Long Live Middle Management! The COVID-19 Response Has Revealed The Leader In Us All

Every CEO I’ve met is different, and each faces a set of challenges that are unique to the company he or she serves. Still, the basic day-in, day-out “deliverables” are always the same: choices and decisions.

Facing a crisis of the magnitude of COVID-19, both the pace and weight of decision-making has multiplied for those of us called on to lead companies and organizations. Fortunately, in the case of Royal Canin, I do not feel alone in this matter: Across our entire company, managers whom we knew to be smart and compassionate are also proving to be steady under enormous pressure — called on to make crucial decisions under fast-changing conditions virtually every day.

When the crisis hit, my first priority was to ensure the health and well-being of our teams, while making sure that our products could continue to reach the end consumers around the world.

So how does a worldwide company that must maintain its output react to an unanticipated event that touches every aspect of its operations? For starters, our global presence provided some extra preparation, as we were able to count on leadership from our teams in Asia to guide us from their experience before the pandemic headed westward. From our French headquarters, for example, we were able to equip some 4,000 computers with VPN access to allow our teams to work from home offices more than a week before government shutdown orders in early March.

Still, once the first set of strategic and security decisions were taken at HQ, what has stood out to me during this crisis is the leadership role of managers at all levels and locations of the company. The experience of COVID-19 defies the recent conventional wisdom in business circles that we are set to witness the “end of middle management.” The autonomy, agility and resilience displayed by our teams in the field have been quite breathtaking. When everything is being turned upside down, and you can’t hit pause, swift and steady decision-making is required on a daily basis from literally hundreds and hundreds of managers.

This applies to production and supply chains, customer relations and communications. How do we rehaul safety procedures in our plants, find new routes to get products to customers, inform our communities about the latest health information, keep our own internal lines of communications flowing? All of these questions present themselves in new and different ways each day, often depending on local conditions — and they all need quick and smart answers.

My job is also being transformed in real-time. With so much day-to-day responsibility in the hands of managers in the field, I do my best to “lead from behind,” to provide priorities and guidelines that allow us to establish a framework and the right working environment that empowers our troops to be able to act decisively and find rapid solutions to all the new challenges that are arising every day.

With so much uncertainty, my other key responsibility as CEO is anticipating and planning, along with my leadership team, to stay one step ahead of the next phase of development of this unique situation. Preparing for the future now also means trying to gauge which of the changes brought on by COVID-19 will stick and which will not. We are trying to learn from and about our customers, our partners, our teams. I am convinced that the immediate reaction to the health crisis will have a lasting impact beyond the current risks of contagion, including a reassessment of travel and an even deeper commitment to the power of information technology, from the use of remote communication to the integration of Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence to improve performance. But this crisis may also lead to whole new business models and approaches to our customers: In our particular sector, for example, we have gotten a glimpse over the past two months of the full potential of home delivery, subscription-based services and veterinary tele-consultation.

I am writing this post from our headquarters, after working much of the previous two months under confinement at my home. Though I was impressed by how our teams adapted to working remotely, it was great to see my colleagues again at the office and enjoy the part of work and life that is always better in person. It reminds me of my first visit after the lockdown began to Dr Julie Bayens — the vet for our seven-year-old Boxer, Coco. Like our teams around the world, Julie too had been forced to quickly change important parts of her practice because of COVID-19, including imposing physical distancing in the waiting room, reorganizing the food order process and the constant cleaning of all surfaces. There is, of course, no handshake hello or goodbye for the time being. But one thing that hasn’t changed, even though it’s mostly covered behind her mask, she greeted Coco and me with a major smile.