Boris Groysberg and colleagues peer into the minds of 10 global CEOs trying to steer their businesses through the upheaval of COVID-19.
Responding to COVID-19 in early 2020 was an exercise in crisis leadership. In 2021, the pandemic feels like a painful marathon that will never end.
The rapidly spreading virus forced a precipitous shift to remote work at many companies, complicating matters for businesses that rely on face-to-face contact. While some businesses have boomed amid demand for videoconferencing and collaborative technology, the CEOs of other firms will likely face difficult decisions, if they haven’t already.
On a personal level, CEOs faced many of the same concerns as their employees: How can I protect my family? How will my children learn via Zoom?
We interviewed 10 CEOs in July about how they are managing the unprecedented stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then checked in with them again at the end of 2020. The interviewees hail from Canada, India, Turkey, the United States, Germany, South Africa, and Australia; and industries include automotive, hospitality, real estate, manufacturing, and finance.
Their biggest concerns fell into five categories:
Cash flow and liquidity. “Payments [were] not coming in, but we had to make our own.” This blunt statement summarized the situation CEOs faced as the pandemic’s suddenness caught many without sufficient ready cash.
A real estate CEO noted: “We had ongoing construction and needed to pay our contractors but were not sure that we would receive payments as planned from our customers who already bought houses. We analyzed each and every customer and their ability to pay for each of our projects to assess the situation.” Uncertainty about “what the runway of cash should be and how long to plan for” compounded CEOs' liquidity concerns.
Family and friends. Like everyone else, CEOs worried about their loved ones—particularly their “vulnerable” parents. The increased difficulty and risks of traveling separated some CEOs from family. One had to make the difficult decision to “move to a different city to be closer to the employees, [leaving] the family behind.”
None in our sample mentioned family contracting the disease, though one US-based CEO reported that friends had come down with it. One CEO and father of three reported “[getting] lost in looking after the kids” as his wife “is a frontline worker and was at the hospital every day.” “Kids switching to online school” was another challenge reported by a CEO married to a working spouse.
Employee well-being. CEOs were concerned about their employees: their safety on the job; overall well-being; and their own task as leaders of “keeping up morale and managing people’s fears.” Having to make decisions under uncertainty while trying to appear in control also took a toll on the CEOs.
Nine out of 10 CEOs mentioned that their employees were worried about their job security and health, as well as their loved ones’ health, and their stress level was high. When asked to rate the stress of their employees on a scale of 1-10, the average score was 9.1. Two CEOs mentioned lack of governmental support as an additional stressor for their employees and by extension, themselves.
Specific groups—parents, salespeople, and older employees—had particular challenges. Older employees and those with less experience managing online relationships struggled with working from home, as did those with young children.
"BUYING A HOUSE IS USUALLY THE BIGGEST DECISION THAT OUR CUSTOMERS MAKE. IT NO LONGER WAS A PRIORITY DURING THE PANDEMIC."
Managing multiple changes. CEOs had to manage changes on many different fronts simultaneously. Many mentioned “adjusting to and complying with the ever-changing regulations and policies.” “Complexity was high,” especially early on, one CEO noted, adding: “It was not easy to keep up with [changing regulations and new policies].”
Customer behavior also changed in response to the pandemic, as one real estate CEO illustrated: “Buying a house is usually the biggest decision that our customers make. It no longer was a priority during the pandemic.” To top it off, all of these changes in the business environment had to be “managed from a distance,” without the richness and immediacy of face-to-face communication.
Preparing for uncertainty. All of these stressors have been compounded by uncertainty, “specifically, about what the new normal will be and when it will arrive,” as one interviewee put it. Specific predicaments mentioned included “what to do with the employees who no longer had anything to do and were sitting idle” for one CEO and, for another, the need “to do extreme scenario planning and take out loans as precautions to boost the balance sheet.” One CEO mentioned that this was complicated by a distrust of government data on health and the economy, thus requiring “self-assessment to understand what to expect.”
The strains of an ongoing situation in which “no one knows the answer” led to “busy brain—it was difficult to calm down and stop the thoughts,” in one CEO’s words, saying that “long days” left him feeling “lethargic and down.”
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