7 Elements of Leadership to Succeed amidst Pandemonium Times - Equip People

Equip People

The sixth element is to equip people with the right tools so that they can perform their roles and execute their responsibilities.

Prasad who is the Managing Director of Chowdary Spinners Private Limited and Pring Fashions (P) Limited in a small town of Tanuku, Andhra Pradesh employs only the local people and does not depend on the Guest Workers. Hence, once the first lockdown was lifted, he opened the factories immediately and got back to production. His sales teams work in a very conventional way of meeting people physically. But realizing that post-lockdown the modus operandi of business would go through a dramatic change he digitized all his sales and marketing content and had trained his sales force who predominantly come from the nearby villages. They adapted themselves to the change quickly. Prasad tells me that as they started their operations they got in touch with all their clients and prospects with the digitized marketing content. To their surprise, two of their very large prospects with whom they had been following up for more than seven years but of no avail gave immediate orders since their regular suppliers had not started their operations. Prasad and team could impress them with their products and service delivery so that both the prospects became clients and with the new relationship established he expects to turn them into lifetime customers whom they were chasing for years but of no anvil.

Hence it is important to equip the teams with the right tools and technology to adapt ourselves to the new norm. Some of the companies have equipped their employees with the best of infrastructure to WFHs. Some of them have gone to the extent of providing them extra allowances for the same. Unlike popular assumptions that most of the companies that equipped the people are large blue-chip IT companies, it is the truth that some of these companies are mid-size and serve the rural markets and have equipped their people with all the tools to deliver from their homes in rural areas until the end of 2020.

The disruption caused by this virus is forcing everyone to equip with new methods. We need to learn and equip ourselves. As the saying goes, “All Learners are not Leaders but all Leaders are Learners.” Hence this is the time to unlearn and learn by equipping ourselves with all the new-age techniques.

Medica Group of Hospitals is one of the most reputed and leading healthcare chains in Eastern India today, having 11 Multispecialty and Super Speciality healthcare facilities across the region over the past 10 years.Medica was one of the few hospitals in the country which had anticipated that COVID 19 could be a major issue and had got ready on a war footing and hence I had a detailed conversation with Udayan Lahiri, Co-Founder and Joint Managing Director of the group to understand what they had done differently from many others in the healthcare to treat COVID 19 patients successfully.

Udayan says, “You can’t go to the war without enough weapons in the armoury and fighting against Coronavirus is a war and we wanted to equip our doctors and staff with everything to ensure we win the war with the least calamity.”

The Management at Medica timely and effectively executed what it had planned by equipping itself for the situation, amidst all the panic and ambiguity.The changes that they had brought about in a swift manner yielded enormous results for Medica. While many of the hospitals were shut between the end of March 2020 till the middle of April 2020, Medica invested in bringing about the changes and was geared up to treat COVID patients.

Udayan adds, “Healthcare can’t afford their workers going down because you can replace everything else, you can replace equipment, you can replace infrastructure, but you can’t replace healthcare workers. If they fall, hospitals will not get any more doctors. Hospitals need to protect them and if that is a cost, everyone has to bear it.”

It is by equipping the Doctors with all the protective gears and bringing about massive changes the Medica Group of Hospitals have been able to successfully fight against the pandemic without losing the life of a single healthcare worker and Doctor whereas we have seen several Doctors losing their lives in trying to save others.