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Good question. My feeling is that distance creates emotional separation and vice versa. Maybe because remote communication is abstract and misunderstood quickly.

BTW: The best I’ve read about this so far is: “The Culture Code”

I'm reading 'The Culture Code' and from what it says all elite teams qualify themselves as family

That most corporations fail at it doesn't mean it's not the ideal

Favourites of 2018:

Lost and Founder: The Mostly Awful, Sometimes Awesome Truth about Building a Tech Startup
by Rand Fishkin
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35957156

Transforming NOKIA: The Power of Paranoid Optimism to Lead Through Colossal Change
by Risto Siilasmaa
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39850907

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
by Matthew Walker
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
by David Kushner
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222146

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
by Daniel Coyle
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25870385

How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story
by Billy Gallagher
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34964879

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters
by Richard P. Rumelt
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36658033

Some of these comments reminded me of a story Clotaire Rapaille told in his book 'The Culture Code.' He gave a talk at an obesity conference. Each speaker gave their own solution to the obesity problem. Rapaille's observed:

“I think it is fascinating that the other speakers today have suggested that education is the answer to our country’s obesity problem,” I said. I slowly gestured around the room. “If education is the answer, then why hasn’t it helped more of you?”

Three of my favorites were:

1. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle
An excellent analysis of what makes some cultures great and others toxic.

2. Measure What Matters by John Doerr
John Doerr describes a simple yet effective management system that has helped Google succeed and scale. The Objective and Key Results approach can be effective for anyone from a single contributor to a large organization trying to encourage a culture of effective collaboration and achievement.

3. Small Giants by Bo Burlingham
The stories about a handful of companies that chose to be great rather than big.

Some of the other books that I have enjoyed are listed here: https://behavioralvalueinvestor.com/other-interesting-books/

This reads like a commercial, but I'm not going to downvote it. I read the book and liked it, along with about a hundred other books on culture over the years. There is a similar pattern: a problem, an old way of doing things, a hero, a change, and a beautiful sunset with our hero riding off.

I think there are really, really good things in these kinds of books, especially if you identify with the problem and hero. At the same time, having gone through a bunch, there's a tendency for them to be like self-help or diet books: lots of great feelings while you're consuming them, energetic talking about the ideas with your friends, then a slow die-off until the next book.

Years ago I started collecting news articles and bits of information on culture. (IT culture). It's a fascinating topic because it intersects hype and measurable reality. Unlike a self-help book that promises "Be a happier you in 3 weeks!", your job is something that either gets better or doesn't.

For what it's worth, my best choice so far is "The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups" I read this book and thought "That son of a bitch! He's stolen all of my research material!" There is a bunch of anecdotes, stories, and research in there. I am still thinking over many of the ideas in the book I hadn't considered before.

This is important stuff. If it's something you're concerned about, don't give up. Read as much as you can. Just step back a bit from the hype cycle as you do so.

First and foremost - it's not about you. Millions of people are getting laid off daily now due to the exceptional circumstances.

It's ok to feel down for some time, but it's important to understand the broad picture and not take this personally - regardless of what you were told.

Now, regarding leadership resources, I would recommend to start with the following (in this order):

Moneyball (movie), books: The Goal, The Phoenix Project, The Mythical Man-Month, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, The Culture Code and in-between those - various Simon Sinek videos.

If you read this far, you should be able to continue finding materials on your own from here ;)

Best of luck!

An unsolicited advice that might cut your learning time in half:

Every book gives advice, every advice is an answer to a question. Ignore the answer, but scrutinize the question.

For example: "embrace remote work, go remote-first even!" says one book, "face-to-face is the only thing that works in the face of inevitable confusion and complexity" says another. Not helpful, right? However, consider that the first author got good result with remote work, and the second one got great results in-office. The two may have had different circumstances which they fail to describe for the reason you're describing the air you are breathing - being very immersed in something makes that something invisible. So a question to ponder then: under what circumstances is remote work possible, and if/how can one modify those circumstances?

Scrutinizing the question is a lot more work than getting excited with the first answer that came your way, but it's that much more likely to yield applicable result on top of a bout of enthusiasm.

Also, thanks for [The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups] suggestion.

There are three main kinds of cultures:

1) superstar centered

2) technology centered

3) community centered

Of these most companies adhere to 1) or 2) and a lot of the suggestions in this thread reflect that

Nobody has really tried 3) that I know of but it's the best way to get people to want to stay, duh

This is straight out of "the culture code" by Daniel Coyle

Clotaire Rapaille's (he is mentioned in the article) book "The Culture Code" is a pretty insightful read. It is hard to come up with a gist of what is in there, but if I were to attempt summarizing it, I would say that the thesis is that cultural has a surprisingly sizable impact on most decisions, and consumers are never accurate when supposedly describing their feelings.

Psychological safety seems to be a big part of the puzzle. For example:

> If there's one thing I feel that is absent from the Agile Manifesto, it's psychological safety. We have learned in the past 20 years how important this to a teams success. https://old.reddit.com/r/agile/comments/jd29lf/the_elephant_...

Just today, I started reading The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. The first two chapters are great and it addresses exactly this question.

1. "An Elegant Puzzle - Systems of Engineering Management" by Will Larson. His blog & "Staff Eng" posts are helpful as well. https://lethain.com/tags/staff-eng/

2. "The Phoenix Project", "The Unicorn Project" (novels), and "DevOps Handbook" by Eugene Kim, on how different parts of a tech + non-tech organization come and work together.

3. "High Output Management" by Andrew Grove on overall technical management.

4. "Measure What Matters" by John Doerr on setting objectives and measuring their progress.

5. "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande on thinking through replicable processes.

6. "Who" by Geoff Smart on hiring.

7. "Start with Why" by Simon Sinek and "The Culture Code" by Daniel Coyle on creating culture and reasons for why people do the work. It's an important part of any management process, double import because of how often it is lost in technical management.

That you never worry about them. You don't worry whether you're doing the right thing or not, or what they're reporting about you to others. You don't worry about their approval or whether they're going to accidentally create obstacles for your work. Due to circumstances outside of everybody's control, great managers may be forced to deliver negative news and have unpleasant conversations, but there's no part of that where you feel they might be hiding something or letting you down. Great managers function seamlessly with whatever you're doing as if they were just another part of your body. They're an extension and natural part of whatever you all are doing, not a separate entity that adds complexity, drama, and stress to things.

In that sense, great managers work for you, not the other way around. Yes, they might have to fire you one day because of budget cuts or some such nonsense, but you never doubt that they spend their time working to learn from their reports and remove obstacles for them -- most times without folks having any idea what they're doing.

ADD: If you're interested in learning more, a good book on teaming and how managers/leaders fit in is "The Culture Code"

I've read quite a few of the books on the list, the ones that have stayed with me and actually changed my life are, in order of impact:

1. The Art of Learning - I'll never think about practice the same way.

2. Getting Things Done - Enough has been said about this elsewhere, but the whole concept of "what's the next action" has really worked for me.

3. E-Myth Revisited - This was my MBA in one book. It came at the right time for me and really changed the way I think about creating businesses as assets. I wasn't a fan the cheesy example of the pie shop, but the advice has been invaluable.

Others that I found interesting, and that changed the way I think were:

4-hour Work Week. Yes, there is a ton of hype around this book, but I'd be surprised if anyone read it with an open mind and didn't learn anything or come away motivated to experiment with their lifestyle.

Outliers. This one probably stands out to me since I read it so recently. Gladwell gets a lot of hype as well, but I think he deserves at least some of it.

The Culture Code drastically changed the way I think about marketing.

And, a few random notes on the others I've read:

I found Predictably Irrational, Brain Rules and The 48 Laws of Power to be mostly garbage.

The Wisdom of Crowds, Wikinomics and Made to Stick are decent essays in book form.

Stumbling on Happiness is not nearly as good as Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis which would be in the first list I made above if it were on Siver's list.

Seth Godin's books are good for motivation and for changing the way you think about marketing, especially if you've been doing it for a long time (I haven't). They're quick and fun, I think they're worth reading.

Fooled By Randomness is worth reading if nothing else because Taleb is such an entertaining writer.