First of all, I hope you, your families, friends and colleagues are healthy and doing as well as possible.
At the risk of getting overloaded with yet another Coronavirus article, here is a Harvard Business School article – ‘How Chinese Companies Have Responded to Coronavirus’.
The article highlights 12 business lessons on how Chinese companies have prepared for and / or are preparing for the recovery. As we all know, China is in the front of experiencing and dealing with this crisis, and as they start showing signs of recovery, they are in front of business recovery plans.
The overarching theme that I get from this article is that it is even more important than ever before, that we change our Ways of Working to be Lean and Agile, especially in times of uncertainty, i.e. if you were a startup (we also need the right level of leadership in caring for the people and guiding us to the light at the end of the tunnel … as we will get through this).
Organizations, eco-systems, groups that have been practicing lean and agile methods are obviously ahead of the game. In other words, they planted their trees already, they are getting feedback from their tree on what is going well and what is not, they are adjusting and those trees are growing as expected or in different ways. Those that have yet to transition and implement these Ways of Working may be worried in the short term but need to focus on the longer term and start planting your trees today.
But it is not just about obtaining the Lean and Agile Ways of Working playbook that will solve the problem. One needs to practice it over and over again and continue to make improvements, adjustments and innovate. This reminds me of one story from the book – ‘The Lean Enterprise – How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale’ by Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky & Barry O’Reilly (great book). The story is from Toyota’s origins when it used to build its own automatic looms (the color coded wiring for a car’s electric system). Toyota had one of their loom plan stollen and upon hearing this, Mr. Kiichiro Toyoda is said to have remarked the following:
‘Certainly the thieves may be able to follow the design plans and produce a loom. But we are modifying and improving our looms everyday. So by the time the thieves have produced a loom from the plan they stole, we will have already advanced well beyond that point. And because they do not have the expertise gained from the failures it took to produce the original, they will waste a great deal more time than us as they move to improve their loom. We need not be concerned about what happened. We need only continue as always, making our improvements.’
If you need help in planting your Ways of Working tree, or do not know where to begin, below are links to two coaches that can help. Or feel free to contact me if you want some guidance.
Stay safe, be smart and be kind to each other
https://thought-for-the-week.com
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