Our last post described actions needed to address potential leadership blind spots. This post covers why the traditional intra-company early warning processes are breaking down.
“It’s covered” has proven to be false in reality. Senior management has relied on early warnings and countermeasures coming from their customer-facing and operational managers. This has broken down under the cascade of global events such as Covid-19 lockdowns, global production shortfalls, and huge changes in patterns of consumption. The obvious examples of assumption-busting events are large-scale external forces – governments, labor force changes, and weather. These are obvious and don’t even recognize disruptions due to staff communications changing termination of some processes and intense competition. Focusing on the more obvious causes misses other more subtle forces that are blindsiding senior management.
The very practices adopted to streamline work and increase productivity have created vulnerabilities. The improvements and optimizations that are driving workforces to be more productive, the work from home revolution, and even the globalization of the supply chain have hobbled the flow of information to senior managers warning of disruption.
Our next post focuses on these more subtle forces. You can find earlier pieces at www.ekalore.com/ars
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