In January 2020, the three of us – Mark, Ken and Gareth – were making plans for our respective businesses and setting our goals for the year. AGM Transitions would be helping more clients transition between senior roles and help them be successful in role. Bestem would be helping members of its network successfully commercialise innovations. It was already a time of change – we could see new technologies, climate change and changing trade patterns affect our clients’ businesses. We had no idea that we were about to enter a time of dislocation caused by a global pandemic.Then it hit. First China, then Italy, then Spain, then the UK. Governments ordered shutdowns; workforces were ordered to stay home. Public spending taps were turned on. Everyone was in shock.Obviously, our business was going to be affected but we didn’t know how. Our clients’ businesses would be affected and, it turned out, they didn’t know how either. So: we asked the question – “How can we help”. Our networks answered – “tell us what everyone else is doing and tell us what we can do. Do you have any ideas?”With this brief we quickly arranged a series of check-in calls with clients, held global C-Suite workshops across industries including Aerospace, Oil, Technical Services, Software, Banking, Investment management, Consumer Retail, Travel.Software CEOs learned what was happening with non-productive physical assets, Banking learned how supply chains could be disrupted and retail bosses learned about remote working cultures. Together we shared our experiences of leadership and productivity. We shared lessons in avoiding burn-out and we discussed how our teams were inventing new ways to work and innovating quickly to automate processes and remove manual labor.We published our findings in April 2020 as a series of short guides that our clients used to lead immediate action. They told us that they found these very useful and asked us to expand on our thinking. This book is the result of our effort.With fresh insights gained from numerous sources over the past 6 months, we have updated our findings to reflect what has worked, what has not and what is more likely than not to make future responses to crises more effective and sustainable. In this book you will therefore find a way to deal not only with the COVID-19 crisis, but also general lessons that apply to all crises. You will see that we cannot be in a world that is merely on pause waiting for things to return to “normal”. We are in a time of transformation. This book will help you to identify key areas to address and it provides guidance to the most important things to consider.We hope that you find this book helpful in your journey, not only for your company, but also for you personally. This is a time of great change and it is likely that your company will need to quickly commercialise innovations as it evolves, and it is likely that your own role will be changing.We trust that you will find this book helpful. Please tell us what you think and how you have applied the ideas here. We’d love to hear from you. Our contact details are at the back of the book. Onwards and upwards