03/17/2020:

Business Transformation and Process Re-engineering in the Time of the
COVID-19 Pandemic

The emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) first identified in Wuhan, China, and its rapid global vectoring via air travel is a game-changer. The estimated 2-week gap from initial exposure to the onset of initial symptoms has challenged governments and health care systems. Their general sluggish recognition of the impending threat is partly because of the asymmetric nature of the reported symptoms (both asymptomatic and flu-like), and political, bureaucratic, and overall general organizational inertia.

With billions, unquestionably hundreds of millions, of individuals in both government-decreed and self-imposed quarantine around the globe, life as we once knew it has substantially altered for the foreseeable future.

This is only the beginning. We can only guess the repercussions of a healthcare solution that is still months into the future, assuming that no further mutation in the virus occurs. So in the interim, with no medical solution currently in sight, we need to do the best we can with what we have. We need to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

“Social distancing”, frequent hand-washing, and minimizing all forms of unnecessary travel are the key and necessary components to flattening the trajectory of new COVID cases. However, it is also clear that work must go on; people must be able to work and earn money to pay bills, buy food, and pay off loans. We must give individuals and families the means of survival or our society may well quickly sink into chaos.

We can change because now we must. Regardless of our political beliefs, our education, our race or religious affiliations, we are all substantially in the same human lifeboat. The alternative to not rising to the challenge is not worthy of our consideration.

Instead of panic, we must begin to define what we need to do, both in the short-term to stabilize our institutions, and in the long-term to successfully transition to our collective new reality. We need to determine which measurements will govern whether we have succeeded in achieving those goals, or not. We need to re-examine the data we collect and analyze to assure that we are on the right track and that we are improving and controlling the underlying systems that support us all.

The following initial business transformation steps seem to be in order:

1. The key to our mutual survival is to reduce the pressure on our existing healthcare system, the maintenance of public safety personnel, and simultaneously strengthening the logistics of food production and its distribution. Everyone connected with these three bedrock areas of activity must be protected from contracting the disease, and if contracted quickly tested and quarantined to decrease any further spread. That includes everything from the highest-paid doctor to the lowest-paid migrant farmworker and grocery clerk, and everyone else in-between.

2. We need to deal with the inevitable displacement of both individuals and small businesses and to begin implementation of training into high-priority professions and skillsets.

3. All public and private entities connected with these foundational activities must be examined closely for areas of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, with less emphasis on hierarchical management and more emphasis on semi-independent teams of 5- 7 individuals charged with a specific set of tasks to accomplish.

4. With the concentration and increased reliance on the internet and the cloud, we must ensure the security of these vital areas of infrastructure, and the maintenance and growth of internet throughput.

Again, this is only the beginning, or perhaps better put: the beginning of the beginning.

We must plan with an eye to helping others, not just ourselves. We need to do this because it is in our own best interest to do so. We need to dial back our own individual greed, materialism, and cultural narcissism. We need to re-calibrate how we think about the world around us.

In the end, these will be the greatest challenges of all.

© Mark Lefcowitz 2001 - 2024
All Rights Reserved

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