Let me tell you what I see in most organisations claiming remote work "doesn't work." Managers scheduling back-to-back video calls to "maintain visibility." Teams spending more time reporting on their work than actually doing it. Employee surveillance software that tracks keystrokes and mouse clicks like we're running a Victorian factory.
It's madness.
I worked with a tech company in Sydney where managers were requiring daily status reports, weekly one-on-ones, and team check-ins every morning. Their developers were spending 15 hours per week in meetings about work instead of doing work.
Then they wondered why productivity dropped.
The problem isn't remote work. The problem is that we're trying to manage remote teams the same way we managed office teams, except with more anxiety and worse communication tools.
What Actually Kills Remote Productivity
Here's what I've learned destroys remote team effectiveness:
Constant availability culture. When people think they need to respond to every message within minutes, they never get into deep work flow. The best remote teams I've worked with have clear communication protocols about when immediate responses are actually needed.
Meeting multiplication. Video calls are exhausting in ways face-to-face meetings aren't. Yet somehow we've convinced ourselves that more meetings equal better collaboration. Wrong.
Micromanagement by metrics. Measuring "productivity" by email response times or hours logged is like measuring football success by how much players run. Completely missing the point.
I had a client in Melbourne—a financial services firm—where managers were tracking when people came online each morning. Their top performer, a senior analyst who did her best work between 6am and 10am, was getting marked down because she wasn't "visible" during standard hours. Mental.
The Trust Deficit
The real reason remote work struggles isn't technological—it's cultural. Most organisations simply don't trust their people to work unsupervised.
This creates a vicious cycle. Managers implement surveillance and control measures because they don't trust teams to be productive. Teams respond by focusing on appearing busy rather than being effective. Productivity actually drops, confirming managers' suspicions that remote work doesn't work.
Here's the thing: If you can't trust your people to work remotely, you hired the wrong people or you're a terrible manager. Probably both.
The companies succeeding with remote work are the ones that hired adults and treat them like adults. Revolutionary concept, I know.
What High-Performing Remote Teams Actually Do
After studying dozens of successful remote operations across Australia, I've identified some clear patterns:
They focus on outcomes, not hours. Nobody cares when you work or where you work, as long as you deliver quality results on time.
They have brutal meeting discipline. No meeting without a clear purpose. No meeting longer than necessary. No meeting that could be an email.
They invest heavily in stress management training. Remote work can be isolating and stressful in ways office work isn't. The teams getting this right are proactively supporting their people's mental health and work-life balance.
They over-communicate context and under-communicate status updates. Instead of constant check-ins about what people are doing, they make sure everyone understands why they're doing it and how it fits the bigger picture.
The Manager Problem
Let's be honest about what's really broken: middle management.
Most managers got promoted because they were good at their previous job, not because they knew how to lead people. Then we gave them teams to manage without any training in how to actually manage.
This worked (sort of) when everyone was in the office because proximity covered up a lot of management shortcomings. You could walk by someone's desk, have casual conversations, pick up on problems through osmosis.
Remote work exposes bad management like nothing else. Suddenly you need actual skills: clear communication, trust-building, outcome-focused thinking, emotional intelligence.
A manufacturing company in Adelaide asked me to help with their "remote work problem." After two weeks of investigation, I told them they didn't have a remote work problem—they had a management problem. Their supervisors had never learned how to delegate effectively, give clear feedback, or support team development. Location was irrelevant.
Getting It Right
The organisations winning at remote work aren't the ones with the best technology or the most flexible policies. They're the ones that completely reimagined how work gets done.
They started with trust as the default position. They focused on developing managers who could lead distributed teams effectively. They designed workflows around asynchronous collaboration rather than constant connectivity.
Most importantly, they stopped trying to recreate the office experience online and started building something better.
The Real Solution
Here's what actually works for remote and hybrid teams:
Clear accountability structures. Everyone knows what they're responsible for and how success is measured. No ambiguity.
Intentional communication. Structured updates, documented decisions, transparent processes. None of this "let me know if you have questions" nonsense.
Manager development that focuses on remote leadership skills. How to build trust with people you rarely see. How to have difficult conversations over video. How to maintain team culture without shared physical space.
Flexibility with boundaries. People can work when and where they're most effective, but team commitments are sacred.
website : https://prospectgroup.bigcartel.com/
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