This Isn't What Remote Work Is Supposed To Look Like.

You're home. Your kids are home. The news is terrifying. You're on a Zoom call trying to focus while simultaneously managing a crisis and a crisis of confidence.

And someone wants to tell you that this is what remote work is really like.

No. This is not what remote work is really like.

I recently talked to Laïla von Alvensleben, who's been working and building distributed teams since 2014—long before it was fashionable or forced. She helped pioneer the remote work movement and built an actual philosophy around it. Not a hustle, not a hack, but a complete rethinking of how work actually happens when people aren't in the same room.

And the first thing she wanted everyone to understand: What you're experiencing right now is not representative of what remote work could be. It's what remote work looks like under duress. Under chaos. Under a level of external pressure that makes everything harder.

And that distinction matters because if you make decisions about your company's future based on this moment, you're going to get it wrong.

The Thing Everyone Got Wrong

Before the world shut down, remote work was this interesting niche. Some companies had figured it out. Most hadn't tried. And the ones who tried it—they weren't just scattering people across time zones and hoping for the best.

They were actually thinking about it.

Laïla worked at a company called Hano, where the entire team was distributed. People in Spain, Hungary, the UK, Malaysia. They weren't remote "just because"—they were remote by design. Everything about how they worked, how they communicated, how they made decisions, was built around the fact that they would never be in the same room.

So they had to figure out what actually matters when the casual hallway conversation doesn't exist. What does leadership look like? What does feedback look like? How do you build culture when culture can't just happen by proximity?

They spent years designing an actual operating system for remote work. They documented it. They shared it. And it was beautiful because it wasn't theoretical. It was born from "This is what we're doing, this is what's working, this is what we had to learn the hard way."

What we're experiencing now—with schools closed and families at home and anxiety through the roof—is definitely not that. And we shouldn't pretend it is.

The Culture Problem (That Nobody Wants To Talk About)

Here's what Laïla said that got stuck in my head: Remote work is a philosophy. It's a foundational part of how a company organizes itself. And the critical piece that most companies completely miss is culture.

We're talking about tools. "What's the best collaboration software?" "Should we use Slack?" "How many Zoom calls is too many?" All reasonable questions. None of them matter if you haven't thought about your actual culture.

Because here's the thing: If your culture was built around "show up at the office, be visible, prove you're working," remote work is going to feel like a failure. The tools won't help. The playbooks won't help. Because the underlying system—how trust works, how decisions get made, what success looks like—is still based on office presence.

If your culture is "Get the right people, be clear about what we're trying to accomplish, and trust them to figure it out," remote work is just a logistical adjustment. The work stays the same.

Most companies haven't had that conversation. They've just... gotten forced into remote work. And now they're scrambling to apply yesterday's office culture to today's distributed reality. It doesn't work.

The Clarity That Comes From Friction

What Laïla noticed, both at Hano and now at Mural where she manages over 140 people across multiple continents, is that remote work forces clarity in a way office work doesn't.

You can't rely on people understanding through osmosis. You can't assume everyone knows what's happening because you mentioned it in a meeting. You have to write it down. You have to be explicit. You have to make decisions deliberately instead of hoping they happen by accident.

And that's actually really hard. It's friction. It forces you to think about what's actually important versus what just happens because people are in proximity.

But that friction also clarifies everything.

She talks about how at Hano they had this documentation they called the playbook. Not a strategy document that sits in a drawer. An actual operating manual for how they worked. "Here's how we do feedback. Here's how we make decisions. Here's how we collaborate with clients. Here's what our values actually are, and here's what that looks like in practice."

Clients would read that playbook and be amazed. They'd say things like, "You know what? We've been working together for years and we never had this level of clarity about how we operate."

And that was the whole point. Remote work requires you to be explicit about things office culture lets you leave implicit. Which is painful at first. Then it becomes an advantage.

Why This Actually Matters

You're probably thinking: "That's nice in theory, but I don't have time to redesign my company culture right now. I just need people to be able to work."

Fair. That's the immediate problem.

But here's what's going to happen: At some point, the crisis ends. Things normalize. And then you'll have a choice. Do you go back to the office because that's "how things were"? Or do you think about what you learned?

Some of you will discover that people are more productive at home. That they're happier. That they don't want to go back.

Others will discover that something was lost—connection, spontaneous collaboration, the human element that nobody talks about until it's gone.

Most of you will discover that the answer is somewhere in the middle and that it probably isn't the same for every person and every team.

But if you're going to make that decision thoughtfully, you need to separate what's true about remote work from what's true about forced remote work under crisis conditions.

And right now? You can't see that difference. You're in it.

What This Means For Your Next Move

Laïla's advice—which has stuck with me—is to stop looking for the right tools and start having conversations about culture.

Ask your people: How are you actually doing? What's working? What's not? What did you learn about how you want to work?

Don't just move on to the next crisis. Pause. Listen. Let the actual experience inform what comes next instead of just going back to "the way things were."

And if you're building a remote-first culture—because some companies will choose to do this—don't copy someone else's playbook. Write your own. Because your culture is unique. Your people are unique. Your challenges are unique.

You can learn from others. You can use frameworks. But the real work is thinking through what remote work means specifically for you.

---

Want the Full Story?

Laïla has been thinking about this stuff for years. She wrote about it extensively at Hanno. She's implementing it at Mural. And she's got insights about what actually works that are way more grounded than most of the hot takes you're seeing right now about "the future of remote work."

Listen to the full conversation on The School of Innovation podcast where she talks about what makes remote work actually work, how culture plays a role nobody talks about, and what we should actually be learning from this moment instead of just surviving it.

Because here's the thing about remote work: It's not about Zoom calls or Slack channels or whether people should be on camera. It's about having a deliberate philosophy about how your organization operates when people aren't physically together.

That conversation is going to matter a lot more in the next few years than we realize.