Alexandra Samuel

The most successful organizations will embrace the new hybrid model of work as a way to renew their organizational culture, fuel effective collaboration and attract the most talented employees.  But how do we foster that kind of culture in between off-sites and Zoom cocktails? How do we strengthen collaboration without back-to-back video calls? And how do we re-establish the office as a core part of our working rhythms, when so many employees are cozily remote?

The key is to shift how managers and employees think about flexibility in this new world of work. “Flexibility isn’t about picking your days in the office, or how often you come in,” Alexandra says. “Real flexibility is about aligning your team to make the most of their face-to-face time, so that they have more focus and flexibility on their days at home.”

That’s the kind of flexibility that comes from understanding how to combine office and remote time in a way that makes the most of each setting. In her new book Remote Inc.: How to Thrive at Work...Wherever You Are, Alexandra teams up with productivity guru Robert Pozen to lay out a roadmap for effective hybrid work. 

The most successful hybrid employees adopt a “business-of-one” approach, explains Alexandra, meaning that they take on the responsibility and accountability of a small business owner. They define their work in terms of goals and deliverables instead of by the eight-hour workday; embrace a rhythm of “punctuated collaboration” that uses structured check-ins to complement solo work; and use the focus of their at-home days to deliver even stronger results. Both the book and Alexandra’s eye-opening talks teach professionals to organize their priorities, communicate effectively, structure online meetings, and maintain a healthy work-life balance in the context of hybrid work.
 
A regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, CBC, and JSTOR Daily, Alexandra is a prolific writer whose articles on management, hybrid work, and tech culture have earned extensive media coverage. The author of the Work Smarter with Social Media series for Harvard Business Review Press, Alexandra has long experience helping people navigate the digital workplace. As the data journalist for the annual Forbes list of the World’s Most Influential CMOs, she has a deep understanding of how top brands and executives navigate digital transformation and the realignment of employee and customer experience in a hybrid world. She works regularly with companies like Twitter, Sprinklr and Microsoft on reports and workshops that address the biggest challenges in digital business.