PRESENT: Richard Slater


Lancashire Business View (chair) Lou Booth


Elementas Coaching


Neil Burrows Burnley College Janet Doolan


Boost Business Lancashire Steve Fogg


Lancashire Enterprise Partnership


Hamish Hamilton Vistage


Sarah Page Plumbs


Khalid Saifullah Star Tissue UK


Mark Sykes BDO Chartered Accountants


Caroline Turley Access to Finance


SP: Communication is key. For leaders it’s really important, despite our own emotional states, that we can be quite clear on a plan.


We’re waiting every day to hear what the government says, and of course we have to react very quickly to that.


However, it’s really important that your team know you’re in charge, you are planning and you are calm and positive about the steps forward. You have to keep feeding out a very positive message, staff need to know that you have hope for the future. Calm is a really understated word.


KS: One of the leader’s responsibilities is to understand the current reality and be open- minded enough to accept that changes will have to be made. You have to face that reality and make clear, conscious decisions. The other thing is to adapt appropriately.


In normal instances you rely on experience, on skills that you have developed. You have to accept this is something new. Decisiveness is important, but equally you have to accept you may not know everything and will have to learn along the way.


You have to be more open-minded and rely on other people to help steer you in the right direction.


CT: I speak to a range of business leaders and their relationships with the bank, with their accountant and their customers is key to their ability to carry on leading well. They need support and when they have good, open, regular contact with these, it enables them to focus on the business better and how they are going to come out of this.


SF: Leaders are going through massive issues. There are three phases for me; stabilising the business, getting into recovery and getting back to growth.


Leaders need to define the problem their business is facing and be very careful about trying to tell their staff they’ve got all the answers. Providing some confidence and assurance, if you can do


LANCASHIREBUSINESSVIEW.CO.UK


that with honesty and sincerity, that’s a great thing. If you can get your team focused on some short-term goals, that’s part of the battle.


Take time to start to think about what the future holds. You can start to think about the various scenarios your business could face, and about some of the answers and solutions to that.


You will not have all the answers yourself. Improving your network, reaching out and getting advice and support is one of the most important things you can do. Otherwise being a leader can be a very lonely place. Above all else you have to hold your nerve.


We have to create a new strategy for Lancashire. We’ve got to engage better with businesses and education and start to reimagine what Lancashire can be. We’ve got to start from a new baseline. The future should be ‘stabilise, recover and grow’.


If there’s ever an


argument for devolution, this is it. This is the point where Lancashire needs to wake up to


the fact that we need a devolved county


How do businesses take forward the innovations they are adopting?


SF: If everybody thinks we’re just going to go back to what we did before, I suspect that’s not going to be the case. We’ve proven business can actually function very differently.


Mental health has got to come to the fore now, because of the stresses and strains across employees, business holders and leaders.


The world’s changing around us. I’ve enjoyed the transition to digital meetings, digital engagement and I’m personally not going to stop that, I’m going to use it more.


Digital meetings have a place among a multitude of ways to engage with people. Use


it purposefully and smartly and it will make a huge difference for business and employment.


KS: Crisis focuses your mind on change. I believe a lot of the changes we’ve seen will remain with us. If you’re an insurance company with 40 people in an office, do you need an office that big? Can half your staff work from home?


You were forced to make this change based on today’s reality, but what are the key benefits you could take going forward? People are working from home, working flexibly and being productive. Could we continue that?


One of the big things we’ve identified is the impact on the UK of not investing in manufacturing over the past 20 to 30 years. You only have to look at the supply chain with PPE and other things that we’ve not been able to produce ourselves and have been struggling to source elsewhere.


One of the things we will learn as the UK and Lancashire is that the ability to be able to produce things quickly, locally, is a huge benefit.


NB: We had just a few days to get virtual learning up and running for students. We’ve now got 916 active Google classrooms in operation and we have had 62,000 Google classroom sessions in the last 21 days. All our students and staff are heavily involved,


We’re doing that with students, why can’t we do it with businesses as well and employees?


MS: Crisis accelerates change and we will see a lot of innovation, a lot of disruption to the way we work. Businesses are accelerating things they were going to do anyway.


Community is now more important; the environment is benefiting from what we’re doing and we are learning some great ways of working that could drive that change.


I’m going to put a little health warning on this: it’s easy to look at the good things that have happened and we should be grabbing those, we’ve just got to watch for the subtle strains and challenges.


Mental health is one issue. We’re lacking some of that normal interaction, being able to passively hear what people are doing around us, making sure that everything is okay, or ‘feeling the pulse’.


There is a lot more adoption of technology. I’m based in Eccleston but sitting here, there is nothing to stop me doing business in America, Australia, London or wherever.


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