Provides some ideas that corporate managers may choose to adapt to their people to make hybrid working work for them.

Certainly a topical read as many companies continue to find a balance post covid. There are plenty of ideas shared in this book about the benefits of hybrid working, however culturally it is going to depend on the managers as to how well they adopt it.

I really liked the practical nature of this book, particularly the visuals. The main thrust of the book is looking at how the workplace has changed since moving to a more virtual world during the COVID-19 pandemic. The tips and tools given are grounded in evidence and provided by those in the field working in these traditional and nontraditional ways. A helpful book navigating the new workplace, this could be a helpful book for human resource professionals and any leaders looking for additional guidance.

Encouraging perspective on need for anytime/anywhere workplace. Book provides general encouragement and suggestions for a hybrid organization. Examples and suggestions center on valuing the person.

Remote Not Distant by Gustavo Razzetti, 326 pages, published June 2022


📝 MY REVIEW

Some things this book did remarkably well:

•Extremely easy to read with small, logically organized sections.

•There were many real-world examples of what remote looks like, practically, in mainstream companies.

•While there were some academic models explained, none of it felt theoretical. Every section gave remote workers actionable advice and clear language to intentionally design culture.

Some things that fell short:

•Hybrid implementation seemed secondary. I think Razzetti initially wrote a book on building company culture, then the publishers urged him to lean into hybrid to market to post-COVID workers. Many sections (i.e., types of decision making) had nothing to do with virtual or distance work.

•Many people would probably pick this book up to try to convince their organization's leadership to transition to a more flexible hybrid policy. The author could have aided their efforts by including more hard data about the benefits of remote-first to companies and employees, but those sections felt vague and often hypothetical. For example, while I agree that many leaders pushed for returning to the office because of a perceived loss of control, I wanted some evidence to support this claim.

•There are so many activities and discussion guides, and it is not realistically feasible for a team to practice all of them. A flow chart of when to use which strategy would have tied them all together, and helped a reader that wants to take action after reading this book know where to start. That said, the activities were clear and widely applicable.

I gave this 3⭐️s on Goodreads and 75 on my likelihood to read again scale.

Thank you NetGalley and Liberationist Press for the arc. All opinions are my own.

Very interesting read when it comes to the hybrid and remote culture! This is a new way of working now and this book gives helpful suggestions and seems to know what it's talking about. Thank you!

The workplace as we know it is no more. The workplace prior to March 2020 is gone. The pandemic has changed much of how we doing things!! With this pivotal change, leaders must embrace these changes & find working solutions. This book is an excellent source of information & I highly recommend it!

After being sent home in March 2020 and never returning to the office or anything like the job I was doing before the pandemic, this book sparked my interest.
Business leaders should read this book and take on board it’s points of design with employees not for employees.
5 steps are explained giving a clear roadmap for hybrid working to be a success. Each step comes with exercises to complete, illustrations and QR codes to templates and extra material.
This book is very easy to read and gives you lots to think about what ever your role in the workplace.
No quick fixes or one size fits all.

This began with helpful operational definitions, which help clarify for the reader, various work styles including hybrid/office centric, remote, virtual- first, etc. these terms, even prior to the pandemic were often incorrectly used. This remains timely in the summer of 2022, where companies are continuing to shift their models and attempting to balance what workers want and what the business needs. I appreciated the people focus over logistics, if you’re seeking a how-to manual for operations this is not it. If you want useful feedback for communication and collaboration, you’ll find it. For those seeking specificity around culture, beyond sentiment or feelings, the next section dives into defining and measuring culture. There are activities to take the material from instruction to action, that even a beginner can easily utilize. Between the worksheets and QR codes, there is added value. This is an enjoyable read that includes recent research and quotes from business leaders. In all this was an enjoyable and timely book as we transition to a post pandemic world, expect to do some critical thinking to get the most from it. As a human resources professional and manager I overall enjoyed this and found it thought-provoking. The copy I read was a e-book format on NetGalley and there were numerous formatting and grammatical issues that I believe may be contributed to by the formatting. For those reasons I have not factored that into my review.

Building a culture is like building a house. Not everyone will look the same; not everyone must address the same need. To leverage the uniqueness of your team, however, you need a step-by-step blueprint that will help you design the right solution. The author definitely knows the culture space and was able to provide a field guide for expert and amateur designers alike.

In today's chronic state of disruption, even some of the most successful organizations find it hard to facilitate changes required to deliver results. This has led to The Great Resignation in almost every sector!

The “Great Resignation” refers to both the large number of resignations in many industries as well as a refusal by people to return to work in light of low pay, poor working conditions, and a general dissatisfaction with the nature of work. Consumer goods, nonprofit, post secondary, government, Fortune 500; this volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment leaves no industry unscathed!

Even mission driven organizations are finding it incredibly difficult to motivate their workforce, foster collaboration, and simply connect on a mind and heart level.

The good news is that HR is in a unique position to help organizations, and their people, ride out this turbulence and transform the way work is done.

Welcome Gustavo Razzetti, CEO and founder of Fearless Culture , a culture design consultancy that helps teams do the best work of their lives. For more than 20 years, he has helped leaders from Fortune 500s, startups, nonprofits, and everything in between on every continent but Antarctica.

I have used Culture Design Canvas (created by Fearless Culture ) It is a framework used by thousands of teams and organizations across the world to map, assess, and design their culture... so I was thrilled to find out that he is putting all his learnings into this book!

Gustavo invites you to take a hard look at the way your organization operates, shift your mindset from traditional ways of working, as well as to identify and develop organizational behaviors that support agility and foster resilience.

I recommend this read to every HR practitioner, leader, and driver of change for practical tips and tools with real world examples, actionable advice, and guidance with:

- New insights to employee engagement
- creating a new work paradigm
- helping teams and organizations thrive in a VUCA world.

A Clarifying and smart information about a content that shows that has come to stay: Hybrid and home office work; It's not a plan for the future, It's our present project that must be well understood and well incorporated to the major employments around the world. Such an insteresting subject to be read. Nice job!

Divided into five steps, Remote, Not Distant, provides some interesting anecdotes and practical exercises to explore what kind a culture you should build within your organization and to what extent remote vs. office-centric vs. hybrid models might work best for you.

The chapters focus on culture building, shared futures, belonging, rethinking collaboration, and autonomy. I appreciated the end of chapter recaps and suggested exercises offered throughout to help readers test these ideas with their colleagues. I'm not sure I learned anything new since I already read a lot about organization development and remote and hybrid working environments, but, nonetheless, found this to be an accessible and timely read. I will definitely use some of featured exercises, for example, on resetting or establishing a culture (the "culture design canvas").

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC via NetGalley.