Team size (optional): 13

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

During instability or crisis, stress and pressure increase in the organisation. It is fundamental for me as a leader and in my role as Legal and Corporate Affairs VP to:

Ensure I keep myself calm and help others (team, peers, managers) stay calm during turbulent times. This does not mean not acting with agility, but it is fundamental to have a clear mind for facing challenges with objectiveness and the right level of urgency.

Stay very close to the business. When pressure increases, people are tempted to do things in faster and easier ways, typically thinking in the short term. Legal needs to be and stay closer than ever to help guide, collaborate, and identify impacts that desperate actions could bring to the company in the mid and long term. Our legal role of protection becomes more important, and we need to ensure Legal is supportive, open, and courageous both to embrace and stop creative solutions or actions.

Communicate with assertiveness. In the midst of a crisis, people do not have time to read long documents or to have repeated discussions. Sharp decisions have to be made very quickly, and this requires accurate assessments and assertive communications to be able to act on time.