[The return to office debate is really about how work is designed—and who gets trusted to make it work.]
He calls on a Friday morning.
Not urgent. Just a quiet, “Are you around?”
We meet for coffee near his office. Nothing fancy. The kind of place where conversations stretch a little longer than planned.
There is a mandate from the American head office sitting heavily on him. Return to office. Five days a week. Culture needs it. Collaboration needs it. The company needs it.
He understands the logic. He has seen similar directives rolled out elsewhere. He has read the memos. We have spoken about this before. Yet today, he is uneasy. Not defensive. Just thoughtful.
The unease is sharpened by context. The request comes directly from the top—and it comes to him because of who he is in the system.
He runs one of the company’s strongest affiliates. Revenue, margins, delivery, engagement—by almost every measure, his business is ahead of the curve. Head office knows this. They also know that during Covid, he navigated the transition of work better than most. I know this because we worked closely then, alongside his leadership team.
That gives his voice weight. It also places him under scrutiny.
“This isn’t abstract,” he says. “This lands on real people. And on the organisation I’m responsible for.”
What Covid Actually Changed
Covid, he reminds me, did not magically make work-from-home effective.
In the early weeks, it was chaotic. Meetings multiplied. Decision-making slowed. People worked longer hours and felt less productive. Simply lifting office work and relocating it to homes did not work.
What changed things was redesign.
Those months forced hard questions. How work was structured. How it was coordinated. How progress was seen. Writing replaced endless talking. Asynchronous updates reduced noise. Outcome dashboards replaced time-based supervision. Leaders learned to manage work rather than watch people work.
Trust did not come from goodwill. It came from clarity.
It took time. Some leaders struggled. Some experiments failed. Resistance and fatigue were real. But gradually, work flowed again.
“That’s the part people forget,” he says. “It worked. But only after we redesigned how work actually happened.”
The Quiet Return of Old Habits
When offices reopened, old habits returned quickly. Presence began to matter again. Calendars filled. Decision cycles lengthened.
What was different this time was that new practices layered themselves onto old ones. Online meetings did not disappear; they multiplied. People commuted to work only to log into calls with colleagues sitting a few rooms away.
What set his affiliate apart was restraint. While others rushed back to familiar patterns, he retained parts of the decentralisation that had emerged during Covid. Not everything—but enough to protect what had been learned.
Eventually, they settled into a rhythm. Three days in the office. Two days working from anywhere. Not as a perk, but as a design choice.
Office days were used for work that genuinely benefited from being together—complex problem-solving, mentoring, difficult conversations, shared sense-making.
Work-from-anywhere days were protected for focus—writing, analysis, planning. Work that needed continuity rather than interruption.
Managers had to relearn what required synchrony and what did not, how to sequence work, and how to make progress visible without constant checking. Even meeting etiquette had to be explicit. If cameras were expected to be on, it was stated clearly.
Change arrived slowly, unevenly, and sometimes reluctantly.
But it held. Performance stayed strong. Engagement stabilised. Attrition remained low. The affiliate became more attractive to high-quality talent.
That is what the five-day mandate now threatens to undo.
The Real Risk Is Regression
He is clear about the immediate difficulty. Convincing people to return five days a week will be hard. Convincing them to do so with belief will be harder.
What worries him more is regression.
He has seen how quickly organisations slip back. Meetings proliferate. Decisions slow. Presence substitutes for clarity. Work becomes busier and less effective at the same time.
“Resistance I can deal with. What worries me more is regression.”
Undoing that once took effort. Undoing it again would mean losing capability—hard-won ways of working that cannot be rebuilt on command.
There is a second risk, and it worries him more.
“Our managers won’t be ready,” he says. “The next generation has already experienced learning online. AI is reshaping how work gets done. And we’re responding with attendance rules.”
For him, this is not a flexibility debate. It is a readiness question.
“This isn’t a flexibility debate. It’s really a question of readiness.”
Where the System Actually Breaks
When we talk about managers, his tone changes.
“This is the uncomfortable part,” he says.
Rules are easy. One rule for everyone. Clean lines. Fewer conversations. Organisations have trained managers to operate this way for decades.
Flexibility breaks that comfort. It forces judgement. It asks managers to talk about outcomes rather than hours. To address underperformance directly rather than attribute it to location. To differentiate between roles without hiding behind sameness in the name of fairness.
Some managers adapted. Others struggled. A few retreated to rules the moment discomfort arose.
Fairness complicated things further. Not all roles can work remotely—plants, frontline teams, hospitals. Fairness cannot mean identical treatment. It has to mean thoughtful design and honest conversations.
Redesigning work was difficult. Redesigning managerial capability was harder.
“We’re not done,” he says. “This is still work in progress.”
What he knows is this. Blanket rules feel reassuring. They reduce friction. They simplify enforcement.
“And they quietly dismantle judgement,” he adds. “That’s what scares me.”
When judgement erodes, decisions slow, talent development weakens, and organisations become less able to respond when conditions change again—as they inevitably will.
“Blanket rules feel reassuring—but they quietly dismantle judgement.”
The Case He Is Preparing
He is not preparing to defy head office. He is preparing to be accountable.
Not to argue about days in the office, but about what problem the organisation is solving. Not supervision, but coordination. Not location, but design.
He is already acting—asking leaders to clarify outcomes, rethinking meetings again, reinforcing writing and shared documentation, naming capability gaps instead of hiding them behind policy.
“This feels personal,” he says. “If I don’t prepare this organisation for what work is becoming, I haven’t done my job.”
An Ending Without Comfort
We finish our coffee. The conversation remains unresolved.
The mandate still stands. The call with head office has not happened yet.
The choice in front of him is clear. Retreat to rules and control—or continue the harder work of redesign.
Work, he believes, is no longer something people go to. It is something organisations must design deliberately.
And in a world where technology, talent, and expectations are moving faster than policy, the greatest risk may not be resistance to change, but the quiet loss of the capabilities that change once forced us to build.
(Note: This essay is loosely based on real situations. Context and details have been adapted to protect confidentiality.)
