When Hurricane Sandy hit the mid-Atlantic coast, in October 2012, I was at my home in Westchester County, New York. It’s an old house, surrounded by old trees, so as the rain battered my windows and the wind shook the walls, I took shelter with my dog under a center-hall desk. But I was less worried about myself than about the thousands of Guardian employees who live across New Jersey and New York, within commuting distance of our Lower Manhattan headquarters. I had become CEO of the insurance company—which offers life, disability, and dental policies and administers family and medical leave—just over a year before. How would we help our people and our company get through this?
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2021 issue of Harvard Business Review.
