Those who succeed in supply chain management tend to have an element of fierceness that helps separate them from the competent, the passionate, and the passionately capable.
Art van Bodegraven was, among other roles, chief design officer for the DES Leadership Academy. He passed away on June 18, 2017. He will be greatly missed.
Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man, whether they realized it or not, had the capability and passion needed to reach the Emerald City in Oz. But none was, by nature, fierce, and they feared finding ferocity as they passed through the forest. The Cowardly Lion may not have been either all they feared or what they needed, but he was all they had at the moment.
MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE BLOGOSPHERE ...
The e-world has been burning up recently, as discussion forums have lit up with intense point/counterpoint barbs about the relative merits of passion, discipline, and competence in our supply chain profession. It's all pretty much anecdotal pamphleteering, but let's face reality—research is, fairly often, the collection of many anecdotes, distilled and summarized.
Some wax eloquent about the necessity and glory of passion in our professional pursuits to transform doing the job into an immensely rewarding and life-changing mission. A grim coterie of doubters, naysayers, and grinches contend that the notion of passion is illusory and transient, and that the real magic lies within the discipline of executing the basics, the blocking and tackling that result in delivering the goods to customers.
Much has been made of the potential for passion to be mere cheerleading; worse, an artificial enthusiasm; or still worse, detrimental by having no substance (competence or discipline) behind it.
THE PITFALL OF A FALSE CHOICE
So, proponents, especially of the plodding discipline and competence camp, like to suggest that success can come from bringing on demonstrated capability and eschewing flash and flair. Others might think that passion can overcome mere details of knowing how to do the job.
Our decision, given a choice between Candidate A and Candidate B in hiring for the future, is to not choose, but to wait for the right combination of passion and capability before hiring. We will admit that operations can be effective, even good, in the hands of disciplined competence. We also contend that passion is the secret sauce that can take good to great.
And great is what separates leaders from laggards. Will greatness always win? No. Will good always fail? Seldom. But what are the risks of being merely good in a world ruled by greatness, and what are the benefits of achieving corporate and competitive greatness?
WHAT ABOUT THE LION?
The more we thought about it, though, the more we realized that there is another ingredient in this mulligatawny—ferocity. Perhaps Dorothy's Lion was not quite up to expectations, but he did come through at the end and help his team dispatch the witch.
Those who succeed, in many fields and certainly in supply chain management, tend to have an element of fierceness that helps separate them from the competent, the passionate, and the passionately capable.
We know an executive who runs the North American supply chain for a leading specialty products company in an extraordinarily competitive field. She is completely self-taught and has risen through the functional ranks based on a single-minded commitment to master each new challenge.
Ferocity is a hallmark of her every effort—and success, whether in business, in fundraising, or in triathlons. Some days, it is frightening, not on a personal level but to see the determination and commitment up close, and momentarily feel some empathy for those who need to keep up.
Then, consider the late Steve Jobs. Passionate, almost beyond reason. Capable, to be sure, and aggressive about surrounding himself with those capable on other facets of the Apple business.
Fun to work with? Maybe for capable people who shared his visions and passion. A cheerleader? Are you serious? Fierce, unyielding, and unbending? Oh, yeah, for sure.
Did he make mistakes? Did Apple ever stumble? Of course; all that is well documented. But ferocity unleashed the passion and vision, the competence and capability, that propelled the enterprise to heights undreamed of in the world outside the Apple orbit.
IS FEROCITY A FORM OF MENTAL ILLNESS?
Could it be that this prized attribute is simply passion with a vengeance, rah-rah run amok? Is it possible that the merely competent use fierceness as a way to compensate, to do more than they might based on routine execution alone?
We think not. Vengeance means taking one's eye off the ball to pursue a secondary, perhaps unrelated, purpose. Doing the same thing over and over in the hope that it will be better, or will work, or will break through if we simply rinse and repeat, only more vigorously. The focused individual, both passionate and disciplined, will not take eyes off the prize. The competent and disciplined is not so much motivated to get better as to get good, on a consistent basis.
By the way, people with the fierce gene are not twisted or anti-social. They can be funny, be delightful to be with, shift gears, and lead lives that are full in all the right human dimensions. It's just that, when it comes to career or other competitive arenas, they can focus and fire the afterburners to elevate where their other attributes can take them.
WHERE DO WE FIND FEROCITY?
All over, whether in business, politics, the arts, religion, and so on. And throughout the universe of supply chain management. Think of the people you know in the field who are fierce as well as capable and passionate. Examples might include academics, consultants, corporate executives, material handling specialists, association managers—anyone who is a differentiated leader putting competitive distance between him or her self and others.
The fierce ones are everywhere, but there aren't actually very many of them. Those with both passion and competence are also found throughout the supply chain, but they are, frankly, outnumbered by the one-dimensional players who have only one card to play.
A real-time business is one that uses trusted, real-time data to enable people and systems to make real-time decisions, Peter Weill, the chairman of MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), said at the “IFS Unleashed” show in Orlando.
By adopting that strategy, they gain three major capabilities, he said in a session titled “Becoming a Real-Time Business: Unlocking the Transformative Power of Digital, Data, and AI.” They are:
business model agility without needing a change management program to implement it
seamless digital customer journeys via self-service, automated, or assisted multi-product, multichannel experiences
thoughtful employee experiences enabled by technology empowered teams
And according to Weill, MIT’s studies show that adopting that real-time data stance is not restricted just to digital or tech-native businesses. Rather, it can produce successful results for companies in any sector that are able to apply the approach better than their immediate competitors.
While many companies are launching artificial intelligence (AI) products for use as generic “co-pilots” or consumer-focused gadgets, the Swedish enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendor IFS says its “Industrial AI” version supports industry-specific processes in “hardcore” sectors based on assets such as power grids, cell phone networks, aircraft maintenance, elevator operation, and construction management.
“Industrial AI is at the very core the solutions we are powering for customers. They are pushing us for ready-to-use AI that they can adopt quickly to solve real industrial challenges like labor shortages, supply chain disruption, [and] stagnated productivity," IFS's Chief Customer Officer, Cathie Hall, said in a release.
In presentations at its user conference in Orlando today, known as "IFS Unleashed," the company said that its latest IFS Cloud 24R2 release supports more than 60 in-depth Industrial AI scenarios. They span generative AI examples like: content generation for training and reports; recommendations for sourcing and suppliers; and contextual knowledge for assembly instruction. The tools also include predictive AI applications like event forecasting; optimization of resources and capacity; and anomaly detection for proactive quality control.
In remarks from the keynote stage, new IFS CEO Mark Moffat—who was appointed to the top office in January—said the company may be less well known than ERP vendors such as SAP, IBM, Oracle, and Infor, but it benefits from a tighter focus on its core users. Instead of selling software across dozens of industries, IFS serves just six industries: aerospace and defense, construction and engineering, energy and utilities, manufacturing, service, and telecommunications.
Thanks to that tight approach, he said the company has earned top Gartner rankings for its software products in field service management (FSM), enterprise asset management (EAM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and enterprise service management (ESM). And to compound that advantage, Moffat said IFS continues to grow swiftly through acquisition, having bought up a handful of companies in recent months: Assyst, Ultimo, Boka, empowermx, Bolo, Tobin, Merrick, and Copperleaf.
“You need an AI business plan” Moffat told the room. “If you have an AI business plan, that’s terrific, but you can improve it. This area is just moving so fast.”
The top three corporate development priorities in consulting firm PwC’s current strategy are climate, artificial intelligence (AI), and business model reinvention (BMR), the company said in remarks today at an Orlando user conference for IFS software.
That approach meshes well with IFS, the Swedish firm which has added dozens of AI applications to its cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools in recent months, that firm said at its "IFS Unleashed" event in Orlando. And underlying the industry’s rush to AI is the growing availability of massive amounts of data, PwC analyst Matthew Duffy said in a session at the show.
According to Duffy, data drives all the major technology changes that PwC advises businesses to examine: subscription or as-a-service models, connected devices and sensors, and conversions between business to business (B2B0 and business to consumer (B2C) approaches.
“Data availability now is greater than it’s ever been, and that’s where AI comes into play,” Duffy said. “It’s not just about driving cost efficiencies in an existing business model, but understanding your customer and your customer’s customer, so you can create a whole new value proposition.”
In fact, he said that PwC is not just giving that advice to its clients but applying it to the firm’s own strategy as well. That can be seen in the firm’s move in recent years to build its “Connected Solutions” business unit.
However, that trend is counterbalanced by economic uncertainty driven by geopolitics, which is prompting many companies to diversity their supply chains, Dun & Bradstreet said in its “Q4 2024 Global Business Optimism Insights” report, which was based on research conducted during the third quarter.
“While overall global business optimism has increased and inflation has abated, it’s important to recognize that geopolitics contribute to economic uncertainty,” Neeraj Sahai, president of Dun & Bradstreet International, said in a release. “Industry-specific regulatory risks and more stringent data requirements have emerged as the top concerns among a third of respondents. To mitigate these risks, businesses are considering diversifying their supply chains and markets to manage regulatory risk.”
According to the report, nearly four in five businesses are expressing increased optimism in domestic and export orders, capital expenditures, and financial risk due to a combination of easing financial pressures, shifts in monetary policies, robust regulatory frameworks, and higher participation in sustainability initiatives.
U.S. businesses recorded a nearly 9% rise in optimism, aided by falling inflation and expectations of further rate cuts. Similarly, business optimism in the U.K. and Spain showed notable recoveries as their respective central banks initiated monetary easing, rising by 13% and 9%, respectively. Emerging economies, such as Argentina and India, saw jumps in optimism levels due to declining inflation and increased domestic demand respectively.
"Businesses are increasingly confident as borrowing costs decline, boosting optimism for higher sales, stronger exports, and reduced financial risks," Arun Singh, Global Chief Economist at Dun & Bradstreet, said. "This confidence is driving capital investments, with easing supply chain pressures supporting growth in the year's final quarter."
The firms’ “GEP Global Supply Chain Volatility Index” tracks demand conditions, shortages, transportation costs, inventories, and backlogs based on a monthly survey of 27,000 businesses.
The rise in underutilized vendor capacity was driven by a deterioration in global demand. Factory purchasing activity was at its weakest in the year-to-date, with procurement trends in all major continents worsening in September and signaling gloomier prospects for economies heading into Q4, the report said.
According to the report, the slowing economy was seen across the major regions:
North America factory purchasing activity deteriorates more quickly in September, with demand at its weakest year-to-date, signaling a quickly slowing U.S. economy
Factory procurement activity in China fell for a third straight month, and devastation from Typhoon Yagi hit vendors feeding Southeast Asian markets like Vietnam
Europe's industrial recession deepens, leading to an even larger increase in supplier spare capacity
"September is the fourth straight month of declining demand and the third month running that the world's supply chains have spare capacity, as manufacturing becomes an increasing drag on the major economies," Jagadish Turimella, president of GEP, said in a release. "With the potential of a widening war in the Middle East impacting oil, and the possibility of more tariffs and trade barriers in the new year, manufacturers should prioritize agility and resilience in their procurement and supply chains."