The global pandemic brought us disruption, heightened anxiety and a permeating uncertainty no one saw coming. However, there have been silver linings: new ways of working, more time with family, and a true pause to reflect how we do business in this brave new digital world.

The pandemic also ushered in something unexpected: the ability to connect on a more human level. It created space for empathy for one another and our range of challenging circumstances. Every day we meet with colleagues and clients over video conferencing and gain a window into their world. We see their kids’ artwork on the walls, we see those kids climbing on their lap, peering curiously at strangers on the screen. We see their homes and lives. We see people struggling and juggling competing demands — personal and professional. We see their complete lives close-up.

Related: Why Selena Gomez Is Cofounding a Mental Health Media Company With Her Mom Mandy Teefey and Newsletter Whiz Daniella Pierson

It represents one of the great ironies of the business-to-business (B2B) world. It’s easy to forget no matter how big the companies you are marketing to, no matter how many billions or trillions their market cap is worth, no matter how many offices and employees they have — you’re still marketing and selling to individuals. People. In a world full of automation, with unprecedented amounts of data and intel, it’s tempting to rely on predictive insights to generate pipeline and revenue. That’s the incomplete approach. People are uncertain, nervous, and a better path forward is to invest and build your relationships during these nerve-racking times.

The B2B companies that thrived throughout this pandemic are those that prioritized relationships over their revenue and became trusted confidants during this crisis. Even with the pandemic end in sight, we can’t go back to a mindset solely focused on revenue.

1. (Actually) Listen. Hear how the people you care about have been impacted.

We should always be working to understand our customers and their problems. It’s even more important during difficult days. But don’t stop at professional points. Ask yourself: does my customer have a family? If so, how is working freedom at home impacting them? As some companies debate whether to return to the office and the old way of working, many workers are concerned. Truly put yourselves in their shoes and try to understand their daily concerns.

Related: How the Keto Diet Can Feed Entrepreneurship and Creativity

Then take it a step further: call them unexpectedly to discuss how the current state of things is impacting them. Listen and create space for them. Make it your mission to fully understand the issues they’re facing and how they’re tackling them. Share the challenges you’ve faced, too. Vulnerability can strengthen a relationship and build an authentic connection. You’ll come out of these meetings with a better perspective, your customer will feel heard, and your relationship will deepen.

2. Define success differently

Though we’ve come a long way since April 2020, and it appears much of the economy is out of the woods of the pandemic. But there is still uncertainty caused by the delta variant, and we could be in for a second, long Covid winter. That can put the brakes on the recovery.

The knee-jerk reaction to a downturn is to crank up sales and try to sell more as some customers churn or potential buyers lose interest. But if a new variant causes another dip, then that is not the time to be an aggressive salesperson. It’s an opportunity to become a customer confidant and understand what success is for the individual. Ask yourself: what does your customer want to achieve in their career, short and long term? How can I help them achieve those goals? Orient your objectives and center on how your customer achieves their goals, rather than focusing on your internal relationship metrics.

We all have Marketing Qualified Leads, sales quotas, and KPIs to meet. But the leaders who can prioritize how their customers become successful over those hard metrics are going to become long-term, trusted advisors that customers can rely on.

Think about simple metrics you can include in your KPIs, such as how many of your customers achieved their goal because of you (personal or professional). Here’s a great example: One of my colleagues, after speaking with a customer who was struggling to find daycare in a new town, spent a few hours researching and assembling options and sent them to the client. That’s the right thing to do. But it’s also the kind of meaningful action that can build brand loyalty and set companies up for long-term success.

Talk to your team about new metrics for qualitative engagement and interaction with customers — and make sure you’re all accountable for these new relationship-based KPIs.

3. Foster a culture of empathetic leadership

So many lines have been blurred during the pandemic. It’s hard to separate the personal from the professional. Work used to be a place where we only presented one side of ourselves, but that is no longer the case after the pandemic. The best leaders are learning more about their employees and their needs; they’re creating a culture based on empathy. Just as you do with customers, schedule time with your colleagues to understand how they’ve been impacted personally and professionally. Ask how you can make their lives easier and help them feel more supported. Ask what problems are the most concerning for them right now. Personally take action to help address them.

Employees who feel heard and who receive gratitude from their boss are more likely to be productive and produce higher-quality work. They’ll also be more receptive and empathetic to your customers, which is good for your company and your business. In fact, Harvard Business Review reported that the top 10 companies in the Global Empathy Index increased in value more than twice as much as the bottom 10 — while generating 50% more earnings. It’s up to leaders to adopt a relationship-centric approach, stop paying it lip service and elevate our empathy during uncertain times. It will help your business not only do good, but be good.

That’s a win-win we can all get behind.

No one wants to work. Or at least that’s what appears to be the case. On the heels of The Great Resignation, we have an uptick in interest in concepts introduced in the 2009 Jim Ferris book The 4-Hour Workweek. A workplace survey conducted by Eagle Hill Consulting found that 83% of employees favor a shortened workweek. In July 2021, a state representative from California proposed legislation that would reduce the standard workweek from 40 to 32 hours. The assumption is that people can work fewer hours and get the same amount done, but is that really true?

How long does it really take to innovate?

Malcolm Gladwell proposed a widely adopted standard for subject mastery, which sits at 10,000 hours. Most people believe it takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. For the average professional working 40 hours a week for 48 weeks a year, this means that mastery is achieved after about five years. It stands to reason that the more complex a field is, the longer it could take to get to an “expert” level.

Based on these estimates, if people work in a field 30 hours a week, it takes closer to seven years to become a master. Shrink that further, and the timeline expands.

Myth: Technology means I can work less

The big addendum most people are using to justify doing less with the same results is technology. But any artificial intelligence (AI) or automation expert will be clear: Tech is meant to replace manual tasks, so that people can do complex tasks, not so that they can do nothing at all.

How long does it take to ideate and implement?

Humanity has progressed rapidly in the last 100 years, largely due to innovations in infrastructure (buildings, highways), technology (the internet, computers, now machine learning and AI), and manufacturing (machines, automations and new inventions). Novel medicines like vaccines have eradicated illnesses that reduced lifespans, making it possible to live longer and work harder. The cost of developing these catalyzing factors for humanity is greater than 30 hours a week, and there is proof to back that claim.

What are the work habits of high performers?

We’re all familiar with the work ethic of modern high performers: Elon Musk works 80-100 hours a week; Tim Cook wakes up at 3:45 a.m.; Bill Gates worked 14-16 hours a day; the best athletes in the world train for several hours a day; and the most esteemed artists and creatives work for weeks on end to complete projects. Lest this list only address current trends, Albert Einstein worked 10 hours a day, six days a week; Winston Churchill’s dictum was “action this day,” and he was famous for working morning until night; and Robert Moses, the “master builder” of the 20th century, was an idealist with an indefatigable work ethic.

The culture conundrum

We, as a culture, want to think that we are too busy and don’t rest enough. The general impression persists that “balanced” cultures take more time off than U.S.-based professionals. But what’s at stake with this steady decline in work hours?

Great achievements simply take time. Time is the untradeable commodity of innovation. An argument could be made that the one thing that could take a culture of our size and development into a dark age is if people simply … stop working.

If, as was posited earlier, mastery takes 10,000 hours, and people are willing to work less and less, the length of time it takes to reach mastery in an individual career is lengthened. If the average duration of a career is around 35 years, and it takes someone 10 (rather than five) years to reach a state of mastery, what can be accomplished in the course of that career (especially during peak performance years) is decreased. The net loss of progress among millions of individuals would be substantial, even devastating, to the state of humanity.

The biggest problem

The pendulum swing of culture has taken people from reveling in personal accomplishments to reveling in personhood, full stop. In other words, “I am more than what I achieve.” This is a fundamentally sound principle, but it is not the full picture, especially operating in a world of cause and effect. Our collective contributions are what push forward great ideas and revolutionary inventions. If a large number of individuals “opt out” of performing to their highest capacity, humanity will pay the price. We should care that this is the case because, unpopular though the idea may be, the world doesn’t revolve around any single person. It takes all of us, laboring toward excellence, to build a brighter future.

Work is not a four-letter word

As humans regularly take stock of what makes us happy, “work” has been villainized. Work is the reason we have no balance in life; work is the reason we don’t get to do what we enjoy; work is the reason we are tired and stressed. There is an inaccuracy here. It is not, in fact, work itself that we detest: It is the workplace. The workplace demands too much and gives too little.

Work itself is actually deeply fulfilling, and something that humans do every day, voluntarily, and with great joy. Rather than working less, people need to consider what work they are doing, and whether it is fulfilling. Competition drives innovation. Dedication and a strong work ethic are valuable traits that shouldn’t be underestimated, especially when it comes to achievements that  ensure the long-term wellbeing of every other individual on the planet. Some people will “opt out.” Some people will live for the weekend and early retirement. But others, the ones with a real vision for creating something meaningful and leaving a legacy, will work hard … and not resent the labor that leads to greatness.

Business requires balance. For example, a healthy work schedule requires a dynamic relationship between the amount of time spent on cost-saving and revenue-boosting initiatives, and leaders are often guilty of overemphasizing one or the other. As the saying goes, you can’t shrink your way to prosperity, yet a fixation on chasing growth can also be unprofitable. The role of senior leadership is to make sure that these efforts are in proportion.

Another vital balance to achieve is between empowerment and accountability. In my more than 40 years of leading businesses, I’ve learned that employee empowerment can be a powerful tool for companies seeking to improve efficiency, innovation and employee retention, but have also learned how disastrous it can be when empowerment is not balanced with accountability.

The essence of empowerment

At its core, empowerment is about giving employees control over how they carry out their roles. Picture Henry Ford’s employees standing at their posts on the Dearborn assembly lines of the late 1920s. Company success depended on each doing one thing in a precise way at a precise time, with little to no room for creativity or innovation. While most businesses do not require that level of control, it’s not uncommon to require employees to complete processes that have been developed exclusively by their managers. When that’s the culture, feedback is usually not welcomed and innovation not expected — not an environment of empowerment.

But when companies empower employees — give them some control over how assignments are accomplished — there’s suddenly a fresh voice in refining systems and optimizing outcomes, and the focus of management moves from overseeing tasks to defining goals and staying focused on results. These techniques, which are often used in software development and manufacturing, allow for project requirements and solutions to evolve based on feedback from team members. In such an agile environment, management makes sure that teams have the resources they need to move things forward, stepping in only when they encounter an impasse.

Related: The Theory of Natural Selection at Work

Required steps

In the course of a busines shifting to a more employee-empowered structure, communication is critical, including leaders sharing with employees ample information about the goals they are pursuing, as well as expecting that employees will share more feedback and solicit more advice. This requires a higher level of transparency from leaders than they might be accustomed to, but it will help give them additional awareness of how projects are proceeding. Other transparency steps include clarification of roles, delegating based on strengths, establishing systems for feedback and publicly recognizing the efforts and accomplishments of employees.

When empowerment goes wrong

I’ve long championed the empowering of work teams, believing that giving people responsibility and accountability simply makes a business better. Most teams can run with it, and appreciate the trust you put in them. At Tenneco Automotive, Inc., where I served as chairman and CEO from March, 1999 to July, 2006, our manufacturing plants utilized a concept of employee empowerment called “self-directed work teams” — their goal to eliminate supervisors and management and allow employees to manage themselves.

Related: Why Servant Leadership is Becoming the Leadership Style of the Future

Excited by the concept. I took a plant that produced exhaust systems for Ford in Smithville, Tennessee, and trained its employees to be self-directed. We spent money with outside consultants in ramping it up, and the entire process took about two and a half months to get everyone trained and systems working. Upon going live with it, we felt pretty confident that we’d done everything by the book and had prepared everyone for success… but we were wrong. Within three months, major issues surfaced that resulted in us losing our “Q1 Flag”, which is issued to suppliers who have reached or surpassed the product quality standards established by Ford.

Frankly, the idea turned out to be a disaster. Our quality rating was in the garbage, and it took eight months to get it back. While I came to regret the decision, I made sure not to miss the valuable lessons it provided. Overall, I found that being self-directed isn’t for everyone; if employees simply don’t want to be, or haven’t spent significant time training to be self-directed, success won’t be easy. Such a program, I also found, requires additional supervision by management, but the bottom line was, even with training, our expectations were too high and our accountability too low.

Balancing with accountability

As I learned the hard way through those experience, empowerment must be balanced with accountability; as employees are given more power to control how they work, they need to be given more responsibility for the output. Looking to Henry Ford’s era one again: When a Model A had problems, it was most likely the fault of the system rather than a result of an employee decision. That’s why such structures are so popular in business: When problems surface, they’re easier to fix when everything is system managed. But in a culture that values empowerment, leaders take on the role of mentors, as opposed to managers — they help employees assess how their efforts are moving the company toward its goals, which in turn advances self-directedness and self-assessment skills.

Related: If You Are Choosing Between Culture and Strategy, You’re Choosing Wrong.

As it is with empowerment, communication is the key to accountability. When goals are clearly articulated and feedback regularly provided, it’s easier to gauge if employees have the understanding and resources that they need to hit their goals. Ongoing, open communication also makes it easier to talk about efforts that fail to accomplish them.

Another key skill for leaders as they strive to balance empowerment and accountability is choosing when to respond to problems with attention alone, rather than with solutions. It’s not wise to simply ignore a problem, certainly, but if you are committed to building a culture of empowerment, you can’t solve every issue. Listen to your employee as they share a problem, then help them to think through their own solutions, making certain they have the resources needed. Then hold them accountable for implementing the plan.

Empowerment balanced with accountability can help just about every manager, but it is especially important for entrepreneurs. Don’t tether the success of your enterprise to the insight and innovation you alone bring; employee empowerment may initially feel like losing control, but when balanced with accountability, it will help build a company that benefits from truly collective strengths and passions.

The events of the past two years, however, radically changed that view for many. For both major corporations and smaller startups, innovation became a lifeline, helping them stay relevant to consumers in a time when the traditional way of doing things went out the window. In 2020, the businesses that looked to the future didn’t just survive but flourished.

Related: Innovation Is the Key To Survival In the #NewNormal

In addition to the increased success of tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft, smaller, forward-thinking companies also made a name for themselves. Fitness startup Tonal, for example, used smart tech to create a better home gym that could adapt to individual needs on the go. Along with Peloton’s remote fitness instructors, Tonal’s virtual coach was perfectly positioned to become the next big thing in fitness, thanks to its innovative approach.

It wasn’t just fitness and tech that saw an increase in the importance of innovation. According to the 2021 American Innovation Index, innovation increased by five points across 20 industries last year and has continued to rise in 2021, indicating that this is not simply a temporary bump but a lasting change in how innovation is approached.

How to make innovation an integral part of your organization

Going forward, startups and established businesses that want to generate long-term success will have to take innovation out of the ivory tower and into the nitty-gritty of the everyday. Here are four ways to begin doing just that:

1. Be proactive, not reactive

Innovation doesn’t mean iterating on the same old thing or responding to a competitor’s new product with a slightly better version of it. It means pursuing something completely different that consumers don’t realize they want until it’s out in the world. Innovation values bravery and boldness, requiring you to be 10 steps ahead rather than just reacting to what’s already there.

Related: The 7 habits you must practice if you want to be highly effective

If this sounds like a tall order, that’s because it is. For a company to take a more proactive stance, it has to change the way people think throughout the entire organization. Innovation doesn’t work if it’s only within the purview of the few; it needs to be embedded in the culture.

An effective way to move innovation into a company’s mainstream is to make it a part of the daily routine. To take innovation into the realm of the extraordinary, you need to make it feel more ordinary for your team. This is what will allow your business to keep its fingers on the pulse of what consumers want next.

If you need an example of what innovation culture looks like, check out KalpTree Energy’s approach. The energy startup’s leaders populated the company with ambitious employees who understand the value of failure when it comes to innovation. The company also instituted an approach to product development that prioritizes collaboration and persistence, recognizing the need to encourage regular, open communication and determination even (or especially) when faced with failure.

2. Expand your definition of competition

Your traditional peers are no longer your only competition. You need to look at competitors in front of you, behind you, and around you. If you’re in the pharmaceutical industry, for instance, it’s not enough to look at Pfizer and Merck. You also need to look at competitors moving into healthcare, specifically tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.

As more industries move to digital, it will also be important to keep up with disrupters and influencers — not only in your industry, but also in adjacent extreme areas. As digital continues to break down barriers, your particular sector could quickly become fair game for anyone with the vision and knack for innovation.

3. Get closer to your customers

To be a leader in innovation, you need to be more like Kim Kardashian. That might sound odd, but take a moment to consider it: with more than 259 million followers on Instagram alone, the ubiquitous Skims shapewear founder has a direct line to her customers and brand advocates. Apart from this being a clear sales pipeline, that close connection allows her to quickly tap into what her audience wants and helps her develop new products she knows will be a hit.

Related: How Do You Get Your Customers to Advocate for You?

While any other brand isn’t likely to get millions of Instagram followers and its own TV show, it’s that type of close relationship that you should strive for, using first-party customer data and analytics. By tracking the customer journey and taking advantage of the latest technology (such as AI and big data), you can go beyond creating products that your audience needs right now and start pursuing what your customers are wishing for.

4. Embrace the minimum viable product

Successful innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. To create a new product that captures the imagination of consumers, you need to make those consumers an active part of the process. That means finding a way to put a product out into the world early. That way, you can get a temperature check on it before you invest too much time and energy into what might turn out to be a dead end.

This is where an MVP comes in. When Dropbox CEO Drew Houston wanted to make sure that his vision for a cloud-storage solution was a product that people would actually want, he decided first to create a video. This video showed off the major features of what his final product would look like and was geared specifically to catch the attention of early adopters. It generated a lot of interest and led thousands of people to sign up as potential beta testers. This was how the company knew it had a hit on its hands.

Create something that shows off the core features of your vision to clients, potential customers, or to the world at large. Listen to consumer feedback, iterate on what you hear and don’t hesitate to pivot or go back to the drawing board if necessary.

The past two years have shown just how necessary innovation is both for consumers and businesses. If you want to ensure that your business will continue to grow long into the future, then it’s crucial to make innovation a core part of it going forward.