While the COVID-19 pandemic has brought all sorts of negative consequences, one of the positive outcomes for many organizations has been rediscovering their ability to innovate.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a terrible impact on businesses, societies, families and individuals around the world. In fact, it certainly seems challenging to find “the silver lining” in the many dark clouds created by this event. But like most things in life, even the most challenging moments can teach us something and provide lessons and techniques that are worth making part of our everyday lives.
For many companies, rediscovering the ability to innovate was one of the benefits of the pandemic. This behavior was often forced and companies regularly faced decisions that amounted to “innovate or die”. Examples abound, from companies with zero remote workers that quickly set up entire departments for remote work to teams that scour the globe to keep production lines running or get essential products to the people who need them most.
Many leaders are proud, and perhaps a little surprised, that their teams rose to the occasion and were able to quickly conceptualize, design, and deploy new technologies, processes, and ways of working, seemingly overnight. It's no wonder that many leaders want to continue this ability to innovate quickly and capture some of the animal spirits that drove rapid innovation and implement them in more conventional times.
Like many of the lessons of the pandemic, it's worth trying to set aside the politics, heartache and difficulties of this period and capture the good, especially when it comes to the ability to innovate quickly. This behavior will serve your organization well, whether your next “crisis” is a world-changing event or a new product launch.
The question of risk versus reward
In speaking with dozens of companies, one of the hallmarks of pandemic innovation success has been a readjustment of the typical “risk versus reward” calculation. Few leaders would suggest punishing thoughtful risk-taking, but they would ask what happened to unsuccessful innovators during the pre-pandemic era.
Typically, individuals would have to expend their political capital to convince others to try a new way of doing something. Generally, the unwritten rule was that if the innovation attempt was successful, everyone who participated would share the credit. At the first sign of failure, all “support actors” would quickly create as much distance as possible between themselves and the innovator.
All risk of failure was typically concentrated in one or two individuals, while any success fell disproportionately on others. Innovation often came down to a battle of David versus Goliath, with the lone innovator struggling to change an organization that might not actively oppose him, but that had no incentive to help him along his journey.
The risk of existential failure at both the organizational and individual worker levels has changed all that. If there is a real and significant risk that you will no longer be able to provide for your family, you will quickly jump on any stupid idea that seems like it has some slim chance of success.
Instead of it being in their best interest to continue on the path with little concern about changing the status quo, suddenly everyone was invested in changing the status quo as the reward for success far outweighed any risks.
Rewiring the risk and reward equation
As the world returns to a kind of normality, leaders who want to maintain their team or organization's capacity for innovation must consciously go through a process of “rewiring”. This is to maintain the system change driven by the pandemic. the reward for taking risks is greater than the reward for maintaining the status quo not just for individual individuals but for the team as a whole.
One of the best ways to complete this “rewiring” is to talk to your team members and ask open-ended questions like:
- What changed during the pandemic that allowed you to experiment with new ideas and techniques?
- What are two organizational changes resulting from the pandemic that you would maintain in the long term?
- What leadership behaviors were different that allowed you to innovate?
You shouldn't need a multi-month study or sophisticated consultancy to start seeing themes based on simple, open-ended questions like the ones above. Ultimately, you want to look for the behaviors that enabled innovation and experimentation during the pandemic and identify those that you can scale up or modify and reuse.
For example, you might hear that relaxing the usual rules and policies was a motivator for innovative behavior. While it's probably not appropriate to eliminate all policies and controls in the long term, your organization may have created an overly cumbersome set of guidelines and rules. These may have stifled innovative behavior and could be reviewed to maintain critical oversight while avoiding becoming obstacles to innovation.
Another likely theme you'll find is that there were minimal repercussions for well-thought-out experiments that failed. Several leaders I worked with noted that many of the innovations attempted during the pandemic were not immediate successes. In some cases, what seemed like a failed effort resulted in a critical insight or new tool that accelerated innovation elsewhere.
Essentially, your organization has gone from being a career-damaging sin to an essential step in the broader journey toward a successful outcome. The old clichés about “failing fast” still contain some truth: failures are a good indicator that you are trying to innovate. Without any failed attempts at innovation, an organization cannot innovate, just as a sprinter cannot win races sitting on the couch.
Moving on
Innovation didn't magically happen during the pandemic . Consciously or not, you, as a leader, likely changed the risk versus reward equation and encouraged experimentation instead of requiring potential innovators to evaluate and “de-risk” until innovation was no longer possible. The broader organization also likely reassessed the value of innovation in an environment where everything was at risk and the old ways of doing business weren't working.
The lessons, techniques, and tools you need to continue innovating are likely operating before your eyes. Instead of striving to return to the “old way of working” as quickly as possible and do away with your newfound innovation arrogance, capture and amplify these lessons and you will continue to innovate regardless of global calamities.
