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November/December 2020 – The Innovators

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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OFF THE CLOCK Getting workers to buy into a remote culture means giving them freedom, says entrepre- neur Lane Merrifield NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 BCBUSINESS 41 BCBUSINESS.CA Public gatherings were capped at 250 people. Bars and restaurants closed. The practice of having health-care workers work at more than one centre was ended. B.C. moved to freeze rent hikes and enacted a moratorium on most residential tenant evictions. In the event of an out-of-control scenario, the Vancouver Convention Centre was readied as a makeshift treatment cen- tre with a 271-bed capacity. After repeatedly insisting that closing the borders was unnecessary, the federal government belatedly gave in and shut down most international travel on March 16. The exception? Visitors from the U.S. were exempt. This had serious implications for B.C. By this point, it was suspected (and later con- firmed by genomic analysis) that many of the province's cases were directly linked to travel to and from Washington state. By not moving to close the border, the Trudeau government was at odds with B.C. Dix was clearly unimpressed and made his displea- sure known to his federal counterparts: "I would say that we communicated pretty directly." At one of the now-ritual weekday briefings, Dix went further. "Don't come," he said curtly, aiming his message at Ameri- cans who were thinking about a B.C. holi- day. (The U.S.-Canada border would finally be shut down to non-essential travel the following week, on March 22.) The most significant provincial action in the early going, however, was moving to free up 30,000 hospital beds. "We made the decision in the middle of March to can- cel all non-urgent scheduled surgeries," Dix says. It was a dramatic, yet prudent, move. "We had new information at that point about what had happened in other health-care systems, including Italy and Hubei province," he explains. "We needed to create that 'space.'" Reducing hospital capacity to between 50 and 60 percent of normal wasn't at all easy. "It was profoundly difficult," says Dix, characterizing the move as "a mas- sive decision." Ultimately, though, what it accomplished was twofold. First, as intended, it ensured that headroom was built into the system if things went south. Second, it underscored the seri- ousness of the situation for the public. "So it wasn't just talk, it was action as well," Dix says. "And I think that was persuasive." But there's more to being persuasive than walking the walk. Talk matters. TA L K I N G H E A D S To get the message out—to establish credibility and ensure compliance— you need the right messenger. In both Adrian Dix and Bonnie Henry, the gov- ernment had a convincing tag team. Since 2005, when he was first elected MLA for Vancouver-Kingsway, Dix built a solid reputation for competence and car- ing. "One thing about Adrian Dix that has been consistent—and I continue to see it today—is that he leads with empathy," says Vancouver-based crisis manager and media relations expert Renu Bakshi, a former longtime CTV journalist. Henry's background was even more of a factor. An on-the-ground physician who had battled the Ugandan Ebola outbreak in 2001, as well as the SARS and H1N1 epi- demics, she has a reservoir of gravitas buttressed by a low-key, soft-spoken deliv- ery. As described by the New York Times, Henry's "preternaturally calm" demean- our has been a significant feature in ensur- ing that British Columbians get with the pandemic response program. "I think it L E A D E R S H I P L E S S O N Put the right people in the right place. Getting your team onside largely depends on the credibility of your top management. TAG TEAM (Clockwise) Provin- cial health officer Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix stage a daily briefing; Lynn Valley Care Centre, home to B.C.'s first known case of com- munity transmission; Wuhan, China, on the first day of its shutdown L E A D E R S H I P L E S S O N Internal and external com- munication should should be clear, consistent and, as much as possible, transparent.

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