Taking over a company just as a global pandemic upends its industry would test any executive. For Michael Polk Newell Brands, it became the defining challenge of his return to corporate leadership.

A Difficult Start

Michael Polk agreed to become CEO of Implus LLC in 2020, right as Covid-19 began disrupting supply chains, retail partnerships and consumer spending across the fitness industry. Implus, a private company owned by Berkshire Partners with sixteen brands under its umbrella, needed steady leadership at a moment when few playbooks applied. Polk, who had spent the prior year in retirement after leaving Newell Brands, used the disruption to rework how Implus operated, shore up its finances and set the business on firmer footing for what came next.

A Different Style of Leadership Emerges

Michael Polk has described the experience as demanding a far more hands-on approach than he used while running Newell Brands, a public company where his time went mostly toward resource allocation and decisions made through several layers of management. At Implus, he found himself working directly alongside his team on brand and business development instead, engaging with the choices shaping the company in real time rather than from a distance.

That closer involvement, Polk has suggested, made Implus more adaptable during a period when adaptability mattered more than almost anything else. Guiding a lean, private organization through a crisis gave him a view of the business, spanning sourcing, manufacturing and retail relationships, that his years at a larger public company never fully offered. For Michael Polk, steering Implus through its most difficult early stretch became proof that smaller companies can respond to disruption in ways bigger organizations often cannot, and it set the tone for how he has continued to run the company in the years that followed, long after the initial crisis had passed. Read this article for additional information.

Learn more about Michael Polk https://www.implus.com/leadership/