Marketing is full of uncertainty, but nothing prepares you for leading through a real crisis. On the four-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, former Kimberly-Clark Marketing Director, and consultant, Noam Buchalter, shares how that first year reshaped his leadership.

Marketing teams face constant pressure: economic shifts, evolving consumer habits, organisational upheaval, tech disruption. But occasionally, a real crisis erupts. That's when Marketing leaders are truly tested and forged.

As we approach the 4-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine I’ve been thinking about my experience of leading through the first year of that crisis.

I was EMEA Marketing Director for Huggies at Kimberly Clark and Ukraine was an important market for our business.

As we all remember, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Our Ukrainian colleagues and friends were fleeing for their lives. Supply chains were severed, impacting most of our Ukraine portfolio.

My team, scattered across EMEA, was watching the news in horror. Our corporate teams were rightly focusing on our Ukraine team’s physical safety. But someone needed to restore supply of these essential products.

I gave my team one simple mission: "Get the diapers to the babies."

Not "navigate the geopolitical complexity." or "wait for corporate direction." Just get the diapers to the babies.

That clarity cut through the chaos and the focus on babies made it a heart-felt mission that unified us all. The team stopped waiting for perfect information or solutions and started making decisions. We defined the must-have portfolio within days, re-routed supply within weeks and rapidly innovated to fill gaps within months. My EMEA team were awesome and our Ukraine team were absolute heroes with unbelievable resilience and commitment.

By late 2022, Huggies had not only maintained its market leadership in Ukraine but strengthened it significantly.

Crisis Leadership Lessons

1.     Care drives performance

People who feel cared for have a far greater capacity to care for others and their work. Care for performance isn't slogans, virtue-signalling HR policies or leadership Town Halls. It's daily habits: weekly 1:1s, coaching, mentoring, sharing your own anxieties, being available and approachable.

Making people feel cared for comes from innate values—you can't train this. Leaders should be selected for it. Care must be the foundation before crisis hits. It's too late to discover care for performance in the moment.


2.  Simplify the mission when everything feels overwhelming

In crisis, people need absolute clarity, not a strategic framework or a twelve-point plan. They need one clear mission that tells them exactly what matters and why it matters. This clarity of purpose creates psychological safety to act decisively when perfect information and ideal solutions don't exist.

3. Trust your team to step beyond their day jobs

When the mission is clear and they feel cared for, brilliant people will do extraordinary things. Marketing and Project managers made supply chain decisions. The Ukraine go-to-market team made tough portfolio calls. Everyone became an expert in whatever the mission needed.

Beyond Crisis

I realised that crisis leadership isn't about having all the answers, it's about giving your team the clarity and confidence to find them.

These principles work powerfully outside crisis too. In my experience, this style of leadership builds high-performing, agile, resilient and innovative teams – crucial for confronting the constant pressures Marketing leaders face.

What’s incredible is that cared-for teams start caring for their leader too – and the leader's performance improves even more.


Sadly, though the diapers are getting to the babies, the tragedy of the Russia-Ukraine war continues. I hope those babies and everyone involved can experience peace again very soon.