How to boost your career

Ever heart about I-types and T-types professionals?

The I-type earns from expertise and knowledge. That person has academic knowledge and as he or she moves up the career ladder, this specialized knowledge becomes so precious, everybody relies on that expertise. The person feels powerful, valued and enjoys clear role and purpose in the organization. Typical I-persons are specialized surgeons, lawyers, accountants or financial experts. They build up a knowledge monopoly and this makes the position difficult to reach for others. Experience and dedication created the value offer.

Now let's look at the T-type. How does that professional creates value? In this case the knowledge comes from relationships. Rather than deepening the knowledge in one field, the expertise is to create valuable relationships that will complement the basic speciality gained during the studies. Generalists know a little about everything while specialists know everything about nothing. So goes the saying.

Now back to reality.

For an I-type professional the deepest knowledge is not valuable without a sense of reality. And the best way to have a grounded opinion is by understanding the views of others. Hence better know a little from the other areas and functions to leverage a speciality and add value to the team.

The T-type professional on the other hand must be careful to avoid only building relationships without content or with knowledge too superficial to be of any value.

Because innovation comes from blending knowledge. Therefore both I-types and T-types must focus on becoming a bit more knowledgeable in the content in other domains. And better go deep and in-depth in a few unfamiliar areas than remaining superficial.

How old you are, does not matter, if you wish to boost your career, keep learning - in new areas - because it is the variety that sparks innovation. And nothing adds more value than innovation!

A T-type with genuine interest to put the dots on the Is of colleagues is the most valuable kind of person in any organization!

Supply Chain Redesign - A job for problem-solvers?

Not really. Engineering is only part of it. Designing a great supply chain is an art.

Supply Chain redesigns start with understanding the customer offer. And that is where the problem starts...

Who is the customer or customers we design for? How do we design a supply chain meeting the needs of these customers? Can we form an opinion talking to sales and marketing? Does that give us insights we can use in supply chain areas? How do we approach these customers?

Second we try to understand our current supply chain. But what supply chain are we talking about? Is the scope clear? Is there a supply chain we can isolate and change without impacting the rest of the business? Reality is that products form a very localized and complex offering in each market but the products do share production, distribution and storage assets. How do we segment the supply chain? Simple question. Complex answers.

Third we try to envision the best possible supply chain. But what does an excellent supply chain look like? Is it realistic to try to implement such a large scope? And should we include the information systems to the scope?

At the end of the day, the best possible supply chain is a value chain, which means the offer of products and services must be fully integrated. Both product and service values flow to chosen customer thanks to one coherent design. Just like when you go to the restaurant. You want a clear menu with transparent pricing and service that exceeds your expectations.

A value chain as designed by Apple. All is integrated into a full offer. Designed to offer the full value to the customer. Thanks to artistic design and skill full engineering.

A beautiful but engineered value chain. As opposed to a supply chain held together with nuts and bolts to adjust the way it operates each time the market forces its volatility on it.

Problem-solving is great but only after designing the right concept.

Why eventually Lean and Six Sigma efforts cannot be sustained

Don't get me wrong.

Lean is a tremendous filosofy of more profit using less resources. Less is more.

And the right use of tools like Value-Stream mapping, Quick change-over (SMED) or Total Productivity Maintenance (TPM) cannot be underestimated. Stronger, each company should embed lean thinking in every operation and apply these tools where they can be value-adding.

Six Sigma is a wonderful concept too.

If you want to fix a process, first make it predictable. Listen to the process first. Analyze symptoms and root causes based on data. Identify the steady state or work towards a stable system. Then like a doctor, apply the remedy that will really make a difference in performance. The one way that will align the Voice of the Process with the the Voice of the Customer. Performance driven by Customer specifications and data. Powerful. Simple. And Scientific. No arguing.

Original thinkers thought best way to embed processes in an organization was via documentation. Hence the ISO Quality movements preaching quality via documents and creating a living for lots of junior consultants creating huge piles of documents.

Then tools for Business Process Management (BPM) were invented. Rather than paperwork, flow diagrams are now kept in huge databases which can be administrated by Process Analysts and governed by Process Owners. Main advantage is the versioning and comparison of processes can be centrally maintained while leaving the local experts to map and document their parts of the processes. Additionally, these tools offer embedded training modules, making process training much more dynamic. A SAP module can now have a dynamic screen set to train the users embedded in the application. Great progress.

But the great gap these tools could not bridge so far is how to adjust the systems and software to optimize these processes.

How to apply lean and six sigma on information flows. In the information age, flexible processes depend from flexible IT systems. A changed process is only as optimal as the support the underlying sofware provides to the user. And optimal systems must be continuously improved to stay optimized.

Nowhere is that more obvious than in Supply Chain Management. Agile supply chains need agile and integrated planning concepts. Such a system takes forever to build. As business planning integrates more and more functions and departments.

We planned production in sites with Material Requirements Planning (MRP), then Distribution with Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP), then Supply Advanced Planning Software (APS).

The next race is to embed financial planning, marketing planning, sales planning and product creation planning to the existing planning systems landscape.

Planning workflows to drive execution and processes.

Welcome the age of eBusiness design.

Marketing, the weakest link in the Value Chain?

Last week at a Conference about Customer-driven Supply Chains we were exposed to the idea that Demand Chains are lacking systems to respond to human creativity and therefore suffer from same symptoms as we experience in chaos theory. Chaos in different forms..

The underlying idea is that some rigor and efficiency would make sales and marketing stronger and more efficient and bring it on a par with the well-engineered processes and ERP-systems that rule in logistics, production planning and procurement.

Interestingly the clash between left brain and right brain, efficiency and effectivity or structure versus chaos and how to marry these skills are becoming the key to business success in the 21st century.

Value creation requires creative brains to design the solutions customers want but rigour and engineering to make these solutions sustainable.

Supply Chain people got to become more creative. Then they will be able to share benefits of a more engineered approach and beautiful design with their marketing folks.

That is what made Apple great. Innovative solutions. but beautiful engineered designs...