Economic recovery efforts continue to rollout
The US has added 2.5 million jobs back in May. Congress has extended the $510B PPP loan program to 24 weeks for converting loans to grants (it was 8 weeks). On June 5th, President Trump said he’ll ask Congress to pass more economic stimulus, including a payroll tax cut. China is taking actions to boost employment in a weakened economy with $60B in loans for small businesses and $280B for cash-strapped municipalities. The European Central Bank has eased monetary policy, further taking its PEPP program from 600 billion euros to 1.5 trillion euros. European supply chain capacity is holding at 60% after ramping up from 46% on 5/24/2020
Is there an opportunity for companies to transition to agile management practices?
With the covid crisis, teams are dealing with an increase in ambiguity. Some members likely have hundreds of emails in their inboxes with decisions moving too slow or just stalled.
How can organizations streamline decisions and improve deliverable cycle-times? We know that emails are a poor way for decision-making when there is ambiguity involved. Agile software developers address this with daily and weekly objective-based meetings. As ambiguity increases, the need for collaboration scales up. On the other hand, if standard work increases (less ambiguity), the need for collaboration should scale down. Managing prioritization and delegation of authority are methods to manage the volume of work and reduce cycle-time. This is a great time for companies to make a strategic move toward an agile management culture. See The Age of Agile for a good read on the subject (also available on Audible)
Top Links
American and United Diverge on Summer Recovery Expectations Skift, June 4th, B. Sumers (4 min read)
- Flight schedules will continue to be limited
- American will fly about 40 percent of its planned July schedule, while United will fly about 25 percent
- American is benefiting from hub locations that are in states that have opened earlier, and a bet on leisure travel to Florida
- American came into the crisis the weakest among the big three with more debt, but could emerge gaining share
“The State of the Deskless Workforce” Logistics Workers Survey Results – SupplyChain 247, June 4 ( 3 min read)
- Nearly 20 percent of logistics professionals came into work sick during the COVID-19 outbreak
- 30% of logistics workers think taking more than one consecutive sick day is a fireable offense
- Only 6 percent of logistics workers have paid sick time
Zero-Based Budgeting Is Not a Wonder Diet for Companies – (4 min) classic HBR June 2016
- Traditional ZBB lacks the transformative mindset required to blow up boundaries
- Broader ZBB can now be completely re-thought and often drastically improved through digitization
- Broader ZBB leaves nothing out of scope, pursuing fresh efficiencies in contracting practices, make-versus-buy tradeoffs, demand reduction, requirement simplification, operational efficiency, applied analytics, rules and policies.
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Best regards,
Don
Don K Brown