2020 The Age of Acceleration

In all the massive upheaval this year technology has come to our rescue, keeping our businesses running, where they can, from home. It turns out you can’t make steel from home but you can run a trillion-dollar bank from your kitchen as one Chairman pointed out to me, and as another retail CEO said you can run thousands of stores and their supply lines from drawing rooms. Technology has also kept us entertained and most importantly connected to friends and loved ones. This is not without its dark side, and I don’t mean just Zoom stress. Our cyber prep and breach teams are facing an extraordinary step-up in problems all over the world.

Dealing with technology disruption has been a top-of-the-agenda issue for business leaders for over two decades. Now business faces a new kind of non-optional connectivity. Business now must be connected to major societal issues in a way it never has before. Employees want employers to reflect their values and where possible the general public is voting through consumer choice, and online there is no place to escape. The new power to call out business on big issues is reaching leaders in every aspect of their lives.

Profit and positive social impact are no longer seen as binary choices. Having widened the aperture of considerations, leaders are taking societal factors into account as for decades they have taken on regulatory factors. It is a core competence and they will be judged by their recognition, understanding and response to changing attitudes.

Investor sentiment through the crisis has been almost universally clear and consistent to our clients—think and act in ways favorable to the long-term good of the business. Investors are looking well beyond financial performance in 2020 or 2021. They have put greater emphasis on ESG, not just as a risk metric but as an indicator of sophistication of leadership and an important indicator of the direction of travel on these bigger issues.

There is a great opportunity for business leaders here. Creating financial returns for investors is central to any businesses purpose and right now that ability is crucial for investment in R&D and innovation. Longer term, creating value for more than a single set of stakeholders will deliver not just financial rewards but also customer loyalty, stronger internal support and performance, better supply-chain-and-distribution relations and lower regulatory and political risks.

Governments everywhere have massively increased their involvement in all of our lives. We have seen emergency laws limiting freedom of movement along with direct company and sector interventions and levels of spending and debt that are normally seen only in a wartime context. As Yuval Noah Harari, of Sapiens fame, reminds us, this is the moment we decided to give governments unprecedented access to our private lives. Unfortunately, all of this intervention and activity has not led to an increase in confidence or trust in our political leaders.

Divisions in societies around the world have not seemed so wide or so deep for a generation or more. Political leaders, in many cases, are seen to have been deepening these divides. By contrast business leaders are acting as a unifying force. Not just in their CSR or philanthropy, and not just in their organizations. More broadly, business leaders are knitting their societal and political agendas into working strategies and practices. Under the pressures of 2020, that is an enormous priority. 

In political life and in some societies, the competition or the opposition is increasingly seen as the enemy. In business, this is the opposite. Now more than ever you cannot have single views, you have to learn to understand why the opposition are opposed. You have to recognize or embrace different perspectives. The art, then, is applying that understanding positively and to good business use.

Throughout this crisis there has been an increasingly clear role for business in society. By effectively broadening its role it has been better valued by all its stakeholders. Business cannot be the solution to the problems of the world but with some focus and adjustment it can be more visibly part of the solution. A government will not be the organization that creates a vaccine. It can, however, learn to understand its potential to better coordinate solutions.

The achievement that took place early this year all over the world was truly remarkable. Again a statement of what can be done given the right commitment.

This Review is titled “The WFH Issue.” We have all mused on the future of office life. Now we have done lockdown for long enough for most of us to yearn for the camaraderie, social buzz and productivity of our workplaces, the joy of seeing our colleagues.

Dealing with our new lives at a day-to-day level has kept all of us very busy. Yet most of us have also found proper time to reflect deeply on bigger strategic issues. I have found this to be true on a personal and also corporate level.

Almost every senior team we work with has devoted significant time to some pretty deep introspection. Looking into the contours of the post-COVID future, they are taking stock and challenging themselves to get fit for a new environment. That might require changing portfolios, structure, management or culture. Often it is all of these because they are so interconnected. You do not need a crystal ball to predict that all this deeper thinking will accelerate action all the more in 2021.

Many of our clients see “build back better” not as a slogan or as a financial target. For most, that will not be possible for quite some time. Rather, they’re seeking to contribute what they do best for all their stakeholders, and they’re seeking to be recognized and appreciated for it. It is an emerging opportunity.

We have learned a lot about what is precious to us. What matters and what we want to protect in our personal and corporate lives. Like health, the things we care about are a leveler of us all. It is hard not to feel that in some ways COVID has prompted us to reflect on our humanity. It has reminded us how we want that humanity present in our working lives.

For our part, we are just incredibly privileged to stand alongside our clients, and we are determined to contribute in these extraordinary times. Thank you.

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Sir Alan Parker is Chairman of Brunswick, which he founded in 1987. Alan has worked on a wide range of assignments, acts as senior consultant on many of the firm’s retained accounts and takes an active role in special project work.