The Future of Work Isn’t About Time, It’s About Clarity

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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.182: The 4-Day Week, Hybrid Work, Leadership, and the Future of Productivity, with Richard Lee, using the player below, or click here.

More Hours Doesn’t Mean More Done

If you’re still measuring productivity by who’s online the longest or who responds fastest to Slack, you might be rewarding the wrong things. In this episode, Richard Lee, a consultant and founder with experience leading hybrid teams through hyper-growth and chaos, shared what productivity looks like when it’s built on purpose not panic.

One of the big lessons from his leadership journey is that productivity isn’t just about pace. It’s about clarity. Teams don’t need more urgency, they need fewer blockers, less noise, clearer direction. And the freedom to do their best work without being micromanaged into burnout.

What the 4-Day Week Really Teaches Us

Richard doesn’t pitch the 4-day work week as a miracle fix. In fact, he’s clear that it doesn’t suit every business model. But he has seen it work well, and the reason had less to do with the ‘day off’, and more to do with how it created space for everyone to work smarter.

Fewer days meant better focus. Meetings had to matter, priorities had to be clear, and people had to take ownership of their time instead of filling it with status updates.

If you’re thinking about reducing hours, Richard’s advice is simple: don’t lead with the perk, lead with the process. Use it as a tool to redesign how your team works, communicates, and delivers results.

The point isn’t to work less. The point is to waste less.

80% time, 100% output, 100% pay.

Hybrid Work Doesn’t Fix A Broken Culture

It’s easy to romanticise hybrid work. Fewer commutes. More flexibility. Better “work-life balance”. But Richard reminded us that hybrid setups only work if the team still feels like a team. That means deliberate structure, regular connection, and a shared sense of purpose.

In this respect, it’s no different to a full-time face-to-face team. Hybrid working isn’t going to repair a broken culture anymore than the return to office could.

When leading a hybrid team (or one making the change for the first time), you can’t assume people will automatically adapt. You need to talk about what good communication looks like, revisit how decisions get made, ask what your values mean when the team isn’t in the same building anymore.

And don’t just leave it to HR or line managers. If you're leading, you're shaping the tone.

Culture doesn’t happen on its own, it grows from the choices people make when no one is watching; which means your systems, rhythms, and expectations need to support the kind of behaviour you want more of.

The Real Cost of Poor Communication

One of the strongest parts of the conversation was about noise. Richard’s experience of a virtual events business during the height of the pandemic, and the rapid growth it went through. As remote/hybrid became an overnight reality he found communication a real challenge.

Endless chats (or, in his words: “my chats exploded”).

Half-useful tools.

A meeting for every decision.

Sound familiar? (Yeah… me too). These things look productive, but they quietly destroy deep work and drain focus.

Richard shared how he helped teams reduce meetings, not by banning them, just by asking whether the meeting had a clear goal, a clear owner, and a clear follow-up.

If you want to free up your team’s time, start there: Cut the filler. Clarify the signal. And stop rewarding speed over thought.

Values Aren’t Just Wall Art

During periods of growth and crisis, Richard also saw how a company’s values either guide decisions or get quietly ignored. He believes leadership means taking those values seriously; naming them, defining them, challenging the team to live by them.

He shared how redefining values helped reset expectations. Not just with employees but clients too. In one case, turning down work that didn’t align with company values helped protect the team’s time and energy, and long-term, it made space for better work with better-fit partners.

If your values aren’t helping your team make better decisions, they’re not values. They’re decoration.

What You Can Do This Week

If you're leading a team, building a business, or just trying to work smarter-not-louder, here’s where you can start:

• Audit your meetings: Look at the calendar… what’s necessary, what’s not, and what can be handled another way?

• Clarify what productivity means: Is it about time vs output? Impact? Collaboration? Make sure everyone’s using the same yardstick.

• Give people space to think: Not just time off, but time away from constant updates, pings, and pressure. Focus time vs collaboration time. Use hybrid to underline and support this space too.

• Revisit your values: If they aren’t helping your team say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ with confidence, rewrite them. Update them regularly. Involve everyone in that process.

• Lead with trust: The best work comes from people who feel ownership, not pressure.

Final Thought

You don’t need to chase trends or make dramatic changes to build a better team. But you do need to be intentional.

As Richard puts it, leadership is about giving people enough structure to know where they’re going, and enough freedom to figure out how to get there.

If your team’s always busy but never making progress, maybe it’s not about working harder, maybe it’s time to lead differently…

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Do listen to the full conversation, Richard has real depth of experience and knows what he’s talking about especially when it comes to productivity, remote work, and managing change during a crisis: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-182-the-4-day-week-hybrid-work-leadership-and-the-future-of-productivity-with-richard-lee-leadership-podcasts (if you prefer video, you can also watch on YouTube, here).

Tune in next week for a my chat with Executive Coach, Keynote Speaker, Leadership Trainer, DiSC Facilitator, CEO and Founder Daphne Valcin.

I’ll see you then and meanwhile: Be a Leader, Not a Boss!

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here to help new managers and first-time founders with their leadership skills, so they can become leaders not bosses, lead with integrity, and build happier, higher performing teams, more effective organisations, and, ultimately: successful businesses.

Be less Baltar. Be more Skywalker (no, not that one, the other one!). Become the leader you wish you’d had, come join my online leadership community now (solopreneurs also welcome 😉) if you have a healthy love of sci-fi and want to learn more about leadership, then this is the community for you. Here’s the link: Integrity Leaders: Community membership and learning, for new leaders or first-time founders.

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