Leading with principles under pressure: lessons from Merck and Upwork

Executive overview

Crisis exposes whether a company's values are real or decorative. Ken Frazier and Hayden Brown both faced decisions — pandemic response, the Russia-Ukraine war, racial justice — where doing the right thing carried measurable financial cost.

The consistent lesson: principles only matter when exercising them is expensive. Leaders who wait for certainty or consensus will act too late.

Values without cost are not values — they are preferences.

On crisis leadership and decision-making

• Top-down, swift decisiveness is the wrong default in novel crises; listening and empowering people is better
• Pandemic required Merck to empower production workers and researchers; order fill rates actually improved
• Leaders must distinguish between decisions that need speed and those that need reflection
• Communicate a clear decision framework so employees, customers, and shareholders know what to expect
• Boards add most value through frequent, transparent interaction — not oversight at a distance

On business responsibility and social issues

• CEOs need not comment on every social issue — speak only where the issue connects to company values
• Business needs a functioning society: rule of law, democracy, equal opportunity are prerequisites for commerce
• Income inequality has been visible for 50 years; the pandemic stripped away remaining cover
• The 1:10 coalition (Frazier and Ken Chenault) targets one million family-sustaining jobs for Black Americans without four-year degrees, via skills-first hiring
• Business is one of the last settings where people cannot self-select into ideological enclaves

On Russia, Ukraine, and principled boycotts

• Exxon pulled out of Russia's Sakhalin 1 project — the single largest foreign investment in Russia — despite receiving no compensation
• Merck suspended non-vital operations but continued supplying cancer medicines, judging that withdrawal would directly cost patient lives
• Upwork suspended operations in Russia and Belarus after pre-paying talent wages so workers could buy food and fuel
• Upwork launched donation tools for Ukrainian talent; Ukrainian worker engagement reached peak levels as remote income became a community lifeline
• Principles have no value if you only apply them when they are costless

On Upwork, Peloton, and navigating whipsaw demand

• Upwork's mission — creating economic opportunity regardless of location — made it structurally suited to the pandemic moment
• Remote work's lasting adoption shifts the strategic question from where work happens to who does it and how
• Removing geography barriers opens diversity and skill-set pools that office-first companies cannot access
• Peloton locked in high fixed costs during the demand boom; unwinding those commitments is the core post-pandemic challenge
• Variable cost structures are more expensive in growth phases but essential for resilience

On the future of work

• The shift to remote work is permanent for 70%+ of businesses
• Focus on who and how, not where — location constraints were always a proxy question about access
• The deeper risk is societal unraveling: distrust of institutions, economic inequality, and polarization that business must actively counter
• Leaders must build cultures that bring diverse people together, not just hire them remotely