End of the world – yet again? More accurately, it is truly the end of the world as we knew it. Enormous changes globally are underway. A new world order is being created. Of the many changes facing us, those related to supply chains and shortages may have the most immediate impacts. Vital to know what these are even if you can’t do much about them.
Shortages of everything is being reported as a catastrophe: we are doomed. But what if this is just a symptom of massive changes underway that are now driven by the COVID black swan? Changes that were inevitable in our way-too-brittle world. If so, this shifts our management context to one of challenge and opportunity. We look here at what to do about the global supply chain mess.
Shortages of everything is being reported as a catastrophe. We may well be doomed. But what if this is just a symptom of massive changes underway that are driven by the COVID black swan? Changes that were inevitable in our way-too-brittle world. If so, this shifts our management context to one of emerging challenge and opportunity, not one dealing in hindsight with catastrophe.
Almost every day now we read about something or other being “unavailable” or “in short supply”. Supply chains are crashing. Many kinds of workers are no longer looking for work despite millions of open jobs. COVID has largely vanished so we are told so shortages must be due to “something else”. What “something”? How do we manage in this terrible mess? Time to worry?
I keep reading about shortages recently. Is it time to panic? To an old systems guy, the current “shortages” and supply chain chaos are exactly what would be expected as the economy begins to open up again after more than a year of lockdowns, business failures, layoffs, and the usual global weather inconveniences. A bigger surprise would have been no shortages occurring.
