The world will never revert to what we knew as normal in 2019—nor should it,” Dilmah chief executive Dilhan Fernando told Campden FB magazine last April 7.
The Sri Lankan family enterprise Dilmah centers on tea production (from planting and harvesting to manufacture and distribution). Its products are staple around the world.
“The arrogance of mankind and the relentless pursuit of profit or power, usually both, has made it acceptable for the world to tolerate the consequences,” he said.
Fernando echoed what Pope Francis said in his Urbi et Orbi message last March 27: “We have gone ahead at breakneck speed, feeling powerful and able to do anything. Greedy for profit, we let ourselves get caught up in things, and lured away by haste. We did not stop … we were not shaken awake … We carried on regardless, thinking we would stay healthy in a world that was sick.”
Fernando’s family business has not been spared the ravages of the pandemic. Resplendent Ceylon, the chain of luxury hotels and resorts managed by his brother Malik, is the hardest hit, but Dilmah itself has had to close plantations and make do with a skeleton crew.
Despite these, Fernando said the safety of their team was paramount. Since the business cannot operate in the same way as it did prepandemic, they are now working to realign with the new normal.
This task of adaptation and adjustment may be easier for family businesses than giant corporations. Research has pointed out the nimbleness, the lack of red tape, the simpler structure of family enterprises as opposed to their bureaucratic, silo-ridden counterparts.
Fernando also pointed to the ethos and mission that family businesses profess to hold.
“They are founded on values that go beyond profit, structured to be able to respond and also know that beyond the conventional definition of success lies the far greater achievement of significance,” he said.
Significance rather than profit—this is particularly apt in our time of quarantine.
My student “Emy” (not her real name), who works for a conglomerate, still goes to the office, always fearful of losing her job and also her life.
“Aren’t we supposed to stay home and keep our distance?” she asks.
“That’s what medical authorities say,” I reply. “Viruses will not survive without human hosts after some time.”
“I am scared to go out of the house,” she says.
“Some workers, such as doctors and nurses, are essential,” I say, like my friend Dr. Susan Gooco, who goes to Lourdes Hospital every day.
Our high school batch has provided support. I have offered prayers at online masses. Susan fortifies herself with vitamins and probiotics, but I still worry, as do friends and loved ones for health front-liners.
“Talk to your boss,” I say.
“He is under pressure from his own boss,” Emy says. “People are still so demanding.”
I sigh.
Emy is not the only one in this dilemma. It’s a vicious cycle: I guide her to manage panic attacks, but she has to go to the office, so anxiety returns, and she needs help once more.
If the panic attacks worsen, I warn Emy, then she has to quit her job.
“The economic system in which we operated tolerated externalities that in a post COVID-19 world must be considered intolerable,” Fernando said.
“In place of the brutal system that accepted … growth at the expense of … inequality, we need to recalibrate and define a kinder, more humane system. We should not resume business as usual, but form a ‘force for good’ on the understanding that good is a norm, and should not be an exception.”
Queena N. Lee-Chua is with the board of directors of Ateneo’s Family Business Center. Get her book “All in the Family Business” at www.lazada.com.ph or call National’s Jennie Garcia at 0915-421-2276. Contact the author at blessbook.chua@gmail.com.