No Man’s Land by Carlos Olabe, Executive Director, European Casters’ Federation


the WWI trenches war. No man´s land was the term used to describe the area of land between two enemy trench systems, which neither side wished to cross or seize for fear of being attacked by the enemy in the process.1 After being immersed for some time into this “New Normal”, what we are finding is that everything is far away from normal and that different challenges rise in different ways, but above all, the lack of certainty dominates. COVID-19 has manifested as a business disruption shaking companies in a way that many of them might not recover. Under those circumstances shall we dare to cross the no man’s land? The no man’s land as I see it, is the future ahead. The business disruption has shown us a couple of things to consider: • All eventualities are possible • We can work remote in some areas and the importance of digital tools


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• The importance of health and the attention to be in good health


• The importance of finance and indebtedness control


Suddenly the change associated to the future development has manifested


8 ❘ September 2020 ®


ecently I had the opportunity to watch the impressive Sam Mendes movie “1917” based on


much faster and abruptly. Does it mean there is no need for planning anymore? At the light of no precise data how can we make long-term commitments? I’m curious to see how in the field of our private life this is a not an issue, when we engage with our couple, have kids or even take a mortgage for our house. Planning is more important than


ever, precisely because things do not turn out as they used to be, the need of planning becomes more paramount. But planning is more than make plans and, in this sense, a methodology associated to planning like the Deming Cycle must be considered thus ensuring the evolution and adjustment of plans to discern trends that have longer term influences.


At the light of the disruption


experienced by COVID-19 when planning ahead the first lesson to apply is that the future is not going to be like the present, which means that business and the way we do it, is not going to be like it was, and that might affect the whole value-chain. This is why it is important to


discriminate between uncertainty and risk. They are not the same. Within the last decades we have learnt to manage risk, even to measure it at certain extent, this is not the case with uncertainty. This is why versus uncertainty it is needed to consider different eventualities and scenarios


in line with the different vectors of uncertainty, that might affect the way your business operates, or it might be looking to operate.


As planning execution is


checked it is relevant to spot when uncertainty becomes inevitable and as such becomes a trend to apply the established contingency planning recognizing the trend. Traditionally incremental growth based on incremental change as per relatively known territory is now challenged as the “no man´s land”. Strategy planning looking ahead needs to face fundamental questions relative to the needs of our products and services, the validity of doing current business doing in the new environment, the review of the mission and vision that drives the business. So do not abandon the idea of


planning because of uncertainty. It is recognized that the exercise of planning might be a little bit more complex than in the past, but precisely much more important and necessary addressing the lines indicated above and accompanied by a methodology like the Deming Cycle for planning adjustment and addressing the different vectors of uncertainty that you might envisage potentially affecting your business.


1 Source : Wikipedia


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