Hybrid, Flexible & Remote Work: What Can Business Learn From Military Communication?
Why?
If you’re frustrated by the constant breakdowns in communication between office-based, hybrid, and remote teams, you’re not alone. The shift to flexible working has exposed what many leaders have long ignored, most organisations don’t have a communication problem; they have a leadership competency problem. Yet, the military continues to operate simultaneously across land, sea, and air, from arctic to desert and jungle to city, maintaining coordination between thousands of people under pressure, in real time, and often in life-threatening conditions. If they can do it there, what stops business from doing it here?
What?
To understand why effective communication deteriorates as distance increases, we’ll explore what truly drives human connection, collaboration, and cohesion, and why technology alone can’t fix it. We’ll examine how physical proximity, leadership style, and performance measurement interact to create either clarity or chaos. By the end, you’ll understand why communication quality reflects leadership competence, not location, and how high-performing teams stay aligned even when spread across continents.
How?
To understand why communication either sustains or collapses across on-site, hybrid, flexible and remote working environments, we’ll analyse a scenario that compares two high-stakes environments, military operations and modern business. Both rely on coordination under pressure, but only one consistently succeeds. Through this comparison, we’ll answer three key questions that reveal the mechanics of effective communication and leadership in any context:
What happens to communication as distance increases, and why can’t technology fix it?
How does leadership structure shape the quality, speed, and accuracy of communication?
What management approach turns autonomy into consistent performance across distance?
Communication
The model below represents The Allen Curve, first discovered by Thomas Allen, Professor of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in 1977. His graph illustrates the exponential decline in communication frequency as physical distance between individuals increases. Allen’s research showed that once people are separated by 50m or more meaningful contact typically drops to once a week or less.
Communication Decay | Source: Allen Curve, Thomas Allen 1977
The correlation was tested again in 1986, 1989 and 2007 to measure the effects of new communication technologies, such as email and instant messaging. The original correlation stood up to scrutiny with every study demonstrating a decay in communication regardless of the technology available. However, a significant finding was identifying the key role of information gatekeepers. Each study also highlighted the presence and necessity of information gatekeepers, typically unrecognised by management, who acted as informal nodes, ensuring the right information reached the right people at the right time, which kept everything moving.
The persistence of this pattern over four decades tells us the problem in hybrid or remote working environments isn’t physical separation or a lack of digital tools; it’s human behaviour and leadership discipline. Effective communication at distance requires deliberate design and consistent practice. Most business leaders are typically promoted on technical merit, without ever receiving training to organise and lead the group of people in front of them, never mind those out-of-sight. Therefore outdated assumptions, such as productivity equals time spent at a desk remain, which confuse visibility with value. This misplaced metric produces organisations that are both inefficient and ineffective: people are present but not connected.
What’s particularly revealing is how the debate around hybrid, flexible or remote work is typically framed, as if these working models are flawed. In reality, any structure is neutral, indifferent, it’s a tool to use or a lever to pull; user competence determines correct or incorrect application. The overarching overtly visible tell-tale are leaders who cannot manage by objectives (MBO), which requires designed and structured communication for success. Their lack self-awareness denies them access to their leadership blindspots, remaining oblivious of the need to adapt. In psychological terms, such leaders are contextually unconsciously incompetent.
In the military NCO’s and Officers routinely check-in with those in their charge to pass on mission critical information, transmit and receive real-time tactical feedback and gauge morale, regardless of environment. This level of competence isn’t accidental; it is trained, rehearsed, and standardised. for example, the British Army can rapidly deploy hundreds of Paratroopers anywhere in the world within 24 to 48 hours to operate in isolated hostile environments, with isolation being an illusion as their communication networks remain coherent under this pressure. In contrast, many business teams lose coherence the moment Wi-Fi drops or a meeting overruns. The difference is not environment or equipment; it’s leadership architecture. If communication naturally decays with distance, the next question is how to design systems that keep it alive.
Centralisation vs Decentralisation
The model below is based on a decision matrix the US Navy SEALs use for leadership selection. For the purpose of this case study I Low Trust has been reframed as Centralised, defined as: Concentration of control of activity or an organisation under a single authority, and High Trust reframed as Decentralised, defined as: Transfer of control of activity or an organisation to local authorities. In the interest of remaining fact based, both definitions have been taken from the Oxford English Dictionary. When plotted against Performance, defined as: A demonstration of technical skills, four cultural archetypes emerge.
Centralised vs Decentralised Decision Making | Cultural Archetypes | Source: Based on US Naval Special Warfare Leadership Selection for Navy SEALs & Kenny Wallace 2020
These four cultures correlate with specific behaviours that can be measured in any team or organisation:
Directed: Under developed strategic thinking, some resilience, likely have problems solved for them.
Dependent: Absence of strategic thinking, misaligned learned helplessness, expect problems to be solved for them.
Disordered: Autonomy without discipline, misaligned activity, poor feedback and absence of accountability.
Autonomous: Pro-active, experimental, personally responsible, accountable, resilient and tenacious.
When we overlay the Allen Curve, the relationship becomes clear: communication quality reflects how empowered people are to act. In centralised organisations, decisions bottleneck through authority; initiative becomes risky, and communication decays as people wait for permission. From an organisational development perspective, individuals shaped by centralised systems rarely develop the strategic thinking required to lead effectively. Conditioned to wait for instruction rather than exercise judgment, they lack the critical thinking needed to define objectives or design communication protocols that achieve them. In such environments, communication decay is not accidental, it’s engineered.
In decentralised systems, decision rights are distributed; those closest to the problem communicate laterally, act quickly, and resolve issues before they escalate. However, decentralisation without competence produces disorder rather than agility, freedom without standards leads to noise, duplication, and drift. True decentralisation succeeds only when paired with discipline: clear objectives, measurable outcomes, and a shared understanding of intent. From an organisational development perspective, individuals raised in decentralised environments are more likely to develop strategic thinking skills because they are trained to think for themselves. They learn to define objectives, establish communication protocols, and apply critical thinking to align intent with execution. Under such conditions, effective communication not only endures, it compounds.
The British military exemplifies disciplined decentralisation. Each layer of leadership, Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers, operates within a clearly defined intent but with freedom of execution. Regular situation reports create a two-way communication flow: information moves upward, downward, and laterally, sustaining shared situational awareness even under duress.
Let me give you a personal example as young paratrooper: I specifically remember preparing to go on an eight-man patrol to carry out a Close Target Reconnaissance (CTR) in the middle of the night, essentially get as close to an enemy position as possible, observe & record their activity then return without the enemy ever knowing we were there.
This particular event is memorable for me as our Patrol Commander, a Corporal, after receiving his orders, gathered us in a circle and clearly stated the what, why, how and when of our mission. He then asked us to poke holes in the action plan he’d come up with to catch any blind spots, he then asked us for ideas on how best to plug any gaps and the good ones were immediately adopted. This created buy-in for each paratrooper, built confidence in our ability to operate as a team, trust in our Patrol Commander and indirectly challenged and prepared each of us to think and operate at his level. Should anything happen to him or his second in command (2i/c) the rest of us can adapt quickly to the changing situation and complete the mission. This is my frame of reference for grassroots leadership at the lowest ranks of the military hierarchy.
A famous example of this at scale 200 years earlier is The Royal Navy’s victory at Trafalgar in 1805. It remains one of history’s clearest demonstrations of the effectiveness of decentralised command. Admiral Nelson abandoned the rigid line-of-battle tactics of his era and empowered each captain to act independently within his overarching intent: Close with the enemy and destroy them. By granting autonomy, Nelson transformed twenty-seven ships into a coherent, adaptive system capable of exploiting local opportunities faster than the opposing Franco-Spanish thirty-three ship fleet could respond. The enemy, bound by centralised command, became paralysed once their flagship lost visibility and control. The Royal Navy crushed a larger force through trust, initiative, and communication grounded in shared intent rather than continuous instruction.
By contrast, few business teams are empowered, or trusted, to operate with this level of autonomy. Layers of approval, fear of blame, and habitual over-management create dependency. When leaders centralise control, they also centralise communication; distance amplifies both the silence and the delay. Yet at the opposite extreme, some organisations attempt decentralisation without the necessary structure or skill, drifting into the disordered quadrant: decisions made in isolation, contradictory actions, and fragmented messaging.
The lesson is clear: ineffective communication is not caused by hybrid, flexible or remote work, or technology gaps. It is the predictable outcome of leadership systems that either over-control or under-coach. To sustain effective communication across distance, organisations must pair decentralised authority with disciplined alignment, clarity of intent, feedback loops, and shared accountability.
Impact on Organisation
The model below is based on a matrix created by Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the first psychologist to formally study the traits associated with high performance, collectively known as Flow. I have adapted the model for organisational analysis by correlating leadership style with its systemic impact. The framework examines the relationship between Challenge, defined as the degree of difficulty to be overcome, and Support, defined as the availability of resources. Four organisational states emerge:
Organisational States | Flow | Source: Massimini Csikszentmihalyi Carl Flow 1987 Kenny Wallace 2019
These organisational states correlate with specific measurable behaviours in any population:
Anxiety: Missed deadlines, avoidance of interaction, negatively impacts employee sickness absence.
Apathy: Absence of enthusiasm or presence of indifference, negatively impacts employee retention.
Comfort: Lack of activity and accountability, negatively impacts employee productivity.
Flow: Pro-active, self-directed, emphasis on personal responsibility, positively impacts all of the above
The pattern mirrors the dynamics explored in Sections 1 and 2. Where the Allen Curve revealed that communication quality declines with distance, and the adapted Navy Seal’s Model showed that autonomy without discipline produces disorder, the Flow framework demonstrates how performance emerges only when challenge and support are balanced by competent leadership.
Leaders who manage by proximity, valuing visibility over outcomes, tend to generate either Anxiety through high challenge, low support, or Apathy through low challenge, low support. Those who over-support without demanding measurable results create Comfort, a deceptive calm that conceals stagnation. Only leaders who align clarity of intent with structured communication achieve Flow, where autonomy, accountability, and motivation intersect.
The mechanism for sustaining Flow at organisational scale is Management by Objectives (MBOs). It replaces time-based supervision with outcome-based alignment: everyone knows what must be achieved, why it matters, and how progress will be measured. In hybrid or remote contexts, this approach becomes essential. Without visible cues, only clarity of objectives, cadence of communication, and quality of feedback maintain direction. MBOs provides that architecture, turning distributed workforces into coordinated systems.
Leaders unable to apply MBOs in a traditional 9-to-5 environment will inevitably struggle far more in hybrid or remote ones. Distance doesn’t create incompetence; distance exposes it. As demonstrated by the armed forces, structure and clarity are not constraints but enablers. The system works, provided the people leading it are competent enough to operate it. When communication, autonomy and purpose are aligned, hybrid, flexible, or remote work becomes an asset rather than a liability. A force multiplier.
Conclusion
So what?
Communication doesn’t fail because people are far apart; it fails because leaders haven’t learned how to sustain clarity once proximity disappears. Close proximity hides leadership incompetence, an increase in proximity expose it. The Allen Curve proved decades ago that distance erodes interaction unless structure counteracts it, a truth unchanged by technology. Most organisations still mistake visibility for value and time for productivity, exposing a deeper deficit in leadership architecture. The military solved this long ago through deliberate rhythm, disciplined feedback, and trained communication protocols. Business hasn’t. In short incompetent leaders build communication architectures unfit for purpose, especially under pressure.
Leadership structure determines whether communication strengthens or collapses. Centralised systems breed hesitation: decisions bottleneck, initiative fades, and dependency replaces thinking. Decentralised systems, by contrast, push authority toward those closest to the problem, creating speed, ownership, and clarity, but only when discipline matches freedom. The British military, from Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar to modern Paratroopers in the field, shows that autonomy succeeds when intent is clear and feedback continuous. Business rarely achieves this balance; most either over-control or under-coach. Sustainable communication and performance depend on decentralised authority underpinned by structure, trust, and accountability, freedom with discipline, not freedom from it.
Performance is the visible outcome of how communication and leadership interact. The Flow model shows that results depend on balancing challenge with support, too much pressure breeds anxiety, too little creates apathy or comfort, and only equilibrium produces sustained engagement. Management by Objectives provides the structure that keeps this balance in motion, replacing time-based supervision with outcome-based alignment. In organisations that lead by proximity, distance exposes what discipline hides: a lack of clarity, cadence, and competence. The armed forces demonstrate that when intent, feedback, and accountability align, autonomy amplifies performance. Flow, in this sense, is not a state of ease but evidence of design, the by-product of systems built to turn communication into coordinated action.
Now what?
The same principle applies across every performance environment. In business, sport, and the arts alike, proximity only masks weak systems; structure is what sustains communication when conditions change. Elite sports teams hold tempo through shared language and predictable rhythm, not constant supervision. Film crews, orchestras, and expedition teams operate with precision because roles, signals, and timings are defined before pressure hits. The military simply codified what others often improvise: communication must be engineered, not assumed. For leaders, this means building cadence into their culture, a predictable flow of intent, feedback, and review that holds even when the environment fragments. Clarity that endures distance is never accidental; it’s trained, rehearsed, and designed.
The balance between freedom and discipline is universal. In business, it determines whether teams move fast or freeze. In sport, it’s the difference between players who wait for instruction and those who read the game and act. In the arts, directors and conductors rely on the same architecture, clear intent paired with creative autonomy, to produce coherence without constriction. The military has long demonstrated that decentralised command works because every individual understands both purpose and boundaries. High performance in any domain depends on this same equation: authority delegated as far down as competence allows, supported by feedback that travels just as far up. When leaders design systems around trust and accountability, they don’t lose control, they multiply it.
The same balance that sustains Flow in organisations drives peak performance everywhere. In elite sport, challenge and support are deliberately calibrated through training loads, feedback loops, and tactical clarity, enough pressure to sharpen focus, enough support to sustain belief. In creative industries, producers and directors use deadlines and critique not as constraints but as catalysts, turning collective tension into momentum. In the military, this equilibrium defines readiness: the constant fine-tuning of pressure, purpose, and preparation. Across all domains, Flow is never accidental; it’s engineered through rhythm, measurement, and shared intent. Leaders who learn to manage by objectives rather than by observation transform distance into alignment, turning autonomy into a coordinated force capable of sustained, measurable performance.
What next?
Now that we’ve explored how communication decays or endures, how leadership structure shapes speed and trust, and how balance sustains performance under pressure, it’s time to turn the lens inward. Lets assess the readiness of your leadership architecture through how clearly you think, how effectively you lead, and how well your organisation performs when proximity, predictability, and comfort fall away.
When proximity disappears, can you still create clarity, not by talking more, but by designing the rhythm, feedback, and structure that keep your team aligned under pressure, and if not, what does that reveal about the system you’ve built?
When authority steps back, does your team hesitate or accelerate, and what does that response reveal about the trust, clarity, and discipline within your system of leadership?
How deliberately do you balance challenge and support in your world, are you creating Flow through clarity, feedback, and measured pressure, or are you mistaking motion for progress while performance quietly drifts out of alignment?
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