Why we operate as a distributed team

We have an office in London. We also have a team that mostly doesn’t work in it. This isn’t an accident, and it isn’t a post-pandemic compromise. It’s how we’ve chosen to build the business — and given how much noise there is in the industry about return-to-office mandates and hybrid working, it’s worth explaining what we actually do.

The structure

Our registered office in London is a real office, not a virtual address. We use it for client meetings, occasional team gatherings, and as a base for anyone in the team who wants one. Most days, however, most of the team isn’t there. The founders work from a mix of locations depending on the week. The senior consultant works partly from the office and partly from home. The Operations Lead is fully remote in the West Midlands. The Australian consultant is in Sydney, obviously.

Client meetings happen wherever the client wants — at their site, at ours, or on video. Internal meetings happen on video as the default. The Friday all-hands is video, the engagement standups are video, and most one-to-ones are video.

Why this works for us

Three reasons, in order of importance.

First, the work doesn’t need a co-located team. Most of our deliverables are produced by individual consultants or pairs, not by large groups in real-time collaboration. The work that does need synchronous time — workshops, presentations, decision meetings — can happen on video without losing much.

Second, hiring is meaningfully easier when geography isn’t a constraint. London is expensive, and the best people for our roles often aren’t there. Insisting they relocate would shrink the candidate pool dramatically without making the work any better.

Third, client time. When the team isn’t commuting, there’s more time to spend with clients and on the work itself. For a consultancy where the only thing we sell is our time, the maths is straightforward.

Where it doesn’t work

We’re not evangelical about remote working. It’s a trade-off, and there are real costs.

Junior team members benefit hugely from being physically near senior team members. Apprentices and graduates learn faster in a room than over a screen. We don’t currently have junior staff, but when we do, we’ll think very carefully about how to make their experience work — likely with more in-person time than the rest of the team has.

Culture also takes more work when you’re distributed. Small signals that get transmitted naturally in an office — how someone reacts to a piece of news, how decisions actually get made, how friction is handled — need to be made deliberate. We do this through written communication, regular video time, and occasional in-person gatherings, but it’s not zero-effort.

And client relationships sometimes still benefit from being physically in the room. We don’t try to do everything remotely with clients; we go where we need to be.

What it costs

The office in London isn’t free. We could be on a smaller, cheaper plan if we wanted to. We’ve chosen to keep a proper office because it gives us optionality — for clients, for team gatherings, and for the team members who want a desk to come to. The cost is modest relative to what it would cost to insist everyone worked from there full-time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will you change your approach as you grow?

Possibly. The current model is working at our current size. We’ll revisit it if it stops working — not because of an arbitrary rule about team size.

How do you handle confidentiality with a distributed team?

Same way most modern businesses do — encrypted communication, access controls, secure document handling, and clear policies on what can be discussed where. We’re happy to talk about this in detail with clients who need to know.

Do you have a written remote working policy?

Yes, internally. It’s short. We can share the headlines if useful.