Five years after COVID reshaped work, the return-to-office debate hasn’t been “won”; it’s matured. In this conversation, Brian Milner and I cut through conflicting studies and personal preferences to ask a better question: what outcomes are we optimizing for? If your work is complex, ambiguous, and cross-functional, collaboration cadence matters more than location; if the work is predictable and focus-heavy, remote can lift throughput. Either way, context beats location.
They argue that leaders should stop chasing a one-size-fits-all answer and instead define the outcome, choose multi-factor metrics (team health, attrition, customer impact, cycle time; not just individual “productivity”), and run time-boxed experiments. Psychological safety, clear working agreements, and transparent “why” behind any policy change are force multipliers regardless of where people sit.
The takeaway: treat ways of working as an empirical product. Set hypotheses, inspect results, and adapt the model. Hybrid isn’t a compromise; it’s a portfolio of options you tune to the work, the team’s experience mix, and the value you owe customers.
A couple of formats are available: watch the YouTube Video or listen to the podcast.