When Business is Slow

Like so many other companies, my seminar business is seasonal. Starting the week before Christmas things have been very slow around here. But I have been quite busy doing those things I never seem to have time for during the busy season which, for me, starts next week.

During the slow time I've been working on a new advertising piece for my certificate in supervisory management program series, a new program titled "Leadership in a Changing Environment," sorting through clutter and junk, working on upgrading the topics of "Trusting Employees" and "Delegation," and of course devoting a lot of time learning about blogging and creating this, my first blog.

Those readers who practice the lean approach recognize the value in what I've been doing. One principle of lean thinking is to use any down time or idle time to make improvements to your operation. In these difficult economic times many non-lean companies are quick to layoff people in order to save money. When you layoff a person, you temporarily lose their knowledge and skills. You also run a risk, and in the case of good employees a strong risk, that the laid-off person may find other employment and not return when recalled. In that case, you lose your entire investment in the person.

Lean thinking suggests that before you layoff people you try to find ways to keep them employed in making those continuous improvements you never had time to do when you were busy. But I know long before lean thinking became a popular tool, smart managers would try to keep good employees working even when times were slow. As a young person working in a factory, I remember a time when three of us (all trained as machine operators) spent nearly a whole summer cleaning, painting, sorting and organizing as we waited for business to pick up. And due to those efforts, when business did pick up, that clean and well organized environment added to our productivity.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
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