None of what you've described is impossible, or less effective, when performed over digital communication. If anything, digital is better for that coordination and influence gathering due to its recorded nature. Better still, because the digital communication is more time flexible the stakeholders and clients you need to coordinate have the ability to consume and process it at a rate that best suits them, rather than feign interest in yet another meeting packed with forgettable information that should have been an email.
It feels like you are thinking of all the times it works well with people who engage positively and I am thinking of all the times it doesn’t with people who don’t. Like all of us here, I have had plenty of successful online and async collaborations to know it is possible and should work well. Not everything is perfect though.
The problem areas — and the reason you’ve basically all got to be in the office at some point — are decision making ones where a group of two or more people fervently believe in two or more mutually exclusive ways forward. Even when I worked remote for a company multiple timezones away, I would be in the office one week every quarter to first build social capital and later to cash it in when building consensus.
I also think back to one of my stakeholders was an underperforming SWE intern. The rate of online engagement that best suited them was zero, and yet — as with any intern — it was crucial to us that they left feeling positive about their time here. That stuff is really hard over the phone.
Collaborative online digital tools aren't simply adequate, they are vastly superior to analog alternatives. It is less effective, less efficient, to meet in person. Making in-person a requirement limits your access to talent, by excluding those in other time zones and those with differences in ability; and it isn't recorded, cannot be referenced or edited, cannot be a living document, and cannot easily include rich multimedia without finicking with AV gear.
And you force everyone to commute into the office.
I've been working remotely for 6y; we have multiple external business partners, and a team of over 50. We have team members and business partners in Russia, Finland, Sweden, Germany, UK, France, NYC, BC, Cali, Japan, and elsewhere; we operate without core hours. I, personally, regularly interact with people in all those listed locations every day.
Never once has there ever been a need for an in-person meeting. Never.
Exactly this! I would also argue that an all digital communication channel leads to better (more objective) decisions simply because the communication channel is not “contaminated” with useless body language , posturing , height and weight differences , race difference and variety of things that introduces biases.
