"Protect cash."
It became the phrase everyone repeated.
Europe was shutting down.
Factories were closing.
Borders were tightening.
Every morning started with another crisis call.
Every afternoon ended with another difficult decision.
I was working as Head of Planning for a global chemical manufacturer, responsible for planning production across multiple manufacturing sites.
The pandemic had begun.
Nobody had a playbook.
One country could operate.
Another couldn't.
Raw materials became uncertain.
Logistics networks changed overnight.
Demand across much of our portfolio simply disappeared.
Like almost every manufacturing business at the time, we switched into survival mode.
Protect cash.
Reduce inventory.
Stop production wherever possible.
Lower utilisation.
Take advantage of furlough schemes.
Looking back now, it's difficult to remember just how sensible those decisions felt.
When the future is completely unknown, protecting working capital feels like the responsible thing to do.
At the time, I don't remember hearing anyone argue differently.
Then an invitation landed in my inbox.
"Fasten Your Seatbelt."
That was the title.
An automotive supply chain webinar.
At first glance it didn't seem particularly relevant.
I wasn't in automotive.
I worked in chemicals.
But supply chains have a habit of sharing the same problems, regardless of the products they make.
I forwarded the invitation to another Planning leader who worked in a different business unit.
We shared the same boss.
"Fancy joining?"
He did.
So did I.
The webinar looked back at previous periods of economic disruption.
Not through the eyes of economists.
Through the eyes of supply chain professionals.
They explained how uncertainty creates the Bullwhip Effect.
Demand falls.
Manufacturers cancel production.
Customers reduce orders.
Suppliers slow their factories.
Raw material producers feel an even bigger shock.
Every company believes it's making sensible decisions.
Individually...
Each decision makes perfect sense.
Collectively...
Those decisions amplify the disruption.
The whole supply chain creates the Bullwhip.
Then came the slide I'll never forget.
The presenters challenged almost every instinct we had.
While businesses around the world were reducing inventory, cutting production and protecting cash, they argued something completely different.
The companies that would come out strongest wouldn't necessarily be the ones that reacted fastest to the downturn.
They would be the ones that prepared earliest for the recovery.
I remember staring at the screen.
Then sending my colleague a private Teams message.
"So... do you think we'll be able to sell this to our leaders?"
We both laughed.
Not because the idea was ridiculous.
Because we knew how difficult that conversation would be.
When the webinar finished, we didn't just close Microsoft Teams.
We picked up the phone.
For nearly an hour we talked through what we'd just heard.
Part of me was convinced.
Part of me wasn't.
The logic was compelling.
If every manufacturer reduced inventory...
...who would be ready when demand returned?
But another part of me understood reality.
This wasn't my money.
Nobody knew how long the pandemic would last.
Protecting working capital wasn't a foolish strategy.
It was a responsible one.
I even emailed the presentation to a close friend who owns an engineering business.
Looking back through my emails while writing this Signal, I smiled when I found what I'd written.
"We're de-stocking globally, slowing production plants down and bringing inventory to lower levels. This methodology goes against that and says... you're not going to be able to keep up with the demand that's coming your way, so you'd better start building stock.
Not sure I'm sold... but certainly an interesting way of looking at it."
Reading those words today made me realise something.
I was standing in the middle of one of the biggest lessons of my career...
...without recognising it.
Then demand came back.
Not gradually.
Violently.
Exactly as the webinar had predicted.
Almost overnight every production plant wanted to run at full utilisation.
Customers wanted product immediately.
Suppliers couldn't react fast enough because many had made exactly the same decisions we had.
Reduce inventory.
Reduce production.
Protect cash.
Raw materials arrived and went straight into production.
Finished goods barely reached the warehouse before they were loaded onto outbound trucks.
Planning horizons shrank.
Schedules changed daily.
Sales teams wanted answers every hour.
Every supplier conversation mattered.
It was relentless.
It was exhausting.
It was unpredictable.
And, strangely...
It was one of the most exciting periods of my career.
It was beautiful chaos.
Every planner dreams of stability.
Few admit that the moments you learn the most are usually the ones where there isn't any.
Would I make a different decision today?
Honestly...
I don't know.
Building inventory during one of the most uncertain periods in modern history would have been a huge financial risk.
It's easy to be brave with hindsight.
That's not the lesson.
The lesson is this.
For the first time in my career, I experienced what it feels like when credible evidence points in the opposite direction to conventional wisdom.
The difficult part wasn't understanding the data.
The difficult part was having the confidence to challenge the instinct that everyone else shared.
If another once in a generation disruption happens during my career, I'll still think carefully about protecting cash.
But before making the decision, I'll ask one more question.
What if everybody else is making exactly the same choice?
I still don't know whether building inventory would have been the right decision.
I probably never will.
But I do know this.
Sometimes the greatest opportunities don't come from having better information.
They come from asking better questions.
Theme
Judgement
Signal
Sometimes the hardest leadership decision isn't choosing between right and wrong. It's choosing between two believable futures.
Reflection
History has a habit of making difficult decisions look obvious.
COVID wasn't obvious.
Every organisation was balancing financial survival against future opportunity.
Most made rational decisions based on the information they had.
The lesson I carried forward wasn't that we should have built more inventory.
It was that when uncertainty is at its highest, conventional wisdom deserves to be challenged—not ignored, but challenged.
The best leaders don't instinctively follow the crowd.
Neither do they instinctively reject it.
They have the judgement to explore an alternative future before deciding which path to take.
Question
Think about the biggest uncertainty your organisation is facing today.
Are you reacting to what's happening now...
...or preparing for what happens next?
The Demand Signal
Lessons from the front line of supply chain.