to work from home, and the salespeople want to be in the office—shocking. And, you know, as I'm supporting the more technical functions leader, my ask to her was that just because your people are happier at home and they feel more productive at home. And I have heard that from certain people they are interdependent with the sales group.

And the sales group wants to have more opportunity to just, "Hey, can I grab you?" "Hey, can we drop this through?" You know, they need more social interaction, so it's not always what makes your people happy.

You know, they need more social interaction, so it's not always what makes your people happy. It's what makes your organization function in a high-capacity way.

And so my thinking in this situation was, you know, you got to take one for the team, guys.

You got to be in at least a little bit so that you can work more effectively cross-functionally because what we know is when functions stop coordinating and getting out of their silos and other bad stuff starts to happen.

So, I think in some cases, if it's a function that's completely isolated, you know, I'm thinking like, you know, phone banks, like there are some functions where it's like they just don't have those built-in interdependencies.

I don't really see the downside of working from home if that's what people want. But if you got cross-functional peers that you need to interact with, you need to collaborate with; there might be a little room to give to meet the needs of your teammates, even if it's not your work style preference.

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