THE CEO COVID PLAYBOOK

It’s rare that an event impacts every industry at the same time, but COVID-19 has had an unprecedented effect due to the resulting economic lockdowns, some of which are back in effect in many parts of the world, once again disrupting operations, supply ch

Four prominent execs share what they’ve learned during COVID-19 and what hurdles are coming next.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned during the past eight months?

We’ve always tried to bring what I call an extension of the Canadian culture, and that’s treating people with tremendous respect and transparency. By doing that successfully, you build a tremendous amount of trust. When COVID hit, the company, our employees, including our unions, and the governments of the countries we’re in really wanted to keep mining going if we could do it safely. And because of the way we’ve been so transparent with governments over the years, so respectful of the people that work for us and their governments and their citizens, and all the things we’ve done in the communities and the way we treat our employees, including the safety emphasis, everybody wanted the same thing: can you mine safely? When you go through a crisis, you’re going to find out whether you’re on the same team.

Other things we’ve learned is local management (matters). We’ve always had an emphasis of having great people on site, some ex-pats, but often we train at every level to bring employees in the country we’re in to every level. But it helps having great teams on site, because you can’t run mines from Vancouver anyway, but you sure can’t run mines from Vancouver during COVID. What’s the biggest hurdle you’ve overcome?

Supply chain, of course. We’ve had minor shutdowns, but those were very minor and they were for specific reasons. In the Philippines, Masbate Island is one of several thousand islands, so the government wanted to keep as many people off this island as possible from the outside. We said, great, we get that, but the island needs fuel, the mine needs fuel. We met with the government and we said how can we do this? We said, okay, let’s shut down the mine for a few days and let’s just talk about this. Let’s minimize the movement of people off the island and let’s go into all of the things we’re supposed to do. Here are the things we want to do when the fuel barge comes in, here’s the protocol for cleaning the barge, for testing people. We very quickly agreed with the government on the way to do that.

What’s the next obstacle? Everyone in the industry is going to be looking at supply chains. Fortunately, we’ve set ourselves up so we have at least 90 days and in some cases much more than that. We’ve always had pretty good stocks — fuel, lime, all the things you need to run a mine — just because stuff happens.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned during the past eight months?

The past six months have seen historic change — economic, social, environmental — with many of the conversations we’re having now advanced due to the impact of COVID. This has galvanized my conviction that businesses have a responsibility to enact positive societal change. At Canada Goose, we’ve leaned into that, through pivoting our production to include PPE (personal protective equipment) and the launch of our Sustainable Impact Strategy within our sustainability report.

When the shortage of PPE became apparent, we didn’t wait to be asked. We retrofitted all our facilities and recalled and retrained our workforces to begin producing PPE for frontline workers and by this fall we’ll have manufactured more than two million units, across our eight factories in Canada. What’s the biggest hurdle you’ve overcome?

When the pandemic took hold, our stores, factories and offices were forced to close. That’s something we’ve never had to do and something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. But we never stopped working. Within three weeks of the closures, our factories were up and running producing PPE. This was a huge undertaking, to pivot one of the largest manufacturing infrastructures in the country, and I’m proud of our team, their leadership, agility and conviction to stand up to do our part to help frontline workers. What’s the next obstacle?

In order for there to be a future, businesses need to change the way they operate to reduce their impact on the environment.

Climate change is real, and every business needs to do their part to step up and take action. Our goal at Canada Goose is to be carbon neutral by 2025 or sooner, and to be a leader in sustainability for the apparel industry.

We’ve set major goals for ourselves and intend to be a leading voice for sustainability in the apparel industry. Our work now is to deliver against those goals — regardless of COVID — the future of the planet cannot wait. things down and focus on what was most important: the safety and well-being of our employees and their families. This approach enabled us to manage through a lot of early uncertainty, keep our employees safe and maintain the strength of our business. What’s the next obstacle?

One of our greatest strengths is our culture and the engagement of our workforce in our mission of building value for all of our

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned during the past eight months?

The biggest lesson for Delvinia has been the resilience of our staff, who have come together to face and navigate economic instability and employee anxiety during the pandemic. While maintaining social connection with our employees to uphold our company culture has been a challenge, thanks to our team’s creativity and dedication, we have been able to grow our staff during the pandemic. As a result, we’ve been able to support the continued growth of our automated Methodify research platform, which delivers insights within hours to allow leaders to make real-time decisions and adapt to new and emerging market conditions. What’s the biggest hurdle you’ve overcome?

The biggest hurdle has been our ability to manage the financial instability caused by the pandemic, while maintaining our investment in our international growth. It has been very difficult to continue to invest in our technology when we faced a decline in revenues, had to work remotely — and our team has been unable to travel. We stakeholders: our owners, our employees and our communities. In the current environment of physical distancing and remote working, it is more challenging to maintain the strong bonds and connections to each other and to our strategy and mission. However, we are fortunate we are in an industry that has been able to adapt better than most and we are currently back to normal production and operating levels. were able to manage the financial instability through a variety of supports: our bank deferring principal payments for a term loan, the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) and other government financial support mechanisms including the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program and Canexport program. With the help of these financial support tools, we were able to continue to invest in our international growth and technology development without having to lay off any of our staff — and, in fact, we hired over 20 employees during the past six months. October is the first month we did not qualify for CEWS, since our revenues in October exceeded our 2019 October revenues, an important milestone. What’s the next obstacle? Canada already has a shortage of senior technical talent. With teams still working remotely, the next obstacle will be to maintain our hiring growth and talented people, while battling foreign firms who, without having to set up offices here, are able to benefit from the lower Canadian dollar by offering higher salaries and allowing staff to work remotely from Canada.