The great spring weather of the past few days has reminded me of a beautiful Dutch saying: “You should fix the roof when the sun is shining”. When I first heard this expression as a teenager, it didn’t even really stick with me. It made perfect sense to me that work on the roof structure should be tackled when the weather was good. Who tackles such important things as repairing a roof when it’s pouring with rain?
But in practice, unfortunately, we don’t always go straight to the proverbial roof when we know that a few roof tiles are crooked or even missing. Often we hope that somehow it will be all right. After all, it’s still the height of summer and the weather is fine: what are the chances of rain? But hoping is not a strategy and at the latest with the first autumn storm you think: I should have done better…
We also see this kind of behaviour in some companies. In the times when many supply chains were hit by the effects of the Corona crisis from one moment to the next, they quickly built solutions to be able to assess and cushion the consequences. For example:
Created evaluations of how much turnover had decreased or increased, changed system settings to make forecasts more adaptive, quickly found alternative suppliers, etc.
Some of these solutions were certainly well thought out and sustainable, others perhaps more patchwork.
And now that the sun is thankfully shining more frequently again for many companies, I think the time is right to replace the patchwork and repair the roof thoroughly and sustainably. Address the issues now, while the memories are still fresh! Because you still remember well the buckets that had to be hastily spread around the attic to catch the water raining in. So you have a driving force for change. And as the Dutch say: you should fix the roof while the sun is shining….
Wishing you sunny days on the roof,
Your Dirk Ungerechts
