The management lessons from our handling of COVID-19

Focus on effectiveness, not shiny distractions: Lighting candles, banging pots and pans, bells and whistles, even a flower shower we did them all. While this show kept up enthusiasm of a select few in an unprecedented lockdown, it also distracted everyone early on in the pandemic. The real job at hand was to stop a certain thing / ramp up certain capacity, the entire pomp took away the focus of a lot of people from solving these fundamental problems.It’s almost 6 months since the first COVID-19 case was detected in India on 30th January 2020. There have been many actions taken by the government and we’ve seen results or lack there of for almost all of these actions. So, what are the lessons from the government’s management of COVID-19? Here is my take

1. Act on and eliminate the constraints first: Countries which have the pandemic under control did so on the back of ramped up testing. We, on the other hand, are still expanding testing capacity. The single biggest reason for the high case numbers today is the inability to track cases early given this constraint.
2. Plan for the collateral consequences. Upfront: While lockdowns imposed at short notice were required, there was no foresight on its knock-on effects on people, economy and governance systems. We are still not proactively tackling, but firefighting its aftermath – migrants, unemployment, economic slump, education disparities… this list just keeps growing bigger.
3. Limit the objectives for a task. Communicate it clearly: What was the objective for the lockdown? Stop COVID-19 in 21 days? Flatten the curve? Expand hospital capacity? Scale up testing facility? The government machinery down the line needed to be absolutely sure what they had to do and achieve. Every second press release and survey today talks about something new achieved out of the lockdown.
4. Capture, look at and present the right data: While high quality, high resolution and right data is important to generate right insights on the spread of the pandemic, presenting the right data to everyone involved including the public at large is equally important. Statistical jugglery, clever by half graphs may be good for corporate/management meetings to get a certain decision, but data transparency is absolutely key when lives are involved.
5. Technology is not the replacement yet for humans: AarogyaSetu was hyped as the app that will do it all – contact trace, inform and provide teleconsultation to manage the disease among those infected. While the rapid adoption and millions of downloads were hailed, it hasn’t impacted the case trajectory one bit. At the other end is telemedicine which still remains a video chat. Not just in India, contact tracing apps worldwide are failing.
6. There are no shortcuts (especially in medicine): There is a hurry to announce new diagnostics, new cures and even new successes in vaccine trials. Announcements by press releases, without following the due review process seem to have become a norm. There is pressure to adhere to certain optical deadlines as well. Rushing into launching and using something not properly researched is extremely risky. At scale, we’ll see events that we’ve never seen in labs and trials. Worst still we’ll encourage people to take false risks.
7. Focus on effectiveness, not shiny distractions: Lighting candles, banging pots and pans, bells and whistles, even a flower shower we did them all. While this show kept up enthusiasm of a select few in an unprecedented lockdown, it also distracted everyone early on in the pandemic. The real job at hand was to stop a certain thing / ramp up certain capacity, the entire pomp took away the focus of a lot of people from solving these fundamental problems.
8. Invest in good people: Lastly, I cannot emphasise this enough, having the right people for the right job is absolutely critical in crisis situations. Here we have consultants and economists doing epidemiological modelling and bureaucrats overseeing clinical trials. The world over the successful strategies have all been devised by the right experts for the given job.

Some life and management lessons are learnt the hard way, hope we will not overlook these going forward.