James Burstall is a forward-thinking leader. He is passionate about ideas and talent. He trained as a journalist, then producer director. As Executive Producer, his credits include Mormon Love on Facebook, award-winning feature film An Englishman in New York starring John Hurt and Cynthia Nixon, and hit franchise House Hunters International. He is a voting member of BAFTA and a Fellow of the RSA. He speaks five languages and is learning Mandarin. He is the founder and CEO of Argonon, the US and UK-based global independent TV production group. He is also the author of The Flexible Method: Prepare to Prosper in the Next Global Crisis (Nicholas Brealey, 2023).

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For those who have not as yet read The Flexible Method, hopefully your responses to these questions will stimulate their interest and, better yet, encourage them to purchase a copy and read the book ASAP. First, when and why did you decide to write it?

As we were coming out of the first lockdown in 2020, a friend suggested I write about what we had learned. Our ability to adapt is key to our success. and during Covid – to our very survival.

Our company took a 9 percent hit on revenue during the pandemic versus an industry average of 19 percent, while one of our biggest competitors took a whopping 30 percent hit.

This got me thinking and I approached a publisher who immediately expressed a strong interest.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic I imagine it would have been helpful to know how many of your team have good WIFI at home and to have upgraded it in advance where needed.

The scale of your organization will determine how much tech you need or can afford but I recommend you listen to your IT-savvy advisors and friends and invest as much as you can. And ensure your data is secure.

Keep your eyes and ears open to world events. Watch out when there are emergencies in other countries. We heard about the credit crunch in the US long before we felt its effects in the UK. We are all interconnected as a planet now and we would be wise to stay alert to what is happening to others – because it just may come our way too.

Heed the signs and if your instinct says act, then start early. Your team will be reluctant to break from their busy routines but take some time to prepare so you are ready to act decisively. And don’t fall into the mistake of ‘planning for the last war’ – stay flexible in what you do and how you do it.

Being brittle will make your organization more fragile.

When a disaster strikes, how best to respond? The most important dos and don’ts to keep in mind?

The first thing you must do is get your people to safety. When there is a shock, whether it’s a terrorist attack, a war or another kind of crisis, your staff will be anxious and uncertain. They will look to you for reassurance. Putting their interests and safety first at this time of need is something they will appreciate and remember.

Caring for your staff is not only the right thing to do; it is in your best interests. Being a strong leader who cares for your team leads to better staff retention and will ultimately give you a competitive advantage. If your staff are happy, they will not just be more productive; you will probably also have happier customers, which leads to higher profitability.

During a crisis you should also seek help. In a crisis, it is a positive strength to reach out for help rather than stubbornly struggle alone. It demonstrates that you are a realist and a pragmatist. Take whatever the government offers and challenge them for more. Find other backers. Seek non-financial help such as legal, commercial and indeed medical expertise.

That is a superb response to an immensely complicated challenge. When emerging from a disaster, what are — or should be — the highest-rated priorities? Why?

The first thing you need to do as you begin to emerge from a crisis is assess what has changed in the new norm. The disruption of the crisis may have resulted in new areas to explore while others are less attractive now. Customers may have changed their behavior, for example, turning away from in-store retail and switching to online purchasing.

Use data to carefully identify which changes in customer behavior are likely to be permanent.

The 9/11 attacks changed attitudes about privacy and security, resulting in permanently higher levels of screening and surveillance. Covid-19 accelerated e-commerce. A post crisis landscape may offer once-in-a-lifetime opportunities where your spend can go further.

There may also be short-term changes you can exploit. Your competitors and customers can give you clues. Who is doing well in the new landscape? What areas are they looking at?

The key to success at this stage is to raise your eyes from day-to-day problems and look six months ahead. Scan the horizon.

Once you have figured out the potential ramifications of the new landscape, you must adapt your business model to respond. Identify specific products and services that will be in demand or opportunities that will most likely grow as a result.

Crises will probably involve the accelerated adoption of technology so you can now offer new digital products, and services. This may require new partnerships. Perhaps you can continue with partners that you collaborated with during the crisis, but you may need to develop new ones from your sector and beyond to thrive in this new post-crisis landscape.

The third step to take as you emerge from a crisis is to boldly invest where appropriate. Great disruption can create great opportunities. You have been through the pain. Now is precisely the time to shake off the cautionary approach you were forced to adopt during the crisis and take swift, bold action.

During the crisis, you have to carefully protect your cash. That time is over. If you responded rapidly to the challenges of the crisis, don’t take your foot off the gas now as things start to recover.

Remember you must speculate to accumulate, and a post-crisis world is ripe with promise.

That said, you need to move circumspectly. Most crises don’t end overnight. High levels of uncertainty are likely to persist and you must not call time on a crisis prematurely. It is important to watch out for aftershocks, so stay alert and monitor the evolving situation. The crisis may be over but like a movie monster or villain, they have a nasty tendency to resurface just when you think you are in the clear.

Ideally, though, you will move boldly and take a few well-considered risks while your competitors are still hanging back, nervously scanning the horizon.

And don’t forget that your team will have been through the mill and will need a rest. Thank your exhausted team and encourage them to take a break. Reward them authentically for their tireless work and dedication. Assess what you did right and what you can do better next time. Circumstances s have changed, many methods and systems will have improved, so capture the learnings and fix them into your organization’s new DNA.

Depending on the crisis, your team may have also suffered trauma and grief. This needs to be acknowledged and taken into account.

You may even have to insist on this with some members of your team. They are going to need all their energy in the months to come.

Constantly expressing positive feedback to your employees is important, but after a crisis it is essential. Every one of your team will have made sacrifices and they need to hear that their dedication is recognized and that it made a difference. Showcase great work across your business, highlighting what and how employees are achieving it. This is also a way of exemplifying new behaviors that contribute to your organization’s success.

It is not only the right thing to do as an empathetic leader; a little gratitude yields big returns in productivity and resilience.

When you finally emerge from the crisis, I would encourage you to bring everyone together and publicly share your appreciation of the team as a whole and of individuals: especially those who tend to remain out of the spotlight. Praise these unsung heroes.

Expressing thanks is all the more important when staff are working remotely. It is easy to overlook people when they are not physically present.

A culture of recognition and appreciation will cascade these positive expressions of thankfulness and foster teamwork as people who have received thankfulness are in turn more generous and helpful to others.

Your gratitude for your team’s work during the crisis should also be followed up with tangible rewards. They can take on many forms – cash, opportunities for development, celebrations.

Let’s say a CEO reads the book and decides that their organization needs to institutionalize the Flexible Method. Where to begin? Why?

You have to start at the top, with your board. Then you work out how to cascade The Flexible Method throughout your management structure to make sure everybody is informed and on board.

Flexible thinking needs to be in your DNA. This comes more naturally to some businesses, especially startups. The independent TV production sector is expert at managing tight margins. We always have to be on top of cost control. We have learned to be nimble, always ready to pivot.

How best to measure the progress of that process?

Celebrate small wins. In early acute stages of a crisis you can be getting through on an hour-by-hour or day-by-day basis. Celebrating small wins is good for morale. It could be a thousand dollar sale, or a client retained. Each win spins the flywheel and builds momentum until you have a self- propelled virtuous circle. Eventually the big wins will come.

What are the most significant early-warning signs that, once systemic, a method is losing its flexibility?

When things are simply not working. Brittle thinking can lead to systems breaking down. If this is happening, it’s time to open up your management strategy. Reach out and lean on your generals, your war cabinet. You have got to be willing to listen, reach out and change.

Don’t be fearful or ashamed if something is not working. Try something else. Remember that Einstein quote.

Of all the Flexible Method tools, which seem(s) to be the most difficult to master? Why?

What we call “open-heart surgery.” That is,,  making cuts. In a crisis, money – or more precisely, the lack of it – can become a big problem. Cash flow issues are one of the main causes of business failures. Basically, if more money is flowing out of your business than is coming in, you end up without the resources to pay your staff or operating expenses.

In other words, you go bust.

In a crisis you will need to act fast to protect your cash. But do not panic and blindly slash spending across the board. This may feel like you are acting decisively but you can do more long-term damage than the crisis itself.

Your overriding priority is to ensure the business survives, of course, but ideally you want to emerge stronger after the crisis, not so weak that your company ends up prey to opportunistic competitors.

Bluntly, you want to be the opportunistic competitor.

So, despite the adrenaline, fear and uncertainty that a crisis triggers, my advice when making cuts is to use a scalpel, not an ax.

Nevertheless, it is painful because it affects people’s livelihoods. You are going to have to make cuts and the first one is the deepest. During Covid, we asked our finance teams to go through every single budget line with each of the eight companies at Argonon and also all of the central operations departments like legal, finance and HR. We left no stone unturned. It was a microscopic process that
took two long weeks.

In the pandemic of 2020, I felt it was essential that I took an immediate pay cut. As a leader, I could not inflict pain on the business without taking my own fair share of it.

Which seem(s) to be most valuable to crisis prevention?

We can’t prevent a crisis. There’s nothing you can do to stop inflation following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You just have to try to mitigate the impact by preparing.

To crisis response?

Again, preparation. Investing in IT, disaster recovery planning, getting people to safety, locking down your computers, saving your materials, all of which should be outlined in your disaster recovery plan.

To post-crisis (“post mortem”) evaluation of the given response?

You must review the key lessons hard won from the crisis. Evaluate what you did best, where you struggled, and how you can simplify or improve your organization.

Ultimately, your bottom line will be the clearest indicator of how well you did.

In your opinion, which of the material you provide in The Flexible Method will be most valuable to those now preparing for a career in business or who have only recently embarked on one? Please explain.

Feel the fear and do it anyway! If you feel excited by something do your research and put the word out. You may be surprised how people respond, but at the same time, don’t fear rejection. If you really want something, go for it.

To the owner/CEOs of small-to-midsize companies? Please explain.

The whole book. It was written with SMEs in mind. We are one ourselves.

To C-level executives in Fortune 500 companies?

Put your people first. Be willing to change if needed. The road is littered with companies that failed because they were too brittle and not flexible. You can get complacent. Just because you have done well for 20 years doesn’t mean you will always
continue do so.

Which question had you hoped to be asked during this interview – but weren’t – and what is your response to it?

There are none I can think of.

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Here is a direct link to Part 1 of the interview.

James cordially invites you to check out the resources at these two websites:

The Flexible Method link

The Argonon link