Mansi Welcome to the latest episode of our COO podcast, The Rise of the COO, bringing together chief operating officers to tackle pressing topics that matter to them in today's world. My name is Mansi Patel. I'm a Capabilities Sector Leader and COO Network Sponsor at Baringa. In today's episode, we talk about operational resilience, leading through crisis and recovery, and how to bring command and clarity in unforeseen situations. I'm really pleased to welcome our guest speaker today - Chris Taylor, Chief Operating Officer at Baringa. Chris joined us over the summer and comes from The Telegraph where he was COO, and before that CIO. He has an impressive career in the digital publishing industry, which we'll hopefully get to hear more about throughout our conversation. Chris will share some invaluable leadership advice for COOs on leading through crisis, what it takes to make critical decisions with limited information, how to keep teams calm and focused under pressure, and the role operations play in stabilizing a business when everything else feels uncertain. We're really happy to have you with us, Chris, so thank you for joining us.
Chris Absolute pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Mansi Now Chris, I feel it's worth mentioning that you've been a member of Baringa's COO network since the beginning. You've been client and now you're working for Baringa. So it would be great to hear a bit about your journey to this role and a bit more about your career to date, if we could start there.
Chris Yeah, for sure. Well, thanks a lot for having me. I suppose my career has primarily been in technology, digital, and operational leadership, primarily in the media industry. I did start originally as a consultant with PwC, but then I worked for several years for EMAP plc, who were a big magazine publisher at the time, as they wrestled with the very early stages of transformation to digital. I went from there to News International, as it then was, became News UK while I was there, so the UK arm of News Corp, initially as deputy to the CIO, took over as CIO and then was made Chief Operating Officer there. I was there during a fascinating time, because that was the period when News was initially going through and then recovering from the phone hacking scandal, so I think that'd be quite pertinent in the context of our conversation today. And then from there I went to The Telegraph; spent 10 years at Telegraph Media Group. First five years as Chief Information Officer and the last three years as Chief Operating Officer. The best way to think about that was I was responsible in those last five years, still for all the tech and digital side of things, but also for really all non-journalism business operations, so pretty broad. And then, having spent the best part of 25 years in the media industry I thought it would be nice to try my hand in a different sector, see if my experience and some of the things I've learned along the way could be put to good use elsewhere. Knew of Baringa’s reputation, primarily because of the culture that Baringa is very famous for and I had been asked to join the COO network group when it was first set up. I found that really interesting. Enjoyed those sessions and when the opportunity to consider moving from media into consulting, specifically from The Telegraph into Baringa as COO came up, I thought that was a really happy opportunity and outcome so delighted that's worked out and it's great to be here.
Mansi Brilliant, we’ll It's been wonderful getting to know you both through the COO network and as a client, so absolutely delighted to have you within Baringa as well. Now, you mentioned some flagship brands that you've worked with as part of your career, and our topic today is operational resilience and leading through crisis and recovery. It would be wonderful to hear a little bit about the role of the COO in crisis, perhaps giving us some examples of when a crisis has hit some of the organizations you've work with previously. It'd good to perhaps walk through how does the COOs role differ from the CEO's role during a crisis?
Chris So it's a really interesting perspective. First of all, I suppose we all hope that we don't have to go through crises, but sadly and unfortunately that tends to be the case for everybody, doesn't it? So I've probably been through about four or five substantial ones during my career. Everyone is, of course, completely different. I think the COO's role - it really starts before the crisis ever happens. So because you are naturally the kind of executive who is closest to operations in the broader sense of the word, I think you have a responsibility as COO to try and engineer those operations to be as resilient as is practical. t's impossible of course to prevent every eventuality and particularly with some of the emerging and ever-changing digital threats, you just cannot stay ahead of everything, but I think that you've got a responsibility to prepare as thoroughly as you can in advance. And because of that closeness, when the crisis itself actually happens, you're often the person on the leadership team who has got the best understanding of the context, the majority of the detail. Often the people who can pull the various levers to help resolve the problem in real-time. Often there will be people who work in the COO's organization, so you've also got that personal line of accountability and hopefully personal relationships you can draw on. Chief Exec is obviously steering the ship as a whole, and has ultimate overall decision-making and responsibility. But it's hard as the Chief Exec to stay as close to the detail as a COO can. Obviously, he can't stay on top of everything, but he can be that degree closer. So when I have been in those situations, I've found that the chief exec will often seek a recommendation or seek advice and broadly will follow that because it is based on a greater degree of knowledge and understanding which like I said starts beforehand but really is valuable when you're in there.
So a couple of examples of things I have experienced – I was at News International, I arrived just as the phone hacking scandal sort of really exploded. All referring to events that happened from prior to me actually arriving there. And I wasn't directly involved in managing that immediate crisis but had a ringside seat and was then more involved in the sort of recovery and rebuild of the business in the subsequent years that followed as it kind of re-emerged as News UK. I think that was a really interesting episode to go through because that really was existential stuff for that business and the speed of decision-making that the leadership team took there, whatever you think about the background, was very impressive. They took very severe, very stark decisions, very fast, in order to be able to save the company during a time of real peril. And I think that speed of decision-making and that willingness to be decisive is to be admired and is actually a key part of managing a crisis like that. If you've got a real sense before you go in as to what really, really matters in the bones of the company, what are the absolute priorities, gives you a reference point for that fast decision making.
And then during my time still within that firm and similarly at the Telegraph I have been through a few large IT and tech digital failure events, where in those very time-critical publishing businesses where you're publishing 24 hours a day around the clock, there is no time, there is no opportunity for downtime and sometimes if you have very large scale systems failures that effectively risk knocking you offline or making it impossible to get the newspaper out, those are very serious as well. I have managed three of those directly myself and that's been a pretty eye-opening experience actually. Again, that is an example where you try and prepare as much as you can in advance. You know what really matters. And in the context of those businesses at the time, it was produce a newspaper, keep the website up, publish the digital apps in that order. And when you've got that clarity going into the situation, it can allow you to make really quite tough decisions very fast and in some cases without the ability to refer them for discussion or debate or validation when you're up against a deadline for a newspaper printing or for trucks leaving a print site and you've only got five minutes to make the decision, you've got to have those reference points already worked out in your head otherwise it's pretty tricky. I've always felt that people are apt to sort of try and over complicate some of those decisions sometimes and try and think multiple steps ahead and really go try and boil it back to just understanding the decision you're taking that's immediately in front of you and that can give you a little bit more clarity.
Mansi Those are great examples, Chris, and even as you're sharing them, I can see you reliving some of those moments. As you've lived through multiple crises, is there a common decision that you typically take first as a COO?
Chris I would say not actually because they're all different and this is the thing about preparation. You can't prepare for everything. It's impossible and I've never been a huge fan or seen great value in the idea of scenario planning to the nth degree. What you think is everything that could occur, because you'll never get everything. It'll always be a bit different, the shake will be a little bit different. I've always preferred to focus on having a clear understanding of the priorities, so you really know what matters. So obviously, you're people first, then your core business operations in sequence, so you know what you can and can't live without temporarily when you're going through those decisions. Have the right people around you, I mean that is absolutely key, have really trusted experts who you can call on, who have the knowledge to help you make those decisions quickly and be able to get to them fast, because inevitably these things happen out of hours and awkward times when people are on holiday and all of that kind of stuff. I remember missing one of my children's christenings entirely dealing with one of these things on Sunday. I think the specific decisions, they come off the context, but if you've got the right people around you and a good understanding of what really matters in your business, you can assess that context really fast and that helps you make the right first decision or at least have a good shot at making a good first decision, relevant to specifically what's going on.
Mansi And you've touched a couple of times on the work you do ahead of a crisis. What risks do you think most organizations consistently underestimate in their crisis planning?
Chris That's a really good question. I think not enough crisis planning is done, in general terms, and when it is done I think it's often too much of a desk exercise, too much for paper exercise about scenario planning, rather than thinking through the practicalities of actually running a crisis. Desktop exercises can be quite helpful in that regard, but one of the things that would come up time and again whenever I was involved in those preparatory exercises is, have you got enough strength in depth in senior people who are aware enough and have enough knowledge to make decisions? Because if you had a crisis that ran for multiple days, it can be extremely exhausting. And I've been involved in a few which have done a full 24-hour cycle. That's obviously unsustainable for multiple day. So often people don't think about that. They think, have we got the right CISO to help us with a cyber threat? Have we got the right Ops Director to help us with supply chain problem, and usually the answer to that is yes. But have those people got one or two really good left-tenants who can step in and cover them when it's day four of a multi-day crisis - that bit often gets overlooked. Being able to stay resilient through a long-running problem.
Mansi Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Sometimes it does seem to go to the single person in charge who doesn't have the same level of experience in necessarily the people around them, which as you say in a long-running scenario is unsustainable and requires a huge amount of resilience just from the individual. Now in the heat of crisis, COOs are often forced to make high-stakes decisions with rapidly shifting information given the crisis that they're dealing with, all whilst also keeping their teams very steady and focused on the tasks in hand. What leadership qualities do you think matter most when COOs are under that type of pressure?
Chris Well, from a personal point of view, I think resilience is extremely important because the pressure can be very substantial and the people who you are leading look to you to be a steadying influence. So one of the things that I think you have to do, It’s important to do, no matter how worried you are on the inside, you need to try very hard to project a degree of calmness and also trying to be measured but also fairly rapid and decisive in your decision making because that in turn instills confidence in people. It's a time when people's confidence very shaken, and if they can look to the person that is leading their organization and be reassured by steadiness, decisiveness, a sense that there is a plan - I think there is no substitute for talking to people directly. Now, at scale obviously that can't be one-to-one, but it can be one-to-one with certain key people who are involved in dealing with particular pinch points of the crisis, and that direct reassurance, a check-in, ‘you're doing a good job, don't worry, I’ll give you air cover, I have got your back’, so they don't feel personally exposed, people always worry a little bit about. ‘If I make this decision or I give the wrong advice, is it going to come back to bite me?’ You've got to really reassure people that's not the case, they're all in it together. But equally, town halls, virtual town halls are a great way of getting across a little bit of in-person reassurance, even if you can't impart much detail.
Mansi And how do you strike the balance of the right degree of information to share, the right degree of transparency to offer the organization? Crisis mode doesn't lend itself to reveal everything. How have you struck that balance?
Chris I think the general principle I try and follow is to share as much as is possible and often depending on the nature of what's happening, you'll be very limited in what you can share, but I think you should try and share as much as you're able and allowed to. Certainly the events I've been involved in, can be quite technical, so I think it's important to also translate that, because in the heat of the moment it's still very important to spend time translating into language that will cut with a broad audience and not assume a degree of technical or supply chain knowledge that people may or may not have. The Chief Exec ultimately responsible quite often be working as COO in a team with other executive colleagues as you try and wrestle your way through the crisis. But you never quite know which exec colleague you might need to draw on at which time. So keeping them broadly briefed, on a rolling basis. And that I have tended to do by sort of periodic update emails, just so that everybody is at a reasonable level of common understanding. So if I needed, for example, in an emergency to reach out to the Chief People Officer for their help on a particular matter, they're already warmed up and already briefed, even if they've not been that engaged so far.
Mansi Quite a broad reach in terms of the role of the COO in a crisis. Now you've talked about living through a number and every crisis leaves behind lessons that shape how leaders respond to the next crisis, and actually how they continue to do their job. What have past crises or disruptions taught you about leadership and how have they shaped how you lead today?
Chris The lesson I have learned most from a leadership point of view is that you need really good, capable, but empowered people working for you and with you in senior roles who are familiar with the idea of making decisions and having responsibility and accountability. Because when a crisis happens, it's not really possible or practical for one person, whether it's the CEO or the Chief Executive, to make all the decisions, because things often move too fast. So you require in a crisis situation, people to operate with a degree of more autonomy. If you run an organization where everything's centralized, everything's command and control, and suddenly in an emergency you expect people to operating independently, that's just not going to work. You need to foster that sense of here's your strategic objectives, here's the tram lines you can operate in, but if you stay within those tram lines, you are responsible, you've got freedom of action and you're accountable for the outcome. And I have always tried over the years to manage and lead my teams more and more like that because I think that creates people who are much more independent and capable and flexible and responsible for those precise moments. And they know, almost always, they know what to do and when they refer it up the chain it's for validation and actually that's time is wasted with that validation process and if you can trust those people and they feel like they're supported sufficiently they can those decisions at the curl phase and you can save quite a bit of time.
Mansi I couldn't agree more and I think in those moments feeling they have the accountability to be empowered to make those changes on behalf of the business I think is a really important stake in the ground for dealing with that crisis well. Now Chris, you've touched on a couple of times that it's always good to be preparing for the crisis in advance. What emerging risks should COOs be preparing in the next five to ten years?
Chris Obviously there are risks from ongoing risks from cyber attacks and so on, which are significant. There are obviously slightly more existential risks that are difficult to influence within your own company like the risks of things like climate change. The disruption that I feel is perhaps more apparent now than has been case for the majority of my career, is material supply chain disruption. So we're at a time now where the world feels far less stable than it has done for the previous two decades, and I recall when the Ukraine invasion happened that one of the consequences of that of course was the price of energy rocketed one of the consequence of that was that during my time at the telegraph media group, the price of newsprint that the paper you print newspapers on rocketed, and we had a real supply chain problem really fast, okay. And that was driven really by those and that unstable world that we now live in and I think as we have an ever more connected global supply chain that is more and more fragile and can be more and more the case. So I think supply chain risks are actually the one that people should keep an eye on as well as the well understood risks around things like cyber because I think global supply chains in an unstable world are much more fragile than perhaps people have been used to. A lot of the decisions you make as a COO in your normal day-to-day job are around being as economically efficient as possible, saving money, renegotiating, consolidating, whatever it might be. And one of the things I've learned through a couple of my crisis experiences is sometimes it's actually better to spend a little more money, to have a little more resilience, so that you're better prepared for something happening in the longer term - whether that's stockpiling materials or having dual systems where you don't really need them. And I think that fragile global supply chain is the thing that I personally would keep a close eye on.
Mansi And as you say, we can't predict exactly what it will be, but the point around the readiness for it and preparedness for it I think is key here. And it would be good perhaps just to close with a bit of a final question around the mindset around crisis management. Do you see it as a competitive advantage rather than a defensive measure?
Chris I think, really the idea is to try and avoid crises as much as you can, it's obviously impossible to do that completely, and as and when they do occur be as ready as you can be to deal with them. I think, a responsible organization should seek to achieve both of those to the best of its ability and the most appropriate level for the industry it operates in. I don't see that as a competitive advantage necessarily, but more as an essential capability that has to be in place to protect the business's strategic operations and not having them place risks putting its commercial competitive advantage at risk. I think if I was operating in an industry against competitive peers and one of them was poorly prepared, I think that would definitely put them at a disadvantage. It's like a gamble, isn't it? Maybe save a little bit money by being poorly prepared and then may get away with it for 10 years and then suddenly when disaster strikes, you're in peril because you've not prepared and equipped your people properly for it. So I do see it more as a defensive measure, but I think the strategic importance of it cannot be underestimated.
Mansi Great. Thank you. Now it's been fascinating to hear all of your insights and I have so many more questions I've had to hold at bay as you've shared lots of those examples. Perhaps before we wrap up is there one piece of advice or a key takeaway you'd like to leave our listeners with?
Chris One of the most helpful things is to know that the crisis is happening as fast as possible. Time matters. And in certain situations, cyber events, whatever it may be, the earlier you know, the better you can respond. So making sure that you have got early warning systems of whatever shape or size is appropriate your business so that not necessarily you as the COO individual but your teams and ultimately then yourself, can be alerted as fast as possible is absolutely key. Because whatever decision should make, however good they are or aren't after that fact, the sooner you know about it, the soon you can start handling it. Much better to have a few false alarms than to be caught short and have an incident occur and hours go by before you realize. So I think that's one thing that I would encourage people to take seriously. Make sure that you're confident you're going to know and hear really, really rapidly so you can start to address.
Mansi Wonderful. Thank you so much, Chris. What great insights into what it takes to live through multiple crises in different organizations. I found it fascinating to hear about the role between you and the CEO and the trust that must exist between those two roles in order to handle a crisis. The reach across the full organization the COO has to have to manage both resilience in the core operations as well as communications out to you. People across the business to keep them uplifted and motivated as you handle the crisis and clearly as you just closed on there the need for speed and early preparation in thinking about when crises might hit.
Thank you so much for your time today Chris, it's been a pleasure to chat with you.
Chris Thanks for having me.
Mansi And a huge thank you to our listeners. Please do join the discussion, comment and tell us what you think. If you've enjoyed this conversation, please do go and take a look at our other episodes in the series that cover a range of topics relevant to operational leaders, from shaping workforces of the future, to getting the most out of external partnerships and more. If there is a specific topic you'd like us to cover in future episodes, do get in touch. And we look forward to welcoming you back for our next episode.
