How have businesses dealt with the pandemic? How are they recovering? What might happen next? Business in Vancouver journalists Hayley Woodin, Tyler Orton and Kirk LaPointe discussed these issues with 10 CEOs for the BIV Business Leadership Series of podcasts. The daily series began last week and continues this week at biv.com.
The following are excerpts from discussions with Teck Resources CEO Don Lindsay, Digital Technology Supercluster CEO Sue Paish, Rennie Marketing Systems principal Bob Rennie, HSBC Canada CEO Sandra Stuart and chair of the Trilateral Commission and former B.C. finance minister Carole Taylor.
The first instalment of excerpts from the leadership podcast series (BIV issue 1597; June 8–14) featured North Shore Studios president Peter Leitch, business magnate Jimmy Pattison, Galvanize president and CEO Laurie Schultz, Vancity CEO Tamara Vrooman and Lululemon founder Chip Wilson.
The excerpts have been edited for space.
How did you first react when you apprehended the threat to business of COVID-19?
Don Lindsay: We had to develop new protocols to keep people safe. And not just safe at the worksite but safe at home as well and travelling back and forth … But I’m so proud because we’ve now done, I think, over 23,000 tests – on-site audits, if you like – of safety protocols with 98% pass rates. So people really are respecting the physical distancing, the sanitation and all the different things we need to do to keep people safe. Because that had to be the priority.
Sandra Stuart: The first thing you have to think about is, ‘How do you operate your business? How do you keep your staff safe?’ … We had already started testing our ability to work remotely and send people home. And the first two things that come to mind are your people and your customers. It’s always about the people; it was about mental health; it was about physical well-being; and it’s about financial well-being.
Carole Taylor: I guess intellectually I just could not believe it was possible to shut down the global economy. The hammer came down on me from my daughter. She is an ER doctor in Los Angeles. She phoned me and said, ‘That’s it, you’re in solitary confinement until further notice.’ How do you survive the moment? The first weeks were crisis management for the businesses I’m involved with. I don’t want to look back on government to say what they should do and should have done, but it was slow in coming.
Bob Rennie: March 13 was a Friday, and we made a decision to shut the company down and send our 92 marketing employees to work from home. We [he and his son, Chris] made a six-minute decision that we would cover everybody. We have to be standing 24 months from now. What’s that going to look like in between? The fundamentals of real estate right now: inventory is at a lowest [point] in 15 years, and sales are down 60%. We’re treating this as if it’s a suppression.
Sue Paish: We’re pretty agile, and there’s no rule book. We closed our offices on March 13, and one week later we launched our COVID-19 program. We got our approval from our board to invest $60 million … to respond to COVID issues. In the last two months, we’ve received over 500 proposals worth of $1.2 billion. It’s going to provide further definition to what we’ve already been doing. Knock when opportunity is there, when opportunity is not there, create it. The solutions that are coming forward are remarkable.
What has surprised you the most about the experience of the pandemic?
Lindsay: I’m in many ways more productive. I’m having face time like this in Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Webex with more people than I could if I was physically in the office. But it’s also not quite the same. If you’re there with a person in front of you, you’ll give them extra time because they worked so hard to have that meeting.
Stuart: … The other thing that is quite striking is how the service industry’s been affected, whether it’s personal services, your salon on the corner, your restaurant on the corner … Some people have fallen through the cracks and some businesses have fallen through the cracks. That’s what we have to keep our eye out for and see how we can help.
Rennie: I have two surprises: how wonderful and valid our relationships are. That was a huge validator. I walk 20 to 30 kilometres a day. On the phone and talking to people. That gathering and how humans resolve: I always knew it was there, but I also believe that nice people are coming through nicer. What I am shocked at is some of the opportunism that I’m seeing taking place and some of the sensationalism. We should be right-of-centre fiscally and on commerce, but I think we’re going to have to be far more left-of-centre than all of us ever imagined socially.
Paish: What surprised me about the pandemic is its nebulous nature. What the coronavirus has shown us is that it’s going to evolve, and it’s going to impact society in ways that we didn’t anticipate. The creativity and the ingenuity and the practicality of industry have surprised me. We did not expect 500 proposals in under three months.
How do you think business practices will change?
Lindsay: We know now we’re not going back to how we were before. We have a task force looking at developing the new hybrid work model, where people will work some part of the week from home and some part in the office. And there will be a lot less travel, we’re fairly certain of that. And one of the things this crisis has done is accelerate the transformation of the company. Not just in terms of remote office work, but the digitalization of our whole company and the whole supply chain end to end.
Stuart: The one thing that I’ve really appreciate is how nimble we’ve been … When you’re waiting for a decision it can feel like forever but when the relief programs were first initiated, you get a tidal wave of applications and working through them has taken time … I think we’ve always felt purpose, but people have need now. They’re really counting on their banks; they’re really counting on the consumer.
Rennie: This time, we’ve seen that we all lose it all. There is going to be a very conservative approach and there are going to be decisions made that should have been made. This is one we’re going to carry forever. There is a threat that there could be another pandemic. We’ve all changed a lot and how we run business. I’m very comfortable now on a Zoom call.
How do you think B.C. will adapt?
Lindsay: Obviously on the infrastructure side, where things were deemed essential services, those have come back. But the challenge they face is for the actual market and customer volumes for their products. Because I look at this in three phases. The first phase was operationally getting our arms around it … The second phase is dealing with the huge global economic dislocation that has occurred in terms of demand for products … I’ve watched what’s been happening just this last week or so as we move into this next phase and opening up the economy. There’s pent-up demand.
Stuart: You look at the provincial growth and B.C. is a very robust province in terms of economic capacity and economic capability … Every province is going to have its impacts. I don’t think B.C. will be an outlier. But I do think it does have lots of natural resources, it has the diversified economic base, it’s got the up-and-coming tech sector, so I do think B.C. will fare – in relative terms – better.
Taylor: We didn’t close down as heavily as other places, so that’s a positive. But we may be holding down longer on things like borders, which is a real problem, because B.C.’s economy is so dependent on tourism and border crossings, and that worries me. The psychological is huge. I don’t know long it will be before people want to go to international meetings just casually. The idea of being in a large crowded gathering: I think that will be a long, long time, if we ever go back to those models.
Rennie: I think as a society we want transparency. We are at the point of ‘Don’t sell me, tell me.’ I think we have a big change coming up. I’m trying to Teflon-coat our mayors and councillors so that they no longer have to politicize housing. Our solutions can’t be left or right. They have to be for everybody.
Paish: I think British Columbia has been an industrious, inventive, innovative population forever. What we are challenged with is being bold. What we tend to be is a little small and conservative and self-effacing in our thinking. What the coronavirus is hopefully going to embed in all of us is being big and bold and ambitious is the way to go. If you take a step … and it doesn’t work, then course-correct. Don’t spend five years planning for the perfect project.
What are the opportunities for business in the time ahead?
Lindsay: We as a company certainly will be more efficient in terms of that kind of infrastructure use and resources. Again, we will probably travel less, but in the end I think there will be an economic boom across all sorts of sectors, some time three or four quarters out, just related to all this stimulus. And all this innovation that’s taking place. New companies will form.
Stuart: No. 1, the opportunity foremost is with our customers, our existing customer base. So our job is to help them, to get them over the hump. Customers remember you for when you help them. Not when times our good, it’s when times are tough.
Taylor: I guess if we’d all been clever we’d all been into Amazon. As someone who works in my apartment says, we should have all been in cardboard boxes. The ones that worry me most in the short term are any of the service and tourism groups and the non-profits. The non-profits are begging right now. I’m trying to do my best. I went to a restaurant this week. I want these guys to survive. I’m not much of a shopper, but I intend to think about ways of supporting little shops around. It’s the smaller ones that make our community special. It’s a big issue if we want this city to go back to the Vancouver we love.
Rennie: I think the opportunities are what you’re doing right now: engagement. We’re social animals, we want to get back to seeing each other. We’re going to re-evaluate a little bit how we live. I convinced you 20 years ago that you didn’t need a den, that you could put your computer on a raised counter with a USB port. I think you need the den again. We’re hiding on these calls. I think livability is going to be a huge topic on our housing fronts.
Paish: Put technology adoption at the front of the list. Let’s start putting customers in the picture when we talk about technology. Get digital implementing as a priority in your company, in your industry and in the province. Let’s bring organizations together around problems. Let’s solve problems collaboratively, rather than having 15 different solutions all coming to the table, none of which are as good as the collective. From what I’ve seen in the last three months, British Columbians are ready to rise.
How are you taking care of yourself?
Taylor: I think we’re all contacting our friends more often than we usually do to make sure, ‘Are you OK?’ Having so much work has been good. I’m really sick of the Zoom meetings. I do cardio every morning. I make sure I do a walk every day. And I do some yoga at night. I make sure I cook every meal properly. It could be very easy to slip into junk.
Paish: Staying connected to my children. Getting away from the computer. I’m an outdoors person. I’m eating healthier. There’s a connectivity across my entire family that’s really quite magical and I want to hold on to that.
What have you learned about yourself?
Taylor: I really need work. I really enjoy work. This has been a real test of that. But also I would say my social contacts and my business friends. I think I’ve taken all for that granted and now really appreciate what that social network has meant.
Paish: I really love what I do. I love bringing people together to do what hasn’t been done before. I’ve probably lived my life in an environment where there is no rule book. I’ve learned again to fall in love with the beauties of this province. I’ve learned to take a lot of comfort in small things. What I’ve really tried to do is be excited when the rose blooms on the sundeck. •
