There’s going to be a new normal

In light of the COVID-19 emergency, we’ve temporarily suspended our regularly scheduled series of conversations with Canadian CEOs. But we’re not going away. Instead, we’re going to pivot to the health emergency itself. We’re going to explore the impact on companies and workers across the country. And we’re going to find out how business leaders are responding to crisis.

“There’s going to be a new normal.”  Mark Barrenechea of Open Text discusses how the COVID-19 crisis will change the way we live, and why he says “there’s a special place in hell” for cyber criminals who are trying to capitalize on the crisis.

Transcript

Goldy Hyder:
I’m Goldy Hyder and this is Speaking of Business. In this special podcast series, we are hearing from business leaders about how they’re responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Within a few short weeks, the new virus has changed the way we live and work, and that includes adapting to a world of physical distancing. Suddenly, the digital world is more important than ever before. My guest today knows all about that. As CEO and chief technology officer of OpenText, Mark Barrenechea helps organizations across the globe manage, share, and secure their data. OpenText is, in fact, Canada’s largest software company.

Goldy Hyder:
Mark, welcome to the program.

Mark Barrenechea:
Goldy, thanks for having me on today.

Goldy Hyder:
Well look, let’s just jump right in. I mean, as I said in the introduction, you have a much more global look at this based on the clients that you serve. It gives you a front row seat, if you will, to see how your customers and organizations are adapting to this COVID crisis. Can you share with our listeners what you have learned over the past few weeks?

Mark Barrenechea:
Yeah, for sure. And if I can, let me just start with just a huge thank you, a thank you to all our healthcare professionals, our first responders, our infrastructure professionals who are keeping the lights, the water, everything running, our data centre professionals, our delivery services. I just want to start with a big thank you for all those heroes and heroines out there keeping the world running for us.

Mark Barrenechea:
It’s been an amazing, unprecedented few months. At OpenText we’re 15,000 employees strong. We operate in 40 countries. We’ve had really an early view from the first days in China and have just, like everyone, watched this wave go from China and Asia through Southern Europe into Europe and then into North America. There are at least three simultaneous crises, right? There’s obviously the health crisis, there’s the financial crisis that is now and will follow, and there is just a big disruption in supply chains. There’s certainly a focus on remote work and tele-work. We had estimated within a two week period, 300 million people went home and tele-worked. But you also have that iceberg beneath the surface of a reordering of supply chains that are going to follow very quickly.

Goldy Hyder:
First of all, great that you had the acknowledgement of everybody out there just throw law enforcement and other into that. It’s just been a great Canadian response, as you note. And thank you for sharing also the insights in terms of what you’re seeing and hearing. Let’s dig deeper into that a little bit. On the question of impact of the working from home and as you noted 300 million people. We had Joe Natale of Rogers on the podcast and talked about the pressure on the infrastructure. One of the things that I wanted to ask you about is concerns that you may be having about cybersecurity and those kinds of issues that you may be seeing globally because unfortunately mischief knows no bounds, right?

Mark Barrenechea:
Yeah, for sure. And I think I can use this word on a podcast, but there’s a special place in hell for those who are exploiting those at any time, but these unprecedented times. So we made an acquisition recently of a company called Carbonite. They are a world leader in endpoint data protection and security. And a one of our services is we actually process every URL and IP address on the internet every day and we’re able to see the new sites that come up, the good sites, the bad sites. And over the last 30 days, 5% of all new IP addresses or websites are malicious behavior. That is just unconscionable. So cyber security needs to be front and center and kind of a co-job number one. Not just being able to enable your workforce being able to get access to systems and collaboration tools, which are very visible, but also data security and data protection. It needs to be forefront.

Goldy Hyder:
How do you think the experience that people are having now in terms of both businesses and individuals are working from home could impact the future of work?

Mark Barrenechea:
It’s not going to return to normal. It’s going to be forever different, both life and work. Look, I have the grace of being a survivor of leukemia and I remember going through my personal journey and getting into, post a bone marrow transplant, getting to a new normal. This is nothing like any of all our personal journeys, this pandemic, but there’s going to be a new normal. Life is not going to return to the same. Retail, it could be contactless retail for a long time. What does return to work even mean? I saw a report from a prestigious US college saying that when they do return to the classrooms, they’re going to have new spacing requirements and they now need three times the space. So I know enough to say it’s not going to be the same. It’s going to be very different. Things like contactless payment, contactless retail and our workspaces are just going to be very, very different going forward.

Goldy Hyder:
Well, you just experienced something like that, right? We’re speaking today on April the eighth and you just wrapped up a very big conference that you were to be in, in Prague, but instead you did the conference virtually. I mean, is this the kind of change that you think will take place in businesses in terms of the amount of business travel, trade shows, or is that just a moment that we’re reflecting on and thinking it will, but over time it will go back to that old normal?

Mark Barrenechea:
It’s probably a very long moment.

Goldy Hyder:
Yeah, yeah. Well said.

Mark Barrenechea:
Yeah. It’s probably a very long moment. We were supposed to be in Europe this week for our annual customer conference, Enterprise World Europe, in Prague. We moved it to our digital zone. We’ve invested as a tech company and an enabler of digital in a very large infrastructure and we were able to deliver a conference today. I think we had a peak of 3000 concurrent viewers. We had breakout sessions, guest speakers, Accenture was there, Uni, Dell. But we did that all digitally and did it in a very creative and interactive way. And I think we’re in this very long moment where all our events, our selling, our servicing are going to be digital.

Mark Barrenechea:
Is SARS a guide here? I remember the Toronto Rolling Stones concert where there needed to be an event to bring people back together. I’m delighted to be thinking about bringing humans back together, but this is probably a very long moment where we’re going to all be living in the digital zone for quite some time.

Goldy Hyder:
Well look, part of what we cover on the podcast is to hear directly from CEOs what they’re doing to help those who may not be in a position to help themselves in this situation. And I know that at OpenText there’ve been a couple of initiatives. I just want you to touch briefly on each one. One is the employee relief fund that you have in place and also, and I love the name of this, but the 100 acts of kindness.

Mark Barrenechea:
Yeah. Thank you for that. It’s really important that all CEOs are over communicating, leaning on their culture and taking care of their communities. And at OpenText we felt the best way to be able to do that is we’re putting in place a $4 million program, $2 million, which is an employee relief fund. Any employee who becomes ill or affected and beyond all the benefits we provide, we’ve put a $2 million fund in place to help employees and their families through the crisis.

Mark Barrenechea:
We’re a global company operating in 40 countries, 100 cities. So we put together a second program funded at $2 million, which is called 100 acts of kindness. So each of our sites, we have site leaders, Richmond Hill, Ottawa, Munich, Paris, San Mateo, California, Tokyo. Each of our site leaders will pick an initiative important to them in their community with an emphasis on those that are marginalized. And we’re going to help the community through fundraising and through 100 acts of kindness around the world.

Mark Barrenechea:
So that’s part of our approach to helping support our employees and our community.

Goldy Hyder:
That’s great. Well, thank you for that. Now, one of the cities you didn’t mention in there but I know is actually your favorite city and it’s a city in a state that’s unfortunately been hit extremely hard by this virus and that is New York. Tell us about your affinity to New York and tell us what you’re hearing about how things are recovering there.

Mark Barrenechea:
Well, I was born and raised in New York and then grew up in Connecticut. I have relatives in New York City as well as southern Connecticut. It is just … My heart is heavy. I don’t know how else to describe it. To just watch how hard New York and the Tristate area is hit with this. It’s just heart wrenching. New Yorkers are resilient, they are generous, and they are tough as nails and they will get through this. They got through 9/11, they got through the Spanish Flu. They will get through this on the other side and they will reflect the best of human behavior. So my heart is heavy, but they are resilient as the day is long.

Goldy Hyder:
Well, we’re rooting for them, as you know. You mentioned battling leukemia and overcoming it. I’m wondering if you can talk about the lessons of leadership at times of crises or the importance of perseverance, whether it’s a health and medical emergency or otherwise. What are you taking away in terms of where we go from here as leaders?

Mark Barrenechea:
Well, I think it’s good to think about who leaders are and what leaders do as sort of two different things. Who leaders are, purpose-driven, collaborative, it’s selflessness, it’s who leaders are and what leaders do. You communicate, bring your teams together in a time of crisis. We’ve organized around six teams internally and we’re prioritizing work, to some degree compartmentalizing as well. We’ve got a team managing the crisis, running the business, focused on a community, focused on our employees, focused on the opportunity to come, right? Because there will be a time when we see a little daylight in the fog. We’re going to go after it hard to help our customers. I also think leaders manage their energy and not just their time. So I like to think of separating who leaders are first, what they do, and that’s helped me through this to help set our ambitions as well as in a lot of ways be our chief people officer today.

Goldy Hyder:
Mark, that’s a great note to end on. Thank you for who you are and thank you for what you do. We appreciate it.

Mark Barrenechea:
All right, Goldy. Thank you for the time and all health and wellness to everyone.

Goldy Hyder:
Mark Barrenechea is the CEO and chief technology officer of OpenText. We’ve heard a wide range of voices and perspectives throughout this special podcast series and I encourage you to listen to more of our conversations at speakingofbiz.ca, that’s biz with a Z or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, I’m Goldy Hyder. Thanks for joining us and be well.