Meet a Distributed Team Member: Adam Morehead

Welcome to our latest instalment of the series, "Meet a Distributed Team Member," where we introduce the people behind the delivery. In this edition, we’re spotlighting Adam Morehead, Chief Community Officer at Distributed. When Adam first joined Distributed, he brought over 20 years of experience helping enterprises innovate through the power of open talent and talent communities. 

With a passion for building communities on a foundation of authenticity, Adam leads Elastic Team Community initiatives that engage our talent and encourage them to grow together.

What keeps you feeling excited about working at Distributed?

I’m really excited about the opportunity for innovation. I love the challenge every customer brings to us. Each day brings some new challenge—a new technology to match, a new problem to solve. Customers often come to us asking, "Can you do this thing?" and I’ll reply "We have a community that can solve these problems." I believe any issue a customer raises can be solved by our community. There are always people ready to help solve the problems customers bring us. At the end of the day, my passion lies in figuring out a way to keep the community engaged and provide opportunities for them.

What’s your top remote work tip for other teams?

My top tip for remote work is: Deliver what you promise, when you say you will. Communication and delivery are critical. The freedom of remote work means you have to be disciplined in managing your own time. But you also need to be in tune with the team's need for reassurance that you're making progress. Finding that balance is key.

What’s your personal prediction for the future of talent in 2024?

2024 is going to be a transitional and tumultuous year when it comes to the future of remote work. There’s a corporate push to bring people back into the office, but there’s also resistance to giving up the flexibility of working from home. It will be a battle, a yin and yang of competing forces.

I envision 2024 as a tipping point where we discover what the new normal of "hybrid work" really means—who will win out in determining how we divide our time between office and home? By the end of the year we should reach some equilibrium, some consensus on the balance of in-person and virtual work.

Some corporates completely understand the benefits of remote, and will only ask people to come in a couple days a week or even just a few times a month. That seems reasonable. The key is that when you do go into the office in a hybrid model, it has purpose: Essential in-person meetings or collaborative workshops. I actually like that focused, intentional use of the office rather than just putting in face time for no reason.

So in summary, 2024 will be a year of experimentation, tension, and debate about finding the right hybrid approach. But by the end of it, we should have a clearer sense of how to make hybrid work successful.

How do you like to unwind and have fun outside of work?

I like to do home renovation projects. We just go through and renovate different rooms completely—I taught myself how to build and do electrical and do drywall and woodworking and so yeah. I’ve pretty much gone room to room and worked on this house over the last 18 years redoing things. That tends to be what my weekends look like in terms of zoning out or having a creative outlet.