How To Live With Covid Like Crises
C.P. Gurnani,
CEO, Tech Mahindra
“When the only constant is change, normalising routine and sticking to it without evolving may not always lead to the best outcomes. Remaining optimistic while setting goals in relation to the current events is an imperative. I salute leadership because I believe everyone is and can be a leader. This means everyone matters and brings something to the table. Motivation should not be limited to one, but should rather be spread across the team, as success lies only in togetherness.”
B. Thiagarajan,
MD, Blue Star
“This setback is also an opportunity to reinvent ourselves. Coping with challenges will lead to a new way of life. As far as leadership is concerned, there are two sets of issues to deal with i.e. present and future. You have to deal with the current crisis because you know there is revenue loss and profitability and therefore a cash flow crisis. Once you cope with this, from a future perspective, you should be looking at how you would be able to reinvent yourselves.”
Debarati Sen,
VP & GM, 3M Abrasive Systems Division
“There are three leadership attitudes that I believe are critical at all times – hunger, humility and heart. It is important for a leader to always stay hungry for growth, improvement and not be happy with the status quo. Humility is to have a student mindset and always be willing to learn new things. Lastly, a great leader ought to be someone with a heart. People want to work with someone they can relate to.”
Aruna Jayanthi,
MD, APAC & Latin America, Capgemini
“The importance of communication, especially during crisis, cannot be stressed enough. This is key for trust to be maintained and for active engagement from people to follow through with safety as a top priority. Harsh times call for harsh measures and only very agile decision making will help people be safe. This skill enables people to move on, and only those firms that make decisions while keeping the time crunch in mind, will be able to survive.”
Prakash Iyer,
CEO & Founder, Leadership Works
“Even leaders at this stage do not know what is to come. They are also spectators to these times. However, what they can do is be transparent and communicate with people. Building trust among each other is imperative and will help overcome these hard times. A key aspect is the role of kindness in today’s times. After all it is harder to be kind than to be clever. But being kind helps ease these hardships.”
Ashish Vidyarthi,
Indian Film Actor & Motivational Speaker
“We need ‘individual leadership’ to move beyond this ‘collective heartbreak’. Nurturing plays a crucial role in enabling people to have hope. All naysayers only say no when there is lack of hope. Therefore, it is important that people understand and conceptualise the power they are giving to the coronavirus. This fall is a time for regeneration and to grow stronger. We should learn from this experience to recreate ourselves.”
Boman irani,
Indian Film
Actor
“Covid-19 is a new start, a change that we have to adapt to. But I refuse to accept the current scenario as the ‘new normal’ because we will find a solution to beat this. That being said, we have not seen great creativity in advertising in many years and this is the time when creative leaders should take on the challenge and blaze the trail. Maybe this is the time for leaders to open up and bring a renaissance.”
Taapsee Pannu,
Indian Film Actor
“Success is always about using the resources that are available to you and making the best use of it. We are already seeing this in how brands and businesses are approaching celebrities as brand endorsers. There will be further innovation not just in brands associations, but also in the way celebrities present themselves and in the kind of creatives we see. We are likely to either witness extremely aggressive approaches or extremely hesitant.”
