I’ve been watching the return-to-office drama unfold with a mix of fascination and frustration. Amazon’s 5-day mandate triggered 2,000-employee walkouts. SAP faced over 5,000 employees signing protest letters. The rhetoric from both sides grows more heated by the day.

But here’s what everyone’s missing: This isn’t about where work happens. It’s about leaders who’ve lost the ability to measure what actually matters.

The Trust Gap That’s Breaking Companies

According to recent workplace research, only 54% of executives trust remote employees to be productive. Meanwhile, just 60% of employees believe leaders trust them equally regardless of location. This trust gap isn’t just uncomfortable—it’s expensive.

I’ve been an individual contributor, held executive roles, and managed distributed teams across continents for over 15 years. Time zones and async collaboration have been my reality since before it was trendy. And now, as a full-time caregiver and product leader, I can tell you definitively: The most productive teams I’ve ever led had one thing in common—trust, not proximity.

The “Quiet Layoffs” Nobody Wants to Discuss

Let’s address the elephant in the room: quiet layoffs. According to BambooHR research, 25% of C-suite executives and 18% of HR professionals admit they hoped RTO mandates would trigger voluntary resignations. AT&T’s mandate requiring 26,000 managers to work from just nine locations was called “a layoff wolf in return-to-office sheep’s clothing” by their own employees.

The symptoms are everywhere:

• Making work conditions so uncomfortable that employees quit rather than be fired
• Avoiding severance packages and unemployment insurance obligations
• Using “collaboration” and “culture” as cover for workforce reduction
• Punishing high performers who’ve built lives around flexibility

Why Leaders Default to Presence Over Performance

Leaders are reverting to what they know—managing by walking around—because they never learned to manage by outcomes. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: Many leaders have never seen “good” before. They grew up in command-and-control environments where visibility equated to value.

Think about it: If you can’t tell whether your team is productive without watching them sit at desks, you’re not measuring the right things.

Measuring What Actually Matters

Over the years, I’ve learned something fundamental: successful teams focus on outcomes, not activity. It’s not a new concept—John Doerr’s “Measure What Matters” has been teaching this for years. Yet most organizations still confuse motion with progress.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

For Engineering Teams:

• Deploy frequency and stability (not hours logged)
• Customer-impacting defect rates (not lines of code)
• Time from commit to production (not time in seat)

For Product Teams:

• Feature adoption rates (not meetings attended)
• Customer outcome metrics (not documents produced)
• Revenue impact per initiative (not face time with stakeholders)

For Leadership:

• Team health scores and retention (not office attendance)
• Cross-functional collaboration effectiveness (not conference room bookings)
• Strategic initiative progress (not executive visibility)

The Benefits vs. Perks Reality Check

Here’s what’s fascinating: Research shows 80% of employees would choose additional benefits over a pay raise, with flexibility ranking at the top. Meanwhile, companies keep investing in pool tables and pizza parties—perks that 42% of employees admit they only use to be seen by managers.

I’ve always believed in meaningful benefits over superficial perks. Remote work flexibility isn’t a perk—it’s a fundamental benefit that enables:

• Caregivers to support family while excelling professionally
• Parents to be present for their children’s milestones
• People with disabilities to work in environments that support their needs
• Anyone to optimize their work environment for peak performance

The companies clinging to pizza parties while mandating office presence have it exactly backward.

Building Systems That Transcend Location

The best distributed teams I’ve led didn’t happen by accident. They were designed for asynchronous excellence:

Documentation as Culture. Every decision, every discussion, every design lives in shared spaces. Not because we don’t trust each other to remember, but because we respect each other’s time zones and deep work schedules.

Intentional Collaboration. We don’t pretend that Zoom recreates water cooler conversations. Instead, we design better interactions: focused working sessions, clear agendas, recorded decisions.

Results Visibility. Everyone can see everyone else’s impact. Not through surveillance, but through shared dashboards, public retrospectives, and celebrated wins.

The Caregiver Reality No One Discusses

Here’s what executives making RTO mandates don’t understand. For many of us, it’s not about preferring to “work from home”. It’s about non-negotiable life responsibilities.

As a full-time caregiver, I deliver exceptional results for my company while managing complex family needs. Force me into a cube from 9-5, and you don’t get a more productive employee—you lose the employee entirely. Family comes first and will always come first. It’s not negotiable.

This isn’t about work-life balance. It’s about recognizing that the best talent often comes with real-life complexity. The question becomes: Do you want access to that talent, or do you want full cubicles?

The Three Questions That Matter

Before implementing any RTO mandate, leaders should answer:

1. What specific problems are we solving? If the answer involves “culture” or “collaboration” without measurable definitions, you’re guessing.

2. How will we measure success? If success metrics include attendance rather than outcomes, you’re measuring the wrong thing.

3. What talent are we willing to lose? Because you will lose talent. Research shows those most likely to leave are your highest performers and those with caregiving responsibilities who need flexibility for their families.

Moving Forward: Leadership for the Real World

The companies winning the talent war aren’t the ones with the prettiest offices or the strictest mandates. They’re the ones who’ve figured out how to measure value creation instead of face time.

This requires leaders to evolve:

• From managing presence to enabling performance
• From controlling inputs to celebrating outputs
• From assuming distrust to building accountability

Some of my highest-performing team members have been caregivers, parents of young children, or people managing physical or mental health conditions. They delivered exceptional results precisely because we built systems that respected their reality while maintaining high standards.

If you’re tasked with creating ‘metrics that matter’ in your organization, your dashboard should be shifting from the presence-based (left) to the outcome-based (right) like in the visual below.

The Choice Is Yours

Companies face a simple decision: Adapt to the reality of modern work, or watch competitors who do adapt take your best talent.

The executives celebrating packed parking lots are measuring the wrong victory. The real winners are quietly building distributed teams that outperform, outinnovate, and outlast companies stuck in 1995’s management playbook.

What’s your organization actually measuring—presence or performance? And which one correlates with your business results?