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The U.S. dollar has long been the bedrock of global trade, investment, and reserve strategy, but cracks are starting to show. From BRICS nations promoting alternative payment systems to central banks in Asia and the Gulf trimming their dollar holdings, momentum is building for a more multipolar currency regime. As Washington increasingly uses the dollar as a geopolitical lever—imposing sanctions, freezing assets, and enforcing capital controls—some allies and rivals alike are hedging their bets. Meanwhile, China is quietly expanding the renminbi’s reach through oil deals, digital infrastructure, and Belt and Road partnerships. Will the greenback remain the world’s most trusted currency or are we entering a new era where financial power is far more diffused?

Still the One?  Can the U.S. Dollar Remain the World's Reserve Currency?

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Well speaking of big ideas, this next panel should be a banger. I think it's a really interesting one. It was alluded to beforehand the future of the US dollar and specifically question the heart of global markets, and one few people would have dared to ask even a decade ago. Can the US dollar hold its position as the world's reserve currency? For generations, the dollar has been the foundation of trade, investment, and global reserves, but the landscape is starting to shift. BRICS economies are testing an alternative payment system. Central banks in Asia and the Gulf are diversifying their holdings, and China is expanding the reach of the renminbi through energy deals, digital networks, and Belt and Road partnerships. So we look at a future where the dollar remains supreme, a world where financial power is far more distributed. To help us understand what's really at stake, we're pleased to be joined by journalist and author Paul Bluestein, who's been studying and reporting on the global monetary system for nearly 4 decades. He'll be in conversation with Fortunes Andrew Staples. Thank you very much. Here they come. Good morning. I'm delighted to welcome my guest for this session, a very topical look at the dollar. We have the author Paul Bluestein of King Dollar. Paul, I'm going to kick off with a very general question. What prompted you to write this book? Why are we hearing so much about this issue of de-dollarization at the moment. Yeah, well, when I started it, there was already a good bit of talk about the dollar losing its dominance because of the overuse of weaponization of the dollar, overuse of sanctions. This was in the first Trump administration, even going back to the to the late second Obama administration, there was a good bit of talk and then of course uh uh during in the course of the uh. First few months of the first few weeks, sorry, of the uh of the Trump administration that that talk has risen to a fever pitch. So yes, I, I'm happy to say that the book is is uh is timely, but um uh but uh yeah, there's lots of been lots of speculation which I. Which which I strongly disagree. Well, let's get into it. King dollar is the crown slipping or not, over to you. I don't think so. I mean this is what I've spent the better part of 5 years, you know, thinking about and I'm still thinking about, still wrestling with. Um, and, and the conclusion I come to is very, you know, this is pretty much the verbatim wording from the, from the first chapter of the book. I say that the dollar's position, it's, as the dominant currency. I'm talking about its position in, in international commerce and cross border transactions of all kinds that that position is, is all but impregnable, barring. Catastrophic missteps by the US government. Now, have there been missteps by the US government, uh, in, in my opinion, in the past few months there have been quite a, quite a number. Are they catastrophic in, in some ways, yes. Are they catastrophic enough to dislodge the dollar from its dominant position? I don't think so. So let me, let me tell you as briefly as I can why. The book goes into a lot of episodes over the past, uh, you know, a little more than half a century in which, uh, in which the dollar's dominance was called into question. Uh, there was the, uh, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 when President Nixon took the dollar off completely off of gold. There was the inflation of the 1970s. There was the swelling of US trade deficits in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s. Um, the rise of Japan and when there was a lot of speculation that the yen would supplant the dollar, there was the, uh, the establishment of the euro and there was a lot of talk that the euro would at least equal the dollar, if not surpass it. There was the global financial crisis at that time, a lot of people said, OK, that's it, the dollar is finished, and of course the rise of China when there's been a lot of speculation about the renminbi replacing the dollar and at each of those junctures, uh, some really, uh, you know, it wasn't just um. Uh, uh, uh, casual commenting, it was people from very distinguished positions in the academic world saying that the dollar's dominance was threatened and in every case, in every instance, those prophecies turned wrong and for very good reason. Because the dollar uniquely among currencies has two very important features, two important features that are that are that together make it unique. One is an open capital account. Money can flow freely across US borders, and the second is, which is I think in many ways even more important is the depth and breadth and liquidity of of US financial markets and particularly the market for obligations of the US government. This is so crucial in a financial crisis, um. In a financial crisis when everyone's scrambling for cash, they want to make sure that they have the cash to pay obligations coming due. If you don't have the cash to pay your obligations coming due, you're the next Lehman Brothers, and treasuries are the one asset by far more than any other that you can that if you hold, you can liquidate in large amounts and get and get the cash you need without suffering terrible losses. So. Uh, so that that's an extremely important feature for, uh, this is these two features together make are, are, I think the, the, the bedrock of dollar dominance. Now I mentioned, now my book came out in March, uh, and within days of its publication came Liberation Day. And all the turmoil in financial markets in which in which the dollar was falling, the treasuries were falling, stocks were falling, and this was quite unusual confluence of events, a lot of speculation that the dollar this time, OK, this time this is really it for the dollar, and then that was followed by the attacks on the Federal Reserve by Trump on the Federal Reserve independence and the passage of the one big beautiful bill, quote unquote, which added to US debt problems. Um, and that has led to even more speculation that the dollar is dominant. Now my publisher, Yale University Press, got in touch with me and said we're going to have a paperback edition coming out. You need to write a new preface for your book to take account of the events of the past few months, and it's been very tempting for me to say, OK, these are the catastrophic missteps of which I warned. These, yes. This, uh, the dollar has been dominant all this time, but because of these catastrophic missteps, it's, yes, I now think it's going to lose its dominance. I don't think that's true, partly for the, you know, the two reasons that I mentioned, uh, that make the dollar uniquely, uh, uh, the unique features it has that bolster dominance, but also because the dollar is so entrenched in the way markets work around the world. So, so on that point, I mean, there are certainly jurisdictions around the world thinking about China, Russia, that would bristle that they have to use the US dollar, and the US has not been shy increasingly of weaponizing the US dollar system as well. So how if you do have An economy the size of China and other economies that work closely with China and beyond that you have other countries that would prefer to move away from the dollar because of that dependency and the risk of it being weaponized. How is the dollar's position so unassailable? You mentioned liquidity and so on, but what about alternatives? What about the euro? What about the yen and so on? Yeah, they, they, they, the euro has a lot of the features that the dollar has. It has the eurozone has a lot of sophisticated financial markets, but it doesn't have a single sovereign debt instrument because you've got 20 sovereign nations, each of which issue their own, their own debt, so it's not like the US Treasury market. It doesn't have that that big deep broad and liquid market for one. uh, government instrument, uh, the renminbi doesn't have a, an open capital account, you know, very important in a crisis. You want to make sure that you're going to be able to get your money out of the country, uh, and there are a lot of concerns by investors that, that, that, that they wouldn't be able to do that. But I, I completely. Understand the frustration of governments around the world with the way the US has used its currency to bully other countries for foreign policy purposes. That's the frustration and desire to move away from the dollar is understandable, but It isn't governments that decide which currency is dominant. It is markets. So let me, let me come back to my point about how entrenched the dollar is in, in the functioning of world markets. Uh, so you know, anyone who's casually looked at the dollar dominance. As I'm sure many people in the audience have know that, you know, the dollar is comprises about 60% of the reserves held by central banks around the world, the foreign exchange reserves. It's used for a roughly similar amount in international trade, imports and exports for invoicing. And uh and it's, and it's the currency that's dominant in uh when countries and companies borrow in currencies other than their own, they borrow in dollars more than any other and in foreign exchange markets, the dollar is on one side of, of, of trades for when currencies are converted one into the other. But let me tell you about a market that I mean there are probably some people in this audience who are familiar with it, maybe they even participate in it. But many of you, I'm suspecting will not have heard of it. This is the only chart I have in my book because it, this just, this was the aha moment for me, the moment that just blew me away in terms of understanding the durability of dollar dominance is a market is a market for foreign exchange swaps. It's it's a pretty obscure market, but it is gigantic. And the uh the data on this is put together by the Bank for International Settlements, and foreign exchange swaps are are a market in which the very biggest actors in the global financial system play multinational companies, multinational banks, insurance companies, pension funds, hedge funds that have that have operate in in dozens of countries. And the BIS estimated that the volume of trading in this market of activity in this market is 5 $trillion trillion. That's with a T dollars a day on average. And what, what, what is this market used for? It's used for hedging. This isn't a market where people are trading one currency for another or speculating on where currencies. This is where these are these very big firms that are that are trying to hedge. Themselves against fluctuations in currency markets. So a great example, what am I talking about? A Japanese life insurance company, for example, which wants to invest a lot of its money in dollar assets in treasuries, but other American stocks, other things. But they, so they, they, they have, they use dollars, but they need yen to pay their claimants when they're, when they're, when they, when people die, right? They have to pay their their claims in dollars. So they need to hedge that a company like that needs to hedge itself against movements in the dollar in the dollar yen rate. So, Uh, so they use this market to hedge and the, and what is the currency that absolutely dominates this $5 trillion a day market? It's the dollar, way above the euro, way above the yen, way above the pound sterling, way above the Swiss franc, and others. And so this is, this means that the biggest actors in the global financial system are using dollars for, you know, for investing, for lending, for borrowing, for exporting, for if you imagine what it would take to unwind all that, it would be so costly, so difficult, and take such a long time. So you know, this is why I say entrenched. It's entrenched. The dollar is entrenched, like it or not, for better or for worse, it's entrenched. Um, what could shake that entrenchment? For example, we've been hearing a lot about crypto, we've been hearing a lot more recently about stablecoins, for example. That's sort of one area. So technology and innovation there. The other one you mentioned earlier on is the sort of policy missteps that the US government might make. And earlier in the year we were hearing a lot about a potential Mar a Lago accord which might have, you know, big implications for the US dollar. Your your comments on Well, you know, yeah, a Mar a Lago card in my view would be a catastrophic policy misstep. Um, it would, and, you know, I don't want to underestimate the potential catastrophic consequences of those missteps. I'm, I'm very much agree that that these things could lead to a financial crisis, uh, you know, the and you don't even have to go to as far as the Mar a Lago accord, you know, if you have uh. you know, more pressure on the Fed to, to, you know, just print money to cover US deficits. I can easily imagine that leading to a big selloff in Treasury securities. Interest rates would rise. The US would suffer some pretty severe economic consequences of that. A Mar a Lago accord, you know, this is, this is this talk, you know, we want, we want to make the dollar go down, but we want to preserve dollar dominance, so we will tax Treasury securities held. Abroad by foreigners that will tax the interest that we pay, that would have a devastating consequence on the market for treasuries. It could lead to a quite severe financial crisis. I don't, I don't want to underestimate that, but you know, the loss of dollar dominance would be the least of our worries in that case. I mean, if we have a real severe crisis in the market for US Treasury, the most important financial market in the world. loss of dollar dominance is, um, is, is, is going to pale by comparison with, with, with the other awful consequences of that. So that's a scenario that we could look through. What about the tech side of things, the stablecoins and so on? What does that mean, if anything, for for dollar dos? Well, isn't it? Ironic, you know, the crypto industry which started off in this, in these uh with these idealistic gauzy ideas, you know, that we're gonna, we're going to create a form of monetary transmission that, that, uh, you know, that avoids banks, central banks, governments entirely. And now they are touting themselves as, as, you know, we're going to help the dollar because after all, stable coins, which are, you know, are tied to fiat dollars, 99% of them are backed by are linked to the dollar and thanks to the legislation that was passed this summer, the Genius Act, they, they are reasonably. You're reliably backed by by reserves of dollars and so now the crypto industry is saying this is going to help the dollar. This is going to save the dollar. Well, first of all, I don't think the dollar needs saving for the reasons we've just been talking about, but stablecoins could actually undermine the the most important benefit that the US gets from dollar dominance. I think the most important. Benefit which is its ability to use the dollar for for for foreign policy leverage because stablecoins can because they are now the crypto industry argues that it's very easy to trace but the blockchain is transparent. You can you can it makes it much easier to catch crooks. I'm sorry, but, but really they're really clever people in the. To space know how to use these types of instruments in ways that disguise their identity and disguise their activities, and I think sanctions evasion is going to become a bigger problem actually for for the US, but of course it's being pushed as this great, great way to help to help dollar dominance. I doubt that it will have, it'll have some effect on the margin. Uh, but I, I doubt that it'll be more than that. Yeah, we've certainly seen China and its trade with other nations, particularly Belt and Road, um, all those nations involved in Belt and Road. Settling their trade more in renminbi and so on with Russia, with Iran, with other parts of the world as well. Is this something that could shake the dollar dominance, or is this really just on the margins? I think it's on the margins. I mean, I think it's it's certainly important for China because they want to, they want to make themselves resilient against. The possibility of the US using types of sanctions against them that were used against Russia, you know, I think if the US used those types of sanctions against China, an economy that's 10 times the size of Russia's. Uh, that the consequences because as we've just seen in the in the trade war, you know, the trade conflict between the US and China, we've just seen that China has a lot of tools of leverage at its own disposal, so I think the consequences of that would be quite disastrous anyway, but, but the Chinese want to make darn sure for quite understandable reasons that they are not vulnerable to that kind of. Thing and they've done quite a good job, I think, of making their own bilateral trade with other countries, uh, much more renminbi denominated, but is the renminbi being used as the way the dollar is in third country trade, in other words, between countries that are neither, you know, China nor the US, no, it's, it's not being used. It's not being used for that purpose. It's not internationalized to that extent, so I don't think it poses a threat to dollar dominance. Yeah, and it's interesting, isn't it, because the states in many other areas such as, you know, world police, being the world policeman and trade and so on seems to be stepping stepping back from that hegemonic role, but they want the dollar to remain. As it is, yeah, OK, um, just coming into the last few seconds and looking out ahead, we've talked about sort of policy mistakes that could shake the dominance of the of the dollar. I'm reminded of that quote by Hemingway that we've heard a couple of times this year as well, things, you know, gradually, then all of a sudden, what could be that flip? What could make things change? Well, you know, I mean a Mar a Lago, I suppose I don't think it's likely that they'll do that because I think they've realized that it would, it would have catastrophic consequences. you know, one of the scenarios that I've I've tried to think of, you know, what could shake the dollar? What, what, and the one that I one that I'm come up with and and I hope no one will be offended is. I imagine the following conversation taking place somewhere in the in the inner sanctum of the White House where the First Lady says to the president, Donald, you know, Barron is, you've always say Baron is such a smart boy. Well, he thinks that bitcoin should become the legal tender or currency of the United States. Don't you think that, don't you agree that he's such a smart boy? And now, do I think this is likely to lead to some change? In the legal tender laws in the United States, I don't, I don't think it's likely, but it's kind of horrifying to think, well, it's conceivable. So yeah, that would be one, that would be one scenario if you like. Yeah, something for us to watch out for then. But in the meantime it looks like we'll be using the dollar for some time, I think so, yeah, OK, well, with that, thank you very much and please join me in thanking Paul for his thoughts on the dollar. Thank you. Thank you very much. OK. Yeah, I go.

Southeast Asia boasts a vibrant manufacturing sector, abundant natural resources, and a population roughly the size of the U.S. and Europe combined. Middle Eastern countries feature wealthy consumers, a strategic location between Europe and Asia, and ambitious plans to diversify their economies.

Investments in these two dynamic regions are growing — but what more can be done? What’s holding back further investment?

A panel of experts, policymakers, and business leaders will explore what makes ASEAN and the GCC compelling regions, how global businesses can support their economic transformation, and what steps can be taken to overcome barriers to future investment.

From Infrastructure to Supply Chain: Driving Investment into ASEAN and GCC

As return-to-office pressure ramps up, Zillow is holding its ground—keeping all 6,900 employees fully remote. The company’s remote-first approach, known as “Cloud HQ,” has reshaped operations, boosted engagement, and quadrupled job applications. But is flexibility a competitive advantage—or a risky gamble? McKinsey’s latest research suggests what’s important is not where people work, but how companies intentionally design the experience to unlock innovation and impact. In this conversation, a McKinsey workplace expert and Zillow’s chief people officer explore the nuance—not the noise—of the RTO debate, offering data and on-the-ground insights from both research and real-world application. 

SEE YOU AT THE WATERCOOLER?: A CLOSER LOOK AT THE RTO DEBATE

Thank you, Elizabeth, um, and now a message from our partner Gild on how it's helping people turn hard work into debt-free degrees and real career growth. I'm working towards the career that I want with no debt. I saved up for years to go to community college, and in two semesters it was all wiped out. Having something you worked so hard for vanished so quickly, it was heartbreaking. I found out Chipotle has this great benefit called guild where they pay for your education. So I got a job at Chipotle, signed up for guild, and now I'm getting a degree without paying tuition. Not only that, I've been promoted twice with Chipotle and guild. I'm just getting started. All right, um, so I edit a lot of stories about RTO, and you really need to take it from me that the reader interest is off the charts. We get love letters, we get hate mail, we hear about it one way or another. So show of hands who here has been part of delivering an RTO mandate to a workforce? OK, yep, lots of hands. OK. Who here has been personally traumatized by that experience? Still lots of hands. All right. Our next guests are here to help us understand how flexible work or lack thereof affects corporate culture and things like productivity, success, and happiness. Dan Spalding is the chief people officer at Zillow, which lets staffers work from where they want to, and Brooke Wettle is a workplace expert and senior partner at McKinsey and Company. So please join me in welcoming them to the summit. All right, Dan, I'm gonna kick it off with you. Um, Zillow has something called cloud HQ. What does that mean and what made you take the leap? Yeah, uh, first, thanks for having us here to share our cloud HQ story. We're, we're really excited and, and proud of it. Um, for us, cloud HQ is about enabling our employees to work where they work best, whether that's at home, in the office, or in the office sometimes. Now we call it cloud HQ because we wanted to take the politics of proximity out of the equation and start from a place that remote work isn't a perk, it's a business strategy. And so for us at Zillow, it's an intentional strategy of everything we do starts in the cloud. It's gonna be documented, it's gonna be written down, it's gonna be clear for our employees to follow. So whether they're working at home or in the office together. Uh, that they know the rules of the road and, and for us it's, it's, it's been really transformative on our, on our culture. Yeah, so you've had some notable results. I'm gonna go through them. 4 times the number of job applicants, 84% of employees say that they can be themselves at work, and there's been a 5% increase in women employees. What was your secret sauce to making this work? Well, we started from listening to what our employees wanted and what they clearly wanted coming out of the pandemic was a workplace that wasn't going to change the rules on them and a workplace that understood that we all learned different ways of collaborating, different ways of working. Uh, and, and so we started down, how do we figure out what the future of work is going to look like, and applying those learnings to building a really intentional strategy around how do you enable remote work that doesn't feel remote, uh, that that allows for in-person connection, allows for teams coming together, um, and. Those results that you just listed really speak for themselves. We're we're 5 years into this project. We've made a ton of mistakes, but we learned from them. And the best part, we're building this in partnership with our employees, so they're really motivated to come to the office when we ask them to come to the office versus feeling like we're forcing them there. All right, we're gonna get back to those details, but Brooke, I'd like to, uh, ask you, so McKinsey released a bombshell study earlier this year, and it found that across remote, hybrid, in person, the levels of burnout, intent to quit, effort and satisfaction were all pretty similar. So do work arrangements matter at all? Yeah, first of all, I've never heard of McKinsey report called a bombshell report, so thank you for that. Um, yes, it was, it was a surprising result though, to your point, we did find that, uh, irrespective of the model, we looked at hybrid, remote, in person, we found that burnout levels, exactly as you say, intend to quit were all similar and so it it it begs the question, right? Well, what's happening here? And if you look. Yeah and and this is what we did, we looked at 5 practices that we know are critical to workplace culture and health, and those are collaboration, uh, and connectivity, right? It's one kind of category innovation, and then you have, uh, mentorship and skill development and what we found is that employee perceptions of all five practices were extremely low. And most interestingly, leaders' perceptions of those practices were orders of magnitude higher, which got us thinking maybe the what question, what policy should we have is perhaps not the wrong question, but not a sufficient question. The more important question, the more nuanced question is how do you implement any kind of workplace policy? Right, and, and so we see study after study say that like workers really love remote options. They like really, really love it. So how do you square what we know to be true with the results from that study? Yeah, well, I think you know it's interesting and and and I've seen the same studies that talk about the preference that a lot of workers have for remote work or hybrid work. Those same studies though typically elucidate a number of other key factors that drive employees to stay or go, and those would be things like compensation. It matters, right? People like to get uh paid something that they think is a fair wage. Uh, meaning and work, especially that connection with the manager, right? Do I feel valued by by my team and my manager, uh, and development. So I would encourage us to take a more nuanced, a more, um, differentiated approach to thinking about this. And by the way, Dan and I were talking about this earlier, flexibility can manifest in many different ways. I work with a lot of manufacturing, uh, companies, a lot. Retail organizations that are building flexibility into in-person work right and we've seen the um the kind of the uberization of of different shift models um there's been some great innovation on that front it's in particular to support working parents right and we're gonna get back to that cohort in particular right Dan, we've heard about the big upsides to cloud HQ. What were some of the specific challenges you ran into, um, lessons learned along the way, stuff you wish you had known on day one. Yeah, absolutely, um, for us, the thing that we knew we had to figure out right from the start was the intentional time together for teams. And so from the beginning, one of the biggest challenges was how do you organize bringing thousands of people together across the year. And we had a lot of learning as we went through that process and what has resulted is we now have a really interesting team that sits at the intersections of a lot of bodies of work but really focuses on that schedule of bringing. Most of the company together on a fairly regular basis for that in-person collaboration. So whether that's scheduling, uh, planning the meetings, planning the food, planning the activities, things that that take a lot of time centralizing those activities, but then actually publishing we call it the cruise calendar of when every group across the company is coming together, where they're coming together, what the purposes are of those groups coming together, and then making that transparency. To the company really gives our employees the ability to understand kind of what's happening outside of the virtual world that they work in on a daily basis. So is this like a big party like 4 times a year? No, uh, it's not, but fun in person is a key goal for a lot of our retreats. Uh, employees want to feel connected like Brooke said, feeling connection to your manager, making sure that we're bringing people together for intentional training time, uh, has been a key part. Of the strategy, but no, sadly it's, it's not about parties. But what I will say is data, as you might imagine is quite important to us at Zillow. We've now used 5 years of data to really dial in for which types of jobs do people need to collaborate more in person. And so we set the expectation when we're hiring people, even though you may be remote and can work anywhere in the US, hey, you're gonna travel to one of our core offices 6 times a year. And, and we need you to be comfortable with that. And then there's other jobs that may get together only once a year and then frankly there are jobs where you may work your entire time at Zillow and only get together a handful of times. So we're trying to use a data oriented approach which really helps, uh, our, our employees understand when they're coming together and why they're coming together. OK, yeah, and I want to talk about optimizing different styles of work. So in person, hybrid, remote, should these look different, how should they look different? Yeah, I, I think they, they should look different, um, and one of the things that we've also been working with a lot of companies on is to acknowledge that a policy setting a policy is not a strategy policy is not equal strategy, right? So setting a policy that the next step is creating a framework, right, creating a set of guard rails right around how you want to implement that policy and that could be in person. It could be hybrid, it could be remote, and I think that's really important because we actually put a great deal of responsibility and, and I would say in some cases pressure on some of our middle managers to interpret a broad policy at scale that's very difficult to do and to the question you know if you're looking at collaboration uh you know, virtually versus in person, yeah, that's gonna look really different and and it's not all easy. In person either, right, it's not, you know, all parties and, um, you know, companies that are trying to prioritize in person work. In fact, many employees have come back to an office and I'm sure some of you have experienced that and been like this, this is terrible. Like I'm just walking the halls of people on on their different Zoom calls, right? Well, that is not fostering any kind of connectivity or collaboration so from everything from real estate to. How to structure work time and versus time for, you know, collaboration, which by the way is work too. All of these things need to be thought through and then there needs to be a process by which you upskill managers to really embrace and role model those practices, but that's not necessarily a skill set that managers had, you know, even 56 years ago, right? OK, we're going to do best case, worst case. So Dan, remote work, best case. Uh, best case, I think you're going to see a lot more companies adopting a cloud HQ model because employees are going to demand it over time. But what are the specifics of that best case look like? Schedule the Z retreats throughout the year, how many, any kind of special other tools? Oh, best case, I mean, you have to rethink everything around your employment policies. You have to think everything. You have to rethink everything around the employee life cycle, how you're onboarding your employees, how you're training managers to support remote employees that come together. And frequently, uh, and then how they're actually managing through the reality of, uh, a workforce that may be trained to do everything in person in the office and it may be traditionally inefficient ways into a culture where you got to write everything down to a culture where you have to be really clear and articulate in in your written thoughts as much as as as you are in your verbal thoughts and then planning of course when when groups are coming together and what you're going to accomplish when you're in person collaborating. Worst case remote. Worst case remote is, uh, people who are looking at it as a way to optimize solely for their personal situation. Uh, aren't committed to the organization, uh, and are, are not willing to adap adapt their style to the working norms of the team or the broader organization. OK, Brooke, in person, best case. Uh, well, I think I would start with a story, right? So how are you creating value for an in-person, um, kind of environment and how does that enable you to, uh, drive whatever performance outcomes you have that tactically means the CEO, the, the top leaders down into the organization know that change story and know why we are choosing that in this case the in-person. Working model versus not right so that's, that's the starting point. Uh, second, I think you need to get smart about how you're actually, uh, upskilling, right? Talked about the managers, but that goes all the way down to the front line if you will, uh, in a, in a in person working context so that's equipping them with things like, you know, meeting rituals, right? Uh, how do you, uh, start a meeting? how do you. End a meeting what are some of the common practices and norms by the way, a lot of these would be similar practices to, uh, virtual, but they would look and feel different in an in-person office obviously you're, you're gonna have a different kind of meeting versus virtual. Then I would think about things like data and analytics, right? You're looking at who's coming in are you leaving people out right that can't come in what's, you know, what's happening there you. Monitoring your high performers, right? uh, what's the impact? It doesn't mean that you should change your policy, but you might be curious about some of the impacts right as you fine tune and approach that. So those would be some of the things I'd look at and I mentioned real estate. I do think there are real ways and we, you know, heard a earlier presentation in which people are evolving their workspace to really live into some of the practices that we've been talking about collaboration, innovation, etc. OK. Um, you know, some groups really value flexible work more than others, caregivers, working parents, like it's really important to them for, you know, for companies thinking about what to do, do they have to sacrifice that group of people if they want to do in person? I, I look, I think, uh, it is hard to say that all caregivers are, you know, have one preference versus another. I think there are certain certainly groups of people that are prioritizing flexibility that is for sure, but as I said earlier, there are different ways to solve for flexibility and one thing I would say about this RTO debate, um, is that a lot of it really. Is about power right? and when can you do your work and how does that fit in with your broader life goals, right? We went through a period during the pandemic where I think we really were, you know, whether you were, um, at home in your office, I was at home in my office, my kids like pressed with their faces against the glass door like we all reexamined why we are doing work and what trade-offs we're making. And so I don't, I don't think you can unsee that and so as you think about crafting a policy, I think you need to acknowledge that, um, but also help people who need more flexibility also get in the flow on things like development right? One of the pieces of research we did a couple of years ago coming out of the pandemic that really stuck with me was around this notion of social capital and guess what, women. Have less social capital meaning fewer connections, fewer relationships, fewer diverse connections than men. Frontline workers have fewer or lower levels of social capital compared to senior leaders. We gotta give, we gotta work to level that playing field and so I think we need to acknowledge some of these needs, but also help people get to where they want to go um in in terms of their careers and development. I'm wondering, you know, for a company deciding what kind of work model they want to go with, what are some foundational questions they need to ask themselves at the beginning to make the right choice? Dan, let's start with you. I think one, how willing are you to listen to your employees and act on what your employees tell you? Uh, secondly, how willing you are to disrupt the ways that you work today, uh, if you're a culture that, you know, only values face to face interaction, uh, and believes that's the only way that that you can, uh, share and extract value from, from the relationship, then it, it's gonna be a challenge if your employees feel that that that they would be better served in driving innovation going in a different direction so you have to really be willing to take. Not the essence of what's important to you as a culture down to the studs, but the way that that culture shows up on a daily basis for your employees, listening to them, letting them architect it along with you, of course, with high expectations about performance and productivity that can't go to the wayside, but your employees will really help to to architect it if you give them the opportunity. Um, you know, we hear from a lot of CHROs, and you know they are the ones who give these mandates even if they disagree with them. Um, so I think a lot of people in those positions are like wondering how do I make the case, how do I show this to my CEO, what's the magic word, what advice do you have for them to, uh, make the best case they can to the powers that be? Well it's a great I I completely agree. I, I work with a lot of CHROs that are like if I get one more forwarded email about RTO from my CEO, right? I'm literally gonna just die. um, so I think it's a thing, um, I guess where I would start from is, you know, going back to what Dan said like let's actually put aside my own feelings and think about what does this business need to deliver value, right? Um, you know, I work at a large aerospace and defense company well they. Manufacture big things. They need to be in person and they wanted to make sure that there was parity right between the in person workers and those that were sitting in the corporate office. Great. So they, they have a clear thesis and they're gonna go implement that. I work with a large quick service restaurant, right? They also have a huge emphasis placed on in-person work, but they ultimately ended up with a hybrid model and wanted to cultivate development in that way, so. I think you really got to figure out, I like the down to the studs what are going to be the critical ways in which your people need to work to deliver that value and by the way, employee experience is part of that formula for value let's not forget that, right? And so that's where I would have the discussion with my, you know, fellow executives if I were making a case and then discern the policy and ultimately the strategy based on that discussion. All right, Dan Brooks, thank you so much for joining me. Bye. All right.

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