Responsibility in Times of Crisis

The situation today is unprecedented, with governments, public health authorities, businesses, and individuals all doing their best to weather the COVID-19 storm. In such a trying time, it’s more important than ever to remind ourselves of the true meaning of “responsibility” and the multiple dimensions of that concept.

Fundamentally, we each bear individual responsibility for our decisions and actions. Faced with a circumstance as enormous and daunting as a global pandemic, it is all too easy to deflect responsibility to our national and local elected officials, intergovernmental organizations, health agencies—really, to anyone other than ourselves. We don’t have that luxury, unfortunately. Getting a handle on this outbreak will require that each of us takes responsibility for our actions, for the good of our families and the greater community. The health advisories have been explicit: Even if you’re healthy and not considered at high risk of contracting the disease, stay home to the extent you can. Maintain social distance and avoid unnecessary contact. As community members, the power to flatten the infection curve is in our hands (which we should all be washing).

To get back to normal as quickly as possible, we also must be able to count on our leaders. Now more than ever, we are relying on our governments, public health authorities, and business leaders to make challenging—and, we hope, prescient—decisions against an uncertain backdrop. Putting people first and leading with science and facts is imperative.

To earn our confidence, governments and health officials must communicate transparently, and they must support the scientists who are working night and day to learn more about the virus and develop treatments and vaccines.

For corporate leaders, this is the time to think above and beyond business continuity plans. The safety and security of employees and their loved ones must be the absolute priority. Many global companies—including PMI—have restricted business travel, shifted to remote work, and implemented precautionary measures for any operations that cannot be performed remotely. In this challenging context, I am humbled to see our more than 73,000 people around the world stepping up to collaborate as one team, with care, respect, and solidarity.

It’s our responsibility as business leaders to assess the situation constantly, adapt quickly as things evolve, and foster resilience across our teams while continuing to operate effectively. That’s a tall order, but it’s an essential one—and it was essential even before this latest crisis took hold.

Equally important is our collective responsibility. This is about us as citizens and as communities coming together (virtually for now) to support one another—and especially to look out for and after those who are most vulnerable. Those of us in a position to do so must extend our spheres of responsibility further, to our neighbors and community members lacking the resources or ability to care for themselves.

We also must work together to ensure that we learn from what has transpired over these past months and what will transpire in the weeks ahead. Once the microbes settle and this crisis is behind us, we must conduct a thorough analysis of what happened, what worked and what didn’t, and, importantly, what we need to put in place to be better prepared for the next such crisis—including what our elected officials need to address.

We all hope we won’t face anything of this nature again—but we know we will. It needn’t be our undoing, however. If all of us take responsibility—personal, professional, societal—for our responses to this crisis, we will come out of this precarious situation stronger than when we entered it.