Welcome to week 3 of the CEO challenge. The ever-evolving world we live in changes the landscape of the business world hourly and C-Suite leaders are tasked with adjusting their plans each time the ground below them shifts. The balancing act between keeping businesses afloat, complying with government regulations and providing employees with empathy and understanding is almost unachievable. Yet each day business leaders are being asked to rise to the occasion and to place themselves and their companies into the best possible business situation they can find.
I had the chance to speak with three different CEOs this past weekend (yes, these leaders worked all weekend trying to stay on pace with the world so they would be ready for Monday morning) who were all wrestling with different challenges. If you know me, you know my background has a lot of consumer products and food companies in it and yes, all three of these CEO's are in the food business. If you walked through a grocery store in California (or many other places) lately you might think all of these leaders would be faced with business dilemmas that had potentially profit positive outcomes. The truth is the mix of conversations and challenges was far more diverse.
As we are all trying to understand the business challenges and complexities in the world today I felt these stories were worth sharing as they shed some light on the work our leaders are doing that may otherwise be unnoticed. The Wall Street Journal also shared a good article on the topic of this CEO challenge today, another good read.
The CEOs I spoke with were all working hard to get their products manufactured, delivered to stores and to consumers who want to see more store shelves full. Despite having the same goal, they all had different things to work through. I was struck by a few things in the discussions about the challenges all three face; the genuine concern in their voices, the tenuous balance of employee's needs along with the needs of the business and the personal hardship of trying to steer their business and personal lives through unclear circumstances. All of the products these 3 companies sell can be found within an aisle or two of each other in any grocery store yet, all are having such very different experiences.
The CEO of a mid-size food company was reporting very positive experiences in being able to provide his office team with work from home options. He had managed to space his skeleton crew of employees going into the office at acceptable social distances and his co-packers were still up and running and his products were getting to market. He was working from home now and was balancing an array of home projects, children and pet needs while trying to be remotely present for his employees. He was also starting to think about cash flow for his business as customers were also running lean offices and are facing their own challenges. When the people at the end of the food chain are slow to pay it resonates all the way back through business process. His suppliers were looking for checks and his employees needed to be paid and his customers were struggling to get payments out. Short term this was a manageable problem, longer term this would require more creative solutions.
The CEO of a smaller company was balancing a completely different set of challenges. She has the production capability to do more but as her business is still growing and she lacks some of the industry connectivity to turn the need for more food products in stores into immediate sales. Further, as a smaller business, having 2 key employees go out sick had tasked the remaining team to work longer hours and take on more responsibility. But easily the hardest challenge was hearing from customers who were temporarily closing their stores. They were cancelling custom made orders she had just produced and were not going to be paying outstanding invoices for at least another 90 days as they needed to divert funds to pay their employees. Her dismay was real as she also has to pay her employees and when businesses use the current hardships, they face to excuse their fiduciary responsibility it is not without cost elsewhere. A few months ago, a business that was beginning to show real signs of positive growth was now suddenly struggling to get by. A world of change in a world filled with change.
The last conversation was with a CEO of a larger company. He was seeing big orders coming in and had the positive challenge of trying to fill orders larger than his production capacity could handle. A few weeks earlier he was worried about keeping his manufacturing teams motivated and compensated well enough in the "full employment economy". Now he had literally hundreds of people lining up at a facility trying to get hourly work in a manufacturing plant. Rather than being challenged with employees who didn't want to or might be afraid to come to work in these challenging times, he reported employee attendance as exceptional; though possibly out of fear of losing their jobs. Getting products to retailers through multiple productions facilities around the US, maintaining production capacity while adding many new sanitization and cleaning processes and ensuring employees a safe work environment were the biggest challenges on his mind this weekend. A lot of things to be keeping him up at night. Add on a few personal hurdles of getting college aged children home safely and keeping family needs in focus and the data sets of the daily challenges to analyze can become huge.
Across all these conversations the true challenge of the business world today was clear. There is a need for compassion, patience and keen decision making at a time where business and personal needs are colliding and changing on daily basis. As citizens of the world, every night we go to bed and wake in the morning to find a new spectrum of challenges in front of us. Business leaders are facing the same things, and then some. Most business leaders are doing a great job of finding balance in a world that is anything but level these days. Let's provide our leaders the support and encouragement they need too. This is a time where we all win when we work together.
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