Latest / Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight / Beyond Hybrid/Remote: Leadership Decisions That Will Define the Next Decade

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Beyond Hybrid/Remote: Leadership Decisions That Will Define the Next Decade · Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight

• 0:17
  Find yourself in.
• 0:23
  Hi, I am Nola Simon.
• 0:25
  I'm the host of the Hope and Possibilities Podcast, and this episode is really
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  to talk about what my, what I'm seeing for 2026 and for the future.
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  And honestly, what I'm seeing is a move away from my work with
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  hybrid, remote and actually just embedding that into leadership.
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  In my personal opinion, we are not going away from flexibility.
• 0:53
  We are not going away from hybrid, remote.
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  What we are going away from, and what some of us will go away from is the debate
• 1:01
  about who has permission to grant us the access to the type of work that we want.
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  It's what the people want.
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  If you talk to people a lot of times what they need is flexible schedules,
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  the ability to make a decision on the day, because of what's happening with
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  childcare, what's happening with elder care, what's happening with the weather,
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  travel schedules, all kinds of different things, all kinds of different reasons.
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  But that flexibility to treat each.
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  Individual as a person capable of making decisions that are in
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  the best interest for themselves personally and for the business.
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  That's something that people want, right?
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  And people are going to start working in ways that give
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  them more of what they want.
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  There's all kinds of studies that have recently come out that basically said
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  that, that wellbeing, that sense of wellbeing, that sense of autonomy,
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  that sense of flexibility, it's work life integration, and that's more
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  valuable to people than compensation.
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  Now people are gonna get that bent because people hear the word
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  money and they automatically think that's the be all and end all.
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  But in practice, what we're seeing is people actually making choices
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  that are in line with what they need financially, but also how they.
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  Embed their work into their life so that they get more of what they need
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  to make their families function.
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  And family could look like anything, right?
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  Whatever's important to that specific person.
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  How does your day look?
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  Who do you live with?
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  Who do you interact with and where does work fit into that?
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  And how do you choose what makes the most sense for you now?
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  The circular debate is really caused by people who are trying to retain identity.
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  They're trying to retain process, they're trying to retain power and control.
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  And they have ingrained narratives about how the way.
• 3:19
  About the way the world works, right?
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  Real estate is a big factor of that.
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  But it's also identity, if you are a leader and real estate has been good
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  to you both personally, professionally how do you make the choice to actually
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  back away from real estate and recognize that the depreciation that people have
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  been talking about is a real thing?
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  How do you convince your board of that?
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  It's a challenging thing because what you're asking people to do is
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  reset mindsets about the way the world works, and that's where that
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  circular debate comes in because so many people are invested in this.
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  If you have 20 years of working in building maintenance, in, designing
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  offices and ex employee experience built around in-person events, you
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  have a vested interest in the way that.
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  Real estate and space contain people, and that's your track record.
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  That's your CV in moving away from that's a pivot that you then have to explain.
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  People don't do that kind of thing unless they're really motivated to do that and
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  to have external forces push them in that direction, that's a challenging thing.
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  But what we're actually seeing is convergence because, since the
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  pandemic, there's been a distinct move, obviously towards flexibility
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  and the hybrid remote way of working.
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  But what now is happening is AI is being introduced, right?
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  And.
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  Depending on who you are, what you think about ai, that's still going to change
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  how people work because AI never sleeps.
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  So if you're integrating AI into your role and AI is doing transactional things
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  that AI is capable of doing right now, AI doesn't need to be in a building.
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  AI doesn't need to be in a physical space.
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  AI can be influenced without.
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  Monitoring body language.
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  So what does that look like?
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  The current narrative that's going on right now is that AI is likely to shrink
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  the workforce, meaning that there's going to be fewer and fewer people.
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  So this push, this narrative to bring people back to an office is in
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  direct conflict with the narrative that we're seeing around ai.
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  Now, I personally don't think either narrative is right.
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  I think that there's going to be something new and creative because
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  I'm always suspicious about a narrative where, people are told that
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  human beings aren't worth betting on, that human beings are gonna go away.
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  We're gonna reduce head count.
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  If you reduce head count.
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  Who's actually gonna be buying your products because nobody's
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  gonna actually have money.
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  Then you get into the whole government benefit scheme and what
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  does that look like, and how long is that gonna take to work out?
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  So I personally don't think we've come across a narrative of what
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  the future is actually gonna be.
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  That's compelling, that's persuasive.
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  I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.
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  But again, that's going to be.
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  Developed over years.
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  It's going to be incremental in the way that we approach that.
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  So what really matters are the choices we make, and that's where my
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  pivot from focusing just solely on.
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  What up until now I've been most proud of, which is my ability to actually influence
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  the hybrid remote adoption of policy.
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  How to make that work smoothly, how to advise companies on how to adopt it.
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  It feels restricted right now because I don't think.
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  That it ends solely there.
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  I think it's a leadership decision.
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  I think it's more of a question about reinvention and ongoing, continual change.
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  Change is not a project anymore.
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  It's actually a reinvention that's never gonna stop because there's so
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  many variables coming at us in all different aspects of life and work that.
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  What we're looking at is how do we reinvent identities?
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  How do we reinvent organizations to redistribute work, redistribute
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  tasks, redistribute value?
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  What matters to people?
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  How do we make people matter?
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  People show up and do a good job when they feel that they have a sense of purpose
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  and they feel that they themselves matter.
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  And what we're seeing in the narratives right now, especially the AI narrative, is
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  there's a certain type of leadership out there that
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  basically says people don't matter.
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  That's.
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  Is never gonna be something I'm gonna put my weight behind because I think people
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  and wisdom, all the things that matter.
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  To human beings are far more important than this narrow story that tech founders
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  are going are spending right now.
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  That's really only going to benefit a very narrow section of the population,
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  and it's really gonna be detrimental to others when somebody is telling
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  you that something is guaranteed and this is the way it's gonna be, and
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  they're giving you that prediction.
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  Futurists don't.
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  Give prediction.
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  They look at trends and scenarios and convergences, and that's what I'm seeing
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  is we have to look at the decisions that we're making and that leads me into a.
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  The leadership aspect, right?
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  And that's, how are you reducing your risk?
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  How are you growing your potential and your business?
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  And how are you doing this credibly and sustainably?
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  That's really what the choice is gonna be because you don't know the
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  future, and the future is coming at us faster than ever before.
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  It's important to look at the way that we're making those decisions,
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  what data we're using to support them and how we trust that any of
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  this is the right direction, right?
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  So this is where I'm going to be pivoting to the business into more of that.
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  It's really a matter of discernment as well too.
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  And discernment is a really tough thing too.
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  Teach anyone because it's fundamentally based in emotional intelligence, but
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  it's also based in what your history has been, what your skills are who
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  you trust pattern recognition how you connect the dots, and how do you take
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  that from an individual level and apply that at an organizational level.
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  And discernment is important for everyone, especially with the way that
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  misinformation is becoming so prevalent.
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  And even, how day AI is pulling data and how it's being trained.
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  How do you know that what you're reading is actually true
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  and reliable and trustworthy?
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  Discernment has become.
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  Honestly, one of the biggest things that I'm concerned about as well too,
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  and especially in a leadership aspect,
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  you really have to be able to have those tough conversations about
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  how all of that feeds into the decisions you're making, both EU as an
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  individual and you as an organization.
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  And I think that's the bigger conversation where I can be.
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  More useful.
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  So again, it's not that I don't believe in hybrid, remote, or flexibility.
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  I absolutely do.
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  I think it's the way of the future.
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  We're seeing all these things about the four wheel four day work week.
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  That all ties into this conversation about the universal benefit and
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  how people are gonna make money.
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  And it's going to be not necessarily just what they're able to earn from
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  employment, but it's also, the.
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  The side projects the portfolio careers, all of these things are converging to make
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  work be something completely different than what we've seen up until now.
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  But there are forces that are gonna drag us backwards.
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  How do you anchor yourself?
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  So that you feel safe and stable.
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  And then how do you make that trust leap to move into the next?
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  How do you crash that threshold into what's going to be your future?
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  That's the more interesting conversation, right?
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  And that's where I think that I can be of more value.
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  So fundamentally, it's all.
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  Part and partial of it.
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  And again, this is more of a a love letter to the future of work.
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  So I'm gonna be changing how I work on LinkedIn how I do
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  newsletters, how I do email.
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  You're probably gonna see less of me on a lot of the social media that I do because
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  I do think that long form is really where I need to be more than anything else.
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  And I am, I'm gonna be switching up what I do with the podcast.
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  I don't think I'm gonna be doing guest episodes unless there's a guest.
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  I just can't resist in the opportunity to have a conversation is irresistible.
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  I think that I'm going to be using this as a way to flesh out conversations
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  that need to be had that the nuance and.
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  That's something I'm going to be experimenting with more.
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  What can the podcast be?
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  Who knew it was gonna be a Global Globes category.
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  Now, podcasting has come so much further than I ever thought it would going to
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  be when I started this five years ago.
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  Now.
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  I have issues with the way that the Global Golden Globes actually
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  created the criteria and who's eligible to win those awards.
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  But realistically, I'm also not doing podcasting because I wanna win awards.
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  I'm using it for a specific reason directly related to my business and how I
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  communicate and help people think through.
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  These types of thorny types of problems.
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  And it's not thought leadership.
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  It's how do you lead thought, and that's what I'm interested in.
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  So that's how I plan to use the podcast as well.
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  So you'll see more of that.
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  My plan really is podcast newsletters, so LinkedIn, substack and also email.
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  I'm really going to lean into email because I really have not.
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  Done a good job.
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  I have created email lists.
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  I do have a whole raft of people who have subscribed to newsletters and things that
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  I write, but I'm going to be tweaking that and cleaning those lists and asking
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  people to unsubscribe if the new direction isn't necessarily what they're after with.
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  So I can identify people that truly want to be in conversation with me.
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  'cause what I find is a lot of people follow me, but nobody really ever.
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  Has those conversations on an ongoing basis.
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  The people who actually speak to me about things that matter to them, that's
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  a really small kind of group of people, and I'd like to get more of the people
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  who are willing to commit to actual change and have those conversations
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  and then work through that, right?
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  So I haven't found.
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  The magic in terms of how I create a safe space for those types of conversations
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  that lead into actual business.
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  So that's what I'm.
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  Working on an ongoing basis.
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  So anyways, that's my plan for 2026.
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  I will be trying to lay up content that will support that more.
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  But this is the first thing that I wanted to start with and
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  hopefully you find that interesting.
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  I will actually be including a link of been testing out a way for
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  you to interact with the podcast.
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  You can actually leave a voicemail and send with questions.
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  If you record a message, you can indicate to me whether you'd like me to be able
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  to use that as clips in the podcast.
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  Questions are the lifeblood of how you stay on top of what people are thinking
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  and getting that type of information.
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  That's really such a valuable, so what ways work for that?
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  I. TikTok.
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  Lots of people talk about TikTok being A F for questions, but I just find TikTok
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  to be a little bit toxic, not to mention it's also really dominated by certain.
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  Demographics and countries.
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  So I'm interested in the people who are willing to speak directly to me in a way
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  that feels safe to them without actually having to go through the gates of hell
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  on public comment forums like TikTok.
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  So that's what I'm experimenting with as well too.
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  So check the show notes for that.
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  And I'll also put it in my LinkedIn thing when I share this, so I'll
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  put it on Substack as well too.
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  So anyways, hopefully that's interesting to you.
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  I'd love to know what you're thinking about what questions
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  are keeping you up at night.
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  The thorny pieces of identity that really keep on coming up
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  is who are you going to be if
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  you have to move away from what has always worked for you?
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  So that's an interesting thing.
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  A lot of times people don't find these questions until they've actually been
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  laid off or they retire or they move or whatever happens to interrupt their life.
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  A lot of times it's called life quakes.
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  Life quakes are an interesting thing to you to explore.
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  But those are the types of questions I'd love to hear more about.
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  What keeps you.
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  Awake.
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  What helps you think about the future in a different way?
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  And we don't have to have answers.
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  It's more about how are you thinking about it?
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  That's the fun part.
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  So anyways, talk soon.
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  Bye.