I have been spending a lot of time lately doing discovery. Have you come across a process or workflow that has a gap or a problem and when you ask about it, the response is either "this is just how it works" or you are given the "reason" for it. I'm always surprised about how often we take the response as a concrete or unchangeable component. We seem to figure that since someone can explain or give an answer, surely they must have explored the alternatives. While this can be true, very often you will find that the reason that is given was more dependent on the thinking or options available at the time versus a pure problem / gap / deficiency in the actual process. Working with my team, I enjoy engaging them with a lot of how and what questions, I keep pushing to the next level, not immediately accepting the response. I am not being difficult and they know that I am asking to really understand, and they do great job explaining. It is always rewarding when you c

It's been a while since I have written anything new. As I have started and gotten into a new role with a new organization, finding time for other interests has been harder. I had couple of events over the last two weeks however that found me back in a place to share. My new role is all about Continuous Improvement. Working with my team and the broader operations teams to drive a lot of change. This is not a new world for me or aren't responsibilities that I haven't had in the past, however it is the first time I find myself in a role completely dedicated to it. The most important thing that you need to be able to do in order to drive change is to understand what is going on. You HAVE to ask A LOT of questions, to keep asking "... and what else?", to keep pushing past the first answers and responses you get (often these are what the business has always done, or what individuals have been doing based on their understanding). Asking questions and pushing

In a world built on relationships, meetings matter. They are important and really help bring people together to achieve common goals. Since meetings are important, it's critical that you know how to run one, properly. First and foremost. Make sure you know what the meeting is for: • Discussion / Exploration • Decision • Information sharing Next, make sure that you actually have the right people at the meeting based on your intention, and more importantly, make sure THEY know why they have been asked to participate. Third and most important, respect people's TIME. Everyone is busy, has a lot on the go and attending meetings takes away time from other things they could / should be working on. To respect people's time, manage your meeting. Start on time, end on time and make sure that you drive the meeting in such a way that you will cover what needs to be covered during the stated time. Don't allow the meeting to go off the rails and then simply think that you can book an

There is so much talk with respect to COVID and how it has 'changed everything forever'. That's hard to accept. From a professional side, I get it. New restrictions, new concerns and trying to figure out how you can effectively put in place, manage and communicate that it is 'safe' to return to normal. Within a business, changing the culture or the structure of your organization is extremely hard. Businesses have grown and evolved their culture to where it is today. There is a huge amount of shared beliefs, norms and expectations that allow you to operate how you do. You can't just flip the switch and have a totally different picture tomorrow. From a personal side however, I am still waiting to see it. Having been the one who has been going to stores and doing the shopping all throughout this pandemic, I can see that people are done. In the beginning, a lot of people, if not everyone was adhering to whatever guidelines where given. We waited patiently in lines,

Coming from an operations world, you are always on the go. While you might work 8 or 10 hours a day, the other parts of your business and/or your responsibility are usually going 24 hours a day. This is one of the most challenging things for people to manage as they get into an operations world. At first you simply believe that you will do more hours, get ahead of the curve and then you will be able to slow down and relax. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. The more you get accomplished, the more 'opportunities' you seem to have. Added to this, you start to deal with the matrix above more often then you realize. The biggest trap that people fall into with their work and responsibilities is not taking the time to understand where each task / problem / responsibility fits. The other major challenge is that we often take on what 'seems' to be urgent and important ... for other people and not necessarily ourselves. With so many people working from home right now, I

Today's post was inspired by the following quote from the book "The Dichotomy of Leadership": "Every leader must be willing and able to lead, but just as important is a leader’s ability to follow. A leader must be willing to lean on the expertise and ideas of others for the good of the team. Leaders must be willing to listen and follow others, regardless of whether they are junior or less experienced." One of the best ways a leader can truly lead the team is to also follow them. It is extremely empowering for your team to know that you not only listen, but trust them to make important decisions and that you are going to have their back and let them take charge. Some people think that being the leader means you make all the of the decisions all of the time, and if you think your idea is best, to just pull rank and make it happen. Like everything in life, it is better when people CHOOSE.  The autonomy and flow it provides your team is extremely importa

I often am challenged or get asked how I have developed the thoughts and insights I have into certain domains even though I don't have years of work history in those spaces. Maybe I'm just weird, or wired differently, but this always leaves me puzzled. The reality is I'm not sitting around coming up with quadratic equations, most of the way I frame things is rooted in common sense. At the end of the day, when not at work, I am a customer / consumer too, just like everyone else. Often I simply look at things and say, "how would I do this", "how would I make this better or less of a pain in the ass"! It's not rocket science. This always makes me think of some line from a movie or TV show (probably something geeky that I came across over the years because I couldn't Google it - if you know it, let me know!) Basically the idea is that to truly understand something, you need to see it while hanging upside down in front of a mirror. The ide

This week seems to be starting off with a theme for me ... the idea and requirements of Express Delivery in last mile. Last mile is a challenging space. You are making direct deliveries to a customer. These are typically the least efficient deliveries that you can make, because an individual order size most likely will be challenge with respect to the operating costs to perform the activity. The discussions I have seen recently seem to be providing people with a bit of a false sense of security (in my opinion). We live in an age of data and technology, where the smallest operations can replicate what used to only be achievable by the biggest companies. This is a double edged sword however in the face of rising expectations. Everyone thinks about Amazon, and how they are 'easily' able to deliver on their service experience, but even Amazon has been careful and slowly approaching express / same day delivery. Walmart has been in the news recently as they launched their

One of the most interesting things to me is how we can be so sure that we are being clear, or that we are communicating our position perfectly, yet someone else interprets it in a totally different way. The image linked to this post is one of my favourite visual examples of this. In both cases, the person is completely right ... based on their perspective. I recently had an experience where I was trying to explain and show my understanding of the last mile space. That my experience deploying and managing last mile in one context, easily and logically translates to another. For me, I was being crystal clear. My examples clearly demonstrated my mastery and understanding, the way I was framing my points was relevant. And then "Can you highlight how this relates to last mile ..." My initial reaction was to simply restate what I already had (since I had done such a 'good job'). Then I paused. I took some time to step out of myself, and take a different approach. The fac

I have had the opportunity lately to have a lot of discussions with other people that work in the Transportation / Distribution space. What has been really interesting for me has been the gaps in understanding each other's perspective or approaches. Often times people think that just because you work in the same or similar space, you will 'get it'. The unfortunate thing however is that we have created such a culture / society where we are afraid or discourage people to learn. If we are doing business, people don't want to ask questions because they fear that it might make them look less professional ... how can I sell you my service, if you know more or have more experience than me? I love having the opportunity to share my perspective and what I (big emphasis there) have learned. I don't come into those conversations thinking that my answer is the best, or that I am better than you because I somehow 'know' the answer. For most of what we

Have you every really thought about how, or why you ask questions? That might seem like a strange question in itself, but think about it. Do you ask your questions to truly learn and understand or are you asking questions to better or modify your response? It is incredible to me how quickly we jump to solutions. How we hear something, or we take someone's point of view and can very quickly fall into the trap of "thinking we understand". It's not easy to sit back, and try to stay curious. Especially if you are feeling frustrated, rushed, annoyed or some other distracting emotion. One of the best things anyone can do is to actually slow down. Ask yourself, is this a good time for me to engage in this exchange, do I need to work harder to compensate for my feelings, how can I detach from my own thoughts and simply listen to the other person. Next time you are having a conversation, see how hard it is for you to resist the urge to 'add' to the

I posted a video this morning on LinkedIn that was focused on credibility and how important that is for a leader. Credibility is that ability for others to trust and believe in you, and what you say you will do. How does that play with creating a culture? True culture is a tribe. It is a group of people that know each other, trust each other, work for each other ... they feel safe together. A lot of people seem to think that just by joining an organization, by putting a company logo on our shirt and caring you laptop from meeting to meeting that it creates a bond among the employees; maybe, but usually not. We are human, whether in our professional or personal lives, there are just certain things we need. People need to feel safe. We are social animals who learned and developed understanding that our ability to survive, to succeed dramatically increased when we work with others not only for own benefit, but for theirs as well. As we have become so competitive a

Adaptability is a big buzzword right now. Makes sense, the CoronaVirus has up-ended the status quo and everyone needs to be able to adjust to their new conditions. If everyone values the ability to pivot and adapt, why then are we seeing such inertia? The answer? Adaptability is more of a mindset and approach versus systems and tools. I was out running this morning. I have been back and forth with runs, cycling and rucking , overall I am pleased with some of my progress and less so with others. For this week I wanted to start a new program: 5km run on Monday, 10km ruck on Tuesday and a 20km cycle on Wednesday (rinse and repeat for R, F, Sa - day off Sunday). I knew the route I had been using for my runs up until this point was just shy of 4km, so to keep it one continuous flow, I changed the route to what was closer to a solid 5km loop. The run started fine (the first few minutes always make you think it will be easy all the way!). As you get out of that first phase a

Do you think that complicated and complex mean the same thing? It's probably a bit of an unfair question, considering the dictionary basically tells you they are! Complicated: Composed of elaborately interconnected parts; complex Complex: Characterized by a very complicated or involved arrangement of parts, units, etc. This idea however, that these two things mean the same, is one of the biggest challenges we face in the business world today. Why? Because it allows business leaders to use the wrong type of approach to 'solve' the type of problem identified (assuming of course that they have correctly identified the problem). Rick Nason, an associate professor of finance at Dalhousie University’s Rowe School of Business, explains the differences between these two types of problems clearly. Complicated problems may be hard to solve (or may even seem unsolvable at a particular point in time) however they are addressable with a systemic or process

   Ego is one of the hardest things to deal with as a new manager. You are in a new situation, you are most likely leading people for the first time, you are probably a bit younger ... and you just feel like you HAVE to prove yourself. This kinda makes sense right? You were obviously promoted because you knew your stuff and were really good at your old job, so now it MUST be your job to make sure everyone knows how good you are. WRONG! This is the number one mistake most new managers make. I totally get why, we have created this hierarchy in our corporate structures that makes people believe a good supervisor = a good manager = a good director = a good VP. This. Is. Completely. Untrue. The reality is that it takes different skills to be a good leader; and excellence at one level does not automatically mean excellence at the next. To be a good leader, you have to always be trying to check your ego. Yes you are smart, you probably have good ideas, you p

I wanted to share some thoughts today with respect to Experience and Relevance that was, in part, inspired by this quote from Leo Tolstoy “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” That resonated with me and I thought it would resonate with a lot of you as well right now. Pretty much everyone is talking about what changes the coronavirus will being to our societies and businesses. There’s a lot of discussion with respect to change and doing things differently; so that got me thinking about the ideas of experience and relevance. Humans make thousands of decisions every day; but, our brains don’t give each decision one of those decisions equal attention, our brains take all kinds of mental shortcuts. These shortcuts are known as “biases.” They’re not necessarily good nor bad; they just are. When I was younger and closer to the start of my career, I always struggled with having “experience” thrown at me as a way to just

This idea has been on my mind a lot recently. Why is it that people say they want team members who are creative, innovative, disruptive, will do things differently and then yet, never want to seriously look at bringing those candidates onto the team? Why do organizations continually seem to make the "safe" choice? Square pegs for square holes. Now more than ever, companies are looking for innovation from their employees. Three quarters of CEOs in a recent survey said that innovation was a critical top three priority why hiring; yet they also stated that they don't feel like they are getting it. Often, this is because they are hiring the wrong people! If the problem seems so simple to fix (just hire differently), why then do people don't do it? Recruiters & HR: What's in it for them? No honestly, what is in it for the HR partner / manager to speak to enough "outlier" candidates, to be able to understand them, to get where th

learn·ing /ˈlərniNG/ Learn to pronounce noun noun: learning     the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught.  I came across the notion of "Disinterested Learning" this morning and I absolutely love it. I was never a straight A student through school, to be honest, it would probably be more like straight B's! That was never really because of a lack of ability, it was more of a result of how much I enjoyed the subject. In the classes I loved or was really interested in, my marks would be high, in the classes that I took because I had to or if I didn't enjoy the professor or material, B / B+. People often find it amusing then when they find out about how much "self learning" that I do. I read a ton, I research things that I don't understand or want to improve on (and I can even get a little obsessed with my focus). While it wasn't as apparent earlier in life, I do love to learn. It is so

  I have a really weird brain. I am always thinking and have so many divergent trains of thought someone once described my brain as a spider web (I totally prefer awesome neural network, but hey, I'm probably pretty biased). While I have come to enjoy the way I think and it most certainly has benefited my throughout my career, as I get older, maybe even a little wiser, I have come to accept the fact that I can't just go all unfiltered on people (I usually know this has happened when I get this deer in the highlights look from the person in front of me). It's one of the main reasons I have invested in and spent so much time on my own self-development. From leadership, to communication, to coaching, it's important to me to be able to manage myself to create the best possible connections with my team and those that I work with. That being said, it's not always easy, and sometimes it's extremely frustrating. Having ideas bottled up in you

  I have always loved the idea of time, which is probably why I have a solid sci-fi geek streak that runs through me (but you may have already guessed that if you recognized my title!). Really understanding and appreciating the nuances of time, isn't something I feel most people are really into. There's all kinds of authors and books who reference time and that it is just a man made creation that has infected our lives; something that stresses people out as they keep feeling like there isn't enough for all of the things they "have" to do. If you haven't seen them yet and want to twist your mind up with time, check out The Arrival & Interstellar . So the question ... why am I writing about time? With all of the talk of Supply Chains in the news lately, with story after story about the stress on them, how some are failing, pressure to perform, etc, talking about time resonated with me. Effectively managing any operation is about effectivel

These ideas might be a bit jumbled as they are crashing together in my head right now. I am currently reading Originals by Adam Grant (which I am enjoying much more than I expected based on some peer feedback). One of the chapters in the book addresses the concept of Groupthink which is quite relevant for the times we are currently experiencing. The CoronaVirus has, in my opinion, created a really challenge within our communities when it comes to Groupthink, Social Influence and those wanting to be different. Here are my thoughts. Groupthink I feel as though a lot of businesses are being dominated by Groupthink at this time. From my experience, when times are stressful and uncertain, people are quite happy to let someone else make the decisions, no one really wants to be the person who takes responsibility for owning the solution. There is a focus on harmony and conformity, that no one wants to rock the boat or challenge the person making the decisions. The reas

This is a really great read and I recommend it to anyone, but especially those in a leadership role. It is written in such a way that it's as if Bob is answering your questions right in the room. He does a great job ingrating events and facts with his personal feelings and thoughts. What I found really refreshing is that this is another wildly successful leader (like Phil Knight with Nike) that really benefitted from hiring people and not just a resume. The views he presents are insightful about focusing on ability and even putting people in roles that are a little beyond them. What was also interesting to see was that it sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn't, but it never made him question his approach. He is a great model to highlight that people can achieve amazing things, even if it is initially outside of their comfort zones. The back of the book contains an annex that basically summarizes a few of his key learnings and the messages he wants to share.

  So I was finally able to get through my second 72 hour fast in the last 12ish months or so. I have been trying to hit this milestone for a while now, but would constantly find myself cracking and grabbing something in the cupboard. This time however, it was really strange, from the second I started the fast, I was good. I didn't really go through massive sugar drops and seemed like my body transitioned really well into fat burning mode. It was important for me to take control of something and show myself that I can still focus my attention and discipline to achieve a goal in front of me. With everything that is going on, a lot of people feel out of control and are struggling. Setting goals and hitting them brings that sense of achievement and normalcy that we are lacking as we manage the outbreak of the COVID-19. This has given me back some of my motivation to now get back into some other work that I haven't been committed too over the last 3 to 5 d

As the CoronaVirus runs across the world, everyone is suddenly being exposed to news story after news story that is talking about Supply Chains. For an industry that usually doesn't get this much attention, this is great and terrible at the same time. As someone who has spent 13 years of my life in the Supply Chain world, it is normal that your friends, family and other professionals don't really get what you do; or they understand your world in bits and pieces. This is completely normal, I don't profess to know all about financial markets, software development, sales or any other industry for that matter. As we grow and develop in our professional lives, we each develop greater levels of expertise and understanding within our field, and we all do our part to contribute to society. The challenge with this however, comes as we experience Black Swan type events ... suddenly there is all kinds of media coverage, conversation and opinions being shared and not