As part of Business in Vancouver’s Business Leadership Series, some of British Columbia’s top CEOs spoke with BIV recently about the pandemic’s impact on the economy and the efforts of businesses to recover. Offering their perspectives this week are North Shore Studios president Peter Leitch, business magnate Jimmy Pattison, Galvanize president and CEO Laurie Schultz, Vancity CEO Tamara Vrooman and Lululemon founder Chip Wilson.
How did you first react when you apprehended the threat to business of COVID-19?
Jimmy Pattison: I think that we didn’t expect the severity that has occurred. We’ve been through a few things before, but nothing like this. The depth of the problem and the length of it … there’s nothing that’s happened before in the history of the world that I’m aware of, so it covered a lot of new ground. This is a new experience for everybody.
Chip Wilson: I had a board meeting in Shanghai. As we got closer to the meeting, it got shifted from Shanghai to Hong Kong, and then to Tokyo.
Most of China was shut down – probably 80% of our retail stores were. We knew that it was a big hit on the retail sector.
My concern was quite limited. And of course I look back at it now and I go, ‘Oh my god, I was right there.’ I had all of the information in the world, but there was just no thought that it was going to go global.
Tamara Vrooman: I had either the coincidence or the good fortune of being in Europe for a international values-based banking meeting in Bern, Switzerland, in late February. Just as things were starting to emerge there in Germany and northern Italy…. I could see what was happening there … and having that change quite suddenly was quite a wake-up call for me. Shortly before there was an official state of emergency, we were already working on our pandemic response plan … to make sure our staff first and foremost was safe and then that we could also serve our members in different ways, knowing they would need access to their finances during this time.
Peter Leitch: We realized that this is going to be something serious for our industry just because of the nature of how we have gatherings of people. And so it did close down fairly quickly and it was probably two or three weeks before everything was shut down.
Laurie Schultz: I remember in the beginning of March we had a large customer conference planned. It was in Florida, and we expected about 800 people there. And we were debating whether we should cancel it, and it’s shocking to think we actually had that debate. And literally in weeks we cancelled the conference and shifted to a virtual conference, and it’s amazing the outcome. We saw almost three times the number of customers join the conference.
What has surprised you the most about the experience of the pandemic?
Pattison: What surprised me was the seriousness of it and the breadth of it. It doesn’t matter who you are, you’re at risk. Just the whole breadth, width, depth of this is something I’ve never run across. Nor has anybody else.
Wilson: Just how well we’ve worked at Zoom. Our office started working at Zoom about six months ago, and I found it quite effective. We were really ready to go.
What would happen in 10 years is happening right now. I think people are going to work from home a lot. Will we end up with 20% of core people working in our offices now? Will we end up with a meeting on Fridays, breaking up into little groups, keeping our culture together, having our lunch together and then going away for another week? How will we react when we have new employees come in who need to get to know everyone?
Vrooman: In a good way, how quickly we all adjusted – beyond just our business, people in my neighbourhood, people in our community. The fact that people, just after just being asked to, stayed home and stayed away and took the necessary steps and adjusted their lives in the most profound way, is encouraging … because it was extraordinary.
Leitch: The biggest surprise for me was just the ‘Let’s fix this; let’s resolve this problem [attitude of industry].’ And I think that’s the biggest surprise to me, that people were up for the challenge, saying, ‘Oh, no – we’re going to get back to work and this is how we do it.’
Schultz: We have 300 employees here [in Vancouver], but it’s been really interesting to navigate this. We have 100 employees in India, for example, offices in Singapore, Japan, Sydney, London, and so the complexity with all of the different local compliance and government responses has been very challenging for us. Though, again, as a tech company we’ve been able to get our employees to [work from] home very consistently, and I think like everybody else we’ve been quite amazed by how productive employees have been.
How do you think business practices will change?
Pattison: There’s definitely going to be changes that, in my opinion, are going to last maybe indefinitely that will have come out of this. This is not going to pass, this experience, without some long-term changes. Working at home is definitely something that will rise to a new level that we have never seen before.
Wilson: Will 60% of us end up in the gig economy? It’s already happening where you’ll send a question to somebody in India overnight, and when you get up in the morning, the answer will be there, and you didn’t have to wait. Will 60% of our employees be [part of] the shared economy, and what will that mean to the workforce? We’ll become global, prices for salaries will probably come down, but that’ll be OK because everything’s going to cost a lot less too.
Vrooman: I do think the retail landscape is changing. Will it change permanently to be one form or the other? I don’t think so. I think we’ll see a lot more hybrid models coming up, where you order things online, come in and pick them up at a certain time, try them on … that make both the customer experience more personal but also more efficient. But I do see that, definitely, the combination of online and in-person has taken a significant step forward.
Leitch: The B.C. health authorities have provided some guidelines and WorkSafeBC has provided guidelines, which we are absolutely going to comply with, plus more. Again, the priority for us is people being confident to come back to work and work in a safe environment, so I think some of the changes we’re going to see is there’s still going to be some social distancing, there’s going to be lots of PPE on sets that we hadn’t had before. In terms of things like serving meals, that’s going to change a lot. We’re not going to have those buffet-style dinners and lunches anymore.
Schultz: We’re all learning that work-from-home folks can be productive. And I’ll admit I feel like I have to keep apologizing for being a generation X-er: I’ve been fairly traditional in my mindset. Though I work for a tech company, I like the idea of people being in an office. It helps us, at least, really leverage our culture.
How do you think B.C. will adapt?
Pattison: Certainly communication, the way we do things, like your conversation with me right now [on Zoom], is something I’ve never done in my life before. Yet this is the umpteenth time I’ve been on one of these calls in the last month. This really works. It’s not as good as face-to-face, but it’s better than the telephone.
Wilson: I think the big issue may be more in our type of government and where we are right now. We’ve got a split government: it’s very tenuous, moving into another election. Probably the DNA of the NDP is more to take care of the few people in the present, especially the disadvantaged, rather than thinking what’s best for the long run. Usually in this situation companies’ processes would get streamlined, everything would change and everything would be quicker and faster. I know companies that work that way, but I don’t think our government is set up to work that way right now. And it’s a sad thing.
I think it needs to be set up to support a gig economy. Whole sectors are going to be disrupted in this, and I think what the government doesn’t realize right now is that it costs more for retail to open up part way than it does to keep closed down. If we continue social distancing for another couple of months, I suspect we’re going to have 20% empty retail stores by November.
Vrooman: I think that what we have is a bit of a blessing and a curse. The blessing, which is the most important one, is that so far it seems that we have not had the negative health effects that other jurisdictions, even in our own country, have had. One of the things I worry about with that, though, is that there is potentially a bit of complacency, so how do we really both understand the discipline that it takes for us to continue to work this way for several months, potentially even years, until we have a vaccine or an effective treatment and consumer confidence can really come back again. But also that we’re needing to spend the time to understand what the future looks like.… Where do we see opportunity for our region in terms of medium- and long-term economic growth? Are there things that we can uniquely leverage here that will set B.C. up to thrive post-COVID? Certainly our ability to welcome immigrants and new Canadians needs to continue if our region is going to enjoy the diversity and the economic ability in our region. We need it for innovation and labour market reasons.
Leitch: In general, the people involved in the industry are great problem-solvers. Safety has been paramount for the last couple of years for us even prior to this, and further back. In some ways we’re up for the challenge. It’s quite complex, but we’re all broken down into different departments … [and] the leadership of all those different groups have really come together and are putting together best practices under the new scenario, post-COVID-19.
Schultz: We have 6,000 customers in 130 countries around the world. And while two-thirds of my employee base are here in Vancouver, and I’m a fiercely loyal Canadian, less than 5% of my customers are in Canada.… I have the ability to flatten my risks and [expand] opportunities by virtue of having access to customers all around the world. And I think for B.C.-based organizations that have that global ambition or at least even that global backdrop already, they’re going to be in a very, very good situation to be resilient.
What are the opportunities for business in the time ahead?
Pattison: Fundamentally things will continue. And, by the way, I believe long-term everything is going to be just fine. But in the meantime there will be changes that will continue. By the same token, the fundamentals will continue that have made our country, business and opportunities, will exist as they always have.
Wilson: I think what we’re going to see is an era of mergers and acquisitions – if not bankruptcies – where maybe 10 apparel brands will get together and form one company and have one back-end of HR, finance, logistics. I think that will happen in many, many sectors. It’s just natural selection.
The other thing that I think is going to happen is VR [virtual reality] e-commerce. The websites that we see now are going to look archaic. To be able to click onto a website and have a person that’s got some kind of camera on their head walking around in a store or VR with a salesperson that’s a bot of some sort, will be the way of the future.
Leitch: We really see British Columbia as a go-to place now because of the way the health authorities have handled things.… There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll have a competitive advantage here as a result of the care that we’ve taken and also just the safety protocols and the educated workforce that we’ve got up here that understands the importance of that in terms of continuing work. The worst thing that could happen for us is if people return to work too soon and they get sick and the industry would be down for some time.
Schultz: In Vancouver, we are challenged for tech talent here just from a supply-and-demand perspective. Of course, with work from home, that has no bounds now. And so I think from a talent-supply perspective, really revisiting where we source talent from is a great game-changer.
What have you done to take care of yourself in the pandemic?
Pattison: I’ll tell you what I’m doing: I’m following the rules that they ask us to do. I’m trying to pay attention to all of the things they’re talking about. Not perfectly, but very, very close to it.
Vrooman: I am very fortunate in that I have a very supportive family. They make sure we’re doing fun things like playing epic games of Risk and Clue and all the old-fashioned things where I am continually reminded I’m not the CEO of everything.
What do you think you’ve learned about yourself in this situation?
Pattison: That’s a good question. What I’ve learned about myself is that I’m so grateful to the good Lord I live in British Columbia. Secondly, I’m going to bed a lot earlier than I used to, and that seems to work OK. We’ll see if that lasts.
Vrooman: I think I have a different view of glass half-full and half-empty. While I in no way have minimized the challenge that COVID has brought, by and large I have had energy throughout. It’s been an exciting time. It’s been a time of problem-solving and creativity and mobilizing and proving that we can do things that people said a credit union couldn’t do. •
