Remote, Not Distant

Have you ever wondered if a team can truly feel connected when everyone’s working from different places? In Remote, Not Distant, Gustavo Razzetti shares a resounding “yes.” He argues that the best organizations of the future aren’t those clinging to offices—they’re the ones learning to build an Anywhere/Anytime Culture. Culture isn’t about the physical presence of people—it’s about how people think, feel, and act together, no matter where they are.

Razzetti’s central claim is simple but revolutionary: You don’t need an office to have a strong culture. Thousands of leaders suspected that physical offices were the glue of collaboration, but the pandemic proved otherwise. When people went home, many teams not only survived—they thrived. Productivity increased, creativity rose, and flexibility became a new expectation. Yet while people adapted, many organizations didn’t. As Razzetti shows through detailed case studies and frameworks, the culture that got us here—the office-centric model—won’t get us there.

Culture Is a System, Not a Slogan

One of the book’s foundational insights is that culture isn’t just a set of slogans, perks, or values pasted on walls. It’s a living system made up of three interacting layers: the Core (purpose, values, and priorities), Emotional Culture (belonging, safety, feedback), and Functional Culture (agility, decision-making, norms). This system pulses and adapts depending on how people behave and understand what’s rewarded—and what’s punished. In other words, culture isn’t what you say—it’s what you tolerate or encourage daily. (Edgar Schein’s organizational theory strongly influences Razzetti’s view.)

The Hybrid Revolution Has Arrived

According to Razzetti, the pandemic accelerated the evolution of work into a hybrid reality—a spectrum that includes fully remote, fully office-based, and every mix in between. The real opportunity isn’t just where we work but how intentionally we design collaboration, belonging, and purpose. Apple’s misstep in mandating three office days showed how easily old thinking clashes with new expectations. Employees want flexibility, autonomy, and meaningful connection—not a return to old norms disguised as progress.

To help teams adapt, Razzetti offers a roadmap: five critical steps to design a culture fit for the hybrid age—Reset, Reimagine, Reignite, Rethink, and Release. Each step shifts the focus from nostalgia about the office to creating systems that support collaboration and belonging virtually.

Why Culture Matters More Than Ever

Research cited in the book underscores that culture directly drives performance. Organizations with healthy foundations outperform benchmarks like the S&P 500 index, showing nearly double growth. Culture amplifies strategy—it doesn’t replace it. Razzetti warns that leaders who romanticize their pre-pandemic identity risk decay; culture must evolve alongside people’s realities. It’s dynamic, co-created, and human-centric. The goal is not perfection but progress through experimentation.

The Human-Centered Future of Work

Ultimately, Remote, Not Distant reframes what success looks like in the modern workplace. A thriving anywhere culture meets three fundamental human needs—autonomy (to choose how you work), belonging (to feel part of something meaningful), and purpose (to understand why your work matters). These aren’t “soft” values—they’re the drivers of innovation, adaptability, and motivation. As Airbnb’s Brian Chesky says, “The best thing for shareholders is for society to want us to exist.” That sentiment captures Razzetti’s vision: the future belongs to organizations that serve humanity, not hierarchy.

Through research, real-world examples, and actionable tools like the Culture Design Canvas, Razzetti gives leaders and teams a playbook for designing culture intentionally—not by default. The coming chapters expand on how to reset outdated ways of working, reimagine shared futures built on purpose, reignite belonging through safety and rituals, rethink collaboration around asynchronously smart systems, and release agility through trust and freedom. In short, it’s a call to build workplaces that are remote but never distant.

When disruption hits, the instinct is to cling to what’s familiar. Razzetti begins his roadmap with a challenge: don’t go back—reset. Resetting culture doesn’t mean erasing everything. It means rethinking what still serves us and what doesn’t. The pandemic proved that rigid systems break, but adaptable cultures flex and thrive. Now, you must design your workplace deliberately instead of letting it evolve by chance.

Five Mindset Shifts

Razzetti proposes five mindset shifts to thrive in a hybrid world:

• From Culture by Chance to Culture by Design: Success comes from intentional design, not luck. Automattic (makers of WordPress) demonstrates this by codifying “communication as oxygen” and inviting anyone—even outsiders—to edit its values.
• From Input to Impact: Replace presenteeism with purpose. Google’s OKRs track outcomes instead of hours, and Microsoft adds reflection questions like “How have I helped others succeed?”
• From Work-Life Balance to Work-Life Integration: Satya Nadella’s “work-life harmony” replaces the myth of balance. GitLab’s Juice Box Chats involve kids and families, embracing real life as part of work.
• From Synchronous to Asynchronous Collaboration: Teams that default to async-first—like Doist—replace endless meetings with thoughtful communication. Writing replaces talking; reflection replaces reaction.
• From One-Size-Fits-All to Flexibility: Apple’s return-to-office plan failed because it presumed uniform needs. True innovation, says Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, “works best when it works for the largest number of people.”

Leadership: From Control to Facilitation

Resetting culture demands that leaders unlearn old habits. Instead of managing by visibility, they must become facilitators of trust and autonomy. Rather than issuing commands, great hybrid leaders host conversations. Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke’s “trust battery” metaphor captures this well—trust must be recharged constantly through authentic behavior and transparency. Atlassian extends trust even before employment officially begins by gifting a “holiday before you start.” These gestures tell employees: “We trust you first.”

“Distance isn’t an obstacle—it’s an opportunity to increase connection and agility.” —Gustavo Razzetti

The Office Becomes the New Offsite

Offices are no longer the default home of culture—they’re special-purpose spaces for collaboration, creativity, and celebration. Companies like Clive Wilkinson Architects are redesigning workplaces around zones such as “library” (deep work) and “plaza” (socializing). This reframing turns physical presence into a choice, not a mandate. Razzetti urges leaders to treat office gatherings as cultural events, not routine obligations.

Communication and Inclusion

Great remote cultures obsess over documentation and clarity. GitLab’s “handbook-first” principle ensures that knowledge is shared before practice begins. Trello levels meetings so everyone joins remotely—even if some are together—to avoid proximity bias. Microsoft assigns facilitators who aren’t in the room to ensure balanced participation. These practices remind us that equality at work starts with equal access to information, not geography.

Resetting culture isn’t a one-time fix—it’s a permanent mindset. It’s the commitment to experiment, involve people, and treat mistakes as learning. In this way, culture becomes a living system, continually refreshed for the world we actually inhabit.

Once you’ve reset your culture, you need a unifying force—a shared purpose that connects everyone, whether they’re in boardrooms or bedrooms. Razzetti argues that purpose is the North Star guiding teams through uncertainty. It’s not a slogan or corporate jargon; it’s a declaration of impact. Purpose answers the question, “Why do we exist?” not “What do we do?”

Purpose Beyond Profit

Purpose transforms organizations from self-serving entities into agents of positive change. Airbnb’s “Create a world where anyone can belong anywhere” and Tesla’s “Accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” prioritize societal good over ego-driven vision. When crises hit, purpose becomes a moral compass. During COVID, Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky embodied the company’s mission by treating laid-off employees with compassion, extending benefits, and creating an alumni directory to help them find new jobs. “A crisis is a spotlight,” he says—it reveals whether your culture lives up to its words.

Defining Team-Level Purpose

While organizational purpose provides direction, team purpose gives clarity in daily life. Teams thrive when they know three things: what they do, who they serve, and what impact they create. Mars Wrigley’s global packaging team discovered this by debating who their real “customer” was—the CEO or the consumer. Their breakthrough came when they aligned around “making the product experience more meaningful.” That clarity reignited motivation and belonging. (This echoes Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why,” but Razzetti moves from inspiration to practical design by guiding teams to write purpose statements using structured tools.)

Values Are What You Reward and Punish

Razzetti issues a strong warning: your culture isn’t defined by your posters—it’s defined by your behaviors. Culture is what you reward and punish. US Bank’s firing of an employee for helping a stranded customer contradicts its “do the right thing” motto and reveals real culture versus declared values. Conversely, companies like Spotify, Amazon, and HubSpot reinforce values through consistent behavioral cues—Spotify rewards creativity, Amazon punishes complacency, and HubSpot rejects shortcuts, preserving integrity over convenience.

Prioritization: Choosing What Comes First

Purpose without priorities is chaos. Razzetti introduces “even over” statements—a way to clarify trade-offs between two good things. Netflix prizes “performance even over effort,” Airbnb favors “long-term vision even over quick wins.” These statements simplify decision-making and empower autonomy. Great teams, he says, design their own “even over” compass to guide choices in hybrid tension—like choosing well-being even over productivity.

Purpose is both practical and profound. It shapes how people act under pressure and how they interpret meaning in their work. It’s not a plaque—it’s a compass. When everyone knows the “why,” culture becomes the collective journey toward impact rather than a set of disjointed tasks.

Belonging—the feeling that you matter and are safe to be yourself—is the beating heart of an effective hybrid culture. Razzetti grounds this in both science and humanity: people who feel connected perform better, stay longer, and innovate more. In remote work, belonging can’t rely on hallway chats; it must be intentionally designed.

The Ladder of Psychological Safety

Building belonging starts with psychological safety—Amy Edmondson’s concept that teams must feel safe to take interpersonal risks. Razzetti visualizes this as a three-level ladder: Welcome (acceptance and empathy), Courageous Conversations (speaking up and disagreeing), and Innovation (experimentation and risk-taking). You climb by fostering trust and fall by tolerating fear or silence.

Saatchi & Saatchi’s “superpower/kryptonite” sessions invited employees to share personal strengths and weaknesses—a courageous first rung. Volvo’s leadership redesign moved further, empowering 2,000 leaders to hold self-managed conversations online, proving vulnerability can scale digitally.

Feedback as a Gift

Traditional feedback is broken—it triggers defensiveness instead of growth. Razzetti proposes five shifts: move from annual reviews to continuous feedback (Microsoft’s “Perspectives”), from giving to requesting (Patagonia’s leaders ask for feedback), from top-down to peer-based (Fitzii’s team reviews), from closed to open (All Blacks rugby team’s collective reviews), and from backward to forward-looking (“feedforward,” as Spotify does). These shifts democratize feedback, replacing fear with learning.

Rituals That Bind

Rituals are the invisible glue that builds emotional culture. Fannie Mae’s team walks with dogs while chatting; Spotify hosts “Fail-fikas” to share mistakes over coffee; Zappos mails herb gardens to continue communal planting remotely. Razzetti distinguishes rituals from routines: they have symbolic meaning, emotional resonance, and rhythm. Strong rituals, like the All Blacks’ “sweep the sheds,” forge humility and unity.

“You will not be judged by your status—you will be judged by what you did for the tribe.” —Owen Eastwood, quoted in Remote, Not Distant

When teams create psychological safety, meaningful feedback, and shared rituals, distance turns into connection. The tribe is no longer defined by geography but by trust, vulnerability, and respect.

Collaboration, long hailed as the holy grail of productivity, has ironically become one of its biggest problems. “More collaboration” no longer means “better results.” Razzetti dismantles this myth by showing that hyper-collaboration—constant meetings, instant messaging, overcrowded calendars—drains creativity. The solution? Intentional collaboration that differentiates when to work together and when to work alone.

The Six Modes of Work

Razzetti introduces six modes that balance personal focus with collective rhythm:

• Focus Work: Deep, uninterrupted thinking. Mars Wrigley’s “Focus Fridays” mimic the mental boundary once provided by commutes.
• Deep Collaboration: Intense teamwork with singular focus, similar to design sprints.
• Regular Collaboration: Meetings and communication that move work forward—ideally limited and well-structured.
• Learning: Dedicated skill-building time; Buffer’s mentors (“role buddies”) model this.
• Casual Collaboration: Informal chats that build social capital—Slack’s “AMA channels” and coffee calls provide this digitally.
• Unplugged: Rest and recovery—necessary to prevent burnout and restore creativity.

Defaulting to Async

The biggest leap forward is embracing asynchronous work—communication that doesn’t demand instant response. Async empowers autonomy, inclusivity, and calm thinking. At GitLab, communication is documented before meetings ever occur. Gumroad’s CEO says that async brings “no drama, just mindfulness.” Synchronous work still matters for speed or emotional nuance, but async-first ensures global teams can think before reacting.

Designing Hybrid Rhythms

Razzetti offers pragmatic tactics: block calendars for deep work, pair asynchronous content with synchronous touchpoints, record meetings for replay, and level the playing field by having everyone join digitally. He even proposes optional meetings—people can “two-click” out when they’re neither learning nor contributing. (This twist on Open Space’s “Law of Two Feet” removes guilt and boosts autonomy.)

Rethinking collaboration means moving from default chaos to designed clarity. Once teams understand their modes of work and integrate asynchronous rhythm, they collaborate less—but accomplish more.

In the final stage, Razzetti redefines agility—not as speed alone, but as a combination of freedom, accountability, and smart decision-making. To thrive, hybrid organizations must replace rules with principles and control with trust. When flexibility meets clarity, agility emerges naturally.

Autonomy Drives Engagement

Research from Future Forum and G+J shows that employees’ satisfaction doesn’t depend on how often they visit the office—it depends on whether they have choice. People want to design life around work, not vice versa. Autonomy, purpose, and mastery (echoing Daniel Pink’s Drive) fuel motivation. Netflix’s rule-free “Act in Netflix’s best interest” travel policy exemplifies this ethos—trust replaces micromanagement, lowering costs and increasing responsibility.

Designing Hybrid Rules That Enable

Leaders must rewrite outdated office rules for a flexible world. Instead of prescribing behavior, define shared norms:

• Establish collaboration hours to balance freedom and predictability.
• Create emergency protocols for contacting colleagues, as Slack does via personal text.
• Replace chat-overload with weekly summaries (as Just Eat Takeaway does).
• Adopt assume-good-intent cultures like Help Scout’s to prevent conflict escalation.

Spotify’s choice to pay remote employees based on role rather than location breaks geographic inequality. These evolved norms enable fairness and clarity instead of bureaucracy.

Fast Decisions, Distributed Authority

Agility depends on how quickly—and clearly—decisions are made. Amazon’s “Type 2” reversible decisions decentralize authority, empowering those closest to the problem. Teams can also adopt “safe-to-try” experiments where imperfect action beats overthinking. Awell Health documents every major decision publicly to preserve context. Atlassian’s “disagree and commit” spirit echoes Jeff Bezos’s belief that decisions with 70% of available information are better than paralysis.

Leading with Humanity, Not Heroism

The future needs “human leaders,” not heroes. Hortense le Gentil reminds us that empathy replaces charisma. Great remote leaders trust employees first (Doist), care for culture more than control (Team Coach Emily Bond), and model vulnerability (“Try working from your kitchen table,” says Capita’s John Chappel). They design opportunities for serendipity—structured casual connection—while embodying asynchronous respect by modeling calm, mindful work habits.

To release agility, leaders must let go—of control, perfectionism, and ego. The reward is a culture that moves fast because it moves together, defined not by office walls but shared purpose, trust, and freedom.