Does Remote Work Actually Kill Innovation?

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Adam Clarke , sent me an article about remote work stifling innovation and wanted to know my thoughts on the subject. As we both share a peak performance mindset and have previously worked in the technology industry, I was deeply curious as to why he would even entertain the notion. 

Adam provides consulting services around education and training for Public Sector and Not-For-Profit organisations. He took me to school by saying that his clients are definitely seeing remote work as a challenge to innovation because they prevent employees from gathering together for the “water cooler” talk that sparks innovation.

In the four years that I’ve spent observing corporate innovation, I’ve never known anything innovative to come out of water cooler talk. With the organisations that I’ve visited on-site, the water cooler talks have been more about the previous night’s episode of “Married at First Sight” rather than “How can we solve this problem?” 

The idea that water cooler talk sparks innovation is flawed thinking adopted by business leaders who have observed companies in Silicon Valley. They believe innovation comes from collaboration and collaboration increases when there is space for people to run into each other serendipitously. This is the mathematical equivalent of adding two plus two and coming up with something that smells like the colour nine.

But here’s the thing. 

Environmental collaboration only works if you’re in an organisation that has a culture that actively encourages collaboration as part of your duties. And here’s the deeper truth. If your company has such a culture, it doesn’t matter if you are face to face or not, you will find a way to collaborate and spark conversations that solve problems. Tech employees are used to working in geographically distributed teams so collaborating digitally to solve problems is second nature to us because we have to.

The problem isn’t remote work killing innovation, it’s the way people work remotely. You need to have a culture that actively cultivates collaboration as a personal virtue instead of viewing it as a byproduct of social proximity.

The Struggle of Collaboration

I wanted to deeper understand why people aren’t able to create conversations that spark innovation without having to be in the office. It turns out the reason is simple: humans are creatures of habit. 

Another friend of mine, “Kate”, is part of a 20-person company that involves consulting as well as software management. She told me before the pandemic, the teams would gather for Friday night drinks and that would be an opportunity for everyone to discuss the challenges of the week and share ideas on how to solve them. But since the pandemic occurred, that never happens anymore remotely.

“We’re all so busy in meetings and doing client work that we never actively make time to just catch up and talk to each other informally.” 

Interesting...

Going back to my conversation with Adam, we spoke about the “Engagement and Recognition @ Work” report from Achievers that surveyed 1500 participants in Australia and Singapore in April 2021. The report says 35% of employees in Australia feel less engaged working remotely than 25% who feel more engaged. In Singapore the issue is worse with 50% feeling less engaged than 12% feeling more engaged. 

Adam quickly chimed in, “AJ, in this context, those engaged employees are probably the ones who know how to work effectively remotely. So to them, they’re still fully engaged during the pandemic.” 

Perhaps that’s what this whole discussion is really about. 

Leaders and teams aren’t really sure how to work remotely to maintain a level of collaboration that fosters meaningful engagement. The lack of conversations that spark creativity is just a symptom of this bigger problem. 

Nicholas Bloom is a Standford University Economics Professor who studied remote work productivity before and during the pandemic. In the article "The productivity pitfalls of working from home in the age of Covid-19", he suggests there are four factors that impact productivity while working from home: children, space, privacy and choice. Professor Bloom goes on to say, “face-to-face meetings are essential for developing new ideas and keeping staff motivated”. While I completely agree with the four factors, I feel his follow-on comments are inaccurate based on my observations.

4 Examples of Remote Innovation

During the first wave of the global pandemic, I created “A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste”, an entirely new virtual presentation for my clients to keep their people engaged and supported during this extraordinary life changing event. While researching material for the presentation I discovered several stories of how organisations, companies and even small businesses had innovated during the height of the pandemic while working remotely. Here are four examples.

I spoke with the CIO of a technology company in Australia who told me about a project they had been working on for one of their clients. The results were so successful that they were going to partner with their client to sell the solution on a larger scale, thus creating a new revenue stream for both companies. This was all completed remotely. 

Also during the pandemic, I heard how the Sri Lankan Tea Board, a 150-year-old organisation,  was forced to innovate its tea auction process so that sellers and buyers could transact remotely. They created a virtual e-auction solution based on Microsoft technology to help keep the ecosystem running.

Then there was automotive manufacturer Nissan. When the first wave hit in early 2020, Nissan employees began collaborating remotely to re-imagine the way business could be done. As a result, they came up with an entirely new process for launching new vehicles that has created unprecedented opportunities for the company. 

Finally, as further proof that remote work doesn’t kill innovation, every local government council here in the state of Victoria, Australia, certainly had to innovate remotely to continue to provide services to citizens during the various lockdowns that we encountered. 

So this argument that remote work kills innovation is simply not true. What does kill innovation is the wrong mindset and culture. 

But we can’t be too harsh here. 

Many teams are feeling the pressures of day to day operational work combined with home life. Essentially we’ve gone from working from home, to living at work. As a result, innovation and collaboration are the last things on many people’s mind. 

However it seems like the only way forward is to address this issue and support employees to develop habits that allow them to work efficiently remotely. So let’s break the pattern of monotony.

3 Unconventional Ideas to Stimulate Collaboration and Creativity

Going beyond the superficial “Managers should check in with their people” advice, here are three things that I’ve learned from my time in technology that have helped me remain productive and engaged while working remotely for the last 10 years.

Create Space for Ideas

This isn’t about building an environment to be creative but rather giving yourself a mental pause from stimulation to let ideas collide. If you’ve ever had a random idea in the shower, you’ll know how this works. The lack of external stimuli and the instinctive behaviour of the task at hand, allows your brain to breathe and you spark eureka moments. So here’s a challenge for you. 

Set a timer for five minutes and do absolutely nothing. No reading. No listening to anything. Just sit in complete stillness for five minutes. If you have no space at home, try locking yourself away in the bathroom with headphones playing RainyMood (or white noise) to drown out home noise. This might be torture at first but slowly you’ll find it easier and just like the shower, ideas will come to you.

Make Time for Inputs

We’re all in different stages of the pandemic and that might mean we’re also in different stages of lockdowns. Thankfully I’m able to leave my home for an hour for exercise and I use it to walk around my block and listen to Kevin Hart’s Comedy Gold Minds podcast. Kevin interviews some of the world’s greatest comedians about their life stories and I always walk away with a few notes after each episode that helps me tackle my big picture issues. 

Essentially what I’m doing here is loading up my mind with thoughts so that when I give it space, ideas collide and spark new thinking. If you can’t escape your house, try your best to schedule some time where you sit by yourself (maybe in the car?) and either read, listen or watch something random that has no real correlation to your day to day activities. As you consume this input, be on the lookout for a way you can connect this to your work. 

Be Deliberate About Having Problem Solving Conversations

A big part of my work is about being valuable to my clients. If I’m not constantly reading up on companies, industries and the latest ideas in management, I’ll soon find myself being replaced by my competitors. It’s this paranoia that drives me to have deliberate conversations with people. Every week I’m usually talking to someone either on the phone, video or instant messaging. We share what’s been happening in our respective worlds and explore new thinking. I always walk away feeling inspired and energised but also have new ideas to think about that solve my problem or add context to how I might be able to solve my client’s issues. 

To make this technique work for you, block out some time in your calendar to speak with someone, either a friend, colleague (current or former) or if you’re feeling adventurous, a complete stranger, and swap stories with them. Here’s the key to making this work, you have to treat it like a different experience to what you’re used to. So if you normally have meetings via video conferencing, then use a phone call to connect or vice versa. 

Bonus - Cultivate an Opportunity for Collaboration

As Leaders we need to make sure we are the best version of ourselves to lead our teams but that also involves building an environment where team members can do the same. The best way to do this is to encourage your people to have these conversations with others or better yet, organise a session where you just get together just to talk about challenges and improvement. This can be done informally with a Friday drinks style session or formally through a facilitated lunch and learn session.

I’ve run many of these sessions for clients since the pandemic began, including one for a global organisation to engage their members in Australia, Europe, North America and South-East Asia. So please feel free to get in touch with me to either give you ideas on best practices or perhaps I could run some structured creativity sessions based on my Heart Centered Innovation™ framework? It will help your people to become inspired, focused and engaged during these incredibly challenging times.

If you download my latest book, “Reimagining Innovation”, on page 22 you’ll see a case study of how one of my sessions created incredible results for a client’s teams that were too busy working on daily projects to even think about innovation and creativity. So please get in touch if you’re looking to engage your people in meaningful ways to spark innovation, creativity and collaboration.

I’d like to close this conversation with you by sharing a story about my Dad. When I was a kid he’d always try to talk to me about things happening in the world and I’d just switch off because none of them were relevant to my world. Then he’d say “Linde Inne Gemba” which translates to “The Frog in the Well”. If you’re not familiar with that folk story, it’s about a frog who lives in a well and thinks that the well is the whole world. But everyone else knows there is a whole world outside of that well. I think this pandemic has seen us all become the frog in the well. It’s time to break out.

Stay safe. Stay inspired.

-AJ~ 

Meet The Author

AJ Kulatunga is a Business Strategist and Professional Keynote Speaker who inspires positive change in the world by reshaping the way we think about Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship. Leveraging his experiences from a 15-year career in business and technology, AJ works with Business Leaders, Teams and Young Professionals to help them adapt, innovate and lead to thrive. Visit AJK.global to see him in action.