CEOs try to plan for every conceivable contingency, whether it be business delays, economic downturns, labor shortages or any other interruption. They see the possibilities in analytical tea leaves, strategize to answer current events and plan for the future.
But there are those events that escape our imagination, that slip past the bounds of recent history. A pandemic does just that. The once-in-a-century crisis did not require Leidos Holdings Inc. Chairman and CEO Roger Krone to help guide the company through one uncertain moment, but instead a series of them.
“I have an expression: ‘The alligator closest to the boat.’ If you’re in the boat, you have a weapon and you’ve only got one shot, which alligator do you shoot? You shoot the one that is today’s problem,” Krone says. “The problems changed over time.”
As the crisis continued, Krone and the company’s Covid working group met daily, addressing developments as they emerged.
When the company suffered its first…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
