Pandemic forces companies to evolve 20 years in 20 days

Since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, respiratory infection caused by the new coronavirus, the chairman of the board of directors of the retail group Magazine Luiza, Luiza Helena Trajano, seeks to exercise constructive leadership. Donated 10 million reais for actions to combat the disease, pledged to keep the employment of its employees and asked the other Brazilian entrepreneurs to do the same. To help small traders, Magazine Luiza created a platform that allows individual microentrepreneurs (MEIs) to sell through the Magalu website, with free shipping, using the logistics network, which is one of the group's assets. For Trajan, cooperation between all agents of the economy is fundamental not only to overcome the crisis but also to navigate the new society that will emerge after the pandemic. "The only certainty I have is that we won't be the same when the emergency passes. The ways of making money and relating will change a lot," says Trajan. It's impossible to tell what this new normal is going to be like. But his intuition -- which helped turn Magalu from a small family store in the interior of São Paulo into a 60 billion-dollar retailer in market value -- points to a more collaborative, conscious and less selfish world. "Because the crisis has affected all social classes and the cooperation we have seen recently, I think the concept of collective and the habit of giving and thinking about others will increase a lot," says Trajan. "For 20 years we have developed this culture. And that's how we act in this crisis." Many companies have had only the 20 days of resurgence of the pandemic in Brazil to replicate a philosophy that, by all indicators, is working well for Magalu in the last 20 years or more.