ACW: You were promoted to president and CEO of GEODIS in Americas right before the pandemic. From a leadership perspective, what have you learned in this time?  

Mike Honious: Without question, this pandemic highlighted what I already knew to be true—our GEODIS teammates are the lifeblood behind our operations and number one priority. From the beginning of the pandemic, we committed to doing whatever it took to ensure our teammates had the proper safety equipment and protocols needed so we could carefully continue our business operations with minimal disruption to our customers. Once we ensured our teammates were safe, we could best work to protect our customers’ unprecedented volume and capacity needs. The pandemic created diverse challenges for our customers, and we saw that they needed us in entirely new ways than before.

While 2020 resulted in unimaginable tragedies, I do believe we have to look for the silver linings and take those with us moving forward. For one, the pandemic showed just how flexible and resilient our team is. They became our supply chain heroes and worked tirelessly and nimbly to adjust to meet our clients’ needs. That spirit will stay with us moving forward in all we do.

Secondly, COVID-19 reinforced that our customers count on us for so much more than simply transporting freight, picking, packing and shipping. They come to us for innovative solutions that will move the needle on their overall business models. This solutions-minded approach will continue guiding GEODIS in the future, and I believe this will be more important than ever, as the pandemic underscored just how vital a flexible supply chain process is to the success of a business.