September 18, 2025 • 49 mins
Your tech is not the problem. The quiet misalignment between execs, IT, and the warehouse is what sinks ERP, MES, and AI projects.
Ellen Wood sits down with Chris Carter, a four-time best-selling author and one of America’s top 10 industry influencers, to unpack how small communication misses become million-dollar delays. They share real stories from SAP and WMS programs where leaders pushed ahead without alignment, plus the fixes that keep strategy and shop-floor reality connected.
In this episode:
Ellen Wood sits down with Chris Carter, a four-time best-selling author and one of America’s top 10 industry influencers, to unpack how small communication misses become million-dollar delays. They share real stories from SAP and WMS programs where leaders pushed ahead without alignment, plus the fixes that keep strategy and shop-floor reality connected.
In this episode:
- The misalignment patterns that break ERP and MES rollouts, including siloed goals, shadow changes, and skipped data prerequisites for SAP upgrades
- A simple communication and governance playbook that aligns the C-suite, IT, and warehouse voices, plus why you should never outsource testing to your implementer
- A real ECC readiness check that halted a doomed migration and what that story teaches about decision rights, meeting rhythms, and field-first feedback
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You will attend this meeting. You will have conversations with
the team, the trainers, the testers, the change management, and
the executive team, and we will go through everything to
make sure that everyone is in alignment. And that's the
key was making sure that everyone is in alignment. And
the CEO came and had a conversation with me. About
(00:20):
fifteen minutes later, he goes, holy cow, nobody's talked to
each other in months. Thank you said, this is what
we do, this is why you hired us. We're going
to make sure that this is back on track, and
we will have this project back on track and close
to their original timelines. But it's because now everyone is
talking true communication and I love it when they do that.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hello and welcome to Speaking of Supply Chain, where we
explore trends, current events, and innovations impacting the logistics and
supply chain industries. I'm your host, Ellen Wood. Behind every
chaotic disruption, delayed decision, or failed transformation in the supply chain,
there's often a deeper issue. No one talks about strategic misalignment.
(01:07):
Today we're pulling back the curtain on the hidden disconnects
between functions, systems, and goals that quietly erode agility, exploring
how supply chain leaders can reframe legacy thinking and technology
to build truly adaptable, future ready supply chains. Chris Carter,
four time best selling author and one of America's top
ten industry influencers, is here with me today to unpack
(01:29):
the silos, challenge the norms, and chart a smarter path forward. Chris,
welcome to Speaking of supply Chain.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Oh, thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
It's great to have you on the show. So before
we get started with unpacking silos today, our ice breaker
question is what is a weird food that you have
tried and would you eat it again?
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So this one was easy for me. Of the questions
you gave me, I'm like, this is it because I
am a huge foody when I travel the globe. There's
the one I gave you. But I also thought about
it a little bit and I was like, oh my gosh.
So the one I sent you was octopus. I love
octopus no matter what form, where it is, and what
it is. But when I really thought about it, I
(02:14):
love the octopus, but I love street vendor food India, China, Brazil.
I will eat my way through whatever city through Rome.
Instead of going to the Marriotte Hotel or the Hilton
or the Hut, I find myself street venders. And it's funny.
I watch as I'm driving into where I need to
(02:35):
be from the airports, and I look and I see,
and then I started asking the cabby or the uber.
It's all about the great street vendor food.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That is absolutely true. I've never been disappointed by street
vending food. I would have to say mine is very similar.
I was in Barcelona, right on the coast and we
went to an amazing seafood restaurant and I had the
squid ink payet and I remember sharing a photo of
this with my you know, with my followers with my
(03:05):
social media, and this was maybe four or five years ago,
and everyone was just amazed that I would eat this
cole black looking. You know, it looked absolutely charcoal. It was.
It was black, but it was so delicious and it
was so so good. I was so glad I got
a chance to try it.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I love but Falonna It is such a great place
to eat, beautiful area, and especially if you're downtown where
the soccer stadium is or the complexes. I like to
call it that whole beautiful red brick wall in the
red There's actually a restaurant across the street and just
down one block that has similar food. Oh, the seafood
(03:48):
is to die for there. And that was just the
main thorough flare thorough fare.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Whenever I'm there, I always go to La Bokria and
I just go and buy little bits and things and
I take it back to my hotel and just have
girl dinner.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I love that, just get little pieces, plus coffees and espressos,
and I do that all around the globe. I'll go
to little coffee shops. I just walk coffee shop, another espresso,
coffee shop another. You can tell I have a lot
of espresso.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
That sounds like me going to the top as bars
and just having a little bite here and there. It's
the best part of Barcelona, my absolute favorite. And I
hope I get to go back sometime. But today we
are talking about some of these disruptions and things that
are going on in the supply chain and why we
don't seem to be getting anywhere. Everyone's just pulling their
(04:42):
hair out. It feels like the same problems over and
over and over and over, and why are we hitting
these on repeat. So what exactly do we mean by
strategic misalignment in the context of whether it's production or distribution.
Where are we seeing this have happening and what is
it really?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Oh gosh, it's everywhere. It's every type of industry, it's
every type of industry focus or it doesn't matter if
you're in an a warehouse distribution area, it doesn't matter
if what the misalignment that is happening between what is
going on at station A to station B to see
And it's interesting. I deal a lot with SAP and
(05:26):
ERP customers, especially wrapping that around AI these days, and
the misalignment it happens from individuals who are black belts
to individuals who are day twenty six on a job.
And it's interesting because it's as if we see things.
If you're working in an environment and it's got in
(05:48):
a misalignment, but you're used to it and you see
what you see every day, it just becomes happenstance. Oh,
it'll fix itself out. Oh we'll get that shipped out.
Oh we'll take care of the well. Instead of taking
care of it, they just let it go on and
they just let it and then it becomes habit. And
when things become habit, what's the old phrase, if you
(06:08):
do things more than three times, all of a sudden,
it becomes a pattern. When it becomes a pattern, and
you start doing it for a while, what is it,
two or three weeks? Then all the s and it
all of a sudden starts becoming the norm. Well, it's
the same thing with how everybody gets misaligned within these
ecosystems when you're starting to do that. And that's why
(06:30):
when we come in or I come in and others
come in and we're like, why would you do that
that way? And what are you doing? And why do
you realize that you're wasting all this time and you're
not aligned with this activity? Or what gets even worse?
It's it's funny. I was just working with one of
our clients and they had go to Singapore and I'd
(06:51):
go to their case and this company, this this individual
organization did it differently than this one than this one.
Nothing was consistent. Everything was misaligned, so they wouldn't even
get the same data. They had to transition their data
to be able to make everybody understand it. And so
it was pretty sad. And why is it happening is
(07:11):
because unfortunately, you get certain people that just don't care.
And I've been in the supply chain in ERP for
my entire career since the nineteen eighties. Yes I'm that old.
I know. I did pull out all my hair. And
you looked at these companies and you just you looked
at them, and as a younger person, I'm trying to
(07:33):
be that person that's trying to help them. And then
you've got mid management and executives that are like, oh no, no,
it's working just fine for us. Okay, well it could
be working a lot better. Then all of a sudden,
I started getting into management and other activities and I
tried to make changes, and then you get the people
down below like no, no, no, we've got this, we
take care of this, we'll do this. We know that
it's time consuming and these activities, but it's fine. And
(07:56):
then all of a sudden you get union shops, and
then all of a sudden you get individuals. It just
goes across the board, and unfortunately, unless there's going to
be a major change dynamic within that organization, the misalignment's
going to happen continue to happen unless they can really
make that change or willing to make change.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
You would think that post COVID, after having lived through this,
we would understand that it shouldn't take such a large
scale disruption in order to question the status quo. But
I hear you saying that people are just adverse to change.
They don't want to do something differently than the way
they've got in their own minds. And you know, every
(08:36):
single one of us knows that there are other great
minds out there, there are other great ideas, there are
other ways of doing things. And when agility is one
of the buzzwords in our industry right now, why are
people so reticent to admit that there could be a
better way to do something?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So I'm going to answer that one, and I hope
I do not offend anybody that LISTENEDTS. So I step
back and I look at this from again an ERP
software mechanism in our ecosystem. Right now, we are the
oldest consulting group be it SAP, ERPs and stuff like,
(09:15):
the oldest group on the consultative map. So when you
look at us, there is over sixty percent of the
individuals are forty plus years of age. And when you
look at fifty plus, it's an even worse scenario, and
they're so grained in. We have problems with companies that
(09:37):
we work with because there's an age activity. And I'm
not going to say agism is good batter otherwise, but
when you're trying to make the changes to more of
an agile state and you're trying to use cloud and
you're trying to move to the next level of an
SAP or an oracle cloud, we get a lot of
times the feedback is my staff just does want to
(10:00):
do that. We're gonna have to make wholesale changes. We're
gonna have to move these people here, We're gonna have
to bring in people that do it. I had one woman,
and I kid you not Ellen. She's maybe fifty two,
so she was younger than me, and she spotted off,
I'm in my fifties. I'm not changing anything. You either
have to fire me or I was like, ma'am, I'm
(10:21):
not doing anything. This is your company. We just need
to know how your process works. You're trying to get
rid of me and I refuse to make these And
what they did is they ended up buying her and
about fifty other people out of their contract. Or their
early retirement activities because they refused to learn the new
(10:41):
concepts and then learn the new activities with the new
SAP system and the new cloud and the new agilities,
and so they ended up going out and hiring these
individuals cousted them a lot to do it, but they
just were not willing to make those initiatives to make
a little bit of change and to help the company
change to better itself, and so it really had to
(11:04):
go through that process. So unfortunately a little bit of
age in there as well.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
When those silos are so persistent, especially in modern organizations
that want to have some of these changes, that want
to keep up with the technology that is evolving, you know,
how does that attitude really undermine that resilience, that cross
functional resilience that we have to have. We've established, you know,
you have to have the different departments talking to each
(11:34):
other or else the whole thing falls apart. You can
have the greatest idea in one section of the company,
but if the other areas of the company are not aligned,
it's not going to go through. So we know we
need to have this type of cross functional communication going on,
and that's what makes these supply chains more resilient. But
(11:56):
we're just absolutely not allowing ourselves to do it.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Unfortunately, companies are not allowing themselves to do it. You
are correct, and I go back to maybe about fifteen
twenty years ago. Remember when we had all of the
technology silos. You took care of operating systems, you took
care of the databases, you took care of the application. Well,
companies took that a little bit further and they said, well,
my warehouse management team doesn't even talk to my distribution
(12:23):
team properly. They feel that they're supposed to be doing this,
and no, you're supposed to be doing that. And then
it's the in the data come in and I'm like, guys,
why are you fighting each other. You're the same company.
If you want to have your little offendom and you
want to keep everything great, but guess what, you work
(12:46):
for the company, and the company needs you, guys and gals,
to work together and to understand. And if it's got
to come down from the top, it's going to come
down for the top. It's it's interesting. I just got
to sit for three and a half hours on an
airplane with the founder of a place called quick Trip,
and in Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois. It's this great little gas
(13:10):
station concept with Chicken Annle and I was asking him.
I was just pepperin him questions. I had no idea
who he was at person, and he was talking about
his supply chain because he was doing X, Y and Z.
He brought it all in house, and they're all on
the same page. We're going to make our glazers orur donuts.
We're gonna do this with bananas. We're gonna do this
with our customers. We're gonna do this with our partner.
(13:31):
Everybody's in alignment and they're all working towards one goal,
and it's for the company's benefit to help the customer.
And unfortunately people look at their little area of their world.
This is my warehouse management, this is my application, this
is I've modified this. I'm going to make sure that
(13:51):
nobody touches this, including those darn people in distribution or
those people and finance that are trying to tell me
I need to give back percent credits and I need
to do this, and lo and behold, it gets involved
with them from a supply chain and tries to help them. Hey,
we're gonna have to charge you on that okay, but
(14:11):
you do see ebbs and flows with that, and I
see ebbs and flows with companies of that all the time.
Al Sen, somebody will leave and you'll get somebody else
and be like, can we make changes? Are we allowed
to help? And they may go off and they may
be brave, may have that big sword and they're gonna
start chopping and they're gonna start doing. You wish you
(14:32):
didn't have to do that, but unfortunately sometimes you have to,
especially when you're working in a supply chain activities and
you need to manage people, processes and activities to go forward.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, I can't imagine that the people are that opposed
to change just on the circuit, Like in general, it
must be. There's got to be some fear behind this.
There's got to be some concern about the job mark,
it about you know, AI taking over people's jobs. I mean,
all of these things are causing people a lot of fear.
(15:07):
But the bottom line is a rising tide raises all ships.
So you know that effort that they put into it,
if each little person puts in each of their effort,
you know the company is going to do better overall.
And you know, I hope that companies are recognizing that
there is that level of actual fear for their own
livelihoods that is keeping people from you know, really jumping
(15:32):
into some of these larger scale changes or being open
to just a completely different viewpoint. And I think that's
one of the great things that you and I have
from the consultancy angle is you know, we're not the
ones ingrained in these habits, in these you know, ways
of working that are that are just so siloed and
(15:56):
with blinders on that we're able to look at it
and see, oh, well, you could do it this way
or you could do it that way, and we have
no stake in the game. You know, it's not going
to affect us one way or the other. And if
they continue to do poorly, it's still not going to
affect us. We have the benefit of being able to
look at it from an outside view and just give advice.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yes, but I say yes to that. But yet, when
I leave an organization and I know they're not going
to make the change, or they've got individuals in their
organization that I know are going to disrupt where they
want to go and how they want to do, I
walk away very sad because I look at that and
(16:40):
just think, God, you could be so much, you could grow,
you could do, but you're just not willing to take
that individual and say, look, you've been here thirty years,
we get it, we're proud of you, but we're going
to put you over here you're getting close to retirement
or whatever the activity there and help and benefit the organization.
(17:02):
And unfortunately I walk away sometimes just shaking my head,
thanking God. That company is never going to get to
the point where he the ownership group or whoever wants
to because of their being disrupted on the bottom or
in the middle.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, because of that opportunity cost that's lost. Yes, So
when it is further down the chain, when it is
you know, the everyday people in the everyday positions, that's
one thing, you know, we have, we have naysayers all
the time. There's never going to please everybody all of
the time. But when it's when it's at the higher circles,
(17:36):
when it's at those upper levels of management, how how
much of that inefficiency can be tracked back to a misalignment?
You know, when we're when we're talking about some of
these larger scale disruptions, some of these larger scale problems,
you know, are these are these habits? Are these mental models?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Is it risk aversion? But is it? Is it at
the top where these larger strategic decisions are being made
or is it more operational?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Well, actually, I'm going to give an example of what
is perfect with this question. About two weeks ago, I
was with an organization that we've been supporting for years
and they just let go of their chief operating officer.
Their chief operating officer was trying to undermine a project
(18:25):
and undermining the CEO because he felt that he did
not understand the technology and did not understand the business.
As the CEO and the son of the founder and
the CEO kept saying, we don't need these activities, we
don't need this, we don't need that. And the CEO
(18:49):
wanted to be intimately involved with the project and was,
and he kept getting these notifications that this was being
changed and this was being changed, and we're not going
to do this. They all had a C level come
to Jesus meeting. I've only heard and been a part
of a few of these, and what is interesting is
(19:10):
they literally sat down in a room and they all
had a part of my language in itch session. Now'll
put the B in front of that what it was,
and we're in consulting. We get these all the time
from usually end users and usually from individuals that are
part of the project teams. But this was a c
level itch session. And apparently this thing went on for
(19:32):
about four hours to finally where the points where the
CEO said that they were resigning and the CEO said, nope,
you have been terminated, and they literally walked them out
of the building. Undermining a project hurts everybody. And by
undermining a project, to just make a change that you
(19:55):
feel is more comfortable for you or your organization, if
it's come from the sea level, from the CEO himself
or herself, you make those changes and you bring it
all together. Now, it may not be the right idea,
and so you explore that conversation, You discuss and you
digest what is going to happen if we make this decision,
(20:19):
if we say we're going to do we're going to
implement enterprise warehouse management, and how this is going to
affect the warehouse management, the distribution, the supply chain, everything across,
and you lay that out in front of everyone and
you make the right decision, or if you're going to
make a wrong decision, Okay, at least you've made a decision.
But now let's understand why it's positive and why it's
(20:41):
negative and then make that forward momentum. But never undermine somebody.
Don't sit there thinking that you from a sea level,
from a mid management to somebody who's doing the testing,
to somebody who's doing the implementation. Don't undermine a project
for your own benefits or for your activity. It's for
the betterment of the company and everyone involved. And I
(21:04):
I it grates on me when people do things for
their own direction or their own activity and forgets that
it's for the greater good.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Well, and I hear you saying a lot of this
boiled down ultimately to a lack of communication. And I've
seen a number of large scale implementations for for many
different reasons within these these types of companies or or
within these types of projects, and they're not quick. These
things take time. Sometimes we move a little quicker than others.
(21:40):
But when it comes to these big strategic moves, there's
there's time given to, you know, do some some data research.
There's time given to understand the implications or at least
we hope sufficient time is given. But you know, this
isn't just a snap decision. This is something where a
number of people should have been brought to the table.
And perhaps I'm hearing you say that they just weren't
(22:03):
brought in in the right time until it was too
late and opinions had been formed, heads were budding, and
now there is no good resolution to the problem.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
And it happens all the time. Unfortunately, we're actually helping
to clean up an organization's mess right now. They didn't
bring in any of the stakeholders up front, and that's
a big piece of it. Bring everyone in before you
even start to buy your licenses or to make a change,
(22:34):
or you need everyone's opinion. Now, not everyone is going
to be in alignment, and I get that, and we've
always said you're probably going to have someone that's going
to descend, and that's great, but they're going to have
an idea, a thought, a concept process that they're going
to bring in to say why this can't work. And
as long as you keep that line of communication open,
(22:55):
our best projects have always been when everybody's allowed to
voice their opinion and have that conversation at the table.
It doesn't matter if it's good bad otherwise, or just
whipping a heat off and throwing it on the table
and saying no communication. It's like being in a marriage.
(23:16):
If you don't communicate with each other, you're not going
to be a very happy marriage. If you're not communicating
as part of a project team for any supply chain project,
for any ERP, for any type of a project, you're
not going to have good relationships with anybody. And so
that's why communication is vital. When we came into this
(23:36):
project that I was just referencing, they were not doing
weekly calls or weekly meetings to give updates. They were
not doing weekly calls for change management activities, they were
not doing weekly calls for even strategy sessions of anything
that would change anybody that needed to make a change
in the system. They just said, oh, okay, send it
(23:58):
over to the basis team or this technolog your team,
this group. Nobody was talking amongst themselves. So we implemented
our strategy, which is we are going to have a
change management meeting every Monday as soon as we get
back from the weekend, because we had to make a
lot of changes on the weekends. Two you've got an
executive meeting. Three, you've got a full team meeting. Five,
(24:19):
you were going to have a technical meeting. We literally
lined up about fifteen different meetings all week long, so
it's about three every day. And people were like, well,
what am I going to do on my calendar? But
I said, I don't care. You will attend this meeting.
You will have conversations with the team, the trainers, the testers,
(24:41):
the change management, and the executive team, and we will
go through everything to make sure that everyone is in alignment.
And that's the key was making sure that everyone is
in alignment. And the CEO came in, had a conversation
with me. About fifteen minutes later, he goes, holy cow,
nobody's talked to each other months. Thank you. I said,
(25:02):
this is what we do. This is why you hired us.
This is we're going to make sure that this is
back on track, and we will have this project back
on track and close to their original timelines. But it's
because now everyone is talking true communication, and I love
it when they do that.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Well, it does make everything a lot easier when they
actually talk to each other. I know, you know, there
have been days when I get so wrapped up in
the work that I'm doing that I forget to tell
other people what's going on, and it does cause an issue.
You have to talk to your to you know, upstream
and downstream of what's happening and what's going on, even
(25:41):
if it's just an update. So one thing you were
mentioning that once they started talking to each other and
having the meetings, it was night and day. They they
were able to communicate, they were able to get things
at least moving in a forward direction. This is the
Aha moment for a lot of companies to realize that
their communication was not as good as they thought it was.
(26:04):
So even when companies think they're in a good place,
you know what kinds of things aside from the communication
piece where they're maybe not as good as they think
they are. But you know, have there been situations where
they thought they were ready for something and they were
they were trying to communicate, but then the technology piece
(26:24):
was just so far behind that there. It really is
an actual roadblock in most cases. I don't think technology
is the roadblock that people think it is.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
It depends on the age of the infrastructure and on
the applications that they're using. We have we've had customers
in the past where they thought, oh, we're good to go,
we can do and I'm looking at their system. But
wait a second, you are in violation of the operating
system patch level. Your in violation of your database patch level.
You don't even have an update on your SAP environment
(26:59):
or your oracle or your technology cannot go to perfect
example is SAP. He's got a thing called ECC ECC six.
It's the right Now we're on S four, which is
all going to a club, and the ECC was the
on premise or bar metal or virtualized environment. Come in
(27:20):
here when we start talking, Oh, we're ready to go
to S four. We were excited, we want to do this,
and so our team did an evaluation of the environment.
Well wait a second. Here, you're on ECC six Enhancement
Pack one. You have to be on Enhancement Pack eight.
Oh wait a second, you're on max dB. You cannot
go to max dB unless you go to HANA first,
(27:42):
and then you got to go up. So you need
to pump the brakes. Your technology is nowhere near ready.
Let's put together a project plan. Let's talk through these scenarios.
Oh my gosh, the CTO thought that we had stepped
on as cheerios or something. They were so upset. Well,
what do you mean we can't do this, this and this,
(28:03):
I said, sir, I'm sorry. This is here. Here's the documentation.
We did an early watch report on your system and
it's not gonna work now. Mind you, there are there
are companies that I've dealt with, and I kid you
not know there are on legacy environments of either Oracle
or SAP or whatever it is that you couldn't even
(28:27):
do an upgrade with. You have to beg and plead
with God, please do not turn off that system. Don't
have a power outage, don't have a batup up, because
if they were to log back in and that system
kicked on, they would probably have five thousand Microsoft hot
packs go into that system and it would kill the environment.
(28:47):
And so these folks just go, oh, it's fine. We
live with this every day. We can work with them,
like pretty soon, you're not gonna be they're working on
anything anymore because it's gonna be so bad.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, they're working with the hope and pray method of
you know, is this going to continue to work tomorrow?
They've got some they've got some poor person sitting in
a closet that their job, their only job is to
make sure that it stays on and doesn't you know,
have a hiccup and you know, keep the band aids coming,
you know, the duct tape, the paper clip, whatever they
(29:21):
have to do to maguy or this system to keep
it running, as opposed to just biting the bullet and saying, hey,
we have to modernize. This technology is not going to
support our goals anymore. This technology is not going to
allow us to achieve the you know whatever, you know,
whatever goals they have in plan, whatever plans they have,
(29:42):
whatever sales, they're not going to be able to do it.
And I don't always understand the mentality. I mean, I
guess when it comes to business, there are big decisions
that have to be made and sometimes, you know, you
do have to cut some corners in order to make
ends meet the end of the day. But you know,
this is when we're when we're talking about strategic change.
(30:05):
This is not just I need to change this light bulb.
This is we need to have something working differently in
order to enable something bigger than what we're already doing.
And I wonder how often companies even look at it
in that light, you know, if they're if their leadership
(30:26):
looks at it in that light of this is this
is not something we have to do because X is
broken and why we'll fix it. It's if we don't
do this, we can't get to Z at all.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Correct. It's it's a business transformation for most of these
organizations because they're going from something so old in our kit.
Remember we used to have the old green screens running
all over my father's company, and then all of a
sudden we started getting X eighty six laptops or desktops
and people were like, Okay, what do we do? Well,
now we're transforming the business. It's amazing when they went
(30:57):
from the old to the new and to be able
to interact with each other and the talk to the
front of the house warehouse to the back of the
whare else and the distributes, well, that's kind of the
transformation activities that we're doing now. We're doing from the
bare metal or in a virtualized world and we're now
going to cloud based worlds with AI and activities wrapped
around it. And that business transformation is key and to
(31:21):
be able to move them into the next level of
their business now is it going to happen overnight. No,
and nobody should ever expect that. But at the end
of the day, you've got to start making those baby steps.
I call it stair stepping. You need to take the
first step, then you need to take that second step. Now,
you might have a little delay in there because maybe
your financials didn't work out that year, or maybe you've
(31:42):
got somebody that left the organization, or maybe you guys
haven't come together as an organization to be able to
go that way. But keep keep climbing, keep climbing. That's
all you need to do, is keep climbing. Or as
a door used to say, just keep swimming. Keep Yes,
I'm a two time girl dad, so I know those songs.
(32:05):
My heart up here.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
So for some of those supply chain executives that are
in our audience, what signs should they be looking for
to indicate that there is that deeper misalignment and overcome it?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
So how to find it? First of all, if you're
working in an environment and your eyes are wide open
and you're able to see what's going on on a
daily basis, if you're involved in your having those dilemmas
and those problems, and those activities, and you truly are
invested and engaged with those activities. That's the things that
(32:47):
you need to understand to step back document document, document, communicate, communicate, communicate,
and talk through a plan, process and activity wrapped around
that specific understanding that you see where there's an issue.
(33:07):
As long as I find this to be quite soothing
when executives go to other executives and they've got that
fully documented out, this is the pain, this is what
we're doing, what we could do be doing about it,
How we can fix this, even to the point where
maybe they've got a cost structure with a timeline cost
(33:28):
of the upgrade, cost of an implementation, retraining of staff
members as part of that organization first, second, third shifts,
and to be able to present that in an executive
manner to the board or to the executive and then
also being able to go down the funnel. Hey, guys,
(33:48):
I want to talk to you about something i've seen.
You're the you're the shipping manager, or you're the warehouse manager,
or you're this and you're that, or you're the district
trucking and distribution site. I still remember to this day,
I was doing a project for the folks over at
Cohler Corporation in Coler, Wisconsin, and had a great relationship
(34:08):
with different individuals at different levels. And then because I
actually it was actually one of my first jobs as
a kid in high school was working with Coler because
I lived in that area of the country. And then
as I started to see and watch and talk with people,
went to college, went through my SAPs and came back
and asked me to do another project there. And it
was great because a lot of those people were still there.
(34:30):
And I watched one executive who was there. His name
is Jim and he would talk intelligently to the executives,
and he would talk intelligently to the people that worked
on his shifts and throughout, and he would get people's
buy ins and communications. And now he's a VP over
at the organization before he gets to retire in a
(34:51):
couple of years because we still keep in touch. But
it's amazing if you communicate those ideas and thoughts up
and down to your staff and to your executives, there's
so much that can happen because now you get people
buying in. Oh, jimmy right, you know, I noticed this,
but I really didn't think about it. And what if
we did this, this and this, and now all of
(35:11):
a sudden, you've got somebody who's working the night shift
or the day shift that is integrated interacting with you,
and you take some of that information up. And then
all of a sudden, David Kohler comes walking in and says, hey, Jim,
you were making reference to this guy. Who is this guy?
And can I talk to him? Well? Okay, Sen David Kohler,
the chairman and CEO of Coler Corporation, is walking around
(35:33):
the distribution center and he's looking for Ellen who made
these comments and ideas, and they start to have a conversation. Well,
holy cow, all of a sudden, that's getting some traction
communication and the idea to be able to make really
strong change to an organization of even that side. That
(35:55):
could be that could save them an hour's worth of
work every day, or it could help a customer with
the distribution activities that they've got. Those are the things
that I think are and this is going to sound tacky,
but it's beautiful. It's beautiful to see the communication and
the changes that happen just from those types of conversations.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I absolutely agree, and I've talked about this on another
episode in another interview. But there was a book that
was very popular around twenty years ago. It was called
Gung Ho and it was you know, talking about you know,
motivation at work, and you know, one of the chapters was,
you know, people want to feel important. They want to
(36:38):
feel that their work matters at the end of the day.
And what you're speaking to is exactly that, making sure
that everyone believes that the work that they're doing matters
at the end of the day to the company, to
the bottom line, to the world at large, whatever, that
it's not just going in and spending their eight hours
away from their home, away from what they rather be doing,
(37:02):
just to earn a paycheck. You know, if the work
that they're doing has some meaning, then they're more apt
to pay attention to it and to care and be
there and aligned when there does need to be a change.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
One hundred percent agree, people want to, even if it's
just for one day out of a year, feel important
and that their opinion and their work matters. If you
make everyone in your organization know that they truly do
matter to the bottom line and to the organization, even
(37:36):
if once a year you're shaking a hand kissing babies,
telling them how great they are, and showing them that
they true. And it's funny, it's not even about the money.
People don't care about the money. Once they get a
handshake from a CEO or from somebody who's part of
the executive team, thank you for what you're doing for
the company.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
We appreciate you even more so when it's something you
know specific to say that idea you had was really great.
I'm glad you brought it to our attention. You know,
that's that's a wonderful thing. And I think that that
kind of brings this to to my next point, which is,
you know, when we when we think of leadership, we
(38:16):
think of control. They're the ones who are in control
of the business decisions. They're the ones who are in
control of the direction that the company is going to go.
They're in charge of, you know, all these different strategic issues.
But when they seed some of that, when they let
that mask of control drop and allow themselves to consider
(38:38):
alternate approaches, alternate opinions, then it becomes an adaptability. And
so that's shifting that mindset from controlling the outcome to
building a system that can adapt to the changes that
the system encounters.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Ellen, you are speaking directly to someone who actually just
watched a movie a couple of months ago about the
gentleman who created the flaming hot cheeto. I don't know
if you've seen this on Netflix. It's a kind of
a documentary kind of thing. The CEO Freedo A Corporation
(39:17):
sent a letter to every employee, act like the CEO
of our company and anything that you see, you do
you be a part of. Because he had walked through
a part of the company and it was dirty and this,
and so he sent out this. Well, this gentleman, he
calls himself a Somebody keeps calling them a janitor, but
(39:39):
he calls himself sanitation control. He had built slurry. It's
called slurri. It's the flavoring they put on in these
different FreeDOS and Doritos and all that kind of stuff.
While he had built that or created that, spread it
on Fredo's and people just loved it back in his
Latino communities and other areas. So he sent a letter
(40:02):
to the chairman and CEO of Freedom A Corporation. Didn't
getting so he calls the office and because of that
CEO empowering the individuals within his company. We now have
Flaming Hut, Cheetos and Flaming Hut and now he is
an advisor directly to the CEO about product and about
(40:26):
how to move the flaming slurry. And he became a character,
well a real life character that now is got a
movie and other stuff. And it's when you empower your
people to be able to make the changes within your
organization and offer that insight and advice, that's when the
(40:47):
magic happens. Because we work in a supply chain industry
and an ecosystem of ERPs and activities. If we empower
and that organization empowers, we're letting them open up their
eyes and open up their ears to other activities that
are happening and around those projects and activities, and now
(41:08):
they're willing to speak freely about that. That's that's where
the magic is happening. And that's where we get our
flaming hot FreeDOS or Cheetos are yeah, flaming how cheetos
I believe they're called.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
I mean, that's informational gold to an organization to have
to have employees who are looking at the work that
they do and the work that the company does or
the product that the company creates, and looking at it
with that critical eye and saying, how could this be better?
How could this be done differently? How could this be
more efficient? Because one person can't be expected to come
(41:40):
up with every single possible, you know, answer to every
question or problem. And these are the people who are
who are doing the work a lot of the time,
so surely they have some insight. But when we're asking
executors to do this, it is a bit of a
step outside their comfort zone because they, you know what,
they got to the positions they are in because they
(42:02):
are very good at you know, control, They're very good
at that strategic mindset. So what can they do to
model some of that cultural change to drive that? Aside
from just listening to employees. I mean we've we've had that,
We've got our freeolay, you know, back to your your
Disney movie ratitui if anyone can cook. So when when
(42:30):
we're looking to make some of these larger strategic changes,
we're looking at these legacy systems, these erp systems, these
things that we know have to change in order to
keep up with not only to keep up with the competition,
but to enable strategic realignment toward new goals in in
(42:52):
the time that we're in because you know, business is
cut throat out there. So in some of these legacy
heavy environments where we're we're looking at older systems, older
ways of doing things. How can we drive that cultural
change from the executive level.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Yeah, it really starts from the top. And I'll give
you a personal example. I was very fortunate I got
to work for the Atlantic Committee for the Olympic Games
a KAG and the chairman and CEO was Billy Payne.
Billy Payne is an incredible executive in the Georgia market,
(43:29):
run multiple companies. He's used to be the chairman of
Augusta National at one point in time. He's now retired
from there. Just an incredible, incredible man and everything started
with him, and so from the communication came straight down
from him. He wanted individuals all the way down to
(43:51):
those people that were going to be at the locations
for the Olympics in Atlanta to be involved with activities
help each It's got to start from the top, and
so as part of that, you need to make sure
as an executive you are laying the foundation in the
groundwork for the activities that are going to happen within
(44:13):
either your company as a founder, your company as a CEO,
and then you have to make sure that those individuals
one level underneath you take that baton and you must
run with it. And if they're not, bring them back
together and understand this is my directive. I want this
done these individuals, like I have one hundred and seventy
(44:36):
three staff members around the world. It comes down from me.
It comes down from my How can I say this nicely?
I am the leader of this company, and I want
everybody underneath me to lead as if they were me.
I want them to talk with your customers. I want
(44:57):
you to talk with your partners. I want you to
commune with each other. I'm constantly on teams and zooms
and those things because I want those individuals to know
that they can have a direct conversation with me. I
will talk with anybody and everybody on my team at
any time of the day. Mind you, it gets a
little hard when they're in indiot in Brazil. I'm on
(45:19):
the West Coast at one time. But it's got to
start from that person up on top. I don't care
who they are. Lead and ask them to be there
holding hands with me to lead the organization to get
the numbers, and then as part of the project team,
I give them the authority to make decisions on the
(45:39):
project teams. My project managers, they know how these projects
need to run, and I fully expect them. If there's
somebody that is slacking on their team, they have the
authority to bring in a manager along with them and
that individual to have a conversation, why is your work
falling behind her? What can we do to help you?
(46:01):
Do you need somebody to assist you in these activities?
Have you not done this type of activity before that
we need to either train you on those activities because
you told this either you could handle it or couldn't.
And we have to make those decisions very quickly, very rapidly,
make the decisions to make the betterment of projects, of
the infrastructure, of the applications of the partners. Make those
(46:24):
decisions quickly and move it forward so we can be
successful together as a client, as a company and make
those decisions happen.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
I'm reminded of and I've seen it around the internet
a number of times over over the years, and it's
if you give each letter of the alphabet a numeric
value from A to Z, and you spell out the
words you know, knowledge or education or all of these
other words, and they're very important. They add up to
(46:54):
a lot, but the one that adds up to one
hundred percent is attitude. And that's what I hear coming
from you. That it takes that mindset of being open,
being open to other people's opinions, but also being open
to possibly hearing something negative or hearing something critical in
(47:16):
order to again use that. You know, the rising tide
lifts all ships. So as long as we're all on
the same team trying for the same thing, there has
to be that level of openness.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Absolutely agree. I will take every piece of criticism that
anybody on my team gives me. I've got a CIO
who loves it criticize me because I'm always trying new
things with marketing and promotions and activities. So I feel
that everybody in the organization should have that. And if
you're on a project team, everybody needs to know that
(47:51):
it's not about hurting you or hurting your feelings. It's
about the project. It's about getting the best results for
the best activities to be able to move forward. So
take the criticals actually the better one. I don't want
everybody kissing my box side, patting me on the back.
Oh Chris here, janius, Oh you know, write another book
about that. Oh you four times seventeen blah blah blah blah. No,
(48:15):
hit me in the arm and say, look you ding dong?
What do you Why are you doing that? Why are
you saying that? I'm like, well, I'm saying that because
I did this, this, this, and this, I validated this,
this is what are you doing as part of the
project and this, this, and this. Make sure that you're critical,
but make sure you're honest in your criticality. Don't just
be critical because you're a critical person. Be critical because
(48:37):
there's really some criticism behind it that needs to be
adjusted and fixed.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
All right, It's clear that strategic misalignment isn't just a
planning issue. It's a silent force that can compromise your
entire supply chain if left unchecked. But with the right mindset,
cross functional clarity, and a willingness to challenge legacy systems,
leaders can turn complexity into a competitive edge.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yes, stay cant.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Thank you so much Chris for joining us today and
sharing your perspectives.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Oh, thank you all, and I appreciate and I look
forward to having conversations with anybody anytime they just want
to chit chat. And if they think that my opinion
is inferior or wrong, I'm willing to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
To our listeners. If you found today's episode valuable, be
sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss another.
And if you're interested in being a guest on our show,
you can reach me at podcast at meiboch dot com
at any time. Thanks for joining us, and remember true
adaptability starts with alignment.
You will attend this meeting. You will have conversations with
the team, the trainers, the testers, the change management, and
the executive team, and we will go through everything to
make sure that everyone is in alignment. And that's the
key was making sure that everyone is in alignment. And
the CEO came and had a conversation with me. About
(00:20):
fifteen minutes later, he goes, holy cow, nobody's talked to
each other in months. Thank you said, this is what
we do, this is why you hired us. We're going
to make sure that this is back on track, and
we will have this project back on track and close
to their original timelines. But it's because now everyone is
talking true communication and I love it when they do that.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hello and welcome to Speaking of Supply Chain, where we
explore trends, current events, and innovations impacting the logistics and
supply chain industries. I'm your host, Ellen Wood. Behind every
chaotic disruption, delayed decision, or failed transformation in the supply chain,
there's often a deeper issue. No one talks about strategic misalignment.
(01:07):
Today we're pulling back the curtain on the hidden disconnects
between functions, systems, and goals that quietly erode agility, exploring
how supply chain leaders can reframe legacy thinking and technology
to build truly adaptable, future ready supply chains. Chris Carter,
four time best selling author and one of America's top
ten industry influencers, is here with me today to unpack
(01:29):
the silos, challenge the norms, and chart a smarter path forward. Chris,
welcome to Speaking of supply Chain.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Oh, thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
It's great to have you on the show. So before
we get started with unpacking silos today, our ice breaker
question is what is a weird food that you have
tried and would you eat it again?
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So this one was easy for me. Of the questions
you gave me, I'm like, this is it because I
am a huge foody when I travel the globe. There's
the one I gave you. But I also thought about
it a little bit and I was like, oh my gosh.
So the one I sent you was octopus. I love
octopus no matter what form, where it is, and what
it is. But when I really thought about it, I
(02:14):
love the octopus, but I love street vendor food India, China, Brazil.
I will eat my way through whatever city through Rome.
Instead of going to the Marriotte Hotel or the Hilton
or the Hut, I find myself street venders. And it's funny.
I watch as I'm driving into where I need to
(02:35):
be from the airports, and I look and I see,
and then I started asking the cabby or the uber.
It's all about the great street vendor food.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
That is absolutely true. I've never been disappointed by street
vending food. I would have to say mine is very similar.
I was in Barcelona, right on the coast and we
went to an amazing seafood restaurant and I had the
squid ink payet and I remember sharing a photo of
this with my you know, with my followers with my
(03:05):
social media, and this was maybe four or five years ago,
and everyone was just amazed that I would eat this
cole black looking. You know, it looked absolutely charcoal. It was.
It was black, but it was so delicious and it
was so so good. I was so glad I got
a chance to try it.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I love but Falonna It is such a great place
to eat, beautiful area, and especially if you're downtown where
the soccer stadium is or the complexes. I like to
call it that whole beautiful red brick wall in the
red There's actually a restaurant across the street and just
down one block that has similar food. Oh, the seafood
(03:48):
is to die for there. And that was just the
main thorough flare thorough fare.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Whenever I'm there, I always go to La Bokria and
I just go and buy little bits and things and
I take it back to my hotel and just have
girl dinner.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I love that, just get little pieces, plus coffees and espressos,
and I do that all around the globe. I'll go
to little coffee shops. I just walk coffee shop, another espresso,
coffee shop another. You can tell I have a lot
of espresso.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
That sounds like me going to the top as bars
and just having a little bite here and there. It's
the best part of Barcelona, my absolute favorite. And I
hope I get to go back sometime. But today we
are talking about some of these disruptions and things that
are going on in the supply chain and why we
don't seem to be getting anywhere. Everyone's just pulling their
(04:42):
hair out. It feels like the same problems over and
over and over and over, and why are we hitting
these on repeat. So what exactly do we mean by
strategic misalignment in the context of whether it's production or distribution.
Where are we seeing this have happening and what is
it really?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Oh gosh, it's everywhere. It's every type of industry, it's
every type of industry focus or it doesn't matter if
you're in an a warehouse distribution area, it doesn't matter
if what the misalignment that is happening between what is
going on at station A to station B to see
And it's interesting. I deal a lot with SAP and
(05:26):
ERP customers, especially wrapping that around AI these days, and
the misalignment it happens from individuals who are black belts
to individuals who are day twenty six on a job.
And it's interesting because it's as if we see things.
If you're working in an environment and it's got in
(05:48):
a misalignment, but you're used to it and you see
what you see every day, it just becomes happenstance. Oh,
it'll fix itself out. Oh we'll get that shipped out.
Oh we'll take care of the well. Instead of taking
care of it, they just let it go on and
they just let it and then it becomes habit. And
when things become habit, what's the old phrase, if you
(06:08):
do things more than three times, all of a sudden,
it becomes a pattern. When it becomes a pattern, and
you start doing it for a while, what is it,
two or three weeks? Then all the s and it
all of a sudden starts becoming the norm. Well, it's
the same thing with how everybody gets misaligned within these
ecosystems when you're starting to do that. And that's why
(06:30):
when we come in or I come in and others
come in and we're like, why would you do that
that way? And what are you doing? And why do
you realize that you're wasting all this time and you're
not aligned with this activity? Or what gets even worse?
It's it's funny. I was just working with one of
our clients and they had go to Singapore and I'd
(06:51):
go to their case and this company, this this individual
organization did it differently than this one than this one.
Nothing was consistent. Everything was misaligned, so they wouldn't even
get the same data. They had to transition their data
to be able to make everybody understand it. And so
it was pretty sad. And why is it happening is
(07:11):
because unfortunately, you get certain people that just don't care.
And I've been in the supply chain in ERP for
my entire career since the nineteen eighties. Yes I'm that old.
I know. I did pull out all my hair. And
you looked at these companies and you just you looked
at them, and as a younger person, I'm trying to
(07:33):
be that person that's trying to help them. And then
you've got mid management and executives that are like, oh no, no,
it's working just fine for us. Okay, well it could
be working a lot better. Then all of a sudden,
I started getting into management and other activities and I
tried to make changes, and then you get the people
down below like no, no, no, we've got this, we
take care of this, we'll do this. We know that
it's time consuming and these activities, but it's fine. And
(07:56):
then all of a sudden you get union shops, and
then all of a sudden you get individuals. It just
goes across the board, and unfortunately, unless there's going to
be a major change dynamic within that organization, the misalignment's
going to happen continue to happen unless they can really
make that change or willing to make change.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
You would think that post COVID, after having lived through this,
we would understand that it shouldn't take such a large
scale disruption in order to question the status quo. But
I hear you saying that people are just adverse to change.
They don't want to do something differently than the way
they've got in their own minds. And you know, every
(08:36):
single one of us knows that there are other great
minds out there, there are other great ideas, there are
other ways of doing things. And when agility is one
of the buzzwords in our industry right now, why are
people so reticent to admit that there could be a
better way to do something?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So I'm going to answer that one, and I hope
I do not offend anybody that LISTENEDTS. So I step
back and I look at this from again an ERP
software mechanism in our ecosystem. Right now, we are the
oldest consulting group be it SAP, ERPs and stuff like,
(09:15):
the oldest group on the consultative map. So when you
look at us, there is over sixty percent of the
individuals are forty plus years of age. And when you
look at fifty plus, it's an even worse scenario, and
they're so grained in. We have problems with companies that
(09:37):
we work with because there's an age activity. And I'm
not going to say agism is good batter otherwise, but
when you're trying to make the changes to more of
an agile state and you're trying to use cloud and
you're trying to move to the next level of an
SAP or an oracle cloud, we get a lot of
times the feedback is my staff just does want to
(10:00):
do that. We're gonna have to make wholesale changes. We're
gonna have to move these people here, We're gonna have
to bring in people that do it. I had one woman,
and I kid you not Ellen. She's maybe fifty two,
so she was younger than me, and she spotted off,
I'm in my fifties. I'm not changing anything. You either
have to fire me or I was like, ma'am, I'm
(10:21):
not doing anything. This is your company. We just need
to know how your process works. You're trying to get
rid of me and I refuse to make these And
what they did is they ended up buying her and
about fifty other people out of their contract. Or their
early retirement activities because they refused to learn the new
(10:41):
concepts and then learn the new activities with the new
SAP system and the new cloud and the new agilities,
and so they ended up going out and hiring these
individuals cousted them a lot to do it, but they
just were not willing to make those initiatives to make
a little bit of change and to help the company
change to better itself, and so it really had to
(11:04):
go through that process. So unfortunately a little bit of
age in there as well.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
When those silos are so persistent, especially in modern organizations
that want to have some of these changes, that want
to keep up with the technology that is evolving, you know,
how does that attitude really undermine that resilience, that cross
functional resilience that we have to have. We've established, you know,
you have to have the different departments talking to each
(11:34):
other or else the whole thing falls apart. You can
have the greatest idea in one section of the company,
but if the other areas of the company are not aligned,
it's not going to go through. So we know we
need to have this type of cross functional communication going on,
and that's what makes these supply chains more resilient. But
(11:56):
we're just absolutely not allowing ourselves to do it.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Unfortunately, companies are not allowing themselves to do it. You
are correct, and I go back to maybe about fifteen
twenty years ago. Remember when we had all of the
technology silos. You took care of operating systems, you took
care of the databases, you took care of the application. Well,
companies took that a little bit further and they said, well,
my warehouse management team doesn't even talk to my distribution
(12:23):
team properly. They feel that they're supposed to be doing this,
and no, you're supposed to be doing that. And then
it's the in the data come in and I'm like, guys,
why are you fighting each other. You're the same company.
If you want to have your little offendom and you
want to keep everything great, but guess what, you work
(12:46):
for the company, and the company needs you, guys and gals,
to work together and to understand. And if it's got
to come down from the top, it's going to come
down for the top. It's it's interesting. I just got
to sit for three and a half hours on an
airplane with the founder of a place called quick Trip,
and in Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois. It's this great little gas
(13:10):
station concept with Chicken Annle and I was asking him.
I was just pepperin him questions. I had no idea
who he was at person, and he was talking about
his supply chain because he was doing X, Y and Z.
He brought it all in house, and they're all on
the same page. We're going to make our glazers orur donuts.
We're gonna do this with bananas. We're gonna do this
with our customers. We're gonna do this with our partner.
(13:31):
Everybody's in alignment and they're all working towards one goal,
and it's for the company's benefit to help the customer.
And unfortunately people look at their little area of their world.
This is my warehouse management, this is my application, this
is I've modified this. I'm going to make sure that
(13:51):
nobody touches this, including those darn people in distribution or
those people and finance that are trying to tell me
I need to give back percent credits and I need
to do this, and lo and behold, it gets involved
with them from a supply chain and tries to help them. Hey,
we're gonna have to charge you on that okay, but
(14:11):
you do see ebbs and flows with that, and I
see ebbs and flows with companies of that all the time.
Al Sen, somebody will leave and you'll get somebody else
and be like, can we make changes? Are we allowed
to help? And they may go off and they may
be brave, may have that big sword and they're gonna
start chopping and they're gonna start doing. You wish you
(14:32):
didn't have to do that, but unfortunately sometimes you have to,
especially when you're working in a supply chain activities and
you need to manage people, processes and activities to go forward.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, I can't imagine that the people are that opposed
to change just on the circuit, Like in general, it
must be. There's got to be some fear behind this.
There's got to be some concern about the job mark,
it about you know, AI taking over people's jobs. I mean,
all of these things are causing people a lot of fear.
(15:07):
But the bottom line is a rising tide raises all ships.
So you know that effort that they put into it,
if each little person puts in each of their effort,
you know the company is going to do better overall.
And you know, I hope that companies are recognizing that
there is that level of actual fear for their own
livelihoods that is keeping people from you know, really jumping
(15:32):
into some of these larger scale changes or being open
to just a completely different viewpoint. And I think that's
one of the great things that you and I have
from the consultancy angle is you know, we're not the
ones ingrained in these habits, in these you know, ways
of working that are that are just so siloed and
(15:56):
with blinders on that we're able to look at it
and see, oh, well, you could do it this way
or you could do it that way, and we have
no stake in the game. You know, it's not going
to affect us one way or the other. And if
they continue to do poorly, it's still not going to
affect us. We have the benefit of being able to
look at it from an outside view and just give advice.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yes, but I say yes to that. But yet, when
I leave an organization and I know they're not going
to make the change, or they've got individuals in their
organization that I know are going to disrupt where they
want to go and how they want to do, I
walk away very sad because I look at that and
(16:40):
just think, God, you could be so much, you could grow,
you could do, but you're just not willing to take
that individual and say, look, you've been here thirty years,
we get it, we're proud of you, but we're going
to put you over here you're getting close to retirement
or whatever the activity there and help and benefit the organization.
(17:02):
And unfortunately I walk away sometimes just shaking my head,
thanking God. That company is never going to get to
the point where he the ownership group or whoever wants
to because of their being disrupted on the bottom or
in the middle.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, because of that opportunity cost that's lost. Yes, So
when it is further down the chain, when it is
you know, the everyday people in the everyday positions, that's
one thing, you know, we have, we have naysayers all
the time. There's never going to please everybody all of
the time. But when it's when it's at the higher circles,
(17:36):
when it's at those upper levels of management, how how
much of that inefficiency can be tracked back to a misalignment?
You know, when we're when we're talking about some of
these larger scale disruptions, some of these larger scale problems,
you know, are these are these habits? Are these mental models?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Is it risk aversion? But is it? Is it at
the top where these larger strategic decisions are being made
or is it more operational?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Well, actually, I'm going to give an example of what
is perfect with this question. About two weeks ago, I
was with an organization that we've been supporting for years
and they just let go of their chief operating officer.
Their chief operating officer was trying to undermine a project
(18:25):
and undermining the CEO because he felt that he did
not understand the technology and did not understand the business.
As the CEO and the son of the founder and
the CEO kept saying, we don't need these activities, we
don't need this, we don't need that. And the CEO
(18:49):
wanted to be intimately involved with the project and was,
and he kept getting these notifications that this was being
changed and this was being changed, and we're not going
to do this. They all had a C level come
to Jesus meeting. I've only heard and been a part
of a few of these, and what is interesting is
(19:10):
they literally sat down in a room and they all
had a part of my language in itch session. Now'll
put the B in front of that what it was,
and we're in consulting. We get these all the time
from usually end users and usually from individuals that are
part of the project teams. But this was a c
level itch session. And apparently this thing went on for
(19:32):
about four hours to finally where the points where the
CEO said that they were resigning and the CEO said, nope,
you have been terminated, and they literally walked them out
of the building. Undermining a project hurts everybody. And by
undermining a project, to just make a change that you
(19:55):
feel is more comfortable for you or your organization, if
it's come from the sea level, from the CEO himself
or herself, you make those changes and you bring it
all together. Now, it may not be the right idea,
and so you explore that conversation, You discuss and you
digest what is going to happen if we make this decision,
(20:19):
if we say we're going to do we're going to
implement enterprise warehouse management, and how this is going to
affect the warehouse management, the distribution, the supply chain, everything across,
and you lay that out in front of everyone and
you make the right decision, or if you're going to
make a wrong decision, Okay, at least you've made a decision.
But now let's understand why it's positive and why it's
(20:41):
negative and then make that forward momentum. But never undermine somebody.
Don't sit there thinking that you from a sea level,
from a mid management to somebody who's doing the testing,
to somebody who's doing the implementation. Don't undermine a project
for your own benefits or for your activity. It's for
the betterment of the company and everyone involved. And I
(21:04):
I it grates on me when people do things for
their own direction or their own activity and forgets that
it's for the greater good.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Well, and I hear you saying a lot of this
boiled down ultimately to a lack of communication. And I've
seen a number of large scale implementations for for many
different reasons within these these types of companies or or
within these types of projects, and they're not quick. These
things take time. Sometimes we move a little quicker than others.
(21:40):
But when it comes to these big strategic moves, there's
there's time given to, you know, do some some data research.
There's time given to understand the implications or at least
we hope sufficient time is given. But you know, this
isn't just a snap decision. This is something where a
number of people should have been brought to the table.
And perhaps I'm hearing you say that they just weren't
(22:03):
brought in in the right time until it was too
late and opinions had been formed, heads were budding, and
now there is no good resolution to the problem.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
And it happens all the time. Unfortunately, we're actually helping
to clean up an organization's mess right now. They didn't
bring in any of the stakeholders up front, and that's
a big piece of it. Bring everyone in before you
even start to buy your licenses or to make a change,
(22:34):
or you need everyone's opinion. Now, not everyone is going
to be in alignment, and I get that, and we've
always said you're probably going to have someone that's going
to descend, and that's great, but they're going to have
an idea, a thought, a concept process that they're going
to bring in to say why this can't work. And
as long as you keep that line of communication open,
(22:55):
our best projects have always been when everybody's allowed to
voice their opinion and have that conversation at the table.
It doesn't matter if it's good bad otherwise, or just
whipping a heat off and throwing it on the table
and saying no communication. It's like being in a marriage.
(23:16):
If you don't communicate with each other, you're not going
to be a very happy marriage. If you're not communicating
as part of a project team for any supply chain project,
for any ERP, for any type of a project, you're
not going to have good relationships with anybody. And so
that's why communication is vital. When we came into this
(23:36):
project that I was just referencing, they were not doing
weekly calls or weekly meetings to give updates. They were
not doing weekly calls for change management activities, they were
not doing weekly calls for even strategy sessions of anything
that would change anybody that needed to make a change
in the system. They just said, oh, okay, send it
(23:58):
over to the basis team or this technolog your team,
this group. Nobody was talking amongst themselves. So we implemented
our strategy, which is we are going to have a
change management meeting every Monday as soon as we get
back from the weekend, because we had to make a
lot of changes on the weekends. Two you've got an
executive meeting. Three, you've got a full team meeting. Five,
(24:19):
you were going to have a technical meeting. We literally
lined up about fifteen different meetings all week long, so
it's about three every day. And people were like, well,
what am I going to do on my calendar? But
I said, I don't care. You will attend this meeting.
You will have conversations with the team, the trainers, the testers,
(24:41):
the change management, and the executive team, and we will
go through everything to make sure that everyone is in alignment.
And that's the key was making sure that everyone is
in alignment. And the CEO came in, had a conversation
with me. About fifteen minutes later, he goes, holy cow,
nobody's talked to each other months. Thank you. I said,
(25:02):
this is what we do. This is why you hired us.
This is we're going to make sure that this is
back on track, and we will have this project back
on track and close to their original timelines. But it's
because now everyone is talking true communication, and I love
it when they do that.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Well, it does make everything a lot easier when they
actually talk to each other. I know, you know, there
have been days when I get so wrapped up in
the work that I'm doing that I forget to tell
other people what's going on, and it does cause an issue.
You have to talk to your to you know, upstream
and downstream of what's happening and what's going on, even
(25:41):
if it's just an update. So one thing you were
mentioning that once they started talking to each other and
having the meetings, it was night and day. They they
were able to communicate, they were able to get things
at least moving in a forward direction. This is the
Aha moment for a lot of companies to realize that
their communication was not as good as they thought it was.
(26:04):
So even when companies think they're in a good place,
you know what kinds of things aside from the communication
piece where they're maybe not as good as they think
they are. But you know, have there been situations where
they thought they were ready for something and they were
they were trying to communicate, but then the technology piece
(26:24):
was just so far behind that there. It really is
an actual roadblock in most cases. I don't think technology
is the roadblock that people think it is.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
It depends on the age of the infrastructure and on
the applications that they're using. We have we've had customers
in the past where they thought, oh, we're good to go,
we can do and I'm looking at their system. But
wait a second, you are in violation of the operating
system patch level. Your in violation of your database patch level.
You don't even have an update on your SAP environment
(26:59):
or your oracle or your technology cannot go to perfect
example is SAP. He's got a thing called ECC ECC six.
It's the right Now we're on S four, which is
all going to a club, and the ECC was the
on premise or bar metal or virtualized environment. Come in
(27:20):
here when we start talking, Oh, we're ready to go
to S four. We were excited, we want to do this,
and so our team did an evaluation of the environment.
Well wait a second. Here, you're on ECC six Enhancement
Pack one. You have to be on Enhancement Pack eight.
Oh wait a second, you're on max dB. You cannot
go to max dB unless you go to HANA first,
(27:42):
and then you got to go up. So you need
to pump the brakes. Your technology is nowhere near ready.
Let's put together a project plan. Let's talk through these scenarios.
Oh my gosh, the CTO thought that we had stepped
on as cheerios or something. They were so upset. Well,
what do you mean we can't do this, this and this,
(28:03):
I said, sir, I'm sorry. This is here. Here's the documentation.
We did an early watch report on your system and
it's not gonna work now. Mind you, there are there
are companies that I've dealt with, and I kid you
not know there are on legacy environments of either Oracle
or SAP or whatever it is that you couldn't even
(28:27):
do an upgrade with. You have to beg and plead
with God, please do not turn off that system. Don't
have a power outage, don't have a batup up, because
if they were to log back in and that system
kicked on, they would probably have five thousand Microsoft hot
packs go into that system and it would kill the environment.
(28:47):
And so these folks just go, oh, it's fine. We
live with this every day. We can work with them,
like pretty soon, you're not gonna be they're working on
anything anymore because it's gonna be so bad.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, they're working with the hope and pray method of
you know, is this going to continue to work tomorrow?
They've got some they've got some poor person sitting in
a closet that their job, their only job is to
make sure that it stays on and doesn't you know,
have a hiccup and you know, keep the band aids coming,
you know, the duct tape, the paper clip, whatever they
(29:21):
have to do to maguy or this system to keep
it running, as opposed to just biting the bullet and saying, hey,
we have to modernize. This technology is not going to
support our goals anymore. This technology is not going to
allow us to achieve the you know whatever, you know,
whatever goals they have in plan, whatever plans they have,
(29:42):
whatever sales, they're not going to be able to do it.
And I don't always understand the mentality. I mean, I
guess when it comes to business, there are big decisions
that have to be made and sometimes, you know, you
do have to cut some corners in order to make
ends meet the end of the day. But you know,
this is when we're when we're talking about strategic change.
(30:05):
This is not just I need to change this light bulb.
This is we need to have something working differently in
order to enable something bigger than what we're already doing.
And I wonder how often companies even look at it
in that light, you know, if they're if their leadership
(30:26):
looks at it in that light of this is this
is not something we have to do because X is
broken and why we'll fix it. It's if we don't
do this, we can't get to Z at all.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Correct. It's it's a business transformation for most of these
organizations because they're going from something so old in our kit.
Remember we used to have the old green screens running
all over my father's company, and then all of a
sudden we started getting X eighty six laptops or desktops
and people were like, Okay, what do we do? Well,
now we're transforming the business. It's amazing when they went
(30:57):
from the old to the new and to be able
to interact with each other and the talk to the
front of the house warehouse to the back of the
whare else and the distributes, well, that's kind of the
transformation activities that we're doing now. We're doing from the
bare metal or in a virtualized world and we're now
going to cloud based worlds with AI and activities wrapped
around it. And that business transformation is key and to
(31:21):
be able to move them into the next level of
their business now is it going to happen overnight. No,
and nobody should ever expect that. But at the end
of the day, you've got to start making those baby steps.
I call it stair stepping. You need to take the
first step, then you need to take that second step. Now,
you might have a little delay in there because maybe
your financials didn't work out that year, or maybe you've
(31:42):
got somebody that left the organization, or maybe you guys
haven't come together as an organization to be able to
go that way. But keep keep climbing, keep climbing. That's
all you need to do, is keep climbing. Or as
a door used to say, just keep swimming. Keep Yes,
I'm a two time girl dad, so I know those songs.
(32:05):
My heart up here.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
So for some of those supply chain executives that are
in our audience, what signs should they be looking for
to indicate that there is that deeper misalignment and overcome it?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
So how to find it? First of all, if you're
working in an environment and your eyes are wide open
and you're able to see what's going on on a
daily basis, if you're involved in your having those dilemmas
and those problems, and those activities, and you truly are
invested and engaged with those activities. That's the things that
(32:47):
you need to understand to step back document document, document, communicate, communicate, communicate,
and talk through a plan, process and activity wrapped around
that specific understanding that you see where there's an issue.
(33:07):
As long as I find this to be quite soothing
when executives go to other executives and they've got that
fully documented out, this is the pain, this is what
we're doing, what we could do be doing about it,
How we can fix this, even to the point where
maybe they've got a cost structure with a timeline cost
(33:28):
of the upgrade, cost of an implementation, retraining of staff
members as part of that organization first, second, third shifts,
and to be able to present that in an executive
manner to the board or to the executive and then
also being able to go down the funnel. Hey, guys,
(33:48):
I want to talk to you about something i've seen.
You're the you're the shipping manager, or you're the warehouse manager,
or you're this and you're that, or you're the district
trucking and distribution site. I still remember to this day,
I was doing a project for the folks over at
Cohler Corporation in Coler, Wisconsin, and had a great relationship
(34:08):
with different individuals at different levels. And then because I
actually it was actually one of my first jobs as
a kid in high school was working with Coler because
I lived in that area of the country. And then
as I started to see and watch and talk with people,
went to college, went through my SAPs and came back
and asked me to do another project there. And it
was great because a lot of those people were still there.
(34:30):
And I watched one executive who was there. His name
is Jim and he would talk intelligently to the executives,
and he would talk intelligently to the people that worked
on his shifts and throughout, and he would get people's
buy ins and communications. And now he's a VP over
at the organization before he gets to retire in a
(34:51):
couple of years because we still keep in touch. But
it's amazing if you communicate those ideas and thoughts up
and down to your staff and to your executives, there's
so much that can happen because now you get people
buying in. Oh, jimmy right, you know, I noticed this,
but I really didn't think about it. And what if
we did this, this and this, and now all of
(35:11):
a sudden, you've got somebody who's working the night shift
or the day shift that is integrated interacting with you,
and you take some of that information up. And then
all of a sudden, David Kohler comes walking in and says, hey, Jim,
you were making reference to this guy. Who is this guy?
And can I talk to him? Well? Okay, Sen David Kohler,
the chairman and CEO of Coler Corporation, is walking around
(35:33):
the distribution center and he's looking for Ellen who made
these comments and ideas, and they start to have a conversation. Well,
holy cow, all of a sudden, that's getting some traction
communication and the idea to be able to make really
strong change to an organization of even that side. That
(35:55):
could be that could save them an hour's worth of
work every day, or it could help a customer with
the distribution activities that they've got. Those are the things
that I think are and this is going to sound tacky,
but it's beautiful. It's beautiful to see the communication and
the changes that happen just from those types of conversations.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I absolutely agree, and I've talked about this on another
episode in another interview. But there was a book that
was very popular around twenty years ago. It was called
Gung Ho and it was you know, talking about you know,
motivation at work, and you know, one of the chapters was,
you know, people want to feel important. They want to
(36:38):
feel that their work matters at the end of the day.
And what you're speaking to is exactly that, making sure
that everyone believes that the work that they're doing matters
at the end of the day to the company, to
the bottom line, to the world at large, whatever, that
it's not just going in and spending their eight hours
away from their home, away from what they rather be doing,
(37:02):
just to earn a paycheck. You know, if the work
that they're doing has some meaning, then they're more apt
to pay attention to it and to care and be
there and aligned when there does need to be a change.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
One hundred percent agree, people want to, even if it's
just for one day out of a year, feel important
and that their opinion and their work matters. If you
make everyone in your organization know that they truly do
matter to the bottom line and to the organization, even
(37:36):
if once a year you're shaking a hand kissing babies,
telling them how great they are, and showing them that
they true. And it's funny, it's not even about the money.
People don't care about the money. Once they get a
handshake from a CEO or from somebody who's part of
the executive team, thank you for what you're doing for
the company.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
We appreciate you even more so when it's something you
know specific to say that idea you had was really great.
I'm glad you brought it to our attention. You know,
that's that's a wonderful thing. And I think that that
kind of brings this to to my next point, which is,
you know, when we when we think of leadership, we
(38:16):
think of control. They're the ones who are in control
of the business decisions. They're the ones who are in
control of the direction that the company is going to go.
They're in charge of, you know, all these different strategic issues.
But when they seed some of that, when they let
that mask of control drop and allow themselves to consider
(38:38):
alternate approaches, alternate opinions, then it becomes an adaptability. And
so that's shifting that mindset from controlling the outcome to
building a system that can adapt to the changes that
the system encounters.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Ellen, you are speaking directly to someone who actually just
watched a movie a couple of months ago about the
gentleman who created the flaming hot cheeto. I don't know
if you've seen this on Netflix. It's a kind of
a documentary kind of thing. The CEO Freedo A Corporation
(39:17):
sent a letter to every employee, act like the CEO
of our company and anything that you see, you do
you be a part of. Because he had walked through
a part of the company and it was dirty and this,
and so he sent out this. Well, this gentleman, he
calls himself a Somebody keeps calling them a janitor, but
(39:39):
he calls himself sanitation control. He had built slurry. It's
called slurri. It's the flavoring they put on in these
different FreeDOS and Doritos and all that kind of stuff.
While he had built that or created that, spread it
on Fredo's and people just loved it back in his
Latino communities and other areas. So he sent a letter
(40:02):
to the chairman and CEO of Freedom A Corporation. Didn't
getting so he calls the office and because of that
CEO empowering the individuals within his company. We now have
Flaming Hut, Cheetos and Flaming Hut and now he is
an advisor directly to the CEO about product and about
(40:26):
how to move the flaming slurry. And he became a character,
well a real life character that now is got a
movie and other stuff. And it's when you empower your
people to be able to make the changes within your
organization and offer that insight and advice, that's when the
(40:47):
magic happens. Because we work in a supply chain industry
and an ecosystem of ERPs and activities. If we empower
and that organization empowers, we're letting them open up their
eyes and open up their ears to other activities that
are happening and around those projects and activities, and now
(41:08):
they're willing to speak freely about that. That's that's where
the magic is happening. And that's where we get our
flaming hot FreeDOS or Cheetos are yeah, flaming how cheetos
I believe they're called.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
I mean, that's informational gold to an organization to have
to have employees who are looking at the work that
they do and the work that the company does or
the product that the company creates, and looking at it
with that critical eye and saying, how could this be better?
How could this be done differently? How could this be
more efficient? Because one person can't be expected to come
(41:40):
up with every single possible, you know, answer to every
question or problem. And these are the people who are
who are doing the work a lot of the time,
so surely they have some insight. But when we're asking
executors to do this, it is a bit of a
step outside their comfort zone because they, you know what,
they got to the positions they are in because they
(42:02):
are very good at you know, control, They're very good
at that strategic mindset. So what can they do to
model some of that cultural change to drive that? Aside
from just listening to employees. I mean we've we've had that,
We've got our freeolay, you know, back to your your
Disney movie ratitui if anyone can cook. So when when
(42:30):
we're looking to make some of these larger strategic changes,
we're looking at these legacy systems, these erp systems, these
things that we know have to change in order to
keep up with not only to keep up with the competition,
but to enable strategic realignment toward new goals in in
(42:52):
the time that we're in because you know, business is
cut throat out there. So in some of these legacy
heavy environments where we're we're looking at older systems, older
ways of doing things. How can we drive that cultural
change from the executive level.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Yeah, it really starts from the top. And I'll give
you a personal example. I was very fortunate I got
to work for the Atlantic Committee for the Olympic Games
a KAG and the chairman and CEO was Billy Payne.
Billy Payne is an incredible executive in the Georgia market,
(43:29):
run multiple companies. He's used to be the chairman of
Augusta National at one point in time. He's now retired
from there. Just an incredible, incredible man and everything started
with him, and so from the communication came straight down
from him. He wanted individuals all the way down to
(43:51):
those people that were going to be at the locations
for the Olympics in Atlanta to be involved with activities
help each It's got to start from the top, and
so as part of that, you need to make sure
as an executive you are laying the foundation in the
groundwork for the activities that are going to happen within
(44:13):
either your company as a founder, your company as a CEO,
and then you have to make sure that those individuals
one level underneath you take that baton and you must
run with it. And if they're not, bring them back
together and understand this is my directive. I want this
done these individuals, like I have one hundred and seventy
(44:36):
three staff members around the world. It comes down from me.
It comes down from my How can I say this nicely?
I am the leader of this company, and I want
everybody underneath me to lead as if they were me.
I want them to talk with your customers. I want
(44:57):
you to talk with your partners. I want you to
commune with each other. I'm constantly on teams and zooms
and those things because I want those individuals to know
that they can have a direct conversation with me. I
will talk with anybody and everybody on my team at
any time of the day. Mind you, it gets a
little hard when they're in indiot in Brazil. I'm on
(45:19):
the West Coast at one time. But it's got to
start from that person up on top. I don't care
who they are. Lead and ask them to be there
holding hands with me to lead the organization to get
the numbers, and then as part of the project team,
I give them the authority to make decisions on the
(45:39):
project teams. My project managers, they know how these projects
need to run, and I fully expect them. If there's
somebody that is slacking on their team, they have the
authority to bring in a manager along with them and
that individual to have a conversation, why is your work
falling behind her? What can we do to help you?
(46:01):
Do you need somebody to assist you in these activities?
Have you not done this type of activity before that
we need to either train you on those activities because
you told this either you could handle it or couldn't.
And we have to make those decisions very quickly, very rapidly,
make the decisions to make the betterment of projects, of
the infrastructure, of the applications of the partners. Make those
(46:24):
decisions quickly and move it forward so we can be
successful together as a client, as a company and make
those decisions happen.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
I'm reminded of and I've seen it around the internet
a number of times over over the years, and it's
if you give each letter of the alphabet a numeric
value from A to Z, and you spell out the
words you know, knowledge or education or all of these
other words, and they're very important. They add up to
(46:54):
a lot, but the one that adds up to one
hundred percent is attitude. And that's what I hear coming
from you. That it takes that mindset of being open,
being open to other people's opinions, but also being open
to possibly hearing something negative or hearing something critical in
(47:16):
order to again use that. You know, the rising tide
lifts all ships. So as long as we're all on
the same team trying for the same thing, there has
to be that level of openness.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Absolutely agree. I will take every piece of criticism that
anybody on my team gives me. I've got a CIO
who loves it criticize me because I'm always trying new
things with marketing and promotions and activities. So I feel
that everybody in the organization should have that. And if
you're on a project team, everybody needs to know that
(47:51):
it's not about hurting you or hurting your feelings. It's
about the project. It's about getting the best results for
the best activities to be able to move forward. So
take the criticals actually the better one. I don't want
everybody kissing my box side, patting me on the back.
Oh Chris here, janius, Oh you know, write another book
about that. Oh you four times seventeen blah blah blah blah. No,
(48:15):
hit me in the arm and say, look you ding dong?
What do you Why are you doing that? Why are
you saying that? I'm like, well, I'm saying that because
I did this, this, this, and this, I validated this,
this is what are you doing as part of the
project and this, this, and this. Make sure that you're critical,
but make sure you're honest in your criticality. Don't just
be critical because you're a critical person. Be critical because
(48:37):
there's really some criticism behind it that needs to be
adjusted and fixed.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
All right, It's clear that strategic misalignment isn't just a
planning issue. It's a silent force that can compromise your
entire supply chain if left unchecked. But with the right mindset,
cross functional clarity, and a willingness to challenge legacy systems,
leaders can turn complexity into a competitive edge.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yes, stay cant.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Thank you so much Chris for joining us today and
sharing your perspectives.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Oh, thank you all, and I appreciate and I look
forward to having conversations with anybody anytime they just want
to chit chat. And if they think that my opinion
is inferior or wrong, I'm willing to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
To our listeners. If you found today's episode valuable, be
sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss another.
And if you're interested in being a guest on our show,
you can reach me at podcast at meiboch dot com
at any time. Thanks for joining us, and remember true
adaptability starts with alignment.
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