How To Stop Forcing Everyone Back To The Office
It's time to reimagine remote work and redesign a better way to work.
Read Time: 6 Minutes
👋 Hey, it’s Jess. Welcome to my weekly newsletter, Thought(ful) Leaders, where I share practical tools and frameworks, share research, and interview thoughtful leaders on the future of work.
⛑️ Work with me for 1:1 executive coaching or book a workshop for your team.
If you’re not a subscriber yet, here’s what you missed this month:
What most teams get wrong about high performance (and how to fix it)
The courage to lead with an open heart (An interview with Marc Lesser)
Subscribe to get access to these posts, and all future posts.
Most companies are having the wrong conversation about remote work.
You know the scene. You commute to the office, spending time, money, and energy only to sit on Zoom all day with people who aren’t even there. You’re fighting for a conference room so you can take back-to-back virtual meetings in peace. It’s counterproductive. It’s stressful. And it’s completely unnecessary.
Returning to the office doesn’t solve misalignment, burnout, or poor collaboration. It just relocates it.
The real problem isn’t where your people are. It’s how you’ve designed the way they work together.
What Leaders and Teams Are Feeling Right Now
If you're a leader, you might be feeling:
Frustrated by inefficiencies and a lack of control
Tired of the endless Slack pings and dropped balls
Worried that your culture is slipping and your team is disengaging
If you're an employee, you might be feeling:
Unseen and undervalued
Disconnected from the mission and how it relates to your daily tasks
Exhausted by busywork, Zoom fatigue, and unclear priorities
Burnout is real. But remote work isn’t the cause. Wasteful, poorly designed work is.
Remote vs. Office Is the Wrong Debate
Most work today is already distributed across building floors, time zones, platforms, and tools. Even co-located teams operate with remote-style complexity.
So let’s stop asking whether people should come back to the office, and start asking a better question:
How do we design for clarity, connection, and momentum, no matter where people are?
Great teams don’t just happen. They’re built intentionally. And one helpful way to break it down is to think about your technical systems (how work gets done) and social systems (how people interact and relate to each other).
Before we dive in…
This article will serve as a primer on distributed teams and I’ll be going deeper into each area in the coming weeks. If you have scenarios or questions on remote work you’d love for me to address, send me an email: jessica@jessicalynnmacleod.com
Technical Systems:
Structure Drives Performance
When people say “remote work doesn’t work,” what they’re usually describing is the failure of basic technical infrastructure.
Distributed teams succeed when work is made visible, communication is intentional, and tools are integrated into a shared way of operating.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
1. Document everything
High-functioning teams don’t rely on memory or private chats to keep track of information. They create a centralized, searchable source of truth. This includes decision logs, standard operating procedures, and clearly defined roles. Fully distributed teams like GitLab treat documentation as infrastructure, not overhead.
2. Design meetings with discipline
Every meeting should clarify three things:
what’s the purpose
who’s needed
and what decisions or outputs are expected.
Shorter, more focused meetings reduce fatigue and increase accountability. People will be more engaged in meetings that are clear and action focused. When you’re stuck in a boring status meeting you might notice people multitasking or keeping their cameras off.
Before you force everyone to be present, see everyone’s default behavior as a signal and determine if the meeting is a good use of time or wasteful work. Set meetings in five-minute increments based on what’s actually required. Defaulting to 30 or 60 minutes is a red flag.
3. Default to asynchronous communication
DistributedGov emphasizes async communication as a driver of autonomy, speed, and flexibility. It reduces interruptions, promotes deep work, and scales more effectively than real-time everything. Use tools like Slack videos, Loom, Notion, or voice memos to share context without hijacking the calendar.
4. Make project management transparent
Every initiative should have a single owner, timeline, and clear deliverables. Use shared visual management tools like Asana, Trello, or Jira to track progress and eliminate the need for constant status updates. Visibility builds accountability without micromanagement.
5. Streamline your tech stack
Tool sprawl kills clarity. Define what each tool is for (Slack, Docs, project tracker) and document those norms. Establish naming conventions, archiving rules, and communication channels for decisions. The tighter your systems, the fewer the cracks.
Social Systems:
Culture Doesn’t Happen by Accident
When your team isn’t physically together, your leadership habits and culture become magnified. The way you communicate, how you handle ambiguity, and how you respond to setbacks are culture-defining behaviors.
Distributed teams that succeed invest just as much in social architecture as technical systems.
1. Make expectations explicit
Ambiguity is the enemy of trust. Without clear expectations around availability, communication cadence, and how decisions are made, teams drift. Write it down. Discuss it. Revisit it regularly. Clarity builds confidence. Check out insights from the CEO of TrueRoll on setting expectations.
2. Prioritize presence over performance
Reboot puts it simply: “You cannot lead someone you don’t pay attention to.” Typing and multi-tasking while someone is talking to you is rude. Canceling one-on-ones because there’s “nothing urgent” is a missed opportunity to build trust. People feel safe when they feel seen and that requires full presence.
Be aware of your body language when you’re on video calls
Practice bringing your hands away from your computer and zoom your camera out so people can see you just as well as if they were in the room with you
Ask deeper questions. Listen past the surface. Reflect what you hear.
3. Rebuild purpose, progress, and visibility
Disengagement happens when people feel irrelevant, invisible, or stalled. Make purpose explicit. Tie work to outcomes. Recognize progress. Invite people into the broader mission. Purpose isn’t a slogan, it’s a structure. If you don’t know where to start, read my recent article on team alignment and performance.
4. Lead with self-awareness, not control
In distributed teams, you can’t manage through proximity. You lead by example. Your own self-regulation, clarity, and communication become the baseline others use to navigate uncertainty. Slow down, stay grounded, and manage your energy. I went deep on this topic recently in an interview with Marc Lesser.
5. Engineer connection points online and offline
Culture doesn’t emerge from group Slack banter or awkward Zoom happy hours. It emerges from consistent rituals and thoughtful structure. Create space for real connection with:
Weekly retros
Open feedback sessions
And drop-in office hours
And yes, in-person time still matters. But don’t waste it. Bring teams together for what actually benefits from being in the same room: problem-solving, creative brainstorming, trust-building, and high-stakes alignment. These types of activities aren’t daily occurrences, so think of them as strategic investments. Optimize remote time for deep focus. Optimize in-person time for relationship-building and co-creation. It’s not all or nothing. It’s by design.
DistributedGov offers this reminder:
“People work better together when they feel safe, respected, and part of something meaningful. That’s not a side effect of good work. That is the work.”
The Bottom Line
Remote work didn’t break your team. It revealed what was already broken.
The organizations succeeding today aren’t doing it by accident. They’ve redesigned both their technical and social systems for clarity, connection, and consistency. If you’re curious about where your organization falls on the spectrum of remote vs in office, check out this guide from GitLab on the 10 stages of remote work.
If your company is still waiting for things to go back to normal, you’re falling behind. The future isn’t either in the office or out of it, and an intentionally designed distributed team. And the best time to start building it is right now.
Want to see what this could look like inside your organization?
Book a free strategy call and we’ll walk through what’s working, what’s not, and where to begin.
Thanks for reading Thought(ful) Leaders! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.