Many business leaders are now also taking time to reflect on where they have reached in their response to the pandemic – in part to satisfy shareholders, investors and lenders, but also to get an understanding of how they compare to others and what the path ahead looks like.

From a strategic perspective, we can think of that journey in four phases – which can be distilled into four (almost) Rs: reaction, resilience, recovery and the new reality.

The ‘reaction’ stage epitomised those early days when organisations had to make tough decisions at speed and act to protect their employees and business – whether that was closing down, putting operations into hibernation, furloughing staff, launching contingency plans or simply trying to respond to government directives.