Whitewashing stones

I recall watching some old WWII movies where on an army or air force base, when things were quiet, the commanding officer would have the troops whitewash stones. A quite pointless activity - though I guess with health and safety regimes these days it would be considered a good thing to highlight a trip hazard.

I once used to work for a boss a number of years ago that insisted on having a list of jobs that, though unnecessary, should always be done in the event of having nothing better to do. He didn’t ever like the idea of us having idle hands – he believed that when the real work came along we would get ‘out of the habit’.

Right now there are a lot of companies that are struggling to keep their people busy whilst order books are tight. The reaction of some companies is to lay people off whilst others opt for short time working.

I’ve been to a number of businesses recently where the factories are the cleanest they’ve been for a long while. The employees, whilst waiting for work are ensuring that their work areas and environments are spruced up and ready for when (we all hope) they get busy again.

I’m delighted to say that a number of our clients, and prospective clients, have taken the opportunity to review their business processes and their systems and are launching projects to upgrade or replace their business systems during this ‘quiet’ time. I think that this displays sensible thinking on a number of fronts. Firstly, they are discovering operational improvements right now that are reducing costs and relieving some of the pressure on their margins. Secondly, they are ‘getting fit’ for when business picks up in the future. They know that when they were busy in the past they simply didn’t have the capacity to undertake process reviews and implement new systems – their best people were tied up doing everyday business. Right now they have the time to improve planning, get their business case together or look at automated data collection projects.

Clearly, not all business can follow this school of thought – but I know of a few companies that are paying people to sit at home – they may as well be whitewashing stones.