Excerpt from Article in Executive Search Review
(Issue 1, 2021)

Responding to a Moment in History

Mary Lee Montague, founder and chief consultant at Montague & Associates, said that many organizations are at a crossroads with a lot of heavy lifting in their future to get back on track, let alone survive, post COVID-19. “Strategic plans are being altered due to the pandemic and if an executive happened to be at a personal crossroad of ‘stay or go’ prior to the pandemic we are finding many now taking this time to pass the reins to the person who will do the necessary heavy lift, develop the new plan and see it implemented,” she said.

More importantly, Ms. Montague said that different management skills and experience have risen to the top of the candidate ‘must have’ list. Key criteria for leaders during and post-pandemic period includes: Empathy; short term strategy vs long term strategy; crisis management; dealing with financial unknowns and the development of contingency plans; creativity, hyper communications; and agility and the ability to think outside the box.

“The future holds many tough decisions and not all leaders have the experience to deal with challenging what ifs in a calm, focused manner while managing a virtual team. Another set of skills which will finally rise to the top post-COVID-19 is a strong background in mergers, collaborations, consolidations and/or acquisitions”, said Ms. Montague. “For many years there has been merger talk with little action. Post-COVID-19 will be the time to put conversations into action.”