Vivek Sood's Blog, page 43

What Is the Emerging Fourth Force in Logistics?

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In Love With Constant Firefighting

Vivek Sood

Chairman and Managing Director, Global Supply Chain Group

Nav Dhami

Senior Consultant, Global Supply Chain Group

“Two types of choices seem … to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies’ histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values.” ― Jared Diamond, Collapse

When people seem to believe that always being busy firefighting is ‘work,’ it’s not usually their fault. They’ve grown up in organisations where perpetually being on the lookout for something to go wrong, and then leaping into the shambles to fix it, is the expectation and the norm.…

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Never Mistake Motion for Action

Vivek Sood

Chairman and Managing Director, Global Supply Chain Group

Nav Dhami

Senior Consultant, Global Supply Chain Group

 

(The title of this article comes from a famous line by Ernest Hemingway.)

 

Executives at a large firm were in talks with us over turning around a stricken supply chain, including planning and scheduling activities that were immensely wasteful. All the planning was still manually done, and, as a result, far too many people were employed to do the work than would have been necessary with current technology.…

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Why A Strong Centre Holds The Organisation Together

Vivek Sood

Chairman and Managing Director, Global Supply Chain Group

Nav Dhami

Senior Consultant, Global Supply Chain Group

“Things fall apart, the centre does not hold.” – WB Yeats

A large corporation called on us to run transformation workshops, both in order to create a sense of urgency and to communicate the vision. At the first workshop, the key executives of the company were to be present, and this was of course the right way to get things rolling. However, close to the date of the workshop, we received the rather unusual message that not even one of the top three leaders of the company would be able to make it to the event!…

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The Comfortable Cuddle of Copycat Thinking

Vivek Sood

Chairman and Managing Director, Global Supply Chain Group

Nav Dhami

Senior Consultant, Global Supply Chain Group

 

The Dubious Comfort of Thinking Alike

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

 – Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

One of our clients had a long-established tradition of placing new factories for their commodity product close to the location of the end-user. Like all such customs, there was a time in history when this had made perfect sense because of the economics of the supply chain, but the original reason had long since become clouded and slowly frozen into a piece of dubious ‘truth’ that was a given.…

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Data DATA everywhere – not a drop to drink..

By: Vivek Sood-Managing Director, Global Supply Chain Group

By Gustave Doré - Unknown, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=558803

I had some personal experience in 1990 with the ancient mariners’ rhyme or The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere:

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

I was the newly appointed Chief Mate on a ship with an intransigent bunch of crew from a very aggressive Marxist union. I will never work out where it was a sabotage (to secure a fairly high hardship allowance and compensation), or an accident – but somehow sea water gained entry into every fresh water tank on the ship (but that is a long story about unions and compensations).

The captain (and I) was left with a dilemma, whether to rely on the fresh water generator on board for a long sea voyage, or not. There was no shortage of water – it just was too salty for most purposes. I will tell you how this event panned out at the end of this blog post. But I want to change course here to the real purpose of the post – DATA, DATA everywhere. In my last blog post I recounted a real life story of a business transformation project where information technology fell woefully short.  This is not the only such situation I encountered. In fact I recount more than 20similar examples in my book ‘UNCHAIN YOUR CORPORATION’.

Look at the growth in global data storage capacity below:

By Myworkforwiki – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29452425

Obviously it is not just the capacity – but also the data that is growing,

There are many graphics showing growth of data – here, here, here and all over the cyberspace. The key story they all are telling is just one – WE ARE FLOATING IN DATA.

Just like the ancient mariner had no dearth of water, we have no dearth of data. And, just as minute quantities of salt (3.5%) that is present in all that seawater, is enough to make raw seawater unusable for most practical purposes, minute quantities of data error is enough to make most of the raw data unusable for practical purposes.

On the ships (and in many locations on land) we deploy fresh water desalination plants such as these. The sole purpose of these massive plants is to parse seawater, take it into a pressure chamber, evaporate it at high temperature (because that requires less energy) and then condensate it into distilled water. Further processing is required to remove other contaminants such as bio-hazards and others. Here is the full process in some more detail.

The biggest opportunity in information technology is not to generate (or collect) more data, but to make the existing data more usable. I was asked a question at a recent speech why I was not as bullish as everyone else on big data. I likened the current big data set-ups to an ocean full of seawater. It still takes a huge expense to desalinate the seawater, and to make the data usable.

Any start-ups that figure out a better way to collate, parse, access, and make usable the data to create insights would be a tremendous success. If you know of any, please let me know in the comments below.

In the story above, we had to put into an emergency port to get fresh water rations without which none of our sailors would have survived. In the emergency port, we had a fight with the sea pirates (which is a story recounted in a previous blog).

You can find comments on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-everywhere-drop-drink-vivek-sood?trk=mp-author-card

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Ideas in Action

By Vivek Sood-Managing Director, Global Supply Chain Group

A switched on team of senior management makes all the difference. No matter which part of the world, and how unfamiliar the concepts are – an interactive team will always find how to use ideas for their business.

I recently had the pleasure of interacting with the chairman and top management team of one of the most strategic companies in Asia.  The healthy discussion and the response proved the power of ideas to me once again.

Was also pleased to be presented the Chairman’s award. Thank you.

You can see a gist of ideas I presented on www.5starbusinessnetwork.com

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Industrial Age Tools vs Information Age Weapons

By: Vivek Sood-Managing Director,Global Supply Chain Group

This is the part 2 of my earlier post What I Learnt Fighting Pirates (Not in the Caribbean)! (that post was getting too long, so I had to break it into two parts). Click here to read the incident report prior to the starting point below.

I asked bosun to send a repelling party to cut the ladder and the scrambling rope, while I sent two other reconnaissance parties to the stern and starboard side of the ship to make sure there were no other boarding parties in the dark.

Meanwhile, I was getting an emergency command post established on the boat deck. I sent the cadets to get walkie talkies and give these to the leaders of each of the party.

As  the pirates’ associate on the deck was pulling up the ladder, another of them was fast scrambling up the rope to help him secure the beachhead. Our repelling party was still about 50 meters away when the second pirate was on board. He unleashed a big weapon (I will not name the weapon because my sons read my blogs and I do not want them to get wrong ideas) that stopped our repelling party in its track. That gave the first pirate enough time to tie the rope ladder and up they came with their weapons and numbers.

Obviously, we did not want any casualties. It appeared that even the pirates were eager to avoid casualties.   We reached a sort of short stalemate – they controlled the deck with superior weapons and numbers. We had the advantage of height and visibility from boat deck, and we controlled the accommodation.

Their worst case would have been to jump back over the ships side into the water, scramble into their boats and disappear into the night. Our worst case would have been to close all the accommodation water tight doors (thick steel doors) and lock up from inside.

We were still trying to gauge their intentions. What were they after? Did they want to hijack the ship? Did they want the cash from the captain’s safe? Did they want the crew’s valuables? Did they mistakenly believe that the ships’ cargo was something valuable which could be sold at big profit locally?

As the two rival parties stood on the deck eyeing each other – soon their intentions became clear. A few of them started approaching a bunch of 200 Liter drums tied up on the deck. These were delivered that very day, and contained lubricating oil for the ships engines. Hard to recall the exact number but there were around 20-30 drums totaling about 4000-6000 liters of lubricating oil.

Why would they want it – we do not know. But one by one  – they untied each drum and lowered it into their boats till all of them were taken. From our point of view, this was not something to lose life over. In fact, the only thing we were prepared to defend, was the accommodation – because it was necessary, and a feasible task. With their superior weapons they were in a position to take any of the deck stores (or even cargo); these things were insured and replaceable. They made no such attempts, and disembarked to leave soon after.

It was not a huge loss of goods . Still, this incident rankles in my memory as I try and think about what we could have done better.

We could surely have a number of watchmen instead of just one QM on duty. Extra watch would have ensured that no ropes with grappling hooks were left uncut.  But given that crews in most ships are stretched too thin – that would be done only in piracy prone areas, which this was not known to be. Plus, our ship did not have valuable cargo that generally attracts pirates.

We could have also run faster to prevent the ladder being lowered to them. But second pirate put an end to that quest. If our repelling party had reached them when the second pirate was still on the scrambling rope, we might have succeeded in cutting his rope and also cutting the ladder away. But they had chosen boarding spot carefully – nearly 150 meters away from the accommodation. Takes a long time to get to in a situation like this, where split seconds make all the difference.

We could have better weapons, so we could have a fairer fight at hand, and there are pros and cons to that argument in that situation.

But, in another set of situations, I see people grappling with impossible odds with inadequate weapons all the time. I am talking about business  transformations that I help companies with for the last 19 years since becoming a management consultant after my MBA.

Traditional tools of industrial age – methodologies, knowledge, practices and power structures are regularly deployed to fight superior forces of information age. Most people do not know the difference between the information age weapons and the industrial age tools, till it is too late.

Take a look at the graphic at the end of the blog. And, if you are still convinced that you have everything for the fight ahead – head out to this link to confirm your opinion.

On the other hand, if you are still taking stock of the situation, like I was doing from the boat deck before sending the repelling party out, this link will immediately give you the necessary information to formulate your game plan.

 

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How to increase your personal earnings?

By: Vivek Sood-Managing Director, Global Supply Chain Group

How to increase your personal earnings? Many people in the business world think about this question from time to time.

No doubt, in the long run, you get paid for your results.

Results are derived  from two critical factors – skills and dedication.

If you have the relevant skills, and you apply them with dedication, you are in a position to ask for, and get paid, more.

To determine whether you are getting paid less, more, or right amount, and to chalk  out a future earning path use the following rough picture showing 9 levels and commensurate daily remuneration.

Whether you are in the corporate hierarchy, or in corresponding consulting hierarchy, everyone has to find their own level on a totem pole, and this may serve as a rough guideline.

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The Universe of Workology

By: Vivek Sood-Managing Director, Global Supply Chain Group

I cannot claim to know everything in the universe of workology. But after starting work at the age of 17 and worked almost continuously  (barring a few short breaks for full time studies), for the last 34 years I do have a perspective. And, I do not hesitate to share it when the need arises.

Recently, someone approached me to mentor her about the salaries, levels and what is required to progress. I narrowed down the answer to the last question to two critical factors – skills and dedication. If you have the skills, and you apply them with dedication, no employer would want to let go of you. Within reason they will be willing to pay much higher than to someone else you fell short on either of these two counts.

To discuss the levels and remunerations I drew the following rough picture showing 9 levels and commensurate daily remuneration. Whether you are in the corporate hierarchy, or in corresponding consulting hierarchy, everyone has to find their own level on a totem pole, and this may serve as a rough guideline.

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