Silvio Napoli has first-hand experience of the impact wrought by last year's financial tsunami. He oversees well over a dozen operating companies plus regional manufacturing bases covering Australasia, the mainland, Japan, South Korea and all points south of Indonesia.
The president for Asia-Pacific at Schindler Group, the lift and escalator giant headquartered in Switzerland, had a crash course on management during a time of unexpected crisis.
When asked what qualities have been most valuable in helping him and his managers deal with the impact of the severe and protracted recession, he pauses for reflection, measures his words carefully, and says: 'Resilience - the ability to inspire performance rather than forcing it; an unerring focus on developing a clear plan and then executing it; and trust - that's probably the single biggest differentiator in managing effectively through a crisis.'
Napoli conceded that managing through this recession threw up challenges that none of the combatants on this battlefield had ever seen before.
One of the sharpest lessons he found himself confronting was that every painstakingly prepared number and projection in the existing plans and budgets had suddenly been rendered virtually useless. That inevitably focused everyone's attention on making sense of the short term. Later, he says, it became equally clear that the subsequent predictions of long-term doom and gloom were likely to be equally false. 'Managers were in the position of having to make very short-term forecasts for their businesses at the same time as holding up their hands and saying it was almost impossible to know if these forecasts were going to be accurate.'
One reliable and entirely measurable solution he did apply, however, was benchmarking. With so many different operating companies across the region, he focused on finding 'champions' in key areas. His aim was not just the accepted model of Best Demonstrated Practice, but to challenge and inspire fellow managers to believe in the opportunity for success.
