No Place? No Problem!
by Pamela Coleman
September 2026
How many of you have had to revise or even eliminate remote work policies because a top leader “misses the energy in the office” or “worries about productivity” or “thinks the culture is suffering”? If you have, you are not alone.
Cisco’s Global Work Study found that 81% of employers mandated return-to-office policies because they didn’t trust employees to be productive from home. This sentiment screams cultural weakness. Leaders do not need water-cooler conversations to devise strong cultural identities, although many believe that their cultural magic resides in the “feeling” in the hallways. Organizational culture is an operating system, and your ways of working create and sustain a healthy culture.
In 2020, when the global COVID-19 pandemic hit, businesses, by necessity, enacted accommodating work-from-home policies. In organizations that relied on proximity to carry their cultures, those cultures eroded. Those leaders who had a cultural structure that was built on principles of how we work sustained and even improved their culture during this difficult period.
The software company GitLab figured this out long before the pandemic forced others to do so. GitLab has over 1,300 employees across 65 countries and a fully remote culture. They publish their cultural guidelines in an online document, a robust and supportive guide for managing without an office. GitLab’s CEO openly discusses his communication needs and shortcomings, encouraging the entire team to be transparent about how they best work. The document outlines GitLab’s cultural framework, and its Head of Remote (great job title!) lauds GitLab’s “cultural maturity” as a direct result of their cultural codification process. Their operating system provides a framework that all employees, from the top down, can leverage for success.
Coherent cultural frameworks are portable and do not need four walls to inspire team success. Where does your culture live? In your breakroom or in your operating code? Need some insight into building and evaluating your current culture? Check out my book Cultural Coherence: A Model for Turning Culture Into a Strategic Lever, available on Amazon.