What Andrew Tan taught me about leading under fire

By Prof. Enrique N. Soriano

Last week, I wrote that the most dangerous time for any business is often when everything appears to be going well. Drawing from the Japanese philosophy, “Kiki no toki ni kaeru no dewa nai. Tsuyoi toki ni kaeru”—do not change when you are in crisis; change when you are strong—I argued that the organizations most at risk are often not those visibly struggling, but those that have become too comfortable to question themselves. Transformation is most effective when leaders still have the time, resources, and freedom to shape their own future.

The same pattern continues to emerge across industries. Food and beverage, hospitality, retail, real estate, technology, beauty and wellness, and franchise businesses may appear exceptionally strong while quietly becoming strategically fragile. Markets evolve. Consumer expectations shift. Technology reshapes industries faster than many organizations can respond. The businesses that endure are rarely those that simply grow faster or sell more. They are the ones that continuously reinvent themselves before circumstances force them to.

This is one of the qualities I admire most about Andrew Tan, founder of Alliance Global Group, one of the Philippines’ largest diversified conglomerates, with a workforce of more than 60,000 people across its businesses. I had the opportunity to work with Andrew during the height of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, when businesses across Asia were confronting extraordinary uncertainty. Currencies were collapsing, credit markets had frozen, banks were calling in loans, and long-standing business relationships were under immense strain.

What struck me then was not simply his ability to withstand the crisis. It was the way he led through it.

He remained remarkably composed. He communicated with clarity, made difficult decisions without hesitation, and refused to allow fear to dictate strategy. More importantly, he never allowed the crisis to define the organization. Instead, he used the crisis as an opportunity to strengthen it.

That experience taught me something about great founders. They possess two qualities that rarely exist together. They are relentlessly optimistic about the future, yet relentlessly vigilant about the present. They inspire confidence while constantly questioning assumptions. They celebrate progress without allowing success to become an excuse for standing still.

After the crisis had passed, Andrew shared a lesson that has stayed with me throughout my career. The essence of what he conveyed was that we may stumble as many times as adversity demands, but it is the journey to recovery—and the growth that follows—that makes every hardship worthwhile. He likened that journey to an athlete striving not merely to win once, but to pursue several Olympic gold medals. The struggle, discipline, setbacks, and perseverance make the eventual triumph far more meaningful than success achieved without adversity.

That perspective fundamentally changed how I viewed leadership.

What I admire about Andrew is that his resilience was not simply about surviving difficult times. It was about using adversity to become stronger, more disciplined, and better prepared for whatever came next. For him, recovery was not the return to where the organization had been. It was an opportunity to become better than it was before the crisis.

That discipline should not disappear when prosperity returns.

While others celebrate record sales, exceptional founders continue asking difficult questions. What business model could make ours obsolete? Which customer behaviors are changing? Which technologies will redefine our industry? Which capabilities must we build before they become urgent? Where are we becoming complacent?

This is what I call productive paranoia. It is not fear. It is disciplined vigilance exercised precisely when there appears to be the least reason for it.

And this is perhaps the greatest lesson I would leave with founders—and even more importantly, with the next generation.

You were not entrusted with a successful business simply to preserve it. You were entrusted with the responsibility to question it, strengthen it, and reinvent it for a world your founders could never have imagined.

Ownership may be transferred through succession, but stewardship must be earned through courage, discipline, and the willingness to change before change is forced upon you.

The day your business reaches its peak is the day you should begin preparing for its next reinvention—not because failure is inevitable, but because change is.

That is what I admire about Andrew Tan. His greatest lesson to me was not simply how to survive a crisis. It was how to emerge from one stronger—and then refuse to become complacent again.

Great founders understand that success is never something to protect; it is something to renew. The truly exceptional ones go one step further. They embed the discipline to question, adapt, and reinvent into the institution itself, long after they are gone.

That may well be the founder’s greatest and final gift—and it is a subject I will explore in my next article.

Prof. Enrique M. Soriano is Executive Director of W+B Advisory Group. Having spent half of his four-decade career as a C-suite executive and the other half as a strategic and governance adviser, he is a volunteer Mentor of the Singapore Institute of Directors’ (SID) Board Readiness Programme, a former World Bank/IFC Governance Consultant, and advises boards, founders and multi-generational family enterprises across Asia on governance, strategy, succession and long-term stewardship.