Читать книгу Manage to Engage - Pamela Hackett - Страница 8

As CEO of Proudfoot, a management consulting company founded in 1946, I too felt the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We had spent our history proud of our “boots on the ground” business model, our people shoulder to shoulder with clients, working through their improvement programs and major transformations to realize large-scale results, coaching new behaviors and implementing new processes and systems, not just advising from a distance. We told our clients, If you go underground we go underground, if your business has a night shift we work night shift. Well, that all stopped when the pandemic hit. Some assignments were paused as people zoomed their way home. We quickly switched to remote work. Where remote was not an option, our revenues paused. Suddenly, our competitive advantage nearly killed us. My goal was to save as many jobs as possible and maintain the business continuity where that was a possibility. We continued with projects that allowed it and were safe for our teams. We helped our clients navigate through with COVID-19 response planning, sometimes for free, because that was the right thing to do, and other times deferring their payments to the next year, to prevent them from deferring their improvement and transformation programs when they needed it most.

I was also conscious of the health and well-being of my people. Having been one of the early COVID-19 victims in February after three trips to New York as well as France and the UK, I knew what the virus could do. While I was lucky (its impact stopped at what I compared to a very bad flu bug turn into pneumonia), I recall getting out of bed three nights in a row wondering if I would be able to continue breathing. It was early in the pandemic. I didn't realize I could die. Later, the experience allowed me to understand its potential, and therefore I treated it with great respect. This disease was a killer for some, but it was not so bad for me. I was sick but lucky.