The moment calls for a total transformation of companies

As we know, the current pandemic situation has had an impact on all companies to different degrees, but the vast majority have faced, and still face, enormous consequences. And many organizations have already realized that these impacts will last and generate others, even after a return to some degree of normality.

In this context, making small changes in companies, such as one-off cost cuts, adjustments here or there… will certainly be insufficient to cope with both the current challenges and those still to come.

So it may be necessary (and even an opportunity) to carry out a total transformation of companies. Or, as we call it in lean management, to make the “big turnaround”.

This transformation needs to begin with a review of the products or services offered. Customers have gone through, and are still going through, the crisis. This is certainly changing mindsets and needs. They will increasingly demand products and services that are efficient, simple, easy to use, with concrete and fast results.

Likewise, it is necessary to radically rethink the processes that deliver and distribute products and services to increasingly demanding customers.

The lean system can help a great deal in promoting this great transformation in the organization as a whole.

For example, effectively establishing “continuous flows” of production. In practice, this means producing without interruptions or “bottlenecks”, from one end of the company to the other, aligning all processes with the pace of customer demand.

To do this, it will be necessary to adopt or reinforce the “pull system”, which means producing only what is demanded by the customer, or by the next process. This is quite different from “push production”, which fills up inventories based on forecasts that often do not materialize.

It is also essential to adopt or deepen “standardized work”, which means establishing as precisely as possible how activities should be performed, always with a view to adding value and eliminating waste.

And, of course, rethinking administrative and support processes (for example, in offices). They, too, are permeated with rework, waste and activities that can be improved, simplified and enhanced with more and better technology.

Also reviewing mindsets, attitudes and practices, of both leaders and those they lead. For example, seeing management change not as something “one-off”, but within a strategic view of the company as a whole. And all of us striving to minimize the natural tendency to resist change.

Of course, carrying out this much transformation is neither an easy nor an immediate task. Changing an organization as a whole is a great challenge and requires “dynamiting” long-entrenched structures and replacing them with a series of others.

It is, however, a possible and perhaps inevitable change. We need to think about it and take the first steps. And understand that the moment brings, more than an opportunity, a need to pursue “the big turnaround”.