The challenges of becoming a CEO in a crisis

Lead­ing a busi­ness is chal­leng­ing enough for any chief exec­u­tive (CEO), but tak­ing the reins of an organ­i­sa­tion dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic makes it more dif­fi­cult than most busi­ness chal­lenges. 

“At that lev­el, you’ve already had a sig­nif­i­cant amount of pres­sure on you,” says Jane Walsh, CEO of SEEN Group, a spe­cial­ist beau­ty agency, since Novem­ber 2020. “But you usu­al­ly go into a CEO role want­i­ng to tell the busi­ness how you want to run it. Here, with fur­lough and oth­er things, soci­ety was telling us how to run the busi­ness.”

Stan Pavlovsky, who became CEO of media library Shut­ter­stock in April 2020, agrees. “Imme­di­ate­ly we had to pre­pare for some seis­mic shifts,” he says. “You look at your busi­ness, and trav­el and adver­tis­ing go away just overnight. Every­thing was can­celled, impact­ing our edi­to­r­i­al cov­er­age. Com­pa­nies were scram­bling and reduc­ing their mar­ket­ing bud­gets.” Pavlovsky recog­nised they need­ed to adjust the busi­ness.

Resizing businesses during the pandemic

Shut­ter­stock launched sev­er­al new sub­scrip­tion prod­ucts for small­er busi­ness­es, reflect­ing the shift in adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing needs, and that big-bud­get invest­ments were unlike­ly. Busi­ness­es knew they need­ed to cut their cloth dif­fer­ent­ly and the com­pa­nies serv­ing them recog­nised this too. 

The com­pa­ny also took stock of what sep­a­rat­ed them from com­peti­tors and how they could help busi­ness­es do things they couldn’t oth­er­wise because of restric­tions around the pan­dem­ic. They began refresh­ing how they pre­sent­ed their pre-pack­aged edi­to­r­i­al con­tent, as clients would still need stock footage for adver­tis­ing cam­paigns, but couldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pro­duce it them­selves.

But it wasn’t just their busi­ness offer that com­pa­nies changed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. How they trans­act­ed busi­ness and how they kept their own firms run­ning was also dif­fer­ent. Pavlovsky wor­ried that work­ing from home would be a strain for employ­ees and could neg­a­tive­ly impact the com­pa­ny. He took the deci­sion to proac­tive­ly over-com­mu­ni­cate with employ­ees. “We tried to put peo­ple at ease,” he says. 

Walsh con­curs. “When the pan­dem­ic hit, I felt there was only real­ly one way to nav­i­gate it, which was to com­plete­ly over-com­mu­ni­cate,” she says. Employ­ees, wor­ried for their future, need­ed clear mes­sag­ing: some­thing all CEOs can car­ry for­ward regard­less of glob­al events.

Enacting your vision of the company

It is a com­mon trait for incom­ing CEOs to want to put their imprint on an organ­i­sa­tion when they arrive in the C‑suite. “I’m 33 and have a per­spec­tive that I want to break all the accept­ed wis­dom down,” says Sam Hawkey, who became CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi in June 2020. 

Per­verse­ly, the out­side issues brought by the pan­dem­ic made that job eas­i­er. “Peo­ple talked a lot about how things were chang­ing and this ‘new nor­mal’,” he says. “Because of that, every­one knew stuff had to change. In chaos there’s always oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

Hawkey used the chal­lenges brought about by COVID as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to jus­ti­fy his more rad­i­cal deci­sions for the firm. The com­pa­ny saw a 12 per cent drop in rev­enue in 2020. Nor­mal­ly, that would be a brake on any big deci­sions to rethink the com­pa­ny, but this time it allowed him to accel­er­ate changes.

Oth­ers found the pan­dem­ic more of a chal­lenge to their efforts to recast firms in their image. “My vision for the com­pa­ny was to become much more ingrained in the work­flow of our cus­tomers,” says Pavlovsky. But the first three months of the pan­dem­ic, and the first few months of his time in charge, were instead spent set­tling employ­ees and lis­ten­ing to their con­cerns.

Keeping employee communication open

The shift to dig­i­tal work­ing was eased by Pavlovsky’s expe­ri­ence as chief oper­at­ing offi­cer at Shut­ter­stock and the firm’s glob­al out­look. “Our employ­ees are used to see­ing me on video, even before the pan­dem­ic,” he says. Video calls there­fore aren’t unusu­al. He did, how­ev­er, have to cut back on plans to vis­it every Shut­ter­stock office in the first year of his tenure. “I like to learn from employ­ees face to face,” he says. “That’s been a lot hard­er, for sure.” 

At Saatchi & Saatchi, Hawkey would have expect­ed to see 100 employ­ees a day, say­ing hel­lo and pick­ing up their gen­er­al atti­tudes to work and the busi­ness. “With­out that touch, you lose any sense of how the busi­ness is feel­ing,” he says.

In its place, firms sought much more proac­tive pur­suit of employ­ee feed­back, active­ly court­ing their opin­ions to raise any con­cerns before they became a larg­er issue. “Whether it’s a pan­dem­ic or not, stake­hold­ers in the busi­ness need that any­way,” says SEEN Group’s Walsh. It’s also impor­tant to be hon­est with the work­force about uncer­tain­ty. 

“Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is so crit­i­cal,” says Walsh. “The change which the pan­dem­ic forced is the need to be way more trans­par­ent.” She insti­gat­ed week­ly town hall meet­ings, giv­ing key busi­ness updates. 

It was also impor­tant to set expec­ta­tions around work, some­thing that, as we rebound from the pan­dem­ic into a reces­sion and peo­ple feel more uncer­tain in their jobs as com­pe­ti­tion increas­es, is more impor­tant than ever. 

Through the quest for employ­ee feed­back, Hawkey realised the dan­ger of staff burnout dur­ing lock­down: “They end up work­ing and work­ing.” But he remains opti­mistic. “My mum taught me two things,” he says. “You make your own luck and, if you’re a pos­i­tive per­son, you get 10 to 15 per cent more out of your­self and those around you.”

Walsh con­cludes: “Right now it’s about sur­vival and team pro­tec­tion.”