What we as leaders should do now

If you missed the opportunity to be one of the early adopters of the wisdom to recognise that a crisis was about to hit us, then it is not too late to still make a difference in your company or community. Remember, the window for making important decisions is never closed. However, keep in mind that such important decisions also have to be the right decisions.

As leaders, the decisions we make during the next few weeks will have a profound and lasting impact on how our organisations survive and emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. No matter how long our economy remains under lockdown, the decisions we make must be based on our need to save our organisations and save our people from a very bleak future.

We commend the governments, healthcare sectors, essential workers around the world as well as ordinary people who have worked tirelessly to slow the outbreak and impact of the COVID-19 virus in their country and their community. To everyone who is playing a vital role in ‘flattening the curve’, their choice is making a real difference to someone - somewhere. 

As leaders with people under our stewardship, it is clear to me that we must take some concrete steps now to lessen the personal and economic fallout from this crisis.

Firstly, we need to make more “people-driven decisions” now and fewer “profit-driven decisions” in our approach to the lockdown and its impact on our organisations. At first, such a statement may sound utterly nonsensical considering how essential profits are. Still, you can be sure that better people-driven decisions now will lead to better profits in the future. Purely profit-decisions now are likely to lead to diminished profits later.

This pandemic is a people-disaster. And disasters have a way of making people remember those who supported them and helped them get through the crisis. Your people will repay you handsomely in many beneficial ways if you choose to empower your people over profits. Very soon, when the lockdown is lifted, no one will continue business as usual. If your people are crippled emotionally and financially, you will have much bigger problems than lack of profits to deal with.

Secondly, a negative impact on our people and us are a given. No one is going to come through this crisis unscathed. No one. We should gear the first few days after lockdown to taking stock of our people and their mental state. Some people may emerge from this crisis relatively unchanged, but it’s a reality that some of your most valuable employees will come through this with some deep emotional scars. Forget old normal. Forego some profits and focus on supporting your people.

People are more resilient than we think, but as leaders, we have to allow them time to adjust to the “new normal” which is very different from what we are used to. If enabled, our people will take responsibility and rebuild themselves and their teams if we allow them to.

Imagine if the virus rebounds later or another crisis hits us, will your people trust you to have their best interest at heart.

Finally, your core team needs to be protected to ensure your organisation’s survival. All our people matter. Each and every job is precious and sustains a family. Every organisation comprises of a core team which is made up of leaders with specialised skills and vast experience. This core team within an organisation is made up of those who know your bread recipe. In other words, I’m talking about those staff members who know how to fix your machines, how to package and ship your product or service and many different critical roles.

And all of this is critical to ensure that your organisation survives to continue feeding the families who make up your community. To survive, you need to make decisions that protect your core team to allow them to do the vital work of restarting your organisational engine. But restarting your corporate engine is only half the battle. To protect our organisations and our people, we’ll need to make sure that our people are healthy enough to keep the corporate engine running.

Without a concrete plan to protect your core team, you may find yourself in real trouble as an organisation. Very soon, it will be vital that your core team can go to work every day to feed their families and help guide us through the tough decisions that are undoubtedly coming our way.

Our people are not commodities, so smart decisions will almost certainly include some collaborations to ensure more companies survive the coming crisis fallout.

In 2017, I took what I considered to be a brave step of preparing for a very tough economic period. As 2020 has shown so far, we have a long way to go until good financial fortune returns. But I am convinced that if we make the right decisions now, informed by our core teams, we will not only survive this crisis but will successfully get our people back to work and our countries healing.

13 April 2020 – Peter Venter

Group CEO, Vinton Holdings