If you’re leading a geographically dispersed team, you probably often ask yourself: “How do I keep everyone aligned and engaged?”
You’ve tried daily check-ins, Zoom meetings, online happy hours, and virtual team-building exercises. Those started off strong in 2020, but after a while the excitement and engagement faded and people went right back to feeling disconnected from one another and their work.
Here’s the harsh truth: Culture can only be built in person.
Can work get done remotely? Of course. There are plenty of people who do great work from home. Their ability to self-manage and be disciplined is high, and the psychological aspect of working in the same space where they sleep doesn’t bother them.
Then there are higher-ups in the company: the leadership that spent their fair share of time in the office as they were coming up and can now work remotely while maintaining the same level of connection with their team members.
But those examples are few and far in between. Culture is built in the in-between moments.
It’s built in the side conversations before a meeting starts, the spontaneous whiteboard session that turns into a breakthrough idea, and the shared energy in a room when a team is solving a problem together. You can’t schedule those moments or try to manufacture them through a screen. They have to happen organically and in person.
When my team is together in the office — whiteboarding as one as opposed to doing it solo or even online — the energy and collaboration (and as a result, the quality of work that gets done) is incomparable.
Coordination is not the same as collaboration.
Think about your last virtual brainstorming session. One person was probably fully engaged. Another was half-listening while checking Slack. Someone’s dog kept barking. Someone else got distracted by something happening off-screen. Even if you’re all together online, there are still too many distractions from the real world they’re physically in…and so they become mentally fragmented too.
When a team is in the same room, the level of focus, energy, and accountability are all elevated. That’s what drives alignment and builds culture.
Now, as I said before, I’m not dismissing remote work entirely. There are scenarios where it works well. Studies show that for certain people, it leads to higher productivity, and it’s important to accommodate those whose work is valuable but who can’t physically be in the office with you.
But productivity and culture are not necessarily the same.
Beyond performance, there’s something else that doesn’t get talked about enough: isolation.
When you work where you live and your only interaction with your team is through a screen, it’s easy to feel disconnected, both from the organization and from people in general.
Some might say they prefer it that way, and that’s fair.
But high-performing organizations don’t just optimize for convenience. They optimize for connection, alignment, and shared momentum.
Because at the end of the day, a business isn’t just a collection of individuals completing tasks. It’s a team, and teams don’t just need communication. They need connection.
So if culture actually matters to you — if alignment, collaboration, and long-term growth are priorities — you have to be intentional about creating environments where those things can thrive.
And more often than not, that means getting people in the same room.
While Zoom can keep people informed, it can’t make them feel like they’re truly part of something meaningful.
