When leadership becomes long-distance — and consequences become local.

Decisions made far away rarely land close to reality.

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The Story

At Evergreen Organics, a premium food brand with operations in Indore, the founder Sanjay Mittal, 44, moved to Dubai “for global expansion.”

But every morning, he ran the Indian team through endless Zoom calls:

“What’s the fryer temperature?”

“Why did the Jaipur unit buy extra milk?”

He set rules, cut budgets, redesigned SOPs — all from 2,000 km away.

Meanwhile, the kitchen staff struggled with broken equipment, local supply shortages, and last-minute festival rush.

One line cook muttered,

“Sir wants gourmet results with WhatsApp instructions.”

Across the world in Melbourne, Grace Thompson, operations head of a sustainable meal-kit company, tried the same.

She managed three cloud kitchens spread across suburbs she’d never visited.

Decisions were made based on spreadsheets, not smells, textures, or customer complaints.

After a month of declining quality, the kitchen manager told her gently,

“You can’t feel the heat from an email.”

Both learned the same truth:

You can’t run a kitchen from another continent.

You can’t sense problems you cannot smell.

Leadership cannot be outsourced to distance.

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What This Reveals About Work Relations

Remote leadership without ground reality is just… illusion management.

When decision-makers are far from the heat:

• problems are misunderstood,

• people feel abandoned,

• confusion spreads,

• trust evaporates.

The flame does not obey long-distance instructions.

The food does not listen to remote commands.

In the future of work, presence is not physical — it is attentional.

To lead people, you must be close enough to understand their world.

Because no kitchen in history has ever been run by someone sitting across the seven seas