This is a controversial statement just now. In a world where we seem to only hear about the crisis of a pandemic the idea of lockdown seems to be all people think of. Keep away from others. Stop doing things. Slow down. Hold on.
These messages are well intended. They make sense for health of individuals.
If you are a business owner or director in the competitive market we face now and in the future, these are very risky plans. There are companies that will seek to make use of this time to learn and innovate. These are the companies that will rapidly recover, and gain advantage even before we all poke our heads back out of our corona-bunkers!
It is at the slowdown times that the lowest risk innovation is done. It is the time right now when you can learn to reduce your costs, increase your productivity, and even come up with better products and services. Rather than simply reduce your workload, you can keep your best and brightest interested in building a better business. This can be done via video and in only small groups. It just takes the courage to do so.
A few years ago I worked with a business who took a chance to use a seasonal slowdown to train their teams and look at their value chain. They wanted to try and speed up the order to delivery time of the products they constructed. The director I spoke with knew his business really well, and was passionate about what they did. He couldn’t see what they could do differently other than push his team to go faster.
Any experienced advisor will know that if you push harder you are wasting effort and more likely to break things, especially your people and their spirits.
In only a few sessions we had reduced the time to delivery from months to weeks! In addition, through actually slowing down some parts of the process we reduced the work in progress (WIP) material by more than $1Million! That is right! Slow down, save $1Million that was tied up in the process to now be used for other things, and get products to customers months faster than before!
These are real results in a short amount of time, with little cost to the business (the unit cost actually reduced for most products and overall operating cost reduced).
What made the difference was a director who was passionate to change, willing to talk and take advantage of a slowdown time to run innovation projects. It also took a willingness to bring in someone who could help. Someone with useful experience who wasn’t bought into the “way we’ve always done things”. Yes there is a small cost, but you are benefitting from the skills learned over decades of doing this for many businesses. Just make sure you shop around for someone you can work with and who makes sense simply.
Now is not the time to stand still. Now is the time to look for new and innovative ways to make your business better. Stay safe with your health. Be brave with your business.
