Lover's Beer and COVID

January 11 2021
By: Terry L. Mathis

Shortly after publication of his book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge did an exercise for a C-suite group of a Fortune 50 company that he labeled Lover's Beer. In this exercise, the executives role-played a beer delivery man, a convenience store operator, the production manager of the beer company, and the sales manager of the beer company. All communication went up and down the chain of contact, and supply and demand never stabilized. The point was that the people controlling production and the people selling the beer never talked except through middle people who tended to overreact.

Now we are manufacturing and distributing COVID-19 vaccine, and the whole process is starving and glutting exactly because the manufacturers and the vaccinators only communicate through layers of government that set priorities but don't manage them well. The job will eventually get done and we will reach herd immunity but much more slowly than necessary. Too bad we don't learn lessons and apply them to our new issues.