As Crisis Hits, Finance Asks: What Will Success Look Like? | Javier Echave, CFO, Heathrow Airport

So just going through these three phases, protect the business when the recovery and build back better, and realizing when was the right time to hold the blocks in terms of protecting your losses, protecting your liquidity, etc, etc. But what was the time to really start recruiting back because the recovery was going to be very, very fast. So defining success over a period of time, I think it’s a fundamental thing that we did, wisely, in my view. The second thing is success, to whom it’s not just success to shareholders, is not just success to creditors, but he’s also success to your own employees. We are living wage employer ID the sponsor the organization to become a living wage employer. And one of the things that we realize very quickly is that it’s in times of crisis, where you have to deliver your commitments is very easy to become a living wage employer when you have abundance and you are making profits and you are paying dividends. But the relationships with your own employees rely that when you are facing difficult times, you are also making those commitments. So we made the commitment that we were not going to abandon our living wage employer. With hindsight, one of the decisions we made why because of has allow us to attract talent back rapidly when the demand has come back. Also, we decided not to abandon our commitments to the prom payment code, making sure that we were paying our small and medium enterprises on time. Because if as a big organization, we were struggling with liquidity or worry about liquidity, we’re not struggling. We’re worried about liquidity. Imagine a smaller organization. So we made the decision that we were not going to change the terms of payments to our small and medium enterprises. So defining success not only for few stakeholders, but actually through the entire ecosystem was a fundamental part of of the success. So, if I have to really flag one of the things that we really did well was, first of all, is making sure that the foundation’s in terms of team culture, purpose, personal resilience, all these things were ready as soon as possible, because you never know when the next crisis is going to hit was really important. The second thing is designing a plan that was answering very clearly a very difficult question, which is how do you define success, over which time horizon and success to whom. And I think being able to address all the different stakeholders over a longer period of time has been, for us the biggest financial strategic moment that actually now we are celebrating, but at the time, it took a hell of a lot of effort.