Very much still in the thinking stage re the move to remote working (who does how much etc) but increasingly wondering if contemplating how existing companies will act is missing the point. 1/n

As it stands now I think remote for existing companies will be classic bell curve. Maybe 5-10% always remote, 5-10% always in the office. Then a distribution of those 1/2/3/4 days a week remote. With average circa 2/3 days in the office or remote. But ...

... that is based on thinking very few companies are suited to being 100% remote. Due to how they work, hire, bond, mentor, learn and socialise. Remote requires different management to in-office and most won’t want to become that ‘different’. So few will go all in. But ....

If you forget about existing companies and focus on new ones, it could be that many of these will be built, from the foundations up, to be fully, 100% remote from day one. Though ‘distributed’ will be how they term themselves. Because ‘remote’ from what?

Now these companies will also be 100% digitally enabled from day one. They will employ all the available digital tools at their disposal and will have zero ‘legacy’ tax. Nothing will be adapted from analogue. Digital will be how they operate.

They will also hire based on being a distributed company. So no-one used to an analogue way of working will need to be trained to adapt to being 100% digital. Every hire will be temperamentally suited to working in a distributed manner.

Which means they really can do what so many fear; hire whoever they want, totally irrespective of geography. Their talent pool is exponentially larger than their analogue competition.

Being distributed they can also afford to use what they would have spent on offices as they wish. Provide higher pay, better perks, more training, whatever. Their sole aim is to hire the best people for the job. Better before cheaper.

Where they need people to physically meet customers, suppliers etc they can plan for that based on real need. Not simply having lots of people who could do those tasks.

And, being distributed they can automatically service any customer, anywhere. Where there is demand for their product or services they can rapidly ‘fire up’ another node on their network.

All of which is placing ‘NewCo’ in a really strong position. Fully aligned employees (or of course contractors if appropriate), digital through and through, flexible, agile, scaleable. And with economics to hire ‘stars’. So this ...

.... is what the current companies, struggling to fully adapt or exploit the possibilities of ‘remote’ working now has to compete against. They are no longer competing ‘apples to apples’ as was, but against a different type of competitor.

A competitor that isn’t hamstrung by having to work out how to maintain culture, onboard new staff, disseminate knowledge and learning. Because they’ve solved all those issues as part of their business model. They do all of this, but without the friction.

So, who wins? Obviously this depends on the type of product/service being offered but, as we’ve seen during Covid, some 30-40% of the countries employees can work fully, or mostly, digitally. Square of an incumbent vs a ‘designed to be distributed’ company... what do you think?

Increasingly I’m thinking the newly minted, designed for this world, companies are going to be formidable competitors. Given good funding, the ability to poach a lot of top talent, a well formulated business model and organisational structure, these companies could really rock.

Which leaves incumbents not competing against their existing competitors (who are also feeling their way to a new way of working) but something else entirely.

Which rather changes how you think about the consequences of Covid doesn’t it?

PS None of the above is an anti office argument. Everyone has to work somewhere. Real estate is still a massive input into a distributed company.