When Mike Horne left his Auckland apartment on the morning of the day the city went into lockdown in August, little did he know he would unlikely be back before the end of the year.
The months that have followed him taking over as chief executive of Deloitte New Zealand at the beginning of June have been, as he describes, an ‘‘extraordinary time’’.
Spending that extended lockdown period in Dunedin where he lives — he was previously commuting to Auckland weekly — he had had to courier the keys to his apartment to a friend a month ago to clean his fridge out.
Mr Horne acknowledged it would likely be next year before he got back to Auckland — and a clean fridge — and he was looking forward to getting back around the table with those people he worked with regularly.
Having only been able to engage virtually, he was hanging out for that social interaction and building off each other’s energy, he said.
Mr Horne, who joined Deloitte as a graduate in 1994 straight out of the University of Otago where he studied commerce and law, was previously the firm’s chief operating officer.
In that position, he had been close to some of the decisions made last year when the country first experienced lockdown.
Transitioning to working from home had been ‘‘pretty seamless’’ for Deloitte, which has more than 1500 staff in New Zealand, he said.
While functionally, staff could still do their jobs fine, a large number were under 40, and a big part of the business was being a learning and mentoring-type organisation.
Working virtually for an extended period during the latest lockdown had been difficult, particularly for staff in Auckland.
Some lived in flatting situations and working from their beds or the kitchen tables, many would have missed the office environment, he said.
For businesses, there were new dynamics from a Covid-19 policy point of view and also health and safety.
For many of Deloitte’s clients — both emerging high-growth businesses and some of its very large clients — demand was not a problem.
The two main challenges were access to talent — closed borders meant there was not the capability in New Zealand to deliver on some of the opportunities — and supply chain logistics challenges.
The biggest difficulty with Covid-19 was the degree of uncertainty, Mr Horne said.
Sometimes unfavourable outcomes were easier to deal with and plan around, as opposed to that uncertainty.
It reminded him of his involvement with the Cancer Society; for people with terminal or bad cancer diagnoses, it was still better to know and be able to take action, or get treatment, than be in a state of limbo, he said.
Uncertainty tended to put decisions clients were looking to make on hold, and that was where a lot of clients’ biggest concerns lay, especially those which operated internationally. They were worried about being at a competitive disadvantage.
But while the Covid-19 pandemic had thrown up no shortage of challenges, there had also been some permanent positive effects.
Many clients had ‘‘hugely sped up’’ digital transformation, along with re-engineering aspects of their business and how they engaged with customers.
There had been a permanent shift in terms of a hybrid working model, which had been talked about for many years and was now permanently embedded.
Mr Horne saw three working platforms for Deloitte — working in the office, with clients and at home. The firm was going through the design process to move into new offices in Auckland in early 2024 and more space was key to that, as it was a lot more about collaboration, he said.
In terms of millennials, a real sense of purpose was starting to come through. What kept them there ultimately was that they saw value in the work they did.
That meant a different approach had to be taken in terms of managing people; a far greater degree of agility and fluidity in terms of policies and approach was required, and a lot of that was really positive, he said.
Employees did not want to work endless hours — they wanted to work hard and were really engaged when they were at work, but that needed to be balanced with ‘‘a whole lot of other aspects in their lives’’.
Talent was what was most important in a business like Deloitte, and most businesses. The biggest challenges for most were access to the talent and capability they needed, and how to best manage their talent models in today’s disrupted times.
It was about understanding a far more fluid talent model which, if embraced, could have positive results for a business. Careers were no longer linear, he said.
Wellbeing, especially in these times, was a ‘‘No1 issue’’ for a lot of businesses.
Mr Horne was previously Asia Pacific Deloitte lead, which involved dealing with people around the globe.
It was an issue for a lot of them well before it was an issue in New Zealand; some had been working from home for 18 to 24 months and he could see the mental stress really impacting people. There was a sense of never being able to ‘‘properly down tools and relax’’.
Asked how he coped with stress, Mr Horne — who described himself as very much a glass-half-full person — said he was an active relaxer and he knew what worked for him.
After getting up at 5.30am, he headed out for an hour or so exercise each morning and that was important time for him, as it was how he relaxed and often how he processed thoughts.
Spending weekends with his wife and sons, who were all actively involved in sport, and on the sidelines, was again a completely different conversation and a chance to engage with each other.
On November 29, Mr Horne is speaking at an Institute of Directors Otago Southland branch event in Dunedin about evolving leadership in a distributed world.
The branch’s emerging director award will also be presented at the function. Coincidentally, Mr Horne was the inaugural winner of that award in 2010.
Reflecting on the impact of winning the award, Mr Horne said there had been a generation of very experienced, highly reputable directors in the South, many of whom were getting towards the latter parts of their careers.
That signalled an opportunity that there were increasingly opportunities at board level and that was quite empowering. The ability to spend time with senior directors and learn from them was also very important.
It was also around the time a lot of boards were starting to shift their thinking about different perspectives required around the board table, whether the likes of age, stage or different backgrounds, and that had continued, Mr Horne said.
He had previously done a lot in governance, sitting on boards in both private and public sector and community organisations. He still sat on a few, but not many, due to his Deloitte job.
Describing himself as a proud Dunedin boy, Mr Horne — who had also lived overseas — noticed that, over the past 10 years or so, Dunedin had ‘‘really found its feet’’.
Businesses in the South featured in Deloitte’s recently released Fast 50 index, and that was a great way to celebrate business success, he said.
There were a lot of ‘‘undiscovered gems’’ in Dunedin; there was a place for celebrating success, which also gave the community confidence.
In recent times, there had been new businesses coming through, people migrating back to the city and a vibrancy and sense of self-belief.
Looking back to the earlier part of the century, there was ‘‘just a degree of malaise’’ and a lot of head offices had shifted away. People were querying what the future held.
Now there was self-confidence and belief in a really bright future was starting to return.
As the end of the year approached, Mr Horne was looking forward to several weeks’ break over Christmas with family in Wanaka. Something he was seeing across Deloitte was that staff, particularly in Auckland, were ‘‘pretty drained’’ and a break was needed for them to return refreshed.
He expected there to be some challenges in the early part of next year — ‘‘we need to be realistic about it’’ — and a higher degree of community spread of the virus would give people pause for a little while.
But he was hopeful that getting towards the mid part of the year, there would be more of a regular cadence of what the ‘‘new normal’’ looked like.
