In March 2026, Thomas d’Aquino delivered the 20th Ivey-Thomas d’Aquino Lecture on Leadership at the National Gallery of Canada, launching a series that celebrates the Business Council of Canada’s 50th anniversary. The lecture framed a crisis that is worldwide — geopolitical fracture, democratic retreat, populism, protectionism, declining trust in institutions, and AI disruption. For Canadian business leaders, this isn’t abstract. Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, challenging middle powers and business leaders to respond. The question is what practical lessons emerge from top CEOs who have already navigated severe crises.
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This article is general information only and does not constitute professional advice. For your specific situation, consult a qualified professional.
These figures point to a pattern. Crisis leadership isn’t about staying calm and repeating platitudes. It’s about making specific, high-stakes decisions under conditions where the usual playbook doesn’t apply. The Canadian CEOs surveyed by EY-Parthenon operate in what they call a NAVI landscape — nonlinear, accelerated, volatile, interconnected. That’s not jargon. It describes an environment where the old rules of quarterly planning and incremental change no longer hold. Here’s what you actually need to know.
What Crisis Leadership Actually Demands
These four takeaways cut across industries and crisis types. What they share is a willingness to act decisively when the safe option looks like waiting. The central concept here is crisis decision-making under uncertainty — the ability to commit resources, change structures, or admit fault when the outcome is genuinely unknown.
What I tend to notice is that leaders who handle crises well don’t wait for perfect data. They identify the one or two moves that matter most and execute them while others are still forming committees. That’s worth weighing against the instinct to gather more information before acting.
What Changes When You Get Crisis Leadership Wrong
The cost of poor crisis leadership isn’t abstract. GM’s faulty ignition switch crisis, which Mary Barra inherited just weeks after becoming CEO, involved at least 54 frontal impact crashes and over a dozen deaths. The company’s response — or lack of it before Barra took over — had already damaged trust beyond repair for many families. Barra’s approach was to establish transparency, customer support, and a commitment to never let such failures happen again. That didn’t undo the harm, but it stopped the bleeding.
For Canadian business leaders, the stakes are structural. D’Aquino’s lecture framed three duties that go beyond shareholder returns: strengthen national unity and the integrity of the Canadian economic union, re-establish stability in the Canada-United States relationship, and build economic and security resilience at home. These aren’t optional extras. They’re the conditions under which Canadian businesses operate. Ignoring them during a crisis doesn’t just hurt a single company — it weakens the broader environment every business depends on.
The EY-Parthenon CEO Outlook Survey, which polled 1,200 leaders globally including Canada in March-April 2026, found that Canadian CEOs’ M&A appetite climbed from 46% to 62% since the start of 2026. That’s a 16-point jump in a few months. It suggests that many leaders see crisis as an opportunity to reposition, but it also raises the risk of rushed deals. The difference between a smart acquisition and a costly mistake often comes down to whether the leadership team has a clear framework for decision-making under pressure.
Where Leaders Commonly Misstep
Waiting for Certainty Before Acting
The most common error is paralysis. Netflix’s Ted Sarandos didn’t wait to see whether streaming originals would work before greenlighting a $100 million investment in “House of Cards.” He called it an existential decision. Film and TV studios had pulled back on licensed content, and Netflix needed its own library. Waiting would have meant losing the window. What I’d do in that situation is identify the one decision that, if made now, changes the trajectory — and make it before the data is complete.
Treating Crisis as a PR Problem
When Mary Barra took over GM, the instinct might have been to lawyer up and limit liability. Instead, she established transparency and customer support as the operating principles. That didn’t eliminate legal exposure, but it prevented the crisis from becoming a permanent brand liability. Leaders who treat a crisis as a communications exercise rather than an operational failure usually make things worse.
Ignoring the Human Layer
Danny Meyer’s response at Shake Shack during COVID-19 included creating a fund to help laid-off staff cover urgent expenses and establishing a system to help them find jobs at companies like Whole Foods. He also returned to tipping, paying a percentage of sales to all kitchen and non-tip eligible workers. That’s not charity — it’s retention strategy. Leaders who focus only on financial metrics during a crisis often lose the people they’ll need when recovery starts.
Acting Alone
D’Aquino’s lecture emphasised that Canadian business leaders have been inseparable from nation-building since Confederation in 1867. The foundational example was building the Canadian Pacific Railway from Eastern Canada to Vancouver in just over four years, six years ahead of schedule. That didn’t happen because one CEO made smart calls. It happened because business and government coordinated. Leaders who try to navigate a crisis without engaging the broader ecosystem — other businesses, regulators, community organisations — miss the structural leverage that comes from collective action.
How to Lead Through a Crisis: The Practical Mechanics
Identify the Existential Decision
Every crisis has one or two decisions that determine the outcome. For Netflix, it was whether to invest in original content when licensed content was drying up. For GM, it was whether to admit fault or fight every claim. The first step is to name that decision explicitly. Write it down. If you can’t state it in one sentence, you haven’t identified it yet. Once you have, the next step is to assess what information you actually need versus what would be nice to have. Most leaders overestimate the first and underestimate the second.
Build a Decision Framework, Not a Plan
Plans assume the future will look like the past. Frameworks assume it won’t. A decision framework specifies your principles, your risk tolerance, and your escalation triggers. For example, Danny Meyer’s framework during COVID-19 was: protect staff first, then customers, then shareholders. That order of operations guided every specific choice he made. Without a framework, you end up making each decision from scratch, which is slow and inconsistent. A business law consultation can help clarify the legal boundaries of your framework, especially around employment and contractual obligations during a crisis.
Communicate in Real Time, Not After the Fact
Barra’s approach at GM was to establish transparency from day one. That meant telling the public what the company knew, what it didn’t know, and what it was doing to find out. Most leaders default to communicating only when they have complete information. In a crisis, that’s a luxury you don’t have. The rule of thumb is: share what you know when you know it, even if the picture is incomplete. People can handle uncertainty better than they can handle silence.
Prepare for the Next Crisis While Managing the Current One
The EY-Parthenon survey found that Canadian CEOs view mega trends as structural shifts affecting operations well into the future. That means the current crisis isn’t the last one. Leaders who emerge stronger are those who use the present disruption to build systems that will handle the next one. That might mean investing in AI despite regulatory uncertainty — 80% of Canadian leaders are doing exactly that. It might mean restructuring supply chains or building more resilient business models. The key is to treat crisis response and long-term strategy as the same conversation, not two separate ones.
The Emerging Regulatory Landscape
Canadian CEOs are ramping up AI investment despite evolving regulation. That’s a calculated risk. The regulatory framework isn’t settled, but waiting for clarity could mean falling behind competitors who are already deploying the technology. The approach that makes sense here is to invest in AI capabilities while building in flexibility — systems that can adapt to whatever regulations emerge. That might mean using modular AI tools rather than monolithic platforms, or working with legal advisors who specialise in intellectual property and compliance to ensure your AI investments don’t create future liability.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the first thing a CEO should do when a crisis hits? ▾
How do you balance transparency with legal risk? ▾
Should you invest during a crisis or conserve cash? ▾
How do you keep employees focused during a crisis? ▾
What’s the biggest mistake leaders make in a crisis? ▾
How do Canadian CEOs view the current crisis landscape? ▾
Why Crisis Leadership Is a Long-Term Capability, Not a Short-Term Fix
The Canadian Pacific Railway was built in just over four years, six years ahead of schedule. That wasn’t because the leaders of the time were smarter or braver. It was because they understood that a crisis — in that case, the existential need to unite a country — required a different kind of decision-making. They committed resources, coordinated across sectors, and kept moving even when the path wasn’t clear. The same principle applies today. The Canadian CEOs surveyed by EY-Parthenon are operating in a NAVI landscape that isn’t going to revert to something more predictable. The leaders who build crisis decision-making as a permanent capability, rather than a temporary response, will be the ones who shape what comes next.
Remember: this article is general information only. For advice on your specific situation, speak to a qualified professional.
If this was useful, you might also want to read Building a Strong Personal Brand: A Guide for Canadian Professionals.
Sources and Further Reading
Building Resilient Businesses: Lessons from Canada’s Pandemic Response — Practical strategies for creating operational resilience drawn from Canadian businesses that navigated COVID-19.
Beyond the Numbers: Ethical Leadership in the Modern Accounting World — How ethical frameworks support better decision-making under pressure, relevant for leaders across industries.
Policy Magazine (2026). Business Leadership in a Time of Crisis: The 2026 Ivey Thomas d’Aquino Lecture on Leadership. 🔗
CNBC (2025). From Netflix to Uber: How 8 Top Leaders Used Crisis to Reinvent Companies. 🔗
EY (2026). EY-Parthenon CEO Outlook Survey. 🔗
