Corporate Culture In the Zoom Era

There is so much talk about culture these days. Many large corporations are playing tone-deaf with the "return the office" initiatives. Apple nearly tanked its entire staff (one of the most desirable employers in the world) by demanding the return to the office. Here's a thought about your companies that are not as coveted as Apple, "We're not coming back to your cube farm to do zoom calls all day."

Culture is no longer made in the conference room or around the coffee machine in the well-stocked kitchen. Sure, we appreciate the nice snacks and fancy coffee, but we'd prefer to be working from home surrounded by our pets and our comfy furniture. We'd also appreciate more cash rather than organic snacks. Okay, so let's talk about this elusive culture any company is trying to enhance.

Today, I work with a team from all over the world and I may not meet any of my colleagues in person for a year or more. Our annual kickoff conference is virtual until further notice. So, we interviewed, were hired, suffered our learning curve freak-out moments, and now are zooming in from our home offices. Home offices, I might remind you, we took a lot of time and energy to get "perfect." Why would zooming from your beautiful conference room or worse, your cube farm with a view?

Flash Question for Companies: Is your office as cool as Apple's RING in California? If the answer is no, consider that more than half of all Apple employees were looking to leave the company over Tim Cook's call for a 2 - 3 in-person mandate.

A quick moment of truth: if you are dealing with professionals, you need to let them work anywhere they get their jobs done. Do you care, should you care, if they are zooming it in from a beach in Hawaii?

Of course, the executives from many of these conflicted companies are being asked to show the way by returning to their corner offices and private conference rooms. And there's a bit of this going on: "If I've got to be back in the office, my team has to be back in the office."

The fallback has been the refrain, "We all get a huge benefit from being together again, at the office." That's the culture card being played.

Today, culture is where you find it. In my recent job switch (7 months) I have a healthier company culture than any forced "return" was going to accomplish with a defensive and insecure manager who was asked to bring us back to the cubes 3 days a week. "Um, why?"

The real answer, for this company, was TAX CREDITS. Our home office, in Kansas City had to get their butts back in the seats or they would lose the tax credits they were given for building their new KC headquarters. So, if KC is going back, Austin has to go back. But here's a funny glitch in that matrix. The developers in this same company were never coming back to the office, Austin, or KC. So, here's a culture killer, a zoom call when 7 of the 8 people are "in the office" and the developer lead is working from his comfy home office.

I understand the problem. But, the problem is not ours, your employees. Apple has the same problem with its massive building in California. They need people in that building to qualify for their tax credits. The frustration of your ELT who are back in their big private offices in your big new building should not be a rationale for bringing their team back to the office. "If I'm in the office, you need to be in the office." That's not healthy company culture.

Here's where culture is built and enhanced. TRUST. For seven months I've worked with a team based all over the world from the comfort of my home office. 100% Zoom-enabled. And here's the lie companies are trying to sell us about culture: we're all happy to be back in person.

I'll never be in-person with my team. And I'm happier and more culturally connected, within a publicly traded global company than I ever was in my last job. All Zoom all the time.

There is no office that is cool enough to justify a 45-minute morning commute to zoom from a cube. There is no chat around the coffee pot that is better than fur babies at your feet and your own coffee from home. Nada.

Get the culture right (trust, honesty, good systems, clear and accepted roles and responsibilities) and the location of your teammates will not matter. Build huge buildings with tax credits for butts in seats, don't blame your staff for your problem. I would love to work for Apple. I'm not interested in going in three days a week at the coolest office building in the world. Nope.

If you don't understand the remote rights of your workers, you're going to lose a lot of them to companies that get it. Developers are never going back into the cube farm. For more than 10 years, developers have rallied around good tools, good management strategies, and remote/asynchronous forever. And there's one more thing: the ELT has been phoning it in as long as they've been executives. If it's good enough for the CEO and the rest of the c-suite, it's good enough for all of us.

Get culture right and where your team zooms in from will not matter. Get the job done and no one should be asking you to sit in their cube to do your job better. If they say it's about "culture" you can be sure it's about something else. Don't give in. Get a better job with an evolved leadership team.

John McElhenney?— @jmacofearth?&?Facebook?&?LinkedIn?&?The Whole Parent

*Disclaimer: John is a Sr. UX executive at?Digital Realty.

You can find my?books on Amazon. And read 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni.