Urvashi Singh is a current MBA student and Forté Fellow with a background in Marketing in the Education Technology and Healthcare industries. Her personal goals in the MBA program are to learn about strategy and decision making in difficult times and understand what makes leadership effective and memorable. In her blog below, she writes about lessons learned from Linda Hasenfratz, EMBA ’97, LLD ’19, CEO Linamar Corporation, who spoke to students on June 2 for the MBA Teachable Moments Virtual Speaker Series, a program designed to provide Ivey MBAs with unprecedented access to accomplished leaders.
It has been a few months dealing with the COVID-19 situation, and we still find ourselves engulfed in its uncharted, unprecedented, and unparalleled challenges. While the damages done to the economy have not even been fully analyzed yet, businesses are now facing bigger issues of predicting how work would look once the economies open, and how can they adapt and transition quickly to the new (and still unknown) reality. In an exclusive session with the Ivey MBA students, Linda Hasenfratz shares her ingenious perspectives on what it takes to steer Canada's second-largest automobile parts manufacturer through this pandemic.
Test of character
Remember the adage, “Crisis does not build character, it reveals it?” While the pandemic has thrown previous learnings and lessons from business books out of the window, it has also given new opportunities to rethink what we have been doing and to redefine our strategy going forward. Hasenfratz shares: Businesses face new problems every day, but it is the current situation that pushes us, more than ever, to re-imagine the way of doing things. Be it motivating your team or communicating with stakeholders, we now have evolved objectives of how and what the future goals should look like and the responsibility of taking our employees, investors, and customer along with us through the transformation. Leaders now face the test of true character. Hence, the pandemic also gives companies a golden opportunity to build authentic and resilient team cultures.
Have a plan
There has never been a better time to speak about the mantra of "thinking global and acting local". The pandemic has proven that with interlinked supply chains and manufacturing capacities across the world, it becomes even more essential for businesses to gather relevant data, delve into analysis, and formulate strategies with data insights and managerial intuitions. Hasenfratz believes that to effectively deal with the current situation, businesses not only need to build a clear plan, but also need to keep their teams informed by maintaining frequent and open communication channels. We need to bring teams together to plan, prioritize, and prepare for contingencies while preparing for all possible scenarios. As a leader, it is of utmost importance to realize that you cannot do this alone and leverage the unique capabilities of your teams, Hasenfratz opines.
Be flexible and adaptive
In times of pandemic we need to recognize that things are changing monthly, weekly and even hourly. The reality on a Monday might be vastly different from the reality on the Sunday before. Therefore, it becomes even more critical for leaders to change and adapt quickly. Hasenfratz shares: in working across geographies, we face a multitude of problems. A few weeks back, while one economy was recovering from the pandemic, the other was going into it. As leaders, we need to keep an open mind and react quickly. We need to understand data and make plans, but at the same time be ready to make difficult decisions and keep larger goals in mind.
Work in the short term, but don't forget the long term
Nothing drives customer trust and employee engagement more than the belief that the company cares for the community at large and is sincerely working towards its goals for the larger good. While margins and EBITDA help run the daily functions of a company, the authenticity in efforts at combining business and community needs determine success in the long run. Employees will remember how they were treated during crisis, and customers will value the work of the company in helping society deal with the situation. By expanding production capacity ten-fold in two weeks to meet the demands of medical ventilators, Hasenfratz exemplifies how community welfare will always be the priority of any corporation that believes in long-term and purpose-driven growth.
The big lessons
Hasenfratz left us with refreshing thoughts about leadership in times of crisis. With millions of lives disrupted and no end of the pandemic in sight yet, hard choices need to be made every day. But at the same time, leaders have an opportunity to innovate existing practices, create cohesive teams, and emerge with stories that companies will be remembered for. As a class, we need to rise to the challenges that the situation presents and embrace these changes to emerge as a more empathetic, more compassionate, and more collaborative group.
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