Remote work. Not home office on probation.
Robert has worked remotely for ten years, long before Covid. We built MacNorris that way from day one, not as a perk, but because it's faster. Working from home means the office, just at home. Remote work is a decision about trust, structure and how a team really works together.
What is remote work, and what is working from home?
Working from home means you work at home instead of the office. Everything else stays the same. Same meetings, same processes, same culture. Just from the couch.
Remote work means you work from wherever you want. At home, in a café, in a coworking space or on a workation. The place doesn't matter, the result does.
That sounds like a small difference, but it's a fundamental one. Real remote work needs different structures, different communication and above all a different mindset: trust instead of control.
Three things remote can't work without.
Trust as the foundation
Remote teams don't fail because of technology. They fail when presence gets mistaken for productivity. If you don't trust your team to manage a doctor's appointment on their own, you don't have a remote problem, you have a trust problem. With us, what counts is what's done, not who was online when.
Communication that doesn't eat everything
A one-hour meeting that could have been three lines. A Slack channel with 200 unread messages. Most virtual meetings fail because of a missing agenda and too many people. We agree up front what runs async, what needs a call and what needs neither.
Tools that fit the team
Slack, Teams, Notion, Linear: the right tool for the right task helps. It doesn't fix culture problems. Move an office team with friction to remote and you get a remote team with friction and better tools.
Remote as a compromise. Not as a decision.
The most common version: the company allows remote, but management actually wants everyone back in the office. The team feels that immediately. Hybrid models with fixed office days, attendance that is "recommended", managers secretly counting who is online when.
That's not a remote model. That's home office on probation.
Remote work doesn't fail because of the home office, it fails because of trust. Skip that, and you invest in tools and processes built on shaky ground.
How we work remotely.
Updates come when there's something to update. The weekly takes 15 minutes at most. Decisions are written down where everyone can find them. We only document what will still be useful in six months. All our ground rules are in the Playbook.
Moving from office to remote or hybrid right now? Write to us, and we'll tell you what works for us and what doesn't.
Full remote or hybrid. Both need clear ground rules.
Full remote or hybrid. Both can work. Both can fail. The difference is not in the model, it is in the rules behind it.
Full remote gives maximum flexibility and is the biggest benefit for many employees: no commute, work-life balance outside city centres, real freedom in daily life. Hybrid sounds like the best of both worlds. It is, when the rules are clear.
- No fixed office, work from wherever you want
- Access to talent without geographic restrictions
- No commute, maximum flexibility in daily life
- Hybrid: mix of remote and office with clear rules
- Both models need trust as the foundation
- Hybrid works when it is clear what office days actually bring
“Remote work doesn't fail because people can't work from home. It fails because companies confuse control with leadership.”
Curious how else we tick?
Remote is just one part of it. How we work, decide and solve problems is in How We Work and in the Playbook.