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LEADERSHIPHow to Lead

Strong leadership for uncertain times
Business leaders’ insights on the unprecedented challenges caused by thecoronavirus pandemic
Vas Narasimhan,
CEO of Novartis

You have to lead yourself
first to lead yourorganisation well in a crisis.
You have to focus on yourwellbeing and mindset. You
have to keep perspective,
sleep well, maintain healthy
habits, and seek diverse
sources of knowledge. And
you have to take the longview.
You also have to create
clarity for your teamsand trust them without
micromanaging. ForNovartis, this fits with our“unbossed” culture — built
on purpose-driven andempowered people.
Last, you have to findsources of optimism andcompassion — and we see
many around the worldright now. I believe humanresilience and science-based
action rise to the occasion
when humanity is most inneed. The global response
is in full swing and we will
get past this pandemic andevery pandemic to come.

Grant Reid,
CEO of MarsThis is a situation unlike
any we’ve seen before,
so there’s no playbook
to follow. It’s times likethese when we really rely
on our five principles(quality, responsibility,efficiency, mutuality
and freedom), because
they ground our decision
making in empathy andcreate stability and hope intumultuous times.
Right now, the needsof our 125,000 Marsassociates are frontand centre of ourconsiderations. That
includes adopting policies
to protect their health,providing extra flexibility

to manage quarantine
situations, and dealing
with the anxiety andimpact created by thepandemic.
Despite all thisdisruption, we’re working
with our partners tocontinue delivering Mars
products and veterinary
services to people andpets the world over whodepend upon them.
We certainly don’t
have all the answers,
but we are continuing tocommunicate frequently
and with transparency
as things evolve. The
most important thing wecan all do right now is toremain calm, do our partto prevent the virus fromspreading, and take careof each other.

Julie Sweet,
CEO of Accenture

I think there are three
things that are really
important: the first istransparency and that’strue with clients and withour people. It’s OK to say“I don’t know” but you
need to be transparent.
Transparency builds trustand it’s critical in a crisis.
The second is what I callcalm and compassionate.
My job as a leader is not
to put more stress intoa system that is alreadystressed.
The third piece, which
has never been more
important, is staying
very close to clients andemployees, that there’s somuch fear and anxiety andconcern if your only focus
is what you’re reading andhearing you’re often
missing what’s happening
on the ground. If you don’t
stay very close to clients© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LIMITED 2020and employees you’regoing to make the wrong
decisions. How I’m leading
right now is I’m focusedvery hard on transparency,
staying calm andcompassionate and staying
very close to our clientsand employees.

Alex Liu, managing
partner at Kearney

I think the urgency
and immediacy ofcommunications globallyand to all walks of our firm
is obvious. Because we’rea services business weshould not make unilateraldecisions just based on what
we would like to do.
Also we have tounderstand the obligations
we have to the communities
and to clients who arejust as unsettled as weare. It’s an emergency, it’sunplanned. There are acouple of principles you
have to lean back on. It’sa moment of truth and all
moments of truth determine
how you look at yourself. It
is an opportunity to build
trust, which is lacking ininstitutions these days.
All leaders have tocommunicate based on
authentic communications
with all the stakeholders.
You have to be realistic,
understand people’s anxiety,but also be a bit forward
looking.

David Winter andDavid Millstone,
Co-CEOs of Standard
Industries
There is little precedent
for a crisis of this scale andmagnitude, and yet we still
have to make decisions on
a minute-by-minute basis
to keep our people safe

while at the same timeensuring the businesses arefunctioning and moving
forward. Those decisions
often involve difficult tradeoffs.
All of this happens
against a backdrop ofwell-meant but sometimes
contradictory and quickly
evolving government
decisions that we have toreact to.
To cut through the noise,
we’ve assembled a groupof outside experts fromthe business, government
and medical communities
to provide us with themost reliable information
available in real time.
Ultimately, the scale ofthe problem is too big for
any one company, andgovernments will have tostep in to manage the crisisand support the economy.
But for now, we’ve had to
acknowledge that the oldplaybooks don’t apply andwe simply have to trust ourinstincts.

Some work is better than nowork.

Richard Gelfond,CEO of Imax

I think [the priority]
is being completelytransparent from the very
beginning; saying what you
know and what you don’tknow; and, as it unfolds,
being agile.
Even though the news has
not been generally whatpeople want to hear I thinkthey respect the fact thatthey tell it to you honestly.

Will Butler Adams,
managing director of
Brompton Bicycles

Julian Richer, founderof Richer Sounds

Warren Kanders, CEOof Safariland

You need to keep a positive
attitude. On the otherhand, a point we want to
get across to everybody
is that the world doesn’tstop and what we do isimportant, and [demand]
will come back and we needto be there to support ourcustomers and the folks
who depend on us. And thenwe need to be thankful wehave a very strong business.
We have contingency
plans. If revenues fall weknow what we need to
do in order to manage
through the business. We
can balance people. One ofthe possibilities is you work
half a day, I work half a day.

because it is those stories
that will help inspire others
to do the same as we workthrough this.
And then, lastly, andmaybe most importantly,
transparency will be thename of the game.

Communication isabsolutely key, but you haveto be honest . . . We have
tried to get the bad news
out fast; first, admitting
mistakes so that you canlearn from them.
It is also important not
to overpromise. You don’tknow what will happen.
I can say I will do theright thing in the rightcircumstances. For example,
we are paying three times
statutory sick pay, not just
if you have got coronavirus
but if you need to be athome because you haveunderlying health problems.

Tim Ryan, chair of
PwC USAs leaders . . . it isimportant for executives
to be calm. It is importantfor executives to focus onsome of the positive andheartwarming stories thatare happening out there,
the stories where people
are rallying together, wherepeople are taking care of
one another, where people
are adapting to new ways ofworking and doing amazing
things in their communities,

When things get difficult,
you need to slow everybody
down. You need to remind
everybody to batten down
the hatches but not tooverreact because you may
need to survive the next
three to six months but
you also want to remain in
business longer term.
We have a weekly meeting
to approve all recruitment
and capital expenditure. We
have not put this spending
on hold, we have just said
that everything needs to beapproved. We are investing
in tooling and some staff.
About 80 per cent of
recruitment has been put on
hold but not 100 per cent.
We are in a very good cash
position but we are looking
to secure an overdraft. We
don’t think we need it but
we better have it available.
We have got a problem,
however, if we cannot ship
bikes. This is a problem
with the supply chain butthe show must go on as best
you can and the difference
between running at 70 per
cent capacity and 80 per
cent capacity is quite big.
You have got to go back tobeing entrepreneurial andchanging the way you work.
Reporting by Andrew
Edgecliffe-Johnson, Sarah
Neville and Jonathan Moule