Nearly one year into the largest remote-working experiment in history, it’s become clear that we can be productive from anywhere. As employees continue to work from anywhere, another key area of experimentation – and one that companies need to continue to perfect – is fostering creativity and innovation within the distributed workforce.

At the onset of COVID-19, Stanford economist Nicolas Bloom wrote that in-person collaboration is necessary for creativity and innovation. Ten months later, technology companies have proven that the jury may still be out on that one, bringing new solutions to market in record time to solve some of the most pressing issues arising from the pandemic.

We’ve seen companies spin up entirely new practices and solutions to combat the effects of COVID-19 on the way we have traditionally worked. Organizations have deployed new tools to help with everything from collaboration and emergency response to workplace efficiency and safety and, most recently, vaccine management.

Even once we begin to bring employees back into the office, we’ll never go back to the way we once worked. Recently, my company conducted a survey that showed that 87% of employees have embraced the new ways of working. Major technology firms have already extended work-from-home policies deep into 2021, with others extending indefinitely.

As the world begins to adapt to a post-pandemic landscape, it’s essential for companies to reexamine their work technology and processes to ensure that they can sustain, and even accelerate innovation and rapid experimentation.

Throughout the pandemic, my team has had to force-multiply our innovation cycle to keep pace with customers’ evolving needs in a constantly changing environment. This has meant tossing aside so-called “conventional” wisdom on fostering creativity.

In that spirit, here are my top takeaways for enterprises to continue to accelerate innovation long-term within a new normal of work.

It’s OK to have too many attendees in meetings

This may sound counterintuitive, but the shift to remote work has been a great equalizer when it comes to access to information. As we all know, initiatives are cross-functional, involving many stakeholders across the organization. In-person meetings had inherent limitations in terms of size and scope, resulting in longer time for information and feedback to reach different parts of an extended project team, often relying on ad-hoc water cooler talk. In contrast, virtual meetings, when structured, create opportunities for people at every level to join calls to get aligned and to provide input.

For example, we implemented weekly 50-person-plus “Mega Standups” to bring together cross-functional teams quickly to identify and solve problems and make sure that everyone was marching toward the same goal. These meetings served as great vehicle to communicate broadly, publicly express gratitude and, we hope, inspire teams to bring their best despite the challenges they may be facing outside work.

Though it may feel like overkill to have regular meetings of 50 to 60 people, it can help teams get started on projects at a rapid pace and change course quickly as needed. By using these large-scale meetings, you can align with multiple teams and functions in one fell swoop. Furthermore, these discussions stoke innovation by democratizing information. Everyone has an equal seat at the table.

Having said that, meeting fatigue is real and something organizations cannot ignore. So once you’ve set a goal and created the required alignment, you can start limiting and prioritizing attendance based on the expertise needed. With each meeting you can get closer to resolving the issue at hand and identify the people who truly need be in the room – or the Zoom for that matter.

In the new distributed workforce where employees will rarely be in the office all at the same time, the “Mega Standup” could become a very potent instrument to drive velocity and alignment.

Take more risks, at a smaller scale

The pandemic forced organizations to move quickly and take more risks to meet employees’ and customers’ evolving needs. That same mindset of agility must continue as we move past COVID-19 in the world of distributed work.

Enterprises should use tightened release cycles as an opportunity for rapid experimentation –albeit at a smaller scale and cost to offset risk — while sourcing and implementing customer feedback in real-time. Condensing your product development cycle means no single update is burning through time and money languishing in reviews. There is no time for delays when the start and end date are only a few weeks apart.

Likewise, companies can push the envelope without the fear of long-term impact. If an update isn’t exactly right initially, the team is already working to make improvements for the next release. This empowers teams to keep innovating on behalf of the customer and executing on what will truly move the needle.

It may take a few cycles to get into a rhythm of accelerated, bite-sized development, but once companies can find a process and timeline that works for them, they can start reaping the benefits of faster, more impactful innovation.

Prioritize the problem in front of you

Pre-COVID, organizations executed against large-scale, multiyear roadmaps. Post-COVID companies will continue to innovate quickly.

New customer problems can arise each day and organizations must be ready to re-prioritize, pivot and tackle them just as fast. Companies have learned that what used to take months can be done in weeks to ensure that customers’ needs of today are met. This mindset pushes companies to develop customer empathy like never before and to innovate based on the world around them.

As the business world shifted to near-universal remote work that seemed impossible before, it unleashed a new period of experimentation and innovation at work. Sustaining this momentum long-term within a new era of distributed work will require a permanent shift in mindset and approach – embracing cross-functional collaboration, creating bolder, bite-sized innovation and seeing around corners to emerging issues.

Deepak Bharadwaj is vice president and general manager of Workplace at ServiceNow Inc. He’s responsible for ServiceNow’s Legal Service Delivery, Workplace Service Delivery and Safe Workplace product lines. He wrote this for SiliconANGLE.

Photo: Cory Hancock/International Monetary Fund/Flickr