You can’t throw a stone on LinkedIn without hitting at least one post about return-to-office policies. From CEOs to employees, from thought leaders to maybe even your mayor, everyone is taking a side, doubling down, and yelling into the void as loud as they can. Where people work is being treated as the most important issue—the existential sea change that will either make or break a company.
In reality, the RTO debate is the superficial fight we have instead of addressing the deeper, tougher, and way more complex issues that really matter, like:

What does it mean to be productive and a good contributor in our organization?

Do we have a clarified strategy that helps people make decisions and prioritize them?

Do we trust our employees?

What is the actual work to be done by each team?


Forcing everyone back into an office doesn’t answer or solve any of those questions. And here’s a fun fact: You can’t work well anywhere (in person or remotely) if confusion and misalignment is swirling around your company. And maybe if we had real answers to these questions, “return to office” wouldn’t feel like the life or death echo chamber we’re caught in now.
In this week’s episode of At Work With The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin unpack why we’re still debating where people work, what that obsession costs our organizations, and how to start breaking free of the cycle.

Mentioned references:

BNW’s first RTO/hybrid work episode: Ep. 79

Erin Grau’s Fortune article “Flexible work is feminist”

"Theory Y"

Brian Elliott's previous appearances on our show: BNW Ep. 129, BNW Ep. 162, and FoHR Miniseries Ep. 9



"Return-to-Office Mandates" from Mark Ma and Yuye Ding of the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business

"Lessons Learned: 1,000 Days of Distributed at Atlassian"

"Basecamp": BNW Ep. 4 with Dan Kim

Mural

Miro

Children of Time

Previous episodes about retreats and in-person gatherings: BNW Ep. 64, BNW Ep. 82 with Lindsay Caplan, and BNW Ep. 94




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