Rakesh Wadhwa:

There's a lot of buzz around working from home or working remote, and a lot of people have been talking about it, a lot of big organizations, have made some big claims about it as well that they want to get a lot of their people to start working from home. Is it something that you feel is a good longterm strategy and how do you think it will impact businesses or shape organizational cultures, communities, or a team efficiencies?

Tom Peters:

Well, I think it's coming and I think it's going to last. I think it may be an exaggeration, but they talk about empty high rises in New York city because all the banker people are now working from home. And I think there is a significant likelihood that to a significant extent, that will be the case. And so I see the new trend toward working from home to be a very, very big deal. And it happens to coincide with the rapid advance of technology, which makes it more and more possible to do. I believe that you can be just as effective with your employees working from home, pretty much as much as you were, from the office, but you've got to learn how to do it. There are a lot of wrong ways to do it. People are inventing new softwares which will record how much speaking time every employee has at a zoom meeting. What a bunch of crap? That's just called micromanagement. That totally de-motivates people. People are talking about such things as leaders who use their computer for their meetings and they also use the phone a lot. During the whole darn meeting, you are distracted and you are frowning. It's probably something that's happened at home with a child who's sick and you're clearly distressed. Well, if I'm a good boss, one of the things I want to do when the meeting is over, I'm going to reach for that old fashioned thing called a phone, and I'm going to call you. And I'm going to say, hey, you're really okay? I'm not chewing you out for not participating. I'm saying we're quiche. Yeah. You and I have worked together for 11 years and you're really looked like you were upset today. Is there anything that I can do for you? There are a lot of things that I would say in that dimension, number one to every boss who is listening to this, I'm worried about your future. That is whether you go to heaven or whether you go to hell. The number one job for every single one of your employees attending a WFH meeting is to take care of themselves. Take care of their families, take care of their 89 year old grandmother and so on. That's number one. But when I say that, it goes back to an earlier comment. If you want people to know, be more productive over the mid to long, let them take care of themselves and be great human beings in the short term.