The Great Lockdown, Lessons Learned During the Pandemic from Organizations Around the World, by Shiva Ji Das, Aroop Zutshi, and Janesh Janardhanan, Wiley 2022

When we look back at the pandemic and the current ramping down, its clear that some organizations - for profit and non-profits alike - showed us how to survive what became one of our biggest worldwide challenges.  And then there are "the others" - governments and businesses whose responses outright failed and contributed to the problem, and other operations that couldn't quite figure out a survival strategy.  It's all here in The Great Lockdown, and we can learn much from this well-considered collection of corporate case studies.

First of all, by the time the Covid virus hit, thanks to air travel the virus spread quickly.  Even tech leaders like SAP and fast and flexible producers covered in The Great Lockdown were challenged to read and adjust to what became not a single straight production line.  Population exposure and susceptibilities varied greatly, and the hopes for herd immunity or a single drug savior lingered; governmental responses, as we well recall, were uneven and mixed.  And mistakes, huge mistakes were made.

"There was a feeling  of unease in the pit of my stomach...I can tell you there was no way I was prepared for what came next.. the magnitude and impact of what was coming our way"

Nevertheless, the authors feature stories of how great innovators - companies like SAP, Abacus Pharmaceuticals, watchmakers A. Lange & Sohne, Bangelore International Airport and others quickly faced requirements to redefine needs and invent answers.  Managing Director and CEO Hari Marar of Bangelore International Airport recalls the shock of not having an "instruction manual".  He had hoped his team would be able to share "some parts fortitude, a dash of wisdom, and dollops of courage - all at the speed of light."  

But what this air traffic center faced not only put its billion-dollar expansion in doubt, but it raised daily questions that many companies were just beginning to formulate, including:

1.  What was the best chemical for sanitization?

2.  How could we ensure procurement speed and efficiency without breaking the bank?

3.  What would make the passenger feel safe to fly again?

4.  How could we ensure that we mitigated people's fear of physically touching a surface or screen? 

5.  How could we manage deliveries that were stuck in the supply pipeline, both domestic and international?

5.  What was the best way to keep passengers and other stakeholders updated about changing regulations?

6.  How would we manage deliveries that were stuck in the supply pipeline, both domestic and international?

and

7.  How would we keep cash flow intact while ensuring our employee salaries and jobs were protected?

As the list of challenges grew, leadership realized their need for quick decision-making and what Marar called "accessible leadership".  From this pandemic response grew a new org chart marked by more flexible and dynamic teams - first, a Steering Committee, then a War group populated with leaders engaged in on-the-ground operations; a stakeholder group designed to cover mitigation solutions and to escalate concerns, and a Surveillance group tasked with the contact tracking of passengers arriving at the airport.  

Marar believes that this team approach is what allowed the company to negotiate the crisis in a way that kept their heads above water.  In fact, from February into June the steering committee met twice daily using Microsoft Teams calls.  Looking back the details this author and CEO shares with us are impressive.  Not all manufacturing operations quickly created this kind of immediate team focus, but it worked for BLR.  

Lets look at SAP for a different crisis response.  

With over 440,000 customers in more than 180 countries we would expect that technology leader SAP would quickly create new technology assists in the lockdown environment.  Indeed, one of the more immediate discoveries was that "cash is king," and that meant being even smarter about how to use technology for cash generation and closings.  Delays were not inevitable in this environment, but required special attention for basic ops.  

The company focused on five key financial goals:

1.  Maintain business continuity, while streamlining required tasks

2.  Manage cash flow

3.  Plan and respond to change , including matching demand with supply, and using software tools to segment, predict and allocate orders.

4.  Maintain manufacturing agility - changes in parts, labor and demand in all plants had - without smart software intervention - 

 the potential to create  chaos

5.  Deliver critical products - the company needed to use fresh information and software to conduct product allocation for critical locations while simultaneously monitoring changes in other stream flows.  

According to contributors Peggy Renders and Tanuj Vijay what the operation learned from the Covid crisis had great usefulness as we began to enter a post-Covid state.  Where software and decision-making may have been slower pre-Covid, by the time workers started to return to real offices, their new experiences and routines proved to be  useful vs. going back to doing business  "the old way."

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com