Pamela Hackett - Manage to Engage: How Great Managers Create Remarkable Results

1. Chapter 4

PAMELLA HAKETT

PROUDFOOT CEO

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Erika gave strength. Ron gave curiosity. Both gave their time.

You can be anything you want. But if you are going to be something, be brilliant at it, and do it with gusto. Showing up gets you started. Stepping up gets you across the finish line.

Capt. Ron Hackett, B.E.M. British & Australian Armed Forces, Military Police

The COVID-19 pandemic thrust the world into navigating the largest work from home experiment of modern times. Realistically, it is the largest work disruption of any time since Henry Ford designed his first production line. There is no denying that the COVID-19 virus is a large-scale human heartache, a health care crisis, and an economic tragedy. It raged across the globe, spreading sickness, death, and displacement. The double whammy impact on lives and livelihood hit many. The millions unemployed created a new reality overnight, and many of those jobs will not be coming back. Whole industries will have been destroyed, disrupted, or dislocated. Still others changed at speeds never seen before. Some have and will prosper. Perhaps not the masses.

While the threat of automation replacing jobs was the focus of much anxiety over the past decade or so, it proved to be a disease that did the most damage, most rapidly. We all saw how quickly the economy halted, the health care system faltered, people were furloughed or, worse, simply laid off as businesses shuttered closed. The world suffered a global crisis and responded with a country-by country, industry-by-industry, company-by-company, plan. The word remote punctuated management conversations, websites, podcasts, and blogs the world over. As the crisis unfolded, discussions ranged from How do we cope? and How do we cut costs? to How do you lead? and How do you lead remotely?

As the COVID-19 pandemic continued to unfold, a new reality set in and it became more difficult to predict an end. Financial modeling became increasingly difficult and cash preservation developed into the daily norm. The words no spend policy became commonplace for many firms.

Many discussions also addressed the issue of change. We have changed more in a few weeks than in 10 years, said Tesco CEO Dave Lewis as supermarkets needed to step up into essential services. Others said they'd seen 6 years of change in 6 months. Larry Rosen, CEO of Harry Rosen Inc., the Canadian luxury men's clothier, flatly admitted, We took a whole bunch of guys like me I'm 64 and they learned how to shop online during this crisis.

The rate of change accelerated by this virus had a fundamental impact on many workplaces and it provided a crisis playbook to better engage organizations, one we must learn from and carry over to postpandemic times.

As CEO of Proudfoot, a management consulting company founded in 1946, I too felt the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We had spent our history proud of our boots on the ground business model, our people shoulder to shoulder with clients, working through their improvement programs and major transformations to realize large-scale results, coaching new behaviors and implementing new processes and systems, not just advising from a distance. We told our clients, If you go underground we go underground, if your business has a night shift we work night shift. Well, that all stopped when the pandemic hit. Some assignments were paused as people zoomed their way home. We quickly switched to remote work. Where remote was not an option, our revenues paused. Suddenly, our competitive advantage nearly killed us. My goal was to save as many jobs as possible and maintain the business continuity where that was a possibility. We continued with projects that allowed it and were safe for our teams. We helped our clients navigate through with COVID-19 response planning, sometimes for free, because that was the right thing to do, and other times deferring their payments to the next year, to prevent them from deferring their improvement and transformation programs when they needed it most.

I was also conscious of the health and well-being of my people. Having been one of the early COVID-19 victims in February after three trips to New York as well as France and the UK, I knew what the virus could do. While I was lucky (its impact stopped at what I compared to a very bad flu bug turn into pneumonia), I recall getting out of bed three nights in a row wondering if I would be able to continue breathing. It was early in the pandemic. I didn't realize I could die. Later, the experience allowed me to understand its potential, and therefore I treated it with great respect. This disease was a killer for some, but it was not so bad for me. I was sick but lucky.