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Available in English, French or Mandarin  | | | | North of Toronto, a car-parts manufacturer is retooling its assembly line to enable it to mass produce the components for medical face shields. In Montreal, a maker of surgical garments is rushing to import fabric and gowns by air rather than sea. In their different ways, both companies illustrate the industrial transformation caused by the outbreak of COVID-19 and the resulting shortage of medical equipment.
| In the short term, hospitals are turning to their communities to donate unused respirators and protective gear – or even sew homemade masks for visitors so hospitals can ration professional masks for medical personnel. But to truly meet the mounting demands for supplies, Canada’s medical system requires companies to pivot into new areas of production while learning to comply with medical safety standards.
|  | | | More stories below advertisement | | | | | | Managers have certain moments when their skills are tested to the ultimate – the busy season, or during a takeover bid, or when a new challenger with a superior offering enters the marketplace. But in the past few weeks – and the weeks, if not months, to come – all managers, in every field, at all levels, are being tested, simultaneously, as their operations must adjust, usually quite radically, to the pandemic threat. Our whole world is being turned upside down.
| We have heard much in recent years about the need for disruption and change. Now we have it – but managers are not in control, they’re trying to make the best of a bad situation. And even when the situation offers opportunities, such as for manufacturers of disinfectant, it requires all their skills to respond.
| This is the management challenge – the management crisis – of our lifetime. Some organizations are facing tougher decisions than companies have tackled since the Second World War or even the Great Depression.
| At work, most of us try to find an acceptable balance between some conflicting tensions. We want to do well personally. We want the organization to do well. We want to help others – our colleagues, and the clients we serve. And we want to be good for the community and world – be socially responsible, as much as possible. That balance is being challenged in various ways by COVID-19. Donna Gillespie, head of the economic development commission in Kingston, Ont., where I live, tells of the small-business owner who moaned: “I’m conflicted between moral responsibility and going bankrupt.”
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