You can use the finest meats, freshest vegetables and highest quality herbs, and still produce an awful meal by assembling them wrong. But on the flip side, you CAN make a very good meal from mediocre ingredients by preparing them properly.
Two examples form my career:
Workplace A: full of smart, motivated problem solvers and "A players" who failed in key ways because a toxic culture just poisoned anything. People were nasty and busy protecting fiefs. The individual work efforts were great, but they couldn't come together.
Workplace B: A place where there was a fairly broad range of people from marginally skilled folks to the super-smart where the teams just got along and had leadership that promoted cross-training and cooperation. People were friendly & professional.
As a leader, doing the care & feeding to maintain good culture (aka making work a place where you want to work) is hard. I think that after you reach a certain size, 100% remote workers make it harder, at least for a core team. Also, your business requirements around security and other factors may force you to do things that will damage that remote culture.
You can use the finest meats, freshest vegetables and highest quality herbs, and still produce an awful meal by assembling them wrong. But on the flip side, you CAN make a very good meal from mediocre ingredients by preparing them properly.
Two examples form my career:
Workplace A: full of smart, motivated problem solvers and "A players" who failed in key ways because a toxic culture just poisoned anything. People were nasty and busy protecting fiefs. The individual work efforts were great, but they couldn't come together.
Workplace B: A place where there was a fairly broad range of people from marginally skilled folks to the super-smart where the teams just got along and had leadership that promoted cross-training and cooperation. People were friendly & professional.
As a leader, doing the care & feeding to maintain good culture (aka making work a place where you want to work) is hard. I think that after you reach a certain size, 100% remote workers make it harder, at least for a core team. Also, your business requirements around security and other factors may force you to do things that will damage that remote culture.