Tag Archives: President Barack Obama

Your Supply Chain’s Sputnik Moment

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On Tuesday, President Obama delivered his annual State of the Union address. Rhetoric and politics aside, Obama portrayed our current status quo as failing to lead in an ever-competitive global marketplace.  Left on this current path America will simply fail to win the future.

As a solution, Obama challenged America to create “Sputnik” moments where new innovation would break through historical obstacles.  “We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” was Obama’s battle cry to action.

Now is an excellent time to apply that same “State of the Union” thinking to our Supply Chain relationships.  How can we create internal “Sputnik” moments with our employees?  Who in our organization owns this role?  Do we encourage or discourage our suppliers and customers from innovating?  How do we even begin?

First, let’s start by thinking about our traditional supply interactions.  Last year, The Mpower Group presented a radical innovation—leading companies need to focus on creating new sources of value rather than beating down suppliers on cost.   This major shift in thinking provides a new foundation for encouraging innovation and collaborative relationships.

Imagine in a negotiation where the supplier was asked what they would do with a $250,000 check on top of their existing bid.  Progressive suppliers worth dealing with should give concrete examples how that investment would be used to improve quality, buy machinery, hire people, etc.  Conversely, if suppliers don’t have any novel ideas then we have a much better picture of what they have to offer in the long term – zero.

Next, let’s think about education.  Traditionally, companies think about their current institutional knowledge base and where they need to be to compete in their market.  While this is laudable, it misses out on a crucial innovation dimension—what the world is doing.

Our cross industry experience as consultants allowed us to challenge the status quo with real companies and real examples.   One that comes to mind is a client that felt it was “state of the industry” with a one week delivery lead-time for in-stock items.  We pointed out that while one week delivery may be “leading” that industry we could give them examples of next and same day delivery in other sister industries.  Viewed against that different performance standard they realized that they could potentially charge higher prices and deliver higher service to those customers who wanted things faster.

Lastly, let’s cover infrastructure.  Traditionally we think of infrastructure in term of bricks, mortar, systems, and capital equipment.  While these investments often provide excellent returns, we believe the best return going forward is to empower your employees and supplier relationships.  “Supplier churning” and employee turnover, while hidden, are as equally damaging as a decrepit piece of machinery or a leaky roof.

As part of our commitment to pushing this community forward, The Mpower Group will be presenting new “Sputnik” techniques for companies looking to innovate and deliver outsized results.  Until then, what is a “Sputnik” successes story for you?  Share with other readers those obstacles that prevent major breakthroughs from occurring and some ideas on  how to overcome them.

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Troops in Afghanistan – a Dramatic Case Study for AEIOU

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Today’s post is from Anne Kohler, COO & Executive Vice-President, of The Mpower Group (TMG) and a contributor to the News U Can Use TMG blog.

What do these historic events have in common?

  • U.S. Invasion on North Korea
  • The Bay of Pigs
  • Watergate
  • Escalation of the Viet Nam War
  • The Hostage Rescue in Iran
  • The Challenger Disaster
  • The Bush Administration’s Invasion of Iraq

This list represents some of the biggest decision-making disasters in history.

A few weeks ago, the famous Washington Post White House author, Bob Woodward wrote an article entitled “Military thwarted president seeking choice in Afghanistan” which was all about the critical nature of decision-making.  What greater decision can there be than deciding the fate of tens of thousands of young U.S. men and women as they are sent into war-torn Afghanistan?   The article chronicles the process that President Barrack Obama undertook in finally deciding to send 30,000 additional troops as opposed to the 40,000 (which came highly recommended by his military leaders) in December 2009.

Obama discovered after months of negotiating with national security officials and being in the middle of a war entering its ninth year that three simple questions could still NOT be answered:

  • What is the mission?
  • What are we trying to do?
  • What will work?

In other words, what is the intended consequence in Afghanistan? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As it turned out, Obama’s military leaders wanted to provide a solution (40,000 new troops) without defining a strategy – the answers to those three simple questions (obviously not so simple!).  Obama asked for a strategy (the answers to those questions) and asked for options, but the inability to answer those questions kept leading back to NO viable options except for an option that was UNacceptable to Obama.

Having been well versed in decision-making disasters from the past (see above), Obama chose to follow a more structured decision-making process.  He knew he had many intelligent key stakeholders at his disposal and wanted input, alignment, and buy-in from all of them.  He actually made a meta-decision – he decided how to decide by answering the following:

  • Who needed to be included in the decision-making process (stakeholders)?
  • What role would each stakeholder play in the decision-making process?
  • How would the decision be made – what criteria would they use to decide?
  • When did the decision need to be made?

Obama did a thorough stakeholder analysis to determine who needed to be included in the decision-making process.  He realized that it was critical to include both military and civilian leaders.  He also determined each stakeholder’s role in the process; keeping the final decision for himself.  He then determined the decision criteria and insisted on being provided options by his advisors, which was critical.  Finally, he did not allow himself to be rushed into making a quick decision (his military leaders tried to do just that) which allowed him the opportunity to consider many alternatives.

At the end, he “sold” his decision to all his stakeholders and insisted that they put their full support behind it.  Obama said, “I don’t want to have anybody going out the day after [the speech] and saying that they don’t agree with this.”

Time will tell whether or not this was the right decision for the U.S.  BUT what we can glean from this article is the importance of having a disciplined approach to decision making.  Even if all of Obama’s stakeholders did not necessarily agree with the final decision, it appears that they did respect the process.  Right before the decision was announced Obama gave Robert Gates, his Defense Secretary, a final opportunity to dissuade him saying, “Can you support this?  Because if the answer is no, I understand it and I’ll be happy to authorize another 10,000 troops, and we can continue to go as we are and train the Afghan national force and just hope for the best.”  Gates did not take Obama up on his offer.

This is just one example of the importance of decision-making.  This is the one skill that most leaders are never trained in, even though it is the most critical part of their job.  It is one of the elements of our AEIOU model, which stresses that the best infrastructure (people, process, tools, and technology – the consonants) in the world is useless without the glue that holds it together (Adoption, Execution, Implementation, Optimization, and Utilization – the vowels that turn the consonants into a language).

Some of the most important events in history required effective decision making and yet we spend little to no time on developing the skills necessary to make good decisions.  The recent deaths in the California wildfires have been attributed to poor decision making by the firefighters.  The good news is that this has led to the addition of decision-making to firefighter training.  One of the most critical decisions that affects all of us is that of a jury.  Yet numerous articles have been written about the fact that our present system does nothing to provide jurors with the tools to decide the fate of a human life.

We need to think about this key skill beyond our politicians and public servants.  How about executives of any kind?  Supply chain leaders?  Sourcing teams?  This should be a critical leadership skill that is purposely taught to all professionals – let’s provide the vowels to complete the language!

Thanks Anne!

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