Phebe Novakovic, chairman and CEO of General Dynamics Corp., is the 2020 Virginia Business Person of the Year. Photo by Philip Bermingham.
Like a lot of bosses in spring and summer 2020, Phebe Novakovic confronted challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic. It threatened lives and economies. Managers weren’t sure when some customers would be able to pay their bills. Employees were anxious; clients were understandably skittish. With travel shutting down, in-person sales demonstrations were curtailed.
But unlike most bosses, Novakovic — pronounced “no-vah-KO-vic” — runs the world’s third-largest defense contractor, Reston-based General Dynamics Corp. A Fortune 100 manufacturer of business jets, warships, submarines, tanks and communications systems, it employs more than 100,000 workers worldwide. Simply shutting down General Dynamics’ operations was not an option: The U.S. government, the company’s largest customer, designated General Dynamics’ defense and aerospace manufacturing operations as critical infrastructure
So Novakovic did what colleagues say she always does: She talked to leaders of business units, managers, board members and trusted medical advisers. She learned. And she laid out a clear series of steps to get through the crisis, trusting her division heads to do their jobs.
Among the actions implemented, Novakovic decided to pay more than $1 billion in cash advances to General Dynamics suppliers in order to ensure that the company’s supply chain remained strong and wasn’t disrupted by the pandemic.
