Episode 3: Balancing priorities during a crisis

Emerge stronger through disruption podcast Podcast, PwC United States September 2020

Leading a business means balancing priorities, particularly when crisis strikes. While it's critical to stabilise and keep the lights on, it’s equally important to look ahead and devise a plan for the future.

In this episode, host Kristin Rivera and PwC's Former Global Markets Leader Richard Oldfield discuss how PwC has balanced both short-term and long-term strategies during the COVID-19 response, the importance of empathy from every leader in an organisation, and how the crisis is redefining the concept of work-life balance.

Release date: September 2020

Full transcript

Kristin Rivera: Welcome to our podcast series, Emerge stronger through disruption. I'm Kristin Rivera, leader of PwC’s global forensics practice, as well as our Global Crisis Centre. And I'm coming to you from my home office just outside San Francisco, California. In each episode of this series we’ll talk to one of our global colleagues about the challenges facing business leaders during crisis.

Today's conversation is centered around balancing priorities in crisis. And I'm joined again by Richard Oldfield. Richard, tell me a bit about your role at PwC and how you've been involved in responding to COVID-19.

Richard Oldfield: Thanks, Kristin. And thanks for having me again. I'm the global markets leader for PwC and whilst you are based in sunny California, I am here in London.

I'm responsible for leading PwC’s market-facing activities across our network, so that's everything that touches our clients. Over the last few months, I've been working with a small number of our global colleagues and the leadership teams in all the countries we operate in to manage the response to the pandemic.

Kristin: Well, thanks for joining me, Richard. Running a business is all about balancing priorities, and this is never more apparent than when managing a crisis. When crisis strikes, it's a juggling act of responding to the disruptive event, continuing to manage the day-to-day, and also trying to look ahead at what might be coming down the road in the future.

For many, managing through the pandemic was a matter of simply keeping the lights on, but at the same time, you have to be forward-looking and be strategic about what could be coming next. So I'm curious, Richard, how PwC balanced both the short-term efforts of managing through the pandemic, as well as that long-term outlook of thinking ahead.

Richard: Well, I think you explained it really well. Right at the beginning, in the first couple of weeks, Kristin, we were just managing through day-to-day. But we quickly realized that we needed to split the leadership team into three groups. So we had the first group, which was exclusively devoted to managing that pandemic response — dealing with our people, dealing with our client issues, and making sure that we are operationally resilient.

We had a second group that was focused on the other things that were happening in the market that we equally needed to respond to. And it's funny, as I'm sitting here, we forget that in the last few months we had an oil price collapse, we had a worsening trade war, we've had the largest corporate collapse in Europe, and we've of course got a worsening situation tensions with China.

So we had a group of people thinking about all of that stuff and how we should respond and the impact it was having on our business. And then there was a third group and we had them in place for a while, but they were thinking about actually the strategy for the PwC network over a much longer time horizon.

And we didn't stop those people from doing what they were doing through the pandemic. It was important, because my reflection is the things that we'd been talking to them about back in February, as the leadership team, we thought might happen over, you know, three, five, seven year time horizon. And now all of a sudden those things were really in a 12-month to a four-year time horizon — everything, everything's accelerated.

And so over the next few months, we rebalanced the number of people in those teams, so we've got fewer people dealing with the pandemic and we've got more people talking about that longer-term strategy, but the aim was really to try and get people focused. My analogy, I suppose, is if you think about driving a car, we had a bunch of people looking in the rear view mirror, a bunch of people looking at the road ahead, and a small group of people focused on the GPS to make sure we could avoid the traffic jumps.

Kristin: Well, I love that we drank our own champagne, if you will, Richard, because this is one of the number one things that are our Crisis Center resources recommend to companies when they're navigating a crisis. It's very natural to have all hands on deck to just respond to those day to day, you know, fires that pop up.

Because the reality is you could have an infinite number of resources responding to those things, and it still would not be enough. But it's critically important as it sounds like we did at PwC, to set aside a different team to really focus on that road ahead, to looking, you know, through the windshield and predicting what road signs might be coming up and devising a plan of where we'll go. It turns out that, again, from our research that doing this, that having a team focused on looking ahead, is a predictor of emerging stronger. And so that's always something that we recommend.

And particularly in this COVID-19 crisis, critically important, because as you say, the world will be forever changed and the sooner businesses think through how that will impact them and what steps they can take to emerge stronger than they were before — the better. So another thing that we see, and I think this is particularly true now, as we're several months into the pandemic, is finding the balance in the face of fatigue.

We are just as humans wired for a fight or flight response. And as we all know, that is fueled by adrenaline. But adrenaline only lasts for so long, and when it begins to wane, you’re left, you know, tired and exhausted. And I think many business leaders can relate to that feeling right now — that adrenaline allowed us to work those long hours.

And yet it can't be sustained forever.

And so here we are in this long term pandemic, that has really no end in sight as we record this podcast. I'm curious how PwC has managed this fatigue, both with our leaders and with our people.

Richard: We’re no different, Kristin, than any other organisation, in that an awful lot has fallen on the shoulders of our leaders. It's funny, you mentioned the adrenaline. We've all been — you know, we sat in our home offices for that first months, the adrenaline was pumping. We were loving it, actually.

It's a horrible thing to say, but we were working 24 seven and it was fine. Of course, never in those first few weeks did we really realize that we were going to be in a race or a marathon that was going to go on for months. And, of course, we've all come to realize that it is not just physically exhausting, but it is mentally exhausting.

And the other thing we know from a leadership perspective is that people who are exhausted make poor decisions. And they lack empathy. And it's quite hard to tap into that inspiration inside of you for other people. And that's really important when you think about keeping your employees going. You really do have to continue to dig deep as leaders and inspire them and actually show empathy for what they're going through.

And you can't do that if you're in a bad place yourself. I think as a group of leaders, we've done a great job of coming together to support each other. I think as an organization, we have over many years, thought it was important that we gave our leaders access to groups of people that they could seek support from, or could help them. And on a personal level, you know, I became really ... there’s this concept of ... you surround yourself by radiators, people who really give you energy — or drains, those who drain you. And then in the middle of a pandemic, actually, I was really selective about having more radiators than I had drains surrounding me because I just needed — I needed that stimulus.

But the other thing on reflection that we did a good job of was our culture enabled us to realize it was OK to step back and let someone else step forward for a little while. And it was a little bit more like a relay. And so, roles were handed off and handed back actually to allow people to recharge themselves as we are, as you said, rightly in the middle of a marathon.

Kristin: I really see these new ways of working, this concept of, you know, working from home, but also, you know, being able to see each other's kids, dogs, home offices — it's one of the bright spots I think coming out of the pandemic, and it certainly has put employers squarely in the role of not just, you know, providing sort of office space that you know, is designed using the latest design principles. But also really thinking about the well being of our people and what they need to be productive — but also happy. And I think the other aspect of that is the fact that school children in many parts of the world are being remote — doing remote learning. This, as well, has sort of turned on its head this concept of what it means to be a working parent and what is required in terms of commitment and time, and how to balance that with our jobs and working remotely. So, a really interesting and unexpected outcome of the pandemic is really redefining what work is in the 21st century.

Richard: I think the whole rethinking work has got to be a hugely exciting topic for any leadership team, because no matter what organisation you're part of or what industry you are in, the future is not going to look like how we worked in the past. And I can already see those organisations that have taken time to invest in their teams, to invest in how teams work and start thinking about that — how about changes — are right at the forefront of reshaping and reframing their business for success. Because as you say, Kristin, it's not just about being in the office and doing things, but how, as we go through the next 12 months and beyond, do we support those parents, all those carers who are going to go through periods of lockdowns, and need flexibility. And people have realized they can work in different ways.

They don't need to be tied to a fixed spot. And look, some roles and some jobs are very different. But across the board, I think people are embracing new ways of working, flexibility … and it's actually, we can see this in many, many companies: It's spurring a degree of innovation that frankly we haven't seen in years — because people had to be creative about how they get things done.

So understanding how we all thrive, what we're doing, understanding where people go under pressure and how you don't help them get through that, I think is a critical part, not of the HR director, by the way, but of every leader in every organisation.

Kristin: This pandemic has definitely redefined the concept of work-life balance. So, Richard, thank you once again for joining us today. It has been wonderful to have you and I look forward to our next discussion on leadership in crisis. Remember to subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss out on future episodes. And you can learn more about PwC’s Global Crisis Centre at pwc.com.

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Dave Stainback

Dave Stainback

Global Crisis & Resilience Co-Leader, PwC United States

Tel: +1 678 419 1355

Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles

Bobbie Ramsden-Knowles

Global Crisis & Resilience Co-Leader, PwC United Kingdom

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