Some major companies have implemented return-to-work policies, but at what cost? Disney CEO Bob Iger demanded in January that all employees come to the office at least four days a week because, “In a creative business like ours, nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe, and create with peers that comes from being physically together.” Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed similar sentiments when he mandated that employees show up at least three days per week since, “Innovation isn’t always a planned activity. It’s bumping into each other over the course of the day and advancing an idea that you just had. And you really need to be together to do that.”

Yet is this true? On the one hand, research at MIT found that remote work weakens the cross-functional, inter-team “weak ties” that form the basis for the exchange of new ideas that tend to foster innovation. Along the same vein, a study by Microsoft concluded that remote work weakens innovation since workers communicate less with those outside their own teams.

On the other hand, McKinsey & Company research pointed to a different verdict. It determined that during the two-plus years of the COVID-19 pandemic, a record number of new patents was filed across 150 global patent filing authorities. Moreover, in 2021 global venture capital more than doubled from 2020, rising 111 percent. McKinsey suggests that this is because more innovative companies developed new ways of connecting remote workers together to build and sustain the cross-functional, inter-team ties necessary for innovation, thus widening the pools of minds that could generate new ideas. Deloitte similarly highlighted how adapting the process of innovation to remote settings offers the key to boost innovation for hybrid and remote teams.

My experience helping 21 organizations transition to hybrid and remote work demonstrates that innovation is eminently achievable. But it requires adopting best practices that address the weakening of cross-functional connections and the lack of natural, spontaneous interactions that breed innovation.

An excellent technique to replace those hallway chats involves collaboration software like Slack or Microsoft Teams. I suggest that you set up a specific channel in that software to facilitate the creativity and collaboration behind serendipitous innovation, and incentivize employees to use that channel.

For example, at a late-stage SaaS start-up that used Microsoft Teams, each small team of six to eight people set up a team-specific channel for members to share innovative ideas relevant to the team’s work. Likewise, larger business units established channels for ideas applicable to the whole unit. Then, when anyone had an idea, they were encouraged to share that idea in the pertinent channel.

We encouraged everyone to pay attention to notifications in that channel. Seeing a new post, if they found the idea relevant, they would respond with additional thoughts building on the initial idea. Responses would snowball, and strong ideas would then lead to next steps, often a brainstorming session.

This approach combines a native virtual format with people’s natural motivations to contribute, collaborate, and claim credit. The initial idea poster and the subsequent contributors aren’t motivated simply by the goal of advancing the team or business unit, even though that’s, of course, part of their goal set. The initial poster is motivated by the possibility of sharing an idea that might be recognized as innovative, practical, and useful to implement, with some revisions. The contributors, in turn, are motivated by the natural desire to give advice, especially since it is visible to and useful for others in their team, business unit, or even the whole organization.

This dynamic also fits well with the different personalities of optimists and pessimists. You’ll find that the former will generally be the ones to post initial ideas. Their strength is innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, but their flaw is being risk-blind to the potential problems in the idea. In turn, pessimists will overwhelmingly serve to build on and improve the idea, pointing out its potential pitfalls and helping address them. 

Remember to avoid undervaluing the contributions of pessimists. It’s too common to pay excessive attention to the initial ideas and overly reward optimists – and I say this as an inveterate optimist myself who has 20 ideas before breakfast and thinks they’re all brilliant. Through the combination of personal bitter experiences and research on optimism and pessimism, I have learned the necessity of letting pessimistic colleagues vet and improve my ideas. My clients have found a significant deal of benefit in highly valuing such devil’s advocate perspectives as well. 

That’s why you should praise and reward not only the generators of innovative ideas but also the two or three people who most contributed to improving and finalizing the idea. And that’s what the late-stage start-up company did. The team or business unit leaders made sure that they publicly recognized the contributions of the initial idea creators and the improvers of the idea, and also gave them a bonus proportionate to the value of their contributions. Indeed, several of these ideas ended up prompting patent applications.

While this technique helps address the problem of missing spontaneous interactions, what about the weakening of cross-functional ties? To help tackle that challenge, while also improving the integration of recently hired staff, we had the SaaS company set up a hybrid and remote mentoring program. 

The program involved several mentors. One came from the recently hired staff’s own team. That mentor assisted the mentee with understanding group dynamics, on-the-job learning, and professional growth.

However, we also included two mentors from other teams. One was in the same business unit as the junior staff, while another came from a separate unit. The role of these mentors involved getting the new employee integrated into the broader company culture, facilitating inter-team collaboration, and strengthening the “weak ties” among company staff to help foster collaboration.

Six months after these interventions, the SaaS company reported a notable boost in innovation across the board. The channels devoted to innovation helped breed a number of novel projects. The mentor-mentee relationships resulted in mentees providing a fresh, creative perspective on the company’s existing work, while the mentors from outside the team helped spur productive conversations within teams that bred further innovation and collaboration. 

If a late-stage start-up with 400 employees could adopt these techniques, so too can major companies like Disney and Apple. Certainly, some tasks may best be done in person, such as sensitive personnel conversations, intense collaborative discussions, key decision-making and strategic conversations, and fun team-building events. But otherwise, the more tasks you can do remotely, the better. 
Unfortunately, Disney and Apple have adopted a traditionalist perspective on how to innovate, which ironically hinders innovation, as they are already losing talented people due to such return-to-work mandates. The future belongs to companies that best make use of the most creative people around the globe – those who have options about where to work – while minimizing their time wasted in rush hour commutes. Doing so requires adopting best practices for hybrid and remote work instead of being stuck in the past.

These three investment strategies turn traditional thinking on its head and show how huge value can be generated by incentivizing lifestyle choices and trading assets that go beyond hard cash.

Invest in Time

In Switzerland, investing in your future has just taken on a new meaning. People are saving up time so they can spend it later. The Swiss government has launched a “time bank” to help provide care for older people. Here’s how it works. Younger people volunteer to care for older people and “deposit” the time they spend volunteering into their social security accounts. When the volunteers are older and need assistance themselves, they can spend the time they’ve saved up on younger volunteer caregivers.

A similar scheme is being launched in Beijing. Volunteers earn 1 “coin” for every hour they spend caring for an older person and can either redeem these when they turn 60 or donate them to older relatives or friends. Saving 10,000 coins (the equivalent of 416 full days) earns you a spot in a state-run care home. Around the world, populations are getting older; today, one in ten people are over 65. By 2050, one in six people will be over 65. This means we’ll need more caregivers for older people. Time banks could be one way to help pay for them. Would you save time now to spend in the future? 

Subsidize Your Healthcare by Saving a Forest

In Borneo, Brazil, and Madagascar, people are getting cheap healthcare in return for saving forests. The innovative scheme is saving lives and cutting deforestation by 70%. So how does it work? US-based organization Health in Harmony listens to communities through a process called “radical listening.” They discovered that local people in Borneo wanted to protect their forest, but when a family member fell sick, logging was a quick source of cash to pay bills. They decided to provide affordable healthcare, with payment accepted as seedlings, manure, handicrafts, or even labor. If locals reduce logging, treatments become even more affordable.

A range of organizations that have adopted this approach also offers training in conservation and organic farming. Since 2007, the number of households logging illegally has fallen by 90%, prevented $65 million worth of carbon from being released, and allowed 20,000 hectares of forest to regrow. The benefits haven’t stopped with forest conservation: Infant mortality has fallen by 67%, while TB, malaria, and other tropical diseases have also declined. Health in Harmony works alongside 135,000 indigenous, traditional, and rainforest peoples to protect more than 8.8 million hectares of valuable rainforests. Rainforests are an especially crucial habitat, containing 80% of the world’s documented species. What’s your business solution for protecting forests? 

Become a Very Remote Worker

Portugal, Ireland, and Australia will pay workers to move to the countryside in a bid to revitalize rural communities and boost local economies. Tempting young, talented people away from cities reduces infrastructure stress on cities and revitalizes rural towns. Portugal offers up to $4,800 to workers from the EU to relocate to the countryside.That’s enough to cover the annual rent of a small village house. In return, they must agree to stay for at least one year. Ireland will introduce a similar scheme, converting 400 disused rural cinemas and town halls into coworking spaces with high-speed broadband.

New South Wales in Australia hopes to attract businesses to rural areas by reimbursing firms up to $7,000 per employee to help cover relocation costs. In Italy, young refugees have breathed life back into several rural communities. They have been welcomed into towns and villages in Sicily after an exodus of local, young workers had left most houses empty, with an aging population living in the remainder. The global movement of people from rural to urban is accelerating, with 55% of the world’s population living in cities. By 2050, that could rise to 70%. Would you move to the countryside to help subsidize a new or existing business?

Mike and Todd Feazel spent 25 years growing one of the largest and most successful roofing companies in the United States.

As time passed, it became apparent that shingles were changing. The amount of shingles per bundle increased, which meant individual shingles were lighter and less durable. The brothers witnessed roofs failing at astounding rates. In many cases, a “30-year roof” lasted less than half its promised life. Mike and Todd didn’t like what this decline in quality meant for homeowners across the country. Add that to a massive increase in costs of labor and materials, as well as home insurance complications, and a grim picture emerges.

“My brother and I could see the staggering number of roofs at risk across the country and wanted to do something about it.” – Mike Feazel.

The connection between early roof failure and its negative environmental impact also becomes apparent. They found that if 1% of homes applied this treatment instead of installing a new roof, It could eliminate 2.8 million tons of landfill waste and 1.1 million metric tons of CO2 emissions. (Vasco-Correa/Shah “Technical, economic and environmental performance of soy methyl ester emulsions applied to aging asphalt roofing.” CFAES, Ohio State University.)

Discovering new advancements in plant-based chemistry, they sold Feazel Roofing and partnered with the largest research and development laboratory in the country to develop Roof Maxx roof rejuvenation. After extensive testing, 17-year-old shingles treated with Roof Maxx passed the same tests required of brand-new shingles. (Study conducted by Ohio State University.)

Untreated, today’s shingles quickly become brittle, leading to loss of granules, cracking, and breaking. This spray-on treatment penetrates the shingle replacing lost oils, and reverses aging. The treated shingles now act more like new shingles, expanding and contracting as they should. This improves their ability to hold the protective granules onto the shingle. In many cases, the shingle’s dried glue tabs are reactivated. This helps to keep shingles from breaking and minimizes blow-offs in high winds.

Roof Maxx had developed a product that was needed in the marketplace and a sustainable way
to create that product. They also needed an innovative way to deliver the product to those who could benefit. Roof Maxx decided to make its product available through a dealership model and granted hundreds of independent dealerships to sustainability-minded entrepreneurs across the country over a few short months.

Each dealership can be as small as one person or as large as an existing roofing company that wants to offer cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternatives for its customers. A Roof Maxx dealership is a unique offering with high returns on a small investment. Dealers need little training and few tools and can be up and running in as few as six weeks. Even those without roofing or construction experience can maintain an exciting, successful, and growing business. After start-up costs of equipment and branding, all a dealer pays for is the product itself. Roof Maxx corporate even provides inexpensive leads gathered from national marketing opportunities.

“We have several roofing companies who have added Roof Maxx because they know it is a real science-based product, and they’ve seen it save roofs. Being the roofing company that only replaces a roof if it absolutely needs to be replaced builds lifelong customers,” says Mike Feazel. “As a dealership/small-business opportunity, Roof Maxx has proven itself to be recession-proof. Dealerships were born and grew during an international pandemic and its economic aftermath. Roof Maxx’s robust nature also has a clear benefit for consumers needing to delay large, expensive projects like re-roofs during difficult times.”
 
Roof Maxx dealers are entrepreneurs like the American Farmer who grows the raw material for the Roof Maxx formula. They are also innovators like Henry Ford and George Washington Carver who worked together to invent synthesized rubber from soybeans, among other advanced products. When you fast forward the better part of a century, soy technology is even used to make Goodyear Tires. Roof Maxx is partnered with the Ohio Soybean Council and Airable Labs which works tirelessly to adapt this renewable resource to revolutionary products across the board.

“Roof Maxx not only provides a green solution to a petroleum-based challenge of losing petroleum oils from a shingle but also can be as low as 20% of the costs of replacing an old roof,” says Barry McGraw, Director of Product Development and Commercialization, Ohio Soybean Council.

Roof Maxx is a win-win-win for dealers and customers. It’s a renewable product that reduces
construction waste AND saves homeowners money while protecting their homes. Dealers get
to make a meaningful impact on their community and the environment while growing a
successful business. roofmaxx.com

The future is arriving sooner than you think. These three emerging technologies could change the way we live and travel and help us avert a climate disaster by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

1. Roads that Charge Electric Cars as They Drive

Holcim, a global company that creates sustainable building materials, has partnered with the German startup Magment to create a magnetizable concrete technology for road surfaces that enables electric vehicles to recharge wirelessly while in motion. Known as inductive charging, this breakthrough concrete-based solution reduces the need for charging stations while saving time — recharging stops will become a thing of the past. This breakthrough has been made possible by a unique concrete with high magnetic permeability. Collaboration is a hallmark of how Holcim operates and is key to creating breakthrough technologies. “Partnering with startups worldwide, we are constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation to lead the way in sustainability,” says Edelio Bermejo, head of the Holcim Global Innovation Center. As part of its open innovation ecosystem, led by the Innovation Center, the company works with more than 120 innovative startups worldwide, pioneering new technologies to accelerate our world’s transition to net zero. Other applications under development include the electrification of industrial floors to recharge robots and forklifts as they work. So how would you boost productivity with such an invention?

2. Making 100% Carbon-Neutral Jet Fuel from Sunlight and Air

Renewable, carbon-neutral kerosene is being developed by researchers at ETH Zürich, a public research university in the Zürich, Switzerland, founded by the Swiss Federal Government in 1854 with a mission to educate engineers and scientists. The process captures CO2 and water from the air, and these substances are split using concentrated solar energy. This produces a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide called syngas, which can then be processed into kerosene — the main ingredient in jet fuel. When burned, this fuel emits only the CO2 extracted from the air in the first place. The researchers at ETH Zürich have built a mini “solar refinery” on the roof of their university and say that their technology is now ready for industrial application. The manufacturing process would be ideal for desert regions where solar energy is plentiful and many poverty-stricken nations are found. There will also be no competition with agriculture for land. Might you be a jet fuel producer of the future?

3. The Ocean as a Renewable Energy Source

Brazilian company TidalWatt has created a new generation of underwater turbines that makes free energy from the movement of the ocean — an impressive 60 times more powerful than a wind turbine. These giant, submerged, and ecologically safe power plants are positioned in previously neglected regions and take advantage of powerful ocean currents — instead of tidal flows that typically move water back and forth in a less forceful way. Natural energy generation doesn’t stop and flows continuously, 24 hours a day. In addition to being utterly harmless to marine life, the massive underwater structures make trawling unfeasible and create ecological sanctuaries, favoring the emergence of artificial reefs. “The world’s oceans are a vast source of renewable energy that is always more predictable than wind and solar energy,” says TidalWatt founder Mauricio Otaviano de Queiroz. “I regard the ocean as an immense gold mine, the wealth of which is much more important for the good of humankind than valuable metal. It’s time we stopped despising this ocean wealth because the technology to exploit it cleanly, responsibly, and efficiently is now here.”

“Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech… the company has taken the decision to terminate the partnership with Ye immediately,” according to its October 25 news release.

That statement conveys a principled and admirable stance against the antisemitism shown by the rapper formerly known as Kanye West after his antisemitic tweet on October 10 that he would go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” 

Yet Adidas waited much, much longer than other companies that cut ties with Ye. Even Ye’s own talent agency dropped him before Adidas. In fact, Adidas delayed so long that Ye taunted them on his October 16 appearance on the Drink Champs podcast, saying “I can say antisemitic things, and Adidas can’t drop me. Now what? Now what?”

Adidas faced particular pressure to drop Ye due to its dark past. A German company founded by a former member of the Nazi party, Adidas had an especially strong reason to drop Ye earlier than other companies. Adidas faced mounting pressure from the Anti-Defamation League and other organizations to drop Ye given its Nazi past. A Change.org petition set up by the Campaign Against Antisemitism urging Adidas to sever ties with Ye had gathered 169,100 signatures by October 25.

Yet Adidas refused to drop Ye until all the other companies dropped him. Instead of getting ahead of the problem and dropping Ye immediately after his October 10 anti-semitic tweet, or even his October 16 taunting of Adidas, the company had to be shamed and pressured into cutting its ties with Ye. As a result, Adidas seriously damaged its brand, harming its reputation among anyone opposed to antisemitism. After all, it appeared Adidas dropped Ye due to the pressure, rather than Ye’s antisemitism and other bad behaviors.

What explains the poor decision-making by the Adidas leadership? It’s a classic case of the ostrich effect: a dangerous judgment error where our minds refuse to acknowledge negative information about reality. It’s named after the mythical notion that ostriches bury their heads in the sand at a sign of danger. The ostrich effect is a type of cognitive bias, one of many mental blindspots impact decision making in all life areas, ranging from the future of work to mental fitness. 

The Adidas leadership buried its head in the sand. It refused to acknowledge the growing damage to its brand from Ye’s antisemitism, as well as his prior bad behavior, such as having models wear “White Lives Matter” T-shirts in early October. 

Such denialism in professional settings happens more often than you might think. A four-year study of 286 organizations that had forced out their CEOs found that 23 percent were fired for denying reality, meaning refusing to recognize negative facts about their organization. Other research shows that professionals at all levels suffer from the tendency to deny uncomfortable facts.

Adidas’ denialism likely stems from the cognitive bias known as the sunk costs fallacy. According to Adidas’ statement, the termination of the contract is expected to “have a short-term negative impact of up to €250 million on the company’s net income in 2022 given the high seasonality of the fourth quarter.” Presumably, the impact will be much higher in 2023, over half a billion at least. 

The partnership with Ye had a long history since 2013, when the company signed his brand away from rival Nike. In 2016, Adidas further expanded its relationship with the rapper, calling it “the most significant partnership ever created between a non-athlete and an athletic brand.”

In other words, Adidas invested a great deal of money and reputation into its relationship with Ye. That kind of investment causes our minds to feel strongly attached to whatever we put those resources into, and throw good money after bad. 

You’ll see this happen often in major projects that are working out poorly, such as Meta’s Metaverse project. Several high-profile industry figures recently criticized Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts. That includes Palmer Luckey, the founder of VR headset startup Oculus, which Meta acquired in 2014 for $2 billion. Luckey said “I don’t think it’s a good product” about Horizon Worlds, Meta’s core metaverse product. He called it a “project car,” a fancy automobile that the owner spends a lot of money on as a hobby. So far, Facebook’s shift to building the metaverse has been costly, with the company last year losing $10 billion on it, and Wall Street analysts expect it to lose more than $10 billion again this year.

Similarly, you’ll see sunken costs in major relationships. That can range from marriages that lasted much longer than they should have to brand partnerships like the one between Adidas and Ye.

The final cognitive bias relevant here is called hyperbolic discounting. This term describes our brain’s focus on short-term, highly visible outcomes over much more important and less visible long-term ones. Adidas didn’t want to take the short-term financial hit to its bottom line from cutting ties with Ye. However, Adidas failed to give sufficient weight to the long-term damage to its brand from failing to do so. 

Short-term financial damage is highly visible and painful, while the long-term brand damage is much less visible and less painful. Yet realistically, such brand damage is much more important to the long-term success of Adidas.

In my consulting, I’ve seen many executives struggling with the same three mental blindspots when they face top performers engaging in bad behaviors, ranging from incivility to sexual harassment and discrimination. Leaders deny it happened because they have so much invested in the top performer, whether a star salesperson or top data scientist, and they don’t consider the long-term consequences to the organization’s culture and employee morale. 

In fact, it’s easy for anyone to fall for these three cognitive biases when someone whom you value behaves badly. Fortunately, forewarned is forearmed: knowing about these three mental blindspots means you can watch out for these problems in your own professional and personal life.

Like many CEOs and business leaders, I’ve thought about income inequality and the shrinking middle class. While this far-reaching societal issue is complex and can’t be solved overnight, leaders can make a real difference in their employees’ lives through more equitable compensation and benefits. 

While generous compensation can make a significant difference in the day-to-day lives of our teams, salaries alone aren’t enough to build actual savings and wealth. In our economy, the costs of living are very high relative to the average person’s pay, especially considering the current inflationary issues we face. Many people are living paycheck to paycheck, a risky and fragile situation. We used to think that going to college was the best path to a better, more wealthy life, but skyrocketing tuition and crushing debt make it inaccessible for many. Now, even higher degrees do not guarantee a higher salary. 

Employee ownership is a broad term; it infers that a company’s employees own stock in the company. There are many forms of employee ownership ranging from stock grants to more complex plans like an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), which is what we are at StoneAge. Founders or business leaders have many reasons why they believe employee ownership is a viable model for their companies. For example, employee ownership can assist with founder succession, increase the company’s performance, build a robust retirement plan, and create a strong culture where employees have a voice and share in its success.

An ESOP is essentially an ownership model that is best accessed at retirement, similar to a 401(k) plan, but instead of investing in the stock market, the ESOP trust buys company stock and holds its assets in a trust for employees. An ESOP can own just a tiny percentage of the company or up to 100 percent of it. ESOP participants, the company’s employees, accrue shares in the plan over time and are paid out by repurchasing their shares, typically after leaving the company. They can take the payout as cash if they are of retirement age. They can roll it into a private IRA if they are not of retirement age. 

Philip Kotler, Professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, wrote an article on worker discontent, making a case for employee ownership. He said, “Companies exist to create value; value is created with Capital and Labor; capital gets to keep the profits (or losses); ordinary Labor only gets a salary and has no other means of support, yet Labor might be responsible for creating between 40–70% of the profit. Marxian economists hold that labor creates the most value, but most profits go to shareholders. Workers can never earn enough to buy shares in their or other companies to become capitalists. Under these conditions, workers become alienated and will do enough work to get by and not be fired. There is little they will gain by working harder. They are without ownership or voice in where their company is or should be going.” 

This statement sums up why I believe in employee ownership. I have seen the benefits of sharing the company’s success at our employee-owned company. Ownership opportunities can create a culture of engagement and purpose. If they work hard and add value to the company’s customers, they will directly benefit by feeling valued and included and improving their bottom lines. 

I am often asked, “How do you get anything done if everyone is an owner and you have to vote on all decisions?” That’s not how employee ownership works. Management is responsible for running the company. Only a few decisions are voted on by employee shareholders, such as dissolving the company or selling to an acquiring company. As CEO of an ESOP company, I am ultimately responsible for ensuring that we grow profitability and responsibly.

But I also lead differently. Unlike many CEOs who share limited financial information in fear of how my employees might use it, we are an open book company and share real-time financial performance with all employees. Rather than keep people in the dark, I am incredibly transparent and communicate regularly about our leadership teams’ decisions, including explaining why we are making them. Instead of making top-down decisions, we ask for input and ideas, seek feedback from all levels of the organization, and try to give everyone ample authority and autonomy. I believe that if you treat people like adults, they will act like adults.

Is it always pretty? No. Is it easy? Rarely. Do we make mistakes in how and when we communicate? Absolutely. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. Our culture is made up of the collective. Yes, it’s leadership’s responsibility to set the tone, address issues, and lead by example. But each person either adds to or takes away from our culture, and we expect our employees to exhibit our values. Doing so not only creates a dynamic and fun workplace, but it also pays. Successful employees in a successful ESOP company are well rewarded. And this is how you build a culture of ownership. And this is how you build the middle class from the middle out.