# Making Connections - Synthesis B By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2026-01-25 The debate over remote versus in-person work often centers on the medium itself, as if the key to meaningful collaboration is simply getting people back into shared physical spaces. Proponents of in-person work argue that real connection requires proximity: the spontaneous conversation after a meeting, the energy of shared presence, the productive friction that virtual formats flatten. There's truth in this. But I wonder if the framing solves the wrong problem. The assumption is that the medium is where transformation lives or dies, that if we could get people back in rooms together, the meaningful work would follow. This feels like a category error. The organizations that struggled with bureaucratic inertia before remote work didn't suddenly discover transformation when everyone shared a building. They held their meetings, grabbed their coffees, and produced the same stagnant outcomes year after year. What changed when people went remote wasn't the loss of some magical proximity effect; it was that the absence of physical presence revealed how little authentic connection had existed in the first place. The coffee conversations were pleasant. They were rarely transformative. Perhaps the nostalgia for in-person work is partly a nostalgia for the _feeling_ of connection rather than its substance. Shared space provides ambient warmth, the comfort of presence, the sense that something is happening. But transformation is not a feeling. It is the hard, often uncomfortable work of building trust, challenging assumptions, and committing to shared purpose over time. This work can happen in a conference room. It can happen on a video call. It mostly doesn't happen at all in either setting because most people and cultures aren't oriented toward it. The medium is a distraction. The real question is whether we're willing to do the work, and we'd rather debate office policy than answer it. #### Related Items [[Work]] [[Remote Work]] [[Authenticity]] [[Development]] [[Effort]] [[Culture]]