Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” Theodore Levitt, American economist and Harvard professor of economics.
One of the casualties from working from home has been the loss of “the water cooler inspiration.” While business leaders are reporting high efficiency rates of employees working from home, they also note the loss of collaboration for innovative solutions to problems. While ZOOM and its counterparts offer a chance for face to face conversation on-line, it hasn’t prompted those informal chats between employees like a congregation around the water cooler often does.
Innovation is a big part of most businesses, even very traditional ones. As times and society develop new problems, businesses must respond with creative solutions, often found in the synergy of employee camaraderie.
Year after year, I witnessed this very necessary part of any business with the yearbook staffers. Each year’s staff was composed of very creative individuals. Each one was a talent in his/her own right. But together! Watching them brainstorm was a pleasure. Quickly, they tossed away tried and true ideas as trite and stretched way out of the box for innovative ways to report the events of the year. Year after year, they turned their abstract ideas into award winning books, a concrete innovation their classmates could scan.
One principal once told me that the yearbook program offered students the opportunity to put to use all the knowledge they had gleaned from years in school. I can’t help but wonder how this year’s staff will turn the tragedy of a pandemic into a grand “positive” theme. Given the chance, they can.
Journalists often rely on informal conversations with their colleagues about possible sources and new insights into the articles they are working on. Teachers are the first to acknowledge that they not only learn new methods and ideas from their colleagues in the workroom, but also from their students in the classroom.
But I truly witnessed the importance of the water cooler concept when I chanced to visit a public relations firm years ago. I was almost run over by a young man pedaling a giant tricycle down the hallway as fast as he could go. When I expressed confusion about the incident to my host, she led me to the creative section of the business. It looked like a giant playroom with all sorts of toys and people chatting with one another as they tossed balls. Out of play came the creative ideas.
David Steitfeld reported in The New York Times in June, that prior to working from home during this COVID-19 pandemic, the reports about work-at-home arrangements were mixed. Initially, pundits predicted it was the new face of the future. More and more work-at-home assignments would replace the need for expensive office buildings. And some businesses, especially technology firms, have reported great success with the innovation.
But other businesses gradually reported inconsistencies. People took advantage of the freedom and were not readily available when a customer or a manager attempted to contact them. In some cases, they were busy on the phone or computer with a customer and did not take an incoming call. In most cases unfortunately, they had slacked off work with the discretion in being on their own. Some companies have added spyware to their systems to observe their employees long distance, a sad commentary on the American worker.
What has made employees more efficient this go round? Has COVID-19 limited them so much that they can’t do much more than work? Have they been afraid of losing their job like the 30 million already receiving unemployment benefits? Or, have they discovered that dedicated workers like themselves can keep the world moving in these trying times?
But back to the water cooler crowd!
Levitt, writing for The Harvard Business Review, says “Ideas are not enough. Why don’t we get more innovation…All in all, ideation is relatively abundant. It is its implementation that is more scarce…People implement ideas.”
One thing we know for certain,COVID-19 has demanded the American workforce not only to come up with new ideas, but to implement them for the benefit of society. People talk about “the new normal.” Whatever that may be, American workers in all fields must be more innovative than ever before.
What a Labor Day!
2020
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