top of page

Why RTO Mandates Kill Company Culture


THIS WEEK'S READ


OUR TAKE


We're not here to tell you whether the mandates are right or wrong. We're here to tell you what happens next, because we can see it from a systems perspective.


First, remember how we got here. People have been doing their jobs remotely for over six years. Calling everybody back isn't a return to normal. The mandate is the disruption.


Why are companies doing it? The reasons executives give: Collaboration. Mentorship. Innovation. Culture building.


Here's our prediction:

These mandates are not going to help these organizations achieve those goals, and they're going to make themselves less adaptable over time.


Collaboration, mentorship, and innovation don't come from a building. They come from how adaptable your organization is. And adaptability is based in three things: Trust, learning, and risk-taking.


  • Collaboration runs on trust.

  • Mentorship runs on learning.

  • Innovation runs on risk.


The mandate hurts all three, which means it undermines the exact things it's supposed to create.


Trust goes down. For six years, people chose how they worked, and they delivered. The mandate takes away that choice. It also tells people: We don't trust you. And when people don't feel trusted, they stop giving extra effort. They don't share ideas, ask for help, or work across teams. There goes collaboration.


Learning goes down. Who quits after a mandate? Senior employees. Skilled workers. The people who carry the knowledge everyone else learns from. Mentorship was one of the reasons for the mandate, but the mentors are the ones walking out the door. When they leave, the knowledge leaves with them.


Risk-taking goes down. People only try new things when they feel safe, when trust is high. Nobody takes a chance at a company that just dropped a top-down policy forcing change on them. When people don't feel empowered, they don't feel safe. When people don't feel safe, they don't take risks. People will show up, put their heads down, and play it safe. There goes innovation.


Here's the tricky part:


The damage will be invisible at first, especially from the top. The costs take time to show up. Expect executives to declare victory before we see the results, which helps shareholder value in the short term. By the time the real issues surface, there will be something else to blame, because nobody connects today's problems to a decision made six or twelve months ago.


Watch for the signs over the next year: Major turnover. Less innovation. A slow erosion of the culture that made these organizations great to begin with.


Location was never the problem. The system is the problem. It's an adaptive challenge, and knowing the difference could have saved these companies millions, if not billions.



YOUR NEXT MOVE


Avoid this kind of mistake! This is what we do with organizations every single day: We find out what's really going on, we measure your level of adaptability, and we solve the problems technical fixes can't solve alone.


  1. Want to know how your organization would absorb a change like this? Email info@wellledstrategies.com for the Adaptive Capacity Diagnostic.

  2. Curious about your own adaptability? Try the individual diagnostic (beta) →

  3. Want to talk it through? Book office hours with us → We would love to chat.

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page