Are Organizations In The Midst Of A Kodak Moment When It Comes To Remote Work?

In 1973, Kodak hired engineering graduate Steven Sasson to work on figuring out whether a device the company had invented a few years prior had any practical benefits. Two years later, at the age of 24, Sasson’s experiments lead him to invent the world’s first digital camera.

Sasson ran a series of demonstrations of his digital camera for various executives at Kodak, taking pictures that within seconds appeared on a TV screen. Unfortunately, the reaction Sasson got for his new invention was lukewarm at best. Many of these leaders couldn’t see any reason why after 100 years of printing photos people would want to view them through a screen.

The leaders at Kodak remained steadfast in that thinking until it was too late for them to catch up to changing consumer tastes, and Kodak ended up filing for bankruptcy … two years after Instagram was created.

The story of Kodak and Sasson’s digital camera has become a cautionary tale for leaders about the dangers of complacency and rigidity in mindset, as well as fighting to preserve a status quo that is fast becoming obsolete. It also serves as a timely lesson for leaders as they assess what to do about the growing demands by employees for remote work options.

Watching the on-going debate over whether organizations should insist on a return to the physical workplace or offer opportunities for their employees to work remotely, I’ve noted how there’s a number of key issues that are being overlooked in these discussions.

I’ve already addressed one of them in a recent “Leadership Espresso Shot” episode on my podcast. Now I’d like to examine one of the reasons why many organizations are pushing back on offering their employees remote work options, and why these organizations risk missing the mark much like Kodak did.

One of the more common arguments made against remote work is that it would adversely impact innovation, in large part because the absence of those spontaneous, ‘water cooler conversations’ that happen when people move about in the workplace.

On the surface, this seems like a reasonable statement. But think about it for a minute – what these leaders are essentially stating is that there’s only one way that will fuel innovation in today’s organizations.

And yet, by its very nature, innovation is about disrupting the status quo. It requires not only a different way of thinking, but doing things differently so as to create conditions that will spark new ideas and experiments from which unique offerings can be created.

As illustrated in the story of Kodak’s digital camera, the most successful and enduring forms of innovation are those which force us to rethink how we do things. It also reveals how failing to do so because you value what you did in the past only serves to open doors for new competitors to come along and take your place in the market.

Furthermore, you can’t drive innovation simply by forcing people to work under the same roof, hoping that a random encounter might lead to some lighting-in-a-bottle moment. Rather, what’s needed is an honest assessment of what kind of work environment you need to create to harness the collective creativity of your employees, not to mention making them feel safe to take risks and experiment as Sasson did at Kodak.

As such, when you hear these leaders arguing that offering remote work opportunities would stifle creativity and innovation, it’s hard not to see that what they’re fighting for is protecting the status quo in terms of their status and control, instead of championing creative and innovative thinking by being open to the possibility of ‘what if’.

And if your employees are advocating – as so many are publicly and loudly doing – that for them to bring their best efforts to work – their creativity, their insights, their unique perspectives – is by having a choice of how and where they work, how can you rationalize that the opposite of what they need to be creative will spur innovation?

More importantly, how are you demonstrating that you are truly listening and hearing what your employees have to say about what they need from you to succeed and thrive?

Seen from this light, is it any wonder why we’re now seeing so many employees quitting in what Texas A&M Professor Anthony Klotz has called “The Great Resignation”, with 41% of the global workforce looking to leave their current job by the end of the year to work elsewhere?

As much as these leaders might be concerned about protecting their organization’s growth potential, the simple truth is your organization’s ability to innovate is directly correlated to whether your employees feel empowered to challenge the status quo; of what’s possible not just today, but in the near future [Share on Twitter].

As a major airline executive told me last week, we have to be careful that we’re not “running on a treadmill where you might be going fast, but you’re not going anywhere.”

Indeed, what many leaders have failed to appreciate is how the COVID-19 pandemic has become a powerful catalyst for change on many fronts – within the workplace, within our communities, and even on the global stage. The way we work has fundamentally changed and much like squeezed toothpaste, it’s near impossible to put things back to the way they were before the pandemic [Share on Twitter].

And frankly, this should be viewed by everyone as being a good thing because you succeed at leadership not by maintaining the status quo, but by moving things forward; by creating change that makes things better [Share on Twitter]. The only difference now is that this vision for change is being created, nurtured, and driven by employees instead of by those in charge.

So is your organization in the midst of a Kodak moment? The only way to know for sure is to honestly assess what’s driving your organization’s response to the growing demand by employees for a flexible work environment. Of whether you’re driven more by what makes sense to you, or by what your employees are telling you they need to continue to succeed, evolve, and grow under your leadership.