How to Build a Winning Team When You're Anywhere and Everywhere
For decades, we’ve talked about company culture in physical terms. We've thought of it as the vibe you feel when you walk into an office. It was the free snacks in the kitchen, the Friday afternoon drinks trolley, the ping-pong table in the breakroom. We built our understanding of culture on a foundation of shared physical space.
And then, almost overnight, that foundation was removed.
The world of work has been fundamentally and permanently transformed. Today, many of our teams are, as a founder recently described it to me, "anywhere and everywhere." This has created one of the most pressing leadership challenges of our time: How do you build a strong, connected, winning culture when your team is geographically distributed? How do you create a sense of belonging through a screen?
This very question was at the centre of a powerful and timely conversation I had on my podcast with Leigh. Leigh is a successful entrepreneur who, after selling her own thriving enterprise, has dedicated herself to a new mission: giving school-aged students the opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship. Her business is seeing significant growth, particularly in rural areas, with students and team members located all throughout Australia.
Leigh is building a business for the future, and she is facing the challenges of the future head-on. She came to our conversation with the critical questions every modern leader must be asking: How do I create a team? How do I recognize great work? And how do I build a winning culture when we're not all in the same room?
Our conversation was a deep dive into the new playbook for remote-first culture.
Today, inspired by Leigh's incredible mission, I want to give you my definitive guide to building a thriving culture in a world without walls.
The First Principle - Culture is Not a Place, It's a Practice
The first and most important mental shift we must make is to decouple "culture" from "office." The office was never your culture. The office was merely the container in which your culture happened. The free snacks were not your culture; a commitment to employee wellbeing was. The ping-pong table was not your culture; a spirit of fun and camaraderie was.
Culture is not a location; it is the sum of your shared values, behaviours, and rituals, practiced consistently over time.
In a remote environment, you cannot rely on culture happening by osmosis in the hallway. You must be far more intentional, deliberate, and explicit about creating it. If your culture was previously a verb—something you felt—it must now also become a noun—something that is written down, systemized, and practiced with discipline.
The Blueprint - How to Build Your Remote Culture Code
You wouldn't build a product without a blueprint, and you cannot build a remote culture without one either. This "Culture Code" is a living document that articulates exactly how you work together.
1. Define and Codify Your Values:
What are the 3-5 core values that guide your organization? And I don't mean generic words like "Integrity" or "Excellence." You need to define them in behavioural terms.
- Instead of "Integrity," it could be "We do what we say we're going to do."
- Instead of "Innovation," it could be "We challenge the status quo and ask 'what if?'"
- Instead of "Teamwork," it could be "We actively seek out different perspectives and offer help before being asked."
These behavioural definitions give your team a clear guide on how to live the values every day, whether they are in an office or in their living room.
2. Establish Communication Norms:
In a remote team, communication is oxygen. But a constant barrage of notifications is the fastest path to burnout. You must be explicit about your communication norms.
- What channel is for what? (e.g., Slack is for quick queries and social chat, email is for formal external communication, Asana/Trello is for project updates).
- What are the expectations around response times? (e.g., "We aim to respond to internal messages within 4 hours. If it's truly urgent, use the phone.").
- Are you a synchronous or asynchronous team? Do you expect people to be online and available from 9-5, or do you focus on outcomes and allow for flexible working hours?
Setting these rules reduces anxiety and allows people to do deep, focused work without feeling like they have to be constantly "on."
3. Master the Art of the Remote Meeting:
Remote meetings require more structure, not less.
- Every meeting must have a clear agenda and a desired outcome, sent out beforehand.
- Start with a human check-in. Go around the "room" and ask a simple, non-work question: "What was the highlight of your weekend?" This 5-minute ritual intentionally rebuilds the social connection that used to happen before a physical meeting started.
- Default to "cameras on." Seeing each other's faces is critical for building connection and understanding nuance.
Recognition and Connection in a Digital World
This was a key part of Leigh's question. How do you recognize great work and create connection when you can't just give someone a high-five or take the team out for lunch? You have to build new rituals.
1. Make Recognition Public and Specific:
- Create a dedicated "Wins" channel in Slack. Encourage everyone on the team to post about great work they've seen from a colleague. The peer-to-peer recognition is often more powerful than top-down praise.
- Start your weekly team meeting with "Shout-Outs." Go around the team and have everyone publicly acknowledge a colleague who helped them or did something great that week.
- The power of the specific "Thank You." As a leader, your specific praise is gold. Don't just say "good job." Say, "Leigh, the way you handled that complex parent query was exceptional. I was so impressed by your empathy and your clear communication. It perfectly embodied our value of 'customer obsession'."
2. Engineer Spontaneity and Connection:
You have to intentionally create the "water cooler" moments that used to happen naturally.
- The Virtual Water Cooler: Have a dedicated Slack channel for non-work chat, sharing photos of pets, hobbies, and weekend adventures.
- Random "Donut" Calls: Use an app like Donut, which randomly pairs up two team members each week for a 15-minute, non-work-related video call. This builds cross-functional relationships and breaks down silos.
- Shared Experiences (The Vivid Experience, Remotely): You can still create shared experiences. Send everyone a delivery voucher and have a virtual team lunch. Run an online trivia game. For a business like Leigh's, you could all participate in one of your own student entrepreneurship challenges as a team. The goal is to create shared memories.
3. Invest in In-Person Gatherings:
While you can build a fantastic remote culture, nothing can ever fully replace the magic of face-to-face human connection. If your budget allows, plan for intentional, in-person gatherings once or twice a year. Don't just get together to sit in a room and do the same work you could do on Zoom. Design these gatherings for connection, celebration, and strategic, big-picture thinking. Make them a memorable and cherished event that fuels the team for the months to come.
A Mission to Build the Future
Leigh's business is so powerful because she is not just building a company; she is building the next generation of company builders. The culture she creates within her own team will have a ripple effect, influencing the thousands of young, aspiring entrepreneurs who go through her programs.
She is teaching them not just the "what" of business, but the "how" of leadership. And in today's world, there is no more important lesson than how to build a business that is both successful and deeply human, no matter where your team is located.
Our full conversation on the podcast was a practical, hands-on workshop on these very topics. We explored specific tools, rituals, and mindset shifts required to lead in this new era. It’s a conversation for every leader who knows that culture is their most important product.
Culture is Leadership in Action
Building a winning culture in a remote or hybrid world is the defining leadership challenge of our generation. It requires us to be more intentional, more disciplined, and more creative than ever before.
It is not about replicating the office online. It is about fundamentally rethinking how we connect, communicate, and collaborate as human beings. It's about understanding that culture is not a place you go, but a set of promises you make and keep to each other, every single day.
It is about creating a community where people feel seen, valued, and connected to a shared purpose—a community so strong that it transcends screens and time zones. And the leader who can master this will not only attract and retain the best talent; they will build a resilient, innovative, and truly unstoppable organization.
Frequently Asked Questions on We Know Culture is Essential, But How?
1. What is the biggest mistake leaders make when trying to 'build' a positive company culture?
The biggest mistake is treating culture as an abstract concept or a set of written rules (the 'shoulds'), rather than a system of reinforced behaviours and stories. Leaders often fail by relying on superficial perks or speeches instead of consistently and publicly rewarding the behaviours that embody the desired values and holding people accountable when they don't. Culture is what people do when the boss isn't looking.
2. How can a leader effectively measure the health of the company's culture?
A leader effectively measures the health of the culture by looking beyond employee satisfaction surveys to metrics of trust and psychological safety. They look for: 1. Unambiguous Clarity: Do employees understand the purpose? 2. Vulnerability: Do team members feel safe bringing up mistakes or bad news? 3. Discretionary Effort: Are employees committed to the collective success? Metrics like employee turnover and customer feedback often provide clearer external signals of a healthy culture than internal polls.
3. What role does the board play in setting and overseeing the company's culture?
The board plays a critical role in setting the 'Tone at the Top' and acting as the ultimate custodian of the culture. Their responsibility is to ensure the company's strategic goals are not being pursued at the expense of its stated values. The board oversees culture by demanding metrics on employee engagement, reviewing executive remuneration structures to ensure alignment with values, and holding the CEO accountable for implementing systems that reinforce ethical behaviour.
4. How does the 'Less is More' principle apply to communicating company values and purpose?
The 'Less is More' principle dictates that values and purpose must be unambiguous, simple, and memorable. A long list of complex values is confusing and quickly ignored. Leaders must simplify the core 'Purpose' and the few non-negotiable 'Values' into a clear framework (like a one-page strategy) that is easy for every employee to understand and apply in their daily 'toil.'
5. Why must a company's recognition and reward system be fundamentally tied to its culture?
The recognition system must be tied to culture because what you reward is what you get. If a company values teamwork but only rewards individual sales heroes, it reinforces the wrong behaviour. Tying recognition to culture means publicly rewarding specific behaviours that embody the core values, using personalized rewards to meet emotional needs, and consistently telling the stories that reinforce the desired cultural narrative.
