What comes next?

The challenge, today, for leaders is to not go back, but to move forward to a better world of business.

- ATHOLL DUNCAN

It has been the toughest of times — leading through a pandemic. But what can we learn from what we have all been through? How will it change us as leaders? And how should we lead out of lockdown? These are just some of the questions that we believe leaders should be pausing to ask themselves. In March 2020, as the first of lockdowns hit India, the leadership and technology business Black Isle Group, embarked on a project to try and capture the remarkable and unprecedented moments as COVID stopped the world.

We followed 28 global business leaders as they were locked down and as they struggled to help their people and their businesses survive. The result is a book Leaders in Lockdown, which we hope is a clarion call to re-set the world of business and re-set society.

The project has now morphed into a series of intense and moving workshops which aim to help leadership teams take a breath and reflect and ultimately emerge with a clearer idea of how they will do things in a different way in the future. The project has identified seven themes from the insights of the leaders who we worked with.

1. A new age of purpose: The project evidenced that leaders who put purpose at the heart of their business during the pandemic fared best. In the future, purpose will no longer be just words to be emblazoned on a website. It will be an essential for engaging employees, customers, and investors. As Leena Nair, Chief HR Officer, Unilever put it, “Companies with purpose last; brands with purpose grow; and people with purpose thrive.”