Despite all the years of business experience one may have under their belt, they could be forgiven for initially being taken in by the panic and inertia which ran rife during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic earlier in 2020. Speaking to the Leaders Council, Mark Turner, who set up Dover based medical device laboratory testing service Medical Engineering Technologies [MET], discusses how the early onset of panic was a challenge his business was forced to negotiate. Meanwhile, the government has announced a revamp of the NHS Test and Trace system which will see 6,000 of its 18,000-strong workforce laid off, with the remainder being redeployed to local public health teams in the hope that it will increase success rates.
Leadership in Focus
In the art of building a business from scratch, Mark Turner’s story is exemplary. He set up Medical Engineering Technologies in 1997, living off personal savings and his wife’s income for two years, buoyed by extra wages he himself earned from driving a taxi in the evenings.
Over two decades later, MET is a thriving medical device laboratory testing business, serving clients on every continent on the planet, other than Antarctica.
Opening up to Leaders Council interviewer Matthew O’Neill about the leadership model which led to the success of the business, Turner explained: “I see a leader as someone who sets a good example. People should follow them by choice, not by coercion, and it is the role of a leader to build a strong team of people where everyone contributes to a common goal that they can all get behind.
“In the day-to-day running of the business, I like to use the ‘walk around’ method. I speak to everybody in the company every day and I want every member of staff to understand that they can chip in when they like and highlight issues they feel are there in the daily running of the business, and suggest improvements.”
Turner’s story of growing the business is an effective demonstrator of how one can learn from less effective leaders as well as more successful ones.
“I remember when I was working for one of my former bosses, he’d stand behind you and give you a little thump if you ever got anything wrong! Having experienced that form of leadership I knew that was a strategy I wouldn’t adopt myself.
“I work on the principle of trust and I find I work best with people who trust you to know what you are doing and to do it properly, with only a light touch of authority. Employees work better with bosses who appreciate your input, so I have integrated that into my leadership style.”
However, as much as the experience of building up a business from nothing will have benefited Turner, the sudden onset of the Covid-19 crisis and the impact it has had on business meant that keeping a cool head at the beginning was no easy challenge.
Turner explained: “The initial reaction within the business was panic, particularly over the furlough scheme, and we had to get over that first. We did not know who we would be furloughing at first so we had to take stock and make decisions on that. Following that, the month of April was a frantic one for us with a lot of demand for ventilator testing. Our sales dipped a little after that, but the laboratory side of the business has largely carried on as normal throughout.
“As of July, we have started to see a return to some sort of normality in the daily running of the business, so we would like to think we’ve navigated it well thus far.”
When asked whether he saw the Covid-19 pandemic as a game-changer for the way the business operates in the future, Turner predicted that operations would largely continue as normal in the long-term.
“We are in the medical sector, so it is immune to these sorts of troughs. We don’t see a huge change, we are getting a lot of inquiries for surgical mask testing which we can’t unfortunately carry out, so maybe there’ll be some minimal change of direction for us, but I foresee us carrying on fairly normally.”
Leadership Today
The government has said that 6,000 staff will be cut from the NHS Test and Trace system in England by the end of the month, following criticism of its efficiency.
The remaining 12,000 people working as contact tracers will now be redeployed and work alongside local public health teams to successfully reach more infected people and their close contacts who may have contracted Covid-19.
NHS staff who work as advisers to individuals who test positive will remain in post.
The approach of using local resources has been used to good effect in Blackburn where lockdown restrictions have been reintroduced locally. The system will now offer the option to all local authorities responsible for public health in their areas, meaning that individual places will have a local “ring-fenced team” originally from the national contact tracing effort, the Department of Health has said.
NHS Test and Trace head Dido Harding said: "We have always been clear that NHS Test and Trace must be local by default and that we do not operate alone - we work with and through partners across the country.
"As we learn more about the spread of the disease, we are able to move to our planned next step and become even more effective in tackling the virus.
"After successful trials in a small number of local areas, I am very pleased to announce that we are now offering this integrated localised approach to all local authorities to ensure we can reach more people in their communities and stop the spread of Covid-19.”
The success rate for the national NHS Test and Trace effort in reaching close contacts of positive cases who do not live together peaked at 70 per cent in mid-July but has since been in decline. Comparatively, public health teams dealing with localised outbreaks in settings such as care homes and factory workplaces as part of the nation scheme have consistently had a success rate of 90 per cent.
Alongside the revamped Test and Trace system, 200 more walk-in testing centres will be opened by October.
Leadership in History
On August 11, 1919, the Weimar constitution was formally declared, establishing Germany as a republic.
Its first president Friedrich Ebert signed the constitution into law, with federal elections held on June 6, 1920 in line with the constitution. The Weimar Republic would stand until 1933.
