“Stars in the sky are not seen during the day, even though they are there. It takes the cover of night to reveal their brilliance. Similarly, during these dark COVID-19 times, there are strengths in you and opportunities around you that are being revealed. Look beyond the pain to find the opportunities. You are made for such a time as this”

Have you wondered why great companies like Amazon, Disney, Google, and HP all started from garages? Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com out of his garage in Bellevue, Washington, in 1994 as an online bookstore. The garage is a metaphor in today's world. Apple was founded out of a rented space and not in a traditional garage.

A garage is a place where innovators can align their thoughts, values, and beliefs. It's a place of discovery, learning, collaboration, and risk-taking without the fear of failure. Innovators are energized in a garage because they have the autonomy to pursue ideas that inspire and give their lives meaning. The garage is the innovator's happy place. It is a place where ideas are transformed into products and services that provide solutions to challenging problems.

Unfortunately, today's disruptive landscape requires leaders to re-evaluate their strategies and respond swiftly to market demands continually. The effect of this is changing roadmaps and project cancellations, which results in talented, creative, and motivated employees feeling frustrated due to the unpredictable nature of their work. With less autonomy, organizations are unintentionally fostering corporate cages — employees are feeling stuck and stifled in the workplace.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened, and a large portion of employees worldwide are now working from home. Is this pandemic an opportunity for innovators to return to their garages and come out with solutions that the world desperately needs to combat the COVID-19 pandemic?

Necessity is the mother of invention. This is why we must borrow from the disruption mindset manual at such a time as this:

#1 Never let a crisis go to waste: on the opposite side of a crisis is an opportunity.

#2 Change with change or be exchanged

#3 Choose your attitude; it's the one thing you can control.

I was watching the news about how one hospital is leveraging the disruptive environment to be creative. They created systems that can work with 4,000 patients at a time from their homes without patients visiting the hospital. This win-win scenario ensures the critically ill get needed help, and the system and doctors don’t get overwhelmed or put their lives at risk. This could have been frowned upon months ago, today, it is a huge win.

In a world searching for answers, this is the perfect opportunity for innovators to step up their game and come up with creative solutions. How do we ramp back to normal when this pandemic ends? COVID-19 has challenged and tested our systems, protocols and our way of working from healthcare to retail to education. With the workforce going remote, what are the security challenges for your company? How about organizational learning systems? COVID-19 has shown that a lot of investment is needed in non-traditional learning systems. It is time to show up and be the solution. The world is depending on your creative genius.

With a remote workforce, leaders must ask themselves how their organizations can foster collaborative mindsets that accelerate innovation. How do you reward or encourage potential innovators in your workplace? What infrastructures or systems can you have in place that create a garage-like environment that accelerates innovation? How do managers and leaders increase and measure productivity in a remote workforce? Is this the time to increase employee autonomy by letting them take a % of their time to work on projects that inspire them?

All is not lost. Smart leaders create innovative cultures by doing the following:

Empower their employees by giving them autonomy.

Create psychological safe environments that ensure accountability.

Understand the superpowers of employees and set them up with people, places, and projects where they can succeed.

Have incubation projects free from the distraction of daily business operations.

Encourage, recognize, and reward innovation.

Innovation can be messy. Creating a balanced environment is key to building and sustaining innovative cultures. According to HBR, innovative cultures require a combination of contradictory behaviors. For example, innovators want autonomy, but discipline is important to get work done.

Ultimately, organizations that foster garage-like cultures in a POST COVID-19 workplace will outperform the competition with innovative products that delight customers. On the opposite side of a crisis, lies an opportunity. How are you fostering garage cultures in your organization today?