The COVID-19 crisis will lead to permanent change for Simon-Kucher & Partners鈥 international operations. As a Partner-led organisation we have traditionally been de-centralised, giving local Managing Partners a lot of entrepreneurial freedom. As we grew (on average 18% p.a. in the last 35 years) Simon-Kucher has installed more global corporate governance and processes. This has proven to be an advantage in the current crisis, as the global bodies required to co-ordinate decisions across countries to ensure consistent and effective measures were already in place. In our case, the co-CEOs, Board and Executive Committee were used to working together. The change was the frequency of meetings during the crisis.
Building for Agility and Speed
Specific topics had always been covered in sub-committees or workgroups, so we could quickly distribute the many Corona-related 鈥渢o-be-developed鈥 actions across small agile international teams. The main challenge was the speed in which the results had to be developed. This put a lot of additional pressure on the Partners and senior HR leadership, which reflects the increase in importance of resilience as a leadership skill.
During the crisis we put a strong emphasis on helping all associates, who were forced to work from home more or less overnight, with maintaining their mental wellbeing, mastering remote working, staying in touch with team members. Agility is another success factor in a crisis. Can you develop and implement new virtual trainings and support for mental wellbeing quickly, without lengthy decision processes?
The Human Side
Leaders were sensitised to show empathy for their team鈥檚 specific challenges (for example managing children at home). One important lesson we quickly learnt is that you need to include the senior leadership in this. It is often expected that senior leaders 鈥榗an do this鈥, but very few have experienced a similar crisis with the related pressure before. This has led Simon-Kucher to start rolling out a broad coaching program that will eventually cover our entire leadership across regions and functions.
Communication is Key
Regular communication from the leadership to the teams is particularly important in a crisis. Everybody wants to be informed regularly, so we installed frequent global 鈥榯own halls鈥 run by our co-CEOS, in addition to countless local or team-level information calls. Even if there is not a lot of news, simply hearing from leadership how the company is doing is important for morale. At Simon-Kucher we communicate revenue and order entry figures to all associates on a monthly basis, so during the crisis they understood why we had to halt certain spending in the worst months and also why we could flexibly adjust upwards, as region after region entered the upswing.
In summary, I fully agree with the report鈥檚 finding that while a focus on the numbers and strategic vision remain important leadership qualities in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, they will need to be more evenly balanced with 鈥榟umane鈥 leadership qualities, such as resilience, empathy and communication ability.
