As we reach the milestone of one year on from New Zealand exiting Alert Level 4, Tammy McLeod, Managing Director from Davenports Law, reflects on the challenges and positive outcomes of the past year on business.
When people comment on the number of women in my business I jokingly say, “it’s good luck rather than good management”. However, I do think that women bring a different perspective to business and this has been highlighted in the last year when we have been faced with unprecedented times. I am firmly of the view that life is about meritocracy – getting to be where you are because you are the right person for the job, not because you fill a quota. However, diversity on all levels is becoming increasingly important to provide balanced views.
In the last year many businesses in New Zealand have faced challenges that we never envisaged. Not since World War II has the world been united with the same issues which have presented challenges for all of us. Whether you are a business owner, an employee in an industry that has been affected either positively or negatively, a parent of school-aged children, or someone with family overseas, then 2020 will be a year never to forget.
The first challenge was that of uncertainty. Like many business owners, while I thrive on challenge and pushing forward, I still like certainty and most importantly being able to control things. This was one time when I initially felt I wasn’t in control – I was following what the government asked of me and trying to make my business work within that. I think that really taught me that I was more resilient than I thought. As a leader I had to smile every day (remotely), be positive and move forward with the team, but also show some vulnerability and admit that while I was positive for the future, I wasn’t sure of all the answers. I was just going step-by-step to make sure that our business thrived through the uncertainty and was then poised for growth the other side of it.
Like many others, on a personal level, I actually enjoyed a lot of parts of the first lockdown last year. In level four, I really felt like I knew what was expected (compared to the vagaries of level three) which made working from home a lot easier. The weather was still quite lovely, we had lots of short weeks with Easter and Anzac weekend and there was a real sense of, “we are all in this together”. I also think that it fostered unity in the community and in the workplace. We were catching up via Zoom with friends who we hadn’t seen for years, but now we had a bit more discretionary time to spend (no time commuting, running kids to after-school activities and other social activities outside of the house). A lot of this reminded me of when I was a child growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s when the world was more insular and there was a lot more of a focus on New Zealand-made and supporting local. We can also never lose sight of how lucky we are to be in this paradise we call home. I hope that this is something that we continue to be grateful for both in everyday life and in our businesses.
Going forward there are some real positives that we can take with us on our business journeys. The first is learning that flexibility is OK. At Davenports Law we have always operated a relatively flexible working environment with many working part-time hours or flexi-hours to fit with family. Because I have young children, I have always been adamant that I want our staff to be able to do the same thing that I want to do with my boys – go to sports day, see them get certificates in assembly and simply be there when needed. However, I think in 2020 we learned that the modern working environment often goes beyond that, with working from home becoming part of the norm and technology really being our friend.
2020 was a challenging year and I think we would be naïve to think that the challenges are in the past. However, my takeaways as a business owner and leader in the community are that we are more resilient than we think, technology is our friend, and to keep moving forward and growing, we need to be nimble and open to new ideas.
Tammy McLeod, Managing Director, Davenports Law
