The five-year-old is now six, and getting sophisticated. The other night at dinner, a pan-Asian cuisine spectacular, he confidently announced, "You know, you have to use chapsticks to eat this kind of food." Taken aback, I dropped my chapsticks on the floor, occasioning grumbling from his grandmother and shrieks of laughter from the munchkins assembled, who thought it was all part of the act.
Reflecting on the incident later, I contemplated the dangers involved in applying close, but not quite right, tools to supply chain planning and operations. They often sound like the right thing to do, the right way to go. But, without closer examination, they could prove to be not as useful as hoped, or worse, downright harmful. The difference between chapsticks and chopsticks is minimal in print, noticeable upon inspection, and catastrophic in mis-application.
Whomever is selling either solution, is usually confident, and persuasive, though. It's up to you to discover when you need - and can benefit from - trying to use one or the other.
Note: ChapStick is a registered trademark of Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, which is being acquired by Pfizer Inc.
Softair Ag's CEO, Gabriel Weisskopf has hit another one out of the park. In a recent parable from his Opinion column in Air Cargo World, he recounted the tale of an uncommon service provider, led by its CEO, Hugo First.
In contrast with the parade of usual suspects who took PowerPoint and bombast to new lows, glazing the eyes and numbing the senses of the selection committee, Hugo brought only a flip chart and a bizarre attitude. After writing, "I am not here today to sell you anything," Mr. First admitted that he had really come "to find out what kind of buyer" he was dealing with.
Horror ensued. No brochures, no testimonials, no incomprehensible "value propositions." What was going on?
Actually, the approach is one that might signal bright prospects in a budding business relationship. After all, what kind of business partner is interested only in: 1) itself, and 2) how to get you to buy something, and soon?
Maybe the the right kind of service provider is one who's interested in the longer term, and how good the fit is between it and you. Or art least, wants to take the time tom understand you and your people before crafting approaches and solutions designed to actually solve real business problems in the supply chain.
Is this tactic sheer insolence on the part of a service provider, or an intelligent means of beginning to build the foundation of something sustainable - and valuable?
About a month ago, John Trentacosta wrote about a subject that no one wants to talk about (mhmonline.com). Fact is, an otherwise phenomenal supply chain can be brought to its knees when one partner in the chain runs into financial trouble. A business relationship with a pauper is not sustainable.
Some early warning signals - the canaries in the coal mine - include: requests for price increases, early payments, accelerated terms, or even financing support; late deliveries or quality degradation; failures to appropriately invest in IT and/or other assets; maintaining spend during downturns; delinquent taxes, deteriorating receivables, and extended payables; and bad press, among others.
Due duiligence on the front end can help prevent problems on the back end, but sometimes bad things happen to good people. That's when an early response team reaction to early warnings can pay off. Sometimes, you've got to pull the plug. But, often you can mutually develop work-out plans to let the troubled partner survive long enough to prosper -and to keep your supply chain humming in an unrelentingly competitive marketplace.
A good friend of many years was recently bemoaning what he sees as the continuing decline of manufacturing in the US. His biggest complaint was that, every time a plant closes, its engineers hit the streets newly badged as "lean" consultants.
"Lean" indeed - a larger population trying to capture bigger pieces of a shrinking pie.
I don't have the data to challenge his contentions. Clearly, a lot of manufacturiung has left our shores over the past couple of decades. But, we still manufacture many things, although perhaps not on the scale of what General Motors plants used to look like. Certainly not at the employment and production levels of twenty years ago. That said, we're still in the early stages of in-shoring and right-shoring movements, and productivity - if not production - continues to climb throughout the sector.
It's possible that my morose amigo has seen his consulting and training business shrink because, at least in part, of other factors. More and better-educated and better-trained engineers and operators. Radical shifts in learning and knowledge transfer paradigms. Tired branding and terminology.
And maybe - just maybe - more companies are learning from one another in close relationships, and have focused, targeted, and empathetic partners to help them improve performance. Or perhaps they are getting help from subject matter experts with different styles, with different kinds of client relationships, and with different approaches to salvation that go beyond traditional projects and programs.
Seems to me that part of staying in the game - and ahead of the pack - in the 21st century is continual reinvention . . . within a supply chain, within a company, within a product, and within oneself. I'm just sayin' . . .
Costco continues to amuse and amaze by offering more than the usual products to pile in the cart. The Costco Connection magazine for June (www.costco.com, "connection") has a page devoted to "Fresh Views," with mini-features on: Wally "Famous" Amos (who has moved on to found Wally's Muffin Company),brainstorming techniques, and a quick summary of a 2009 book, Extraordinary Groups: How Ordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results.
My big takeaways this month, aside from a hankering for a muffin or a chocolate chip cookie, were from Extraordinary Groups. One - not quite an aha! moment - was that a group dynamic can hinder, rather than stimulate, group productivity. The other was that "exceptional experiences can be thoughtfully nurtured and intentionally encouraged."
Good stuff, but the authors may have missed the larger point, which is that transporting tools and techniques for elevating group performance, to the operation of business relationships involving entire companies, can magnify and multiply the consequences of what might be accomplished.
Maybe an even greater message, though, lies in how Costco works at a fuller customer relationship by providing unexpected value, beyond the nuts and bolts of selling them tires and tube steaks.
CSCMP's game-changing CEO Rick Blasgen really nailed it in his latest Direct Connection segment in the Q2 issue of Supply Chain Quarterly (www.supplychainquarterly.com). The general point emphasized the value of face-to-face human-level communications in an age of instantaneous electronic communication via numerous media.
Even the Millennial Generation, btw, recognizes this value, despite its fondness for electronic access to all manner of information (and entertainment). My deep suspicion is that way too many people of all ages like to hide behind the impersonal facade of email, texting, tweeting, twittering, flittering - anything that buffers them from interactive personal contact. But, that reflects a personality disorder rather than a generational "preference."
Rick went on to promote the idea that communications leads to collaboration, which can be transported from individual application to organizational relationships. I take heart - when our profession's leaders get the picture this clearly, there's hope that the profession itself will follow.
Things get tricky at this point. Organizational collaboration can't really be - as in the George Gershwin song from Porgy and Bess - "a sometime thing," done when it's convenient for one supply chain partner or another. It needs to be part of day-to-day, and everyday, transaction execution within business relationships.
Now, the hard part. Collaboration doesn't just happen; relationships don't blossom just because they're planted and watered occasionally. All this is part of conscious investment of time and resources in creating the right kind of relationships with the right kind of partners, and all with a business purpose.
The investment, consuming as it may be, is where the big payoff in supply chain management is, though. It transcends momentary gains and losses when designed to deliver sustainable end-to-end marketplace advantage. And, the wunderkind at the end of the table who's texting while you're talking is part of that set of organized relationships.
Stadia emptied, vuvuzelas silenced, the Netherlands team has four years to contemplate what might have been in their resurgent prominence in the world of World Cup soccer. FIFA has a shorter time to assess the salutory effects of public hanging for sight-challenged and judgement-impaired referees. In the meantime, we'll don our colors and pull for Ajax, the pride of Amsterdam.
Back in the real world, the good news is that our universe of supply chain management is making headlines. That's also the bad news. USA Today's July 8 Money section carried a top-of-the-fold feature on shipping bottlenecks and their negative impacts on cost and timeliness. Our friend Rosalyn Wilson was cited (but CSCMP's production of her annual State of Logistics study was not mentioned - another rant for another day).
The problem was blamed on recession-driven capacity cutbacks in air cargo, ocean shipments, and truck transport. Adding container shortages to the mix makes marine transport the most severe manifestation of the problem, with shipping volumes increasing while Chinese container manufacturing has been seriously curtailed.
But, some of the damage was self-inflicted, and some continued difficulty is a matter of choice - an investment in short-term pain in exchange for a payoff in longer-term financial pleasure. Carriers (of all types) embraced sharp price cuts in order to keep operating - even at a loss - when times got tough. Many shippers took advantage of a perceived desperation, and turned the screws even tighter.
Now, the carriers want to get well - and fast. The USA Today feature reports a 150% increase in transportation costs (following the historic decline of 2009). Significant additional increases lie ahead, with re-activated capacity lagging demand. Some observers maintain that the ocean carriers' recent practice of "slow steaming" is a faux green maneuver to mask a cynical manipulation that reduces effective capacity - and creates unholy pressures for further upward price movement.
Despite the fine words and high concepts coming from many players in the global supply chain community, this scenario reflects a sobering reality about talking the talk versus walking the walk.
How often must we repeat these cycles of adversarial win/lose (and lose/lose) industry-wide confrontation? At some point, the strategists among us will learn to think, like Bobby Fischer, four or five moves ahead and build long-term business relationships. Real relationships will insulate genuine partners from the debilitating skirmishes that perpetuate the paradigm of creating immediate transactional focus, short-term one-sided gains, and long-term supply chain underperformance.
We know better; now we've got to do better. But, doing better requires that everybody - shippers, carriers, service providers - gets in the game. And plays to win-win.
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A major food service provider, ConAgra, builds relationships by finding qualified businesses who can conduct business on the same terms, conditions, and quality standards as other business suppliers. ConAgra looks for corporate partners who can provide a consistent product enabling ConAgra to pass on the consistency in the food they provide.
ConAgra also focuses on a culturally diverse employee base. ConAgra works with six Employee Resource Networks to ensure this diversity. The current six Employee Resource Networks include: ConAgra Black Employee Network, Women's Leadership Council, ConAgra Asian Network, ConAgra Latino Network, ConAgra Young Professional Network, and Illuminations. Each of these networks plays a large internal and external role for the company. Externally these networks provide volunteer support for community events and organizations.
http://company.conagrafoods.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=202310&p=comm_diversity
In the real world, partners in supply chains typically have widely varying skill, competency, experience, and maturity profiles. That's consultant-speak for "some players are stronger, and some are weaker." In leveraged and progressive supply chains, the stronger partners have responsibilities to lead, mentor, and teach the others how to get better, not only in raw performance but also in risk management and mitigation.
If the grown-up in the room finds that the other organizations in the overall supply chain can't or won't respond to the required leadership, perhaps they aren't the right partners. On the flip side, if the weaker players aren't getting the leadership and instruction they need to grow and eevelop, maybe they're in the wrong supply chain altogether, and need to find new relationships.
It's sad to see the "A" players and the "B" players pointing fingers at one another like 6-year olds in the wake of a problem. The "A" players have got to act like grown-ups, or maybe they're not really "A" players where it counts. Size and naked power alone do not confer grown-up status on a supply chain partner.
This challenge can become mission-critical for ultimate supply chain success in the marketplace when one of the partners is a logistics service provider (LSP, or 3PL). While it is possible that a relatively new 3PL can be manhandled by a big and savvy customer, it is frequently the case that the customer is less-experienced and less-aware than a diversified multi-customer service provider.
That's when the LSP - in a genuine supply chain business relationship - needs to be the grown-up in the room, and lead the customer to success, taking every care to not let the customer slip off the path into a dismal swamp of risk and failure.
I've been glued to CNN this past week trying to comprehend the catastophe following the earthquake in Haiti. I've been impressed with many things, but one of the things that has impressed me the most has been the power of relationships. In a catastrophe - be it in Haiti or in business-- when everything you had counted on has failed, often the only currency we have left is the power of relationships. Our ability to quickly make connections, create trust and find a common ground can be the difference between life and death. Those in Haiti -- or in business--who are paralyzed by fear, full of self-doubt and want to isolate are really struggling. Those in Haiti --or in business--who have had strong relationships or know how to create them guickly are doing better. They are the resilient ones, and they are the ones most likely to thrive in the future.
The good news is that we can all learn how to be better at creating relationships. There are tools and practices to help us. There is no magic to it. Relationship building is a learned skill. The real challenge is to actively practice those skills before we need to depend on them in life or death situations. I think I need to keep practicing.
First, some definition. Lieder are love songs of primarily Dutch and German origin, with lyrics that evidence literary aspiration. I first encountered the "liedership" term a dozen or so years ago in connection with productions at London's South Bank Centre. The celebration commemorated the 200th birthday of Austria's Franz Schubert, an iconic master of the genre.
Leadership, on the other hand, wasn't in great demand in the earliest days of physical distribution. How much leadership was really needed when all we did was move stuff from Point A to Point B, and put it someplace once it had arrived? Slowly, but thankfully, some leaders in the field began to emerge. They began the processes of extending our understanding of the scope of logistics and supply chain management, and they elevated our appreciation of the value of our role(s) in organizational performance.
In today's complex and interconnected supply chains, leadership - strong leadership - is an absolute necessity. For the really good supply chains that are built on the foundations of well-managed business relationships, leadership is the magical mystery ingredient. The process of building strong business relationships is not a grass-roots movement, although it does require grass-roots execution. Only leadership can provide the vision for future state success, as well as command and commit the resources of people, programs, and time needed to keep relationships working at high levels.
And Liederkranz? For some of us, it means a funny little American cheese, characterized by an indelibly pungent aroma, and now extinct. But liederkranz ("wreath of songs") is actually a singing society, and is far from extinct wherever German heritage and tradition are preserved. Curiously, a liederkranz may be one of the few environments in which both liedership and leadership are vital to sustainable success.
I’m always amazed how hard we fight to get our way, especially when letting go might be the better strategy.
For example, on my way to a business meeting this morning, I was stopped by a bus loading middle school students for their first day of school. After the students were loaded, we continued –after what seemed like an almost interminable wait--for the bus to move on.
FINALLY a mother appeared from stage right dragging her much bigger and much taller son to the bus. He kicked; he fought; he struggled. But she persisted—if only for a bit-- and finally forced him on to the bus.
I hoped the drama was over, but no, he refused to take his seat. Finally the bus driver kicked him off the bus, and he and his mother walked calmly home.
As I watched this drama play out, I couldn’t help but wonder about the impact on these relationships going forward--his willingness to go to school tomorrow, his relationships with other students on the bus, the relationship between mother and son.
Clearly the mother did not achieve her goal, and the son won only for the moment. The problem was not resolved. Their team did not win. Surely, there had to be a better way.
Just when I thought the drama was over, when I arrived for my business meeting, I was amazed to see the same play unfolding on a different set. The players were different, but the plot was the same.
The CEO needed the leadership team to step up and solve a critical business problem. He pushed, prodded and intimidated his people to make the changes he believed essential.
The more he pushed, the harder his team resisted. As a result, nothing happened and everyone’s position had hardened. The company still needed to change and no one was willing to move. Surely, there had to be a better way.
Seeing the same play on two different stages within two hours made me stop and think; how many times have I pushed when I should have listened? told when I should have asked?applied more pressure when I should have let go? Surely this might be a better way.