Latest / Speaking of Supply Chain / Big Change, No Problem: Navigating Large Scale Transformations

Transcript

Big Change, No Problem: Navigating Large Scale Transformations · Speaking of Supply Chain

0:06
You're listening to Speaking of Supply Chain, a meboch podcast. This is a
0:10
show for logistics professionals looking to learn more about the latest innovations in supply chain.
0:16
Each episode will feature a conversation on topics such as mitigating supply chain disruption
0:20
and reducing risk, current automation trends, sustainability initiatives, and more. Let's
0:26
dive right in. Hello, and welcome to Speaking of Supply Chain, where
0:33
we explore trends, current events, and innovations impacting the logistics and supply chain
0:38
industries. I am your host, Ellen Wood. Today I am joined by
0:43
Jay Jackson, and we're talking about large transformations inside organizations and what tactics can
0:49
mitigate the disruptions that a large transformation typically causes. Jay. Welcome, Hey,
0:56
thanks for having me, Alan, appreciate you. So Jay is with
1:00
me about consulting as well. He is a manager, a change management manager.
1:07
That's a little bit of an alliteration, a bit of a mouthful,
1:11
Yeah, mouthful. And you're also an adjunct professor at SNHU Southern New Hampshire
1:17
University. So tell us a little bit more about what it is that you
1:21
do. Yeah, So I guess in a nutshell, you know, I
1:25
try to help our organizations and our clients with change management organizational behavior. You
1:30
know, I kind of jokingly tell clients and our colleagues and I'm kind of
1:34
like an organizational psychologist feel I'm a business therapist, but I really try to
1:38
help work with our clients and our own colleagues in fact, with how to
1:42
go about change. We're always changing something, and those changes can be very
1:47
minor to something that's very impactful. Maybe it can even impact you know,
1:52
your livelihood or fundamentally how you perform your work today. So really helping individuals
1:57
navigate those types of rollercoasters in their life and those difficulties. Everybody deals with
2:02
change differently, and so we've come to appreciate this both a science and an
2:07
art to how you can help support and navigate individuals. As a professor,
2:13
I teach a host of topics in supply chain and operations management. So those
2:17
can be from the fundamentals of air transportation, or to again organizational topics like
2:24
leadership and team management, or teaching a class right now actually on sustainability and
2:30
the triple bottom line effect. So those are some of the courses that I
2:32
also teach for SNHU and some other universities fantastic. Well, onto our actual
2:40
topic today, which is large scale transformations and the impact that they can cause
2:46
and how to kind of mitigate that. So when we're talking about a transformation,
2:51
we've established that change is difficult and everyone experiences the change differently. What
2:57
makes a transformation large? I mean, is there a dollar amount? No,
3:02
It's an interesting question, right, And so to kind of be a
3:05
little technical here for a hot second. So Gartner defines transformations, if you
3:08
will, supply Transersformations refers to technological innovation and digitalization of an organization's supply chain,
3:15
you know, in a nutshell though, I like to just kind of
3:19
simplify that and just say, what are we going to do differently tomorrow than
3:22
what we're doing today, hopefully in in efforts for efficiency gains or to you
3:27
know, again make the organization better. But what defines again large versus small?
3:32
It really comes down to that organization and to that organization's culture. There
3:38
are organizations today that are worth billions of dollars that you know, making a
3:42
simple change could could derail the whole organization. It could It could cause employees
3:46
to think about working from home for instance, right, like, something like
3:49
that can It doesn't matter if you're a large deal of billion dollar organization or
3:53
your you know, mom and pops, you know operation, A change can
3:58
whether you prepared web for the storm, a change like remote working could have
4:01
been something as a blip on the radar to again scarcely almost like life impacting
4:08
business, impacting the survivability of your own organization. So every change it's in
4:15
the eyes of the beholder, if you will, And that's where we will
4:17
work with organizations to help to find for them what type of a change is
4:21
this, Because every change is different, and how we as individuals and how
4:28
organizations handle that change is different. And you bring up a good point.
4:32
I mean, that's just one example, the work from home, But that
4:35
makes a huge impact on a business. For the individual, it's as simple
4:41
as you know, do I put on fancy clothes and go into an office
4:44
today or do I stay in my pajama pants and just get my work done
4:48
and knock it out from my home office. Yeah, and for a lot
4:53
of individuals that's that's such a small thing. But when it comes to the
4:58
company itself, that makes a big difference on how they operate, you know,
5:03
if they have to maintain office suites, if they continue to pay out
5:08
large sums of money to have an office for employees to go to, if
5:12
employees prefer to work from home, or if that's getting to be an expectation
5:17
that they don't have to go into an office. Companies can save money by
5:21
not having to have an office suite in certain locations. So you make an
5:27
excellent point that it could be huge or it could be small, and a
5:30
lot of that depends on the perspective, whether it's from the company's perspective or
5:33
the individual's perspective, whether it's large or small. And just continue further elaborating
5:39
on this point and using this as our example here. You know, as
5:43
I said, Gardner says that transformation involves technological innovation, and what we're doing
5:47
here right now, on this recording and on this podcast is a technological innovation.
5:53
You know, to organizations in every day something new is coming out,
5:57
whether it be in social media. They get the advent of the e that
6:00
was a huge change for businesses and organizations, just like the advent of the
6:04
wheel was for our earlier cave men and women who are out there right so
6:10
we're always constantly changing how we interact with each other. It's social media communication.
6:15
These technological changes are they're fast coming if you will. You know,
6:19
I was watching something earlier today and talking about how even our data is the
6:25
new goal. You know, absolutely, things are changing all the time.
6:28
And again for what we do, we don't come in and say this is
6:30
a large or small transformation. We try to come in and understand from their
6:34
perspective what type of a transformation this is for them. So in these transformations,
6:40
we talked about how it's a change, it's drastic, and it can
6:43
cause disruptions. So what's a realistic worst case scenario for a disruption? I
6:48
mean, truthfully, you know, a worst case scenario is obviously the transformation
6:53
completely fails and it doesn't go through. But realistically what signifies success versus not
7:00
success depends. But but just as an example, you know, some changes
7:05
involved human interactions. So worst case scenario would be something like the loss of
7:11
life would be a very worst case scenario, which a lot of companies are
7:14
implementing changes that for safety or health reasons can impact someone's life. You know,
7:18
I guess in the normal business context or in a maybe more typical,
7:23
typical thank you business context. Losing customers damage to your brand and reputation is
7:29
a huge worst case scenario. Right when you lose the people who are paying
7:32
for your products or paying for your service, you're no longer in business.
7:35
And then again the lively the life of your business is ceased to exist.
7:41
So those are worst case scenarios. And if you don't get it right,
7:44
and when I say you don't get it right, it could be any little
7:46
thing. It could be the communication of the changes. It could be yes,
7:50
the implementation of the changes. It could be poor planning, it could
7:55
be it could be a whole host of things. One small pebble can the
8:00
whole thing to fall apart. That's terrifying. Yeah, And so a small
8:07
disruption might be okay, this is you know, everybody's grumpy for a week,
8:11
or the emails down for a day. I know we're we're going through
8:15
some IT transitions right now, and one of our systems is going to be
8:20
down for twenty four hours. You know, it's an inconvenience. It's not
8:24
ideal obviously at the at any time, but you know, at certain times
8:28
of the year that can be a small problem versus a catastrophic problem. Yeah,
8:33
but when you put it that way, that that small thing could have
8:37
that snowball effect to bring things completely to a halt is terrifying for businesses.
8:43
So are there any vertical market implications like does it transformation? Is it easier
8:52
in some industries versus others? Are there types of businesses that are able to
8:56
go through these types of disruption? I would say yes, you know,
9:01
some companies and some industries are disruptors in themselves, that their whole purpose is
9:07
to disrupt, you know. And so let's think about it, like our
9:09
IT industries and our software industries, right, they're constantly always supposed to be
9:13
pushing the bounds. They're always constantly supposed to be trying something different, doing
9:18
something new. I will say that, yes, some industries are better prepared
9:22
for changes, and that could be due to regulatory reasons, that could be
9:26
due to they're better, you know, even though they might be competitors.
9:30
They're better at collaboration and sharing of information, if you will. And then
9:35
there's some industries where you know, they're still stuck in the stone age is
9:39
for lack of better terminology, right, and simply implementing a new IT system
9:43
or a new process change. Again, it could be catastrophic if it's not
9:48
well prepared and not well thought through. And actually, you know, going
9:52
towards that and jumping back to what we were just talking about as well as
9:54
part of these disruptions, part of this proper planning, you should be doing
9:58
things like risk mitigation and risk management planning. Risk management planning is a huge
10:03
thing that's really coming up these days, if you will, in conversations and
10:07
topics, because we've come in the situations that no one ever thought was ever
10:11
possible i e. COVID or another really recent real world example is a ship
10:18
getting stuck in the US canal. If you remember that debacle and tragedy,
10:22
well not tragic but incident that happened a couple of months ago. People were
10:26
prepared for that, right. That disruption completely then changed how products got to
10:31
the market. I mean, that wasn't a transformation that they were planning on,
10:35
and that was those were unexpected. But to your point, when something
10:41
is changing that you know is going to change and that you know is going
10:45
to be different, you have to look for those Okay, what if situations?
10:48
What if this goes wrong? What if this happens, what's the worst
10:52
case scenario, what could happen? And if it does, what are we
10:56
going to do about it? That's the heart of risk mitigation. And it's
11:00
hard because you you kind of have to think of doomsday if you will,
11:03
like, what's the worst case in there that can happen? Right, But
11:05
then you put in proper plans and guardrails in place, if you will,
11:09
to do your best to prevent that from happening, right. And so along
11:15
with that also comes the ability for individuals to feel what's called psychological safety,
11:20
so basically feeling comfortable bringing up concerns, bringing up issues. Again, you
11:26
know, large transformations have led to certain disasters because employees didn't feel comfortable calling
11:31
on saying hey we see something wrong over here, right, so yeah,
11:35
that they feel they didn't have a voice. It reminds me of a saying
11:37
you know, proper planning prevents poor performance. And you know, there's some
11:41
alliteration there. There are some variations on that theme. But when it comes
11:46
to those large transformations, and again large being subjective here, that you do
11:54
need to look for those potential pitfalls in order to plan around them, plan
12:01
for them. Even if you can't avoid it. Okay, Obviously avoiding it
12:05
is the best case scenario. Let's avoid this problem. But if you can't,
12:07
if it's staring you in the face, you should have a plan for
12:11
what are we going to do about it? Yes? And as the famous
12:16
Mike Tyson said, right, we all have a plan until we get punched
12:18
in the face and that happens. It happens. With The point is you
12:22
have a plan, yes, or a backup plan or a backup backup plan,
12:28
you know, all the way from Plan A to Plan Z of what
12:33
are we going to do if then scenarios? If this happens, then we're
12:35
going to do this. Okay. So what are some things that you'd like
12:41
our listeners to think about when they are considering their own transformations. We know
12:48
that a lot of the listeners have a transformation already planned for this new year
12:52
or they obviously, as we continue to grow, everyone's going to have a
12:56
transformation at some point. So what are some things to consider or look out
13:01
for when they're looking to create that plan that risk mitigation. Well, I
13:07
think when they're when they're looking to undertake their next transformation, I would say
13:11
that the first thing is the facts. Number one is to speak with the
13:16
facts, speak with transparency. It's important to create a sense of urgency,
13:20
as we've come to appreciate and learn in in transformations. But you don't want
13:24
to be the quote unquote boy you christ Wolf right, because then that will
13:28
lose trust. And once you've lost trust in the transformation, it's very difficult
13:33
to gain that trust back. So being factual, being transparent, that does
13:37
not mean that you have to lay all your cards out on the table,
13:41
but that does mean that that maybe you have to then explain why you can't
13:46
and that can be as simply as I just cannot talk about it. It's
13:50
confidential. I don't really know, right, But at least you at least
13:52
you stick to being factual, right, you stick to being transparent and keeping
13:58
those lights of communication open with the individuals who are going to be affected by
14:03
that change, exactly right. Building that, honestly, building that trust is
14:05
so important. I'd say. The next thing from my standpoint is building a
14:09
very strong and diverse team of both executors and influencers. We've come to understand
14:16
in team building that you can't have everybody who's all a players, and that's
14:20
actually not beneficial for the team because what you find then is they start to
14:24
trample on top of each other to see who's going to be the number one.
14:28
Right, So you got to have a good, diverse team of individuals
14:31
who are good at communication, good at execution, good at decision making,
14:35
and good at like thought process. Right. You know, that diverse team
14:41
of individuals then brings together you know, I like to think of Elected Justice
14:43
League. If you think of you know, superheroes standpoint. You know Batman
14:48
was rich and Superman had had powers, right, and you know Wonder Woman
14:52
brought the Last show of Truth and all her strengths and abilities. So you've
14:54
got to have a very diverse team of individuals who can help with the transform
15:00
because they're going to leverage those members of the team well. And they're also
15:03
going to bring their different perspectives to the situation. Absolutely, and that's extremely
15:09
important. Your perspective on the situation is going to be different, You're absolutely
15:11
right, and so helping individuals to see different angles of the situation is so
15:16
important. And I'd said my last recommendation is you got to be a good
15:22
active listener. And that means both internally and externally. You've got to be
15:26
good at good active listening. You've got to have strong emotional intelligence, right
15:31
and know that too often leadership thinks that they always have all the answers and
15:35
in reality they don't. And layering back off the first two points of having
15:41
a strong and diverse team and building in facts. This is where active listening
15:46
is so important because again, your perspective could be different than reality, and
15:50
that's a detriment. When your perspective is different in reality, it's going to
15:52
set the transformation up for failure. Yes, so it's so important to actively
15:58
listen to actively what the other individual on the other side of the table is
16:03
trying to convey to you. Right. That doesn't mean you have to agree
16:06
with it, but it just means you have to just actively listen and acknowledge
16:10
that person that they were heard so in a nutshell, real quickly. It
16:14
just be my quick starting points to help an organization out. So do you
16:18
think when it comes to those pitfalls, those typical pitfalls in transformations, do
16:22
you think that the I would say the risk is mainly when it comes to
16:26
getting the individuals, the people on board and behind the change, or is
16:30
it usually something technical regarding the change itself. Changes can be anything. We've
16:37
talked about a number of different ones. But is it in the operational in
16:41
the execution of the change itself, or is it in the team that has
16:45
to live the change that has the higher risk. I'm a people person,
16:51
so I would always mean more towards the people. Again, change is just
16:55
very hard for individuals, and everybody reacts to change just completely differently. And
17:00
so I would say the biggest risk is losing then your buying of your stakeholders,
17:06
and your stakeholders can be above or below you, right, Stakeholders is
17:10
not a rank or title. Just because you're in the C suite doesn't mean
17:12
that you're a stakeholder there. And just because you're not in a spit suite
17:17
does not mean you're not a quote unquote stakeholder. Okay, everybody is a
17:19
stakeholder, internal and external, and you have to monitor and understand what's important
17:25
to each of your individual stakeholders, both on the individual level and on the
17:29
group level. So when I say the group level groupings of your customers versus
17:33
your employees, maybe versus your management team, et cetera, et cetera.
17:37
Well, and we're talking very high level about change and transformation. It could
17:41
be something as simple as previously when we were talking about working from home,
17:47
and that could be any industry, it could be any situation. It has
17:49
absolutely nothing to do with supply chain. That's just being a professional adult.
17:56
It could be an IT transformation like an email platform or you know, a
18:02
CRM that's being changed again, that has nothing to do with supply chain and
18:07
everything to do with just being in business. But when we're talking about supply
18:11
chain specifically, we can think of things like implementing automation or adjusting your network
18:19
to include a new node. All of those types of things are very large
18:25
transformations. And I think that's where we're really kind of leading this is that
18:30
transformations can be small obviously, or they can be huge in terms of that
18:36
individual business and what they're trying to accomplish in their growth pattern, in their
18:41
growth strategy. Yeah, and I was just gonna just comment real quick.
18:45
I mean, think about getting a package next day, right, and being
18:48
able to track that package on your phones again, going back to just every
18:52
time we get a new phone, there's a change you have to learn,
18:56
the new features and the new you know, security you have for all your
19:00
data yeah, right. And so also from my phone, I can track
19:03
my package, and I can track my containers that are on a ship.
19:07
I can track my people in their movements, right, you know, whether
19:11
your delivery drivers or people are out and out in the community doing something whatever,
19:18
I can track them on my phone. So these technological innovations to some
19:21
people that can handle that like like that. To some people it's again it's
19:25
earth shattering. You know, they got the person we went from the typewriter
19:27
to the computer. It's it's a completely different system thing. And so when
19:33
we're talking about specifically supply chain transformations and some of these larger initiatives, the
19:40
basics don't change. The fundamentals don't change. Of you need to be prepared,
19:45
You need to have a well thought out plan. You need to understand
19:48
the scope of the transformation and who is going to be affected and how they're
19:53
going to be affected, and what potential risks there are to those individuals.
19:59
And when it's small change, that's probably a quicker evaluation or preparation. But
20:04
when it's a larger scale change, that's a completely different ballgame in terms of
20:10
how many stakeholders there are and the potential for risks or the potential for pitfalls.
20:17
Yes, So do you have a success or horror story of a transformation?
20:25
You know, I would say I would how all go with the success
20:26
if you will, okay, And this was just bringing in a lot of
20:30
the elements that we just talked about. This client, they are in Canada.
20:33
They were transitioning from their old third party logistics service provider, if you
20:37
will, who did their warehousing and distribution efforts, and they were going to
20:41
a new, larger, well known, if you will, third party logistics
20:45
provider in the area. Okay. So a very basic thing, changing a
20:51
service provider, and that's it. Yeah, changing your service provider. And
20:53
then something this is maybe not even changing the building in the sentence, We
20:56
were changing the building the buildings that the products were were stored with it.
21:00
And this was a retail client. You know. At first, what's always
21:03
interesting and what's always fun for me is when you come in and you say,
21:06
look, we're going to do stakeholder now, so we're going to do
21:08
risk management, planning, et cetera, et cetera. People's eyes gloss over.
21:12
Initially they hate coming to those workshops, but then once they realized and
21:17
this is where I also tell other change managers and other facilitators, do your
21:22
best to make it fun and interactive. Right, because when you can then
21:26
make these workshops somewhat bearable for people to come to, right, then at
21:30
the end of it, they actually say to themselves, not only do we
21:33
actually do have a plan here, but this actually wasn't terrible. And those
21:37
are some of our greatest success stories when the client says, you know,
21:40
we really appreciated. At first, we kind of didn't believe this was necessary,
21:45
right, We thought this was a waste of time, But in reality,
21:47
it was really good that we did do this because we then when something
21:51
came up, we had those plans in place ready to enable. Right.
21:56
They were expecting torture and they got a pleasant experience instead. Correct. And
22:00
so we don't you say these things as buzzwords like we really need to do
22:03
a risk management analysis and plan. We really do need to do a stakeholder
22:07
analysis at the beginning of a project so you can learn more about individuals and
22:11
learn more about the groups of teams and how's the best way to interact with
22:15
them. Again, this is not just something we just check in the box
22:18
and just say, yeah, we're going to go interview people. No,
22:22
we actually take that information, We take those notes, we take it back
22:26
and we digest what did we learn right, what do we hear, what
22:29
do we see, and then we use that information to better design the transformation
22:34
so things go smoother when there is the full plan in place. Now,
22:40
that doesn't mean that it's perfect, that doesn't mean that nothing is going to
22:44
go wrong, but everything has that at least potential for success when everything is
22:52
planned out properly. Again, the proper planning prevents poor performance. Yes,
22:57
is there a situation that you know of, Maybe not one of your projects
23:03
or case studies, but can you think of a time when that change went
23:07
so horribly wrong that it did result in that death And I'm using air quotes
23:11
for all of our audio listener's death of loss of business, loss of trust
23:18
in the public market. Is there a case study or a story that you
23:22
know of where a change transformation went so horribly awry that it had that terrible
23:27
result? So, I mean one I can think of, and it's typically
23:33
a product launch, Yeah, I mean that's a change to offer a new
23:37
product out there and put all of your expectations for that year's sales into a
23:44
new product launch and not perhaps understanding the market itself, not doing the due
23:52
diligence there. I'm old enough that I think of Crystal pepsi if you remember
23:56
that from the early nineties. They thought it was going to be so such
24:00
a great product in it it had a little bit of a blip, but
24:03
then it ultimately fell flat, and those types of things where they thought it
24:07
was going to be a great change. They thought it was going to be
24:10
a great introduction of a new product and it didn't go well. What popped
24:15
into my head and media when you said that that was very public if you
24:17
and regardless of what side of the balance you fall on, tumps I remember
24:22
just most recently was like the if you remember that website launch for the Affordable
24:26
Healthcare Acts many years ago, Yes in the US, Yes, in the
24:30
US, right, And that overloaded the servers so many people, the volume
24:34
of individuals to come and sign up, right, And so whichever way you
24:38
view it, you were able to spend it in your direction. However,
24:42
if you look at it, that was not a successful launch, if you
24:45
will, because the website went down. However, there was a lot of
24:49
learnings that came from it. And that's also a big thing. By the
24:52
way, Ellen, I want to highlight here is when transformations do fail,
24:56
it's important to document the reasons why they failed, those lessons learned. Ah
25:00
yeah, So that way you can take that information for when your next transformation
25:03
comes along. It's important to document lessons learned for when transformations are successful and
25:08
they fail, but particularly when they fail, so the way you can learn
25:11
from those mistakes for future and better implementation. So that's one that I can
25:17
think of that was pretty public disaster, if you will, and they were
25:21
able to learn from it and to get the system work again. So it's
25:23
also I think a good rebound story. Fantastic all right, last question,
25:29
Yeah, what resources are available out there? I mean, obviously, yes,
25:33
consultants are available to support organizations and the larger this implementation needs to be.
25:40
Obviously, it's worth the investment and hiring support to guide that transformation process.
25:47
Whether the company has an internal individual perhaps or an external company that's coming
25:52
into support it, there needs to be someone focused on that transition plan,
25:57
that risk mitigation, all of that. But what other resources are out there?
26:03
I mean, we've talked about mom and pops and small things working from
26:07
home all these smaller transformations and really understanding what change management is. Are there
26:11
any resources out there you're a professor, Ellen, Yes, I would say
26:15
that before even looking into resources. The first thing that everyone really has to
26:22
do is you have to have an appreciation for change. That doesn't mean you
26:25
have to know everything that there is about that. Like you mentioned, you
26:29
know the plug that you put in there for consultants such as myself. Yes,
26:33
there are organizational behaviors and psychologists that are out there in the industry.
26:37
Yes, there, And we're even teaching these things in academia and others at
26:41
mi alma mater. At Purdue, you know, they have an OBHR field,
26:45
right, and so they're talking organizational behavior and human resources in the business
26:49
school. So the first thing, like I said, is you've got to
26:52
have an appreciation and understand that this is important. Individual behaviors, corporate behaviors,
26:59
corporate culture. It's important. Don't downplay, don't downplay. And then
27:03
from there, like you said, there's a host of books that are out
27:07
there, you know, and some of the more well known psychologists and business
27:11
organizational behaviors that are out there, such as John Cotter and Kurt Lewin,
27:15
you know, Elizabeth Koobler Ross. There's so many that are out there that
27:18
they've written, books, YouTube, videos and whatnot. So I guess when
27:22
I come back to the word appreciation, I mean, you got to be
27:26
hungry. You gotta be hungry to go find this information. You got to
27:29
be hungry to go learn more about it. There's a pluthora of resources that
27:33
are out there, videos, schools, in academia, books, heck,
27:37
even like on social media. I'm on Pinterest and on Instagram, and you
27:41
know, every once in a while I will get, you know, a
27:42
pop up that talks about gives me a good quotes, or gives me something
27:47
to think about right, or teaches me something new about project management or process
27:51
management. So just be hungry. It's out there. It may not find
27:56
you, but you can find it if you are just hungry for it and
28:00
you appreciate it and you take it seriously. Well. And I think that's
28:03
also great advice really to sit back and appreciate the effort that goes into a
28:10
transformational change, because that's what's going to lead the individual to that self awareness
28:15
of whether we can do this on our own, whether this is a small
28:18
enough change that we can figure this out, or if this is something where
28:25
I'm not ready to handle this level of transformation on my own, we need
28:30
an expert. We need someone who knows how to run these stakeholder analysis to
28:37
run this risk analysis and then advise on whether or not it's worth it or
28:42
not, or what this risk mitigation plan needs to be. Because when it
28:47
is truly a small change, that's something that a lot of organizations can do.
28:52
You know, it may be as simple as we're changing our expense platform.
28:56
I've participated in that type of change before, where you do the recent
29:00
to find the platform you want to do, you have to train your employees
29:03
on how to redo their expenses in this new way, or timekeeping platforms,
29:07
those types of things. Those are it changes that can have a significant effect
29:11
if they go wrong. But at the same time, that stakeholder analysis within
29:15
an organization is much smaller, that risk mitigation is not quite as devastating,
29:22
although it could be. I mean, when you're talking about expenses and payroll,
29:25
that could be a big deal. But some changes can be handled internally,
29:30
whereas others that are larger, especially when we're talking about global organizations.
29:34
You know, if our office changes our payroll or our expense platform. That's
29:41
fine. If a giant global conglomerate changes their expense and payroll planning and the
29:47
way they handle that, that's a larger transformation just by virtue of the size
29:51
of the organization. But when it comes to that change, really sitting there
29:56
and having that awareness that you were talking about and understanding, Okay, this
29:59
is either some thing I can do or this is something I know. I
30:03
require help, I require support, And that's where you come in. Yeah,
30:07
you know, I guess one. Final Part two is that I want
30:11
to highlight it too. To be a good change manager has nothing to do
30:14
with being an extrovert or an introvert by any means. To be a good
30:18
change manager, in my belief, is that you again, you have to
30:21
appreciate and be a people person first, right, That's what makes a good
30:26
change manager. You have to know how to interact with people. You have
30:27
to know how to engage with people. It doesn't matter where you come from,
30:30
does matter, your gender, doesn't matter, you know your East coast,
30:33
West coast. It matters. Do you care about people and are you
30:36
genuine with people? I think what you're trying to get to is that it
30:40
has less to do with IQ and more EQ. Thank you, right,
30:42
And something I had mentioned earlier EQ emotional intelligence. It does, It absolutely
30:48
does. And as you know, as I've come to tell you many times,
30:51
right, there's that those four levels of emotional intelligence, right, and
30:52
that first level is self awareness. You got to be able to understand what
30:57
your own feelings in a situation, right, and how does the situation make
31:00
me feel? So then moving all the way up to the fourth level,
31:04
where you're able to control other people's emotions, right, which is the highest
31:08
form of emotional intelligence. And let me also say to our viewers out there,
31:12
don't use EQ for that. There's even ways you can use emotional intelligence
31:18
for evil if you will, right, and for manipulation and things like that.
31:21
But having a strong EQ, that's what moves people. That's what gets
31:26
people to buy into your messaging, right, when you can convince and convey
31:32
your thoughts and your sentiments into others and get there buy in. I mean,
31:37
that's the goal is to present this change in a way or in a
31:44
fashion that it appears or I won't say it appears because I don't want to
31:48
indicate that it's all a facade, but that they understand and see the benefit
31:55
of it, even if it's hard, even if it's a significant change,
31:57
there's clearly a benefit. Otherwise it wouldn't be happening. People don't change or
32:01
organizations don't change for the worst just because, yes, it may be initially
32:07
there could be a honeymoon period where things are chaotic, or things don't work
32:13
as they should, or you know, it's a tough transition, or you've
32:16
got people who are upset about the change. Obviously those things can happen,
32:21
but ultimately, the whole point of the transformation is to do something better,
32:24
to improve upon some aspect. And I think what you're trying to say there
32:30
is that in that fourth level of emotional intelligence is getting the ability to get
32:38
others to buy into that change and convince them that this is the right thing
32:44
to do and the best path forward. Yes, awesome. I think that
32:49
brings us to the end of our discussion. It has been a fantastic discussion
32:53
about transformational change. Oh thanks Allen. Appreciate ed Again. If anyone's just
33:00
and you know, you can always look us up on LinkedIn and whatnot.
33:01
I'm always posting content and articles out there. Just to help bring that awareness
33:07
and appreciation to others. I will make sure that there is a link to
33:10
your LinkedIn bio in our episode description. Oh thanks appreciate that. So if
33:15
anyone of our listeners or viewers out there has a suggestion for a topic or
33:22
would like to be a guest on our show, I invite you to reach
33:24
out to me at podcast atmebok dot com. That's the best way to contact
33:30
us. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to have you on
33:32
the show. As always, thanks for listening to speaking of supply chain.
33:37
Please rate and review us on whatever podcast platform you prefer. We're on Apple
33:42
Podcasts, Google, Spotify, YouTube podcasts, and YouTube itself for our video
33:46
content. Be sure to tune in next time. Meboch Consulting is one of
33:55
the largest and most globally recognized supply chain consulting and nearing and advisory firms.
34:00
For nearly fifty years, we've helped clients achieve supply chain excellence and sustainable competitive
34:07
advantage across the entire spectrum of the supply chain by delivering improvements and innovation strategically,
34:13
tactically, and digitally. To learn more, visit meboch dot com.
34:19
You've been listening to Speaking Up Supply Chain, a meeboch podcast. Keep connected
34:22
with us by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast player. If you
34:27
like what you've heard, please rate the show that helps us to keep delivering
34:30
the latest in supply chain information. Thanks for listening. Until next time.