Leading in a warzone: running a company during a conflict

Many busi­ness lead­ers face chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances, but few com­pare with run­ning a com­pa­ny in the mid­dle of a war. When con­flict broke out in Syr­ia in 2011, Louai Al Roumani found him­self in this unen­vi­able posi­tion. 

As head of finance for Banque Bemo Sau­di Fran­si (BBSF) – Syria’s largest pri­vate com­mer­cial bank – Roumani was tasked with lead­ing the com­pa­ny through its most chal­leng­ing peri­od. The hor­rif­ic images from the war in Ukraine bring back mem­o­ries of his expe­ri­ences in Syr­ia.

“The Syr­i­an civ­il war dif­fers from the con­flict in Ukraine because there wasn’t a sin­gle turn­ing point. It was more grad­ual and as things esca­lat­ed, it mor­phed into one of the worst wars in mod­ern times,” he says. 

A warrior and a philosopher

Now liv­ing in Lon­don, Roumani wrote about his expe­ri­ence as CFO of BBSF dur­ing the Syr­i­an con­flict in his 2020 book Lessons from a War­zone. “When you’re work­ing in such a cri­sis you almost need to become both a war­rior and a philoso­pher at the same time,” he says. “You face dai­ly chal­lenges that make things so much hard­er on the ground, which need to be con­stant­ly addressed. There’s very lit­tle lee­way for get­ting things wrong.”

At the out­set of the war, Roumani and his col­leagues won­dered how it would end. They found them­selves imag­in­ing the many dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios that could unfold. “In war and times of cri­sis, it’s very tempt­ing to only think in the near-term and focus on short-term fix­es,” he says. “It’s easy to let the dom­i­nant feel­ing of impend­ing doom take over and make you feel like every­thing’s falling apart, that there’s no way things could become bet­ter.”

This exer­cise proved futile, with the con­flict ongo­ing more than 11 years lat­er. The bank’s lead­ers “decid­ed to take a step back”, he says, becom­ing more sto­ic and ask­ing impor­tant ques­tions. “Whether the war ends tomor­row, or in 10 years, whether the US inter­feres or not, we’re a bank – what do we need to get right?”

By focus­ing on the things they could con­trol, rather than exter­nal fac­tors, BBSF con­tin­ued oper­at­ing despite the cri­sis unfurl­ing out­side. “When we start­ed approach­ing it in this way, it became obvi­ous to us that there were things we had to get right, no mat­ter what, and these were fac­tors that were crit­i­cal to our suc­cess,” Roumani says.

One of the ear­ly barom­e­ters of a cri­sis are queues. In the UK, at the start of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, long lines out­side super­mar­kets were a sure sign that peo­ple were fear­ing the worst. As impend­ing war approached in Syr­ia and Ukraine, peo­ple queued for banks to with­draw their mon­ey. 

This pre­sent­ed a chal­lenge for BBSF. “Most of the oth­er banks lim­it­ed with­drawals. They would tell peo­ple not to with­draw their mon­ey or try to delay the with­draw­al,” Roumani says. “We took a risk and did the exact oppo­site.”

Rather than add to the pan­ic build­ing out­side the banks, BBSF decid­ed to reas­sure peo­ple that it had suf­fi­cient reserves. Ban­knotes were stacked in counter win­dows and peo­ple began shar­ing pho­tos of the piles of mon­ey. “We want­ed to put out the mes­sage that we had good liq­uid­i­ty and we were open for busi­ness,” Roumani explains. “If peo­ple want­ed their mon­ey, they could take it.”

He believes this helped main­tain trust between the bank and its cus­tomers. This was in stark con­trast to the oth­er banks that opt­ed to delay with­drawals, mak­ing their cus­tomers pan­ic even more. “Although we lost some short-term liq­uid­i­ty, over the longer-term peo­ple remem­bered how we act­ed and with­in three months they were bring­ing their deposits back,” Roumani says. “That’s why it’s impor­tant to be a philoso­pher as you have to resist the instinct to address short-term prob­lems and instead think about long-term goals.” 

Shaking the survival instinct

How­ev­er, it’s hard to focus on long-term ambi­tions when con­flict is hap­pen­ing around you. Dur­ing the war, Roumani had to con­tend with mor­tar bombs hit­ting the bank where he was work­ing and threats of kid­nap­ping. Around a quar­ter of the bank’s branch­es were destroyed over the course of the war. 

“You can imag­ine how hor­rif­ic it was to man­age oper­a­tions when ISIS was ram­pag­ing through some of our branch­es,” Roumani says. Even in these sit­u­a­tions, Roumani was reluc­tant to focus on sur­vival. “If sur­vival becomes your only goal, you’re lim­it­ing your­self to not dying. It almost becomes sui­ci­dal – you stop tak­ing risks and the focus is on safe­guard­ing,” he says. “You don’t address a cri­sis by sim­ply tak­ing the easy route: you need to go beyond that.” 

Some peo­ple assume that eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty comes to a halt dur­ing a war and busi­ness­es pull up the shut­ters. Roumani recounts one phone call he had with a Finnish com­pa­ny. “When I men­tioned that I was the CFO of a bank in Syr­ia, he thought I was prank­ing him,” he says.

“Although we lost a quar­ter of our branch­es, it did­n’t destroy the main indus­try dynam­ics that we were oper­at­ing in,” Roumani explains. “Even in war peo­ple con­tin­ue to live.” 

While around 6.8 mil­lion Syr­i­ans left the coun­try as refugees or asy­lum seek­ers, more than 17 mil­lion peo­ple stayed in the coun­try. “Imports con­tin­ued to be made every day and there was still eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty going on, even though it had been high­ly cur­tailed,” Roumani says. “Peo­ple have to move on with their lives, despite the cri­sis. I was the CFO of a bank and we had thou­sands of depos­i­tors, so we need­ed to go to work. I couldn’t just sit at home doing noth­ing.”

Many Ukrain­ian com­pa­nies now find them­selves in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. Despite the Russ­ian inva­sion, these firms are find­ing ways to con­tin­ue work­ing while ensur­ing the safe­ty of their staff. “I’m sure they’re going through the same thoughts that we did,” Roumani says. “With so much large-scale destruc­tion hap­pen­ing around you it becomes very easy for this neg­a­tive nar­ra­tive to dom­i­nate and not allow you to see any oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

How­ev­er, he advis­es busi­ness­es to main­tain a laser focus on their crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors. Stake­hold­er man­age­ment also becomes a vital skill. “In a cri­sis, all of your stake­hold­ers become a lot more demand­ing – share­hold­ers, cus­tomers, gov­ern­ment, reg­u­la­tors, sup­pli­ers,” he says.

Taking action

In these instances, it’s impor­tant to demon­strate your sup­port through actions, rather than words. “Every­one tries to make their peo­ple feel bet­ter by try­ing to pro­vide reas­sur­ances but with­out back­ing them up with actions, peo­ple will stop trust­ing you,” Roumani says, reflect­ing on his own expe­ri­ences.

“There was no way that we could talk about men­tal well­be­ing when so many of people’s basic needs were not being met. Instead we took action by mov­ing peo­ple and their fam­i­lies out of dan­ger zones. Mak­ing sure that we were sat­is­fy­ing these very pri­ma­ry needs was essen­tial, because if we did­n’t do that the rest of our actions would­n’t mat­ter.”

Busi­ness strate­gies must also be flex­i­ble to react to con­stant­ly chang­ing cir­cum­stances. Roumani’s expe­ri­ence at BBSF shows that by focus­ing on long-term suc­cess, remain­ing flex­i­ble and adopt­ing the warrior/philosopher men­tal­i­ty that he describes, it’s pos­si­ble to lead a thriv­ing com­pa­ny in the mid­dle of a war­zone.

“There’s no way you can pre­dict what’s going to hap­pen, even if you have a team of 20 ana­lysts around the table,” Roumani says. “Rather than wast­ing time on fore­sight, embed flex­i­bil­i­ty in almost every­thing that you do. We had no idea which branch would be ram­paged by ISIS or oth­er groups but what we could do is ensure that the branch staff, cus­tomers and assets were safe­guard­ed.”