Extraordinary times, extraordinary leadership
As the pandemic swept the planet, a new way of thinking was urgently needed. We brought together business leaders, academics and policy advisers to respond to the short-term crisis and the long-term fallout
When the world challenges, Oxford answers. The latest global challenge came in March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world and put more than 100 countries, including the UK, into full or partial lockdown. Oxford Saïd responded in its own way with the Leadership in Extraordinary Times (LiET) webinar series to help leaders and individuals respond to the immediate crisis and shape the post-pandemic future.
Between early April and mid-July, the School streamed more than 24 hours of discussions with Oxford academics, industry leaders, entrepreneurs and policy advisers, exploring the pandemic’s effect on business, the economy, individuals and society at large.
These conversations, designed to share research and ideas with the wider business community, underlined that many organisations anticipate the biggest challenges still lie ahead in the global recovery as governments seek, in a suddenly popular phrase, to ‘build back better’.
Several contributors reflected a widespread desire to use the pandemic as an opportunity to revitalise business and the economy, embedding purpose, social and environmental factors into everyday decision making. Pursuing a purposeful corporate agenda requires a shift in emphasis from shareholder returns and short-term thinking to a broader multi-stakeholder and longer-term perspective on business performance.
Speaking in April, Oxford Saïd Chair and former CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman, noted ‘a mixed picture’ for longer-term decision making as governments and businesses battled with multiple competing priorities and the temptation to ‘stimulate growth at any expense… We need to be sure that the steps we now take to come out of this crisis actually create a better future than where we came from. It’s important that we think about the future and not create problems that might be bigger than we have today.’
For André Hoffmann, Vice-Chair of Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, the Covid-19 crisis represented ‘a crux moment’ for global businesses. Speaking in June, he said: ‘We have discovered that our systems are not resilient. We’ve collapsed in the face of adversity and a system that is not able to weather adverse events is not a system fit for purpose.
‘You can’t just focus on short-term profit maximisation if you want to run large incredibly impactful companies on the planet… There is a realisation among younger generations that just making money is not going to be enough.’
Purpose has become a corporate watchword in the last decade, but Martyn Etherington, Chief Marketing Officer of cloud data analytics company Teradata and a partner of the Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative, said actions rather than rhetoric are needed, particularly during times such as these. ‘Being authentic to your brand but doing so for the betterment of mankind’ would be key to winning back trust in this post-pandemic era, he said.
MORAL LEADERSHIP MATTERS
In December 2019, the world’s largest pension fund was hailed as a trailblazer for taking decisive action as a shareholder to suspend stock lending for short selling, saying the practice was inconsistent with its stewardship responsibilities as a long-term investor. ‘It was very controversial both internally and externally as we gave up more than $100m (£77m) of ‘easy money’,’ said Hiro Mizuno, former Chief Investment Officer of Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund and Executive in Residence at Oxford Saïd, during an LiET broadcast in April. ‘We keep asking corporates to pay attention to the social impact but I never saw an asset owner step up and assume responsibility… We are saying we are going to walk the talk of long-term investment.’
Covid-19 is bringing such examples of moral leadership and the tension between corporate social responsibility and capitalism into sharp focus. ‘People are worrying about executive pay, the distribution of resources, and the distribution of the economic pain that comes with the health crisis,’ said Alan Morrison, Professor of Law and Finance at Oxford Saïd, whose research covers subjects including governance and ethics. ‘Whether this has any long-term effects on the way that we run capitalist economies is unclear, but I suspect it will result in more debates and discussion and that can only be a good thing.’
CHARACTER, COURAGE, COLLABORATION
Jacqueline Novogratz, the founder and CEO of Acumen, a non-profit global venture capital fund and the author of the Manifesto for a Moral Revolution bestseller, pointed to the forces of capitalism and technology that ‘unleashed incredible energy and innovation into the world’, but also contributed to individualism, division and inequality.
‘Our heroes in other periods of our history have been people who changed the world. Somehow, over the last few decades, our heroes have become defined by money, power and fame. How you shift that again starts with the decision inside, which is a character decision,’ she said.
As well as strength of character, having the courage to create space for solutions to emerge is crucial, explained Marya Besharov, Professor of Organisations and Impact at Oxford Saïd, stressing the importance of leaders being open to re-evaluating and shifting decisions made in times of crisis and uncertainty.
‘Circumstances change, resources shift, the context evolves, so it’s important to be able to revisit and rethink courses of action and lines of decision making,’ she said. Leaders also need to look beyond the confines of their organisation and utilise their networks fully to build coalitions and engage with broader stakeholders, she added.
This systems perspective is key to building resilience in a crisis, agreed Dr Eleanor Murray, Oxford Saïd’s Senior Fellow in Management Practice, and an expert in large-scale changes in organisations and systems. ‘It’s really important to think about how organisations, corporations and governments act in a more collaborative way, build alliances, and think about how they’re going to act in relation to broader issues such as climate change,’ she stated.
Traditional boundaries between sectors are already breaking down as governments prop up the real economy, giving rise to unexpected partnerships and collaboration. However, we need to see a world that is much more coordinated at the intersection of the private, public and social sectors, noted Michael Warren, Managing Director of global business strategy firm Albright Stonebridge Group. ‘There is an increasing understanding that those sectors can’t operate on their own independently for a long period of time and that the tail risks that we’re experiencing now, and will continue to experience, are not ones that any one sector can fundamentally address,’ he said.
The stakes are extremely high and the risks and uncertainties are extreme. But with the right sort of ‘rebuilding’, we will be better placed to deal with the climate crisis and any other global challenges that are thrown our way, concluded Dr Peter Drobac, Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford Saïd and an expert in public health.
‘What we do in the next months and years is going to define this generation,’ he said. ‘There is a roadmap for how we can work better together, and how we need to rethink our economic systems and social systems in ways that will allow us to thrive more in an interdependent world in the 21st century.’
View the full Leadership in Extraordinary Times broadcast series
at sbs.ox.ac.uk/oxford-answers
WORDS: HANNAH STODELL
