While culturally challenging, leading Aviva's turnaround during COVID proved beneficial for execution. The remote setup was a 'blessing' that eliminated travel and streamlined meetings, enabling leadership to focus intensely and accelerate major decisions, such as divesting multiple businesses, far more quickly than would have been possible otherwise.
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In a remote workforce, scrappy problem-solving is often invisible. Leaders must create a system to surface and publicly celebrate reps who use creativity to overcome blockers. This not only rewards the desired behavior but also transforms individual wins into scalable learning moments for the entire team.
Reflecting on Walmart's multi-year transformation, CEO Doug McMillan identifies the most common leadership pitfall: delaying actions you instinctively know are right. He advises leaders to trust their gut and move quickly, as organizations are often more capable of handling rapid change than perceived.
The pandemic's urgency forced Walmart's leadership to accelerate its meeting cadence from a weekly/monthly rhythm to a daily one. This faster pace necessitated greater delegation, revealing the high quality and speed of decisions made by empowered associates throughout the organization.
Aviva's CEO notes her leadership has evolved to be more decisive with personnel. Experience allows her to recognize familiar, negative patterns early on ('seen this movie run... it doesn't end well'). Rather than delaying a difficult decision in hopes of improvement, she trusts her judgment and acts quickly.
Merge committed to an in-person office, even during peak COVID, believing it was non-negotiable for speed and culture. The core reason: physical proximity makes team members care more about each other's success and holds them accountable in ways remote work can't easily replicate.
Aviva CEO Amanda Blanc believes superior execution of a good strategy is better than a brilliant one with poor follow-through. Her method involves cascading clear objectives to every employee, conducting relentless performance reviews, and embedding customer feedback at the highest levels to ensure actions consistently align with stated goals.
To avoid bureaucratic slowdown, LEGO's CEO broke his leadership team into smaller, empowered subgroups like a "commercial triangle" (CCO, COO, CMO). These groups handle operational decisions, only escalating disagreements. This has cut full executive meetings to just one hour a month plus quarterly strategy sessions.
Despite working for a meeting-centric company, the guest's key to success is asynchronous collaboration. Using tools for high-bandwidth video and audio messages allows his remote, multi-time-zone team to collaborate effectively on complex topics without needing to schedule a live meeting for every interaction.
