Category Archives: Knowledge Management

You Can’t Solve a Problem You Can’t Identify …

Nor can you solve a problem that won’t admit exists. Industry Week recently ran a great article on “Surfacing Problems Daily” that pointed out a harsh reality: the culture of many organizations dictates that they only face problems that they know how to address.

But if you only face problems you know how to solve, the problems you don’t know how to solve grow and fester … until, someday, they paralyze you. But it doesn’t have to be the case. You can recognize the problem as soon as it becomes apparent. Even if you can’t solve the problem right away, the sooner you begin to address it, the sooner you are likely to come up with a solution.

So what can you do to improve? According to the article, you can:

  1. Assess the Current Condition
    and make sure you know what to do when you see a problem.
  2. Develop a Mechanism
    to insure that the problem is properly recorded and tracked.
  3. Establish Non-Monetary Incentives to Surface Problems
    to insure that they are identified and recorded.
  4. Define How Leaders Should Respond
    since workers will not surface, track, or even acknowledge problems if the leaders don’t support the initiative.

And make sure that you understand the nature of problems … as old ones get solved, new ones surface. It’s a never ending cycle.

Step 1 To Building a World Class Supply Management Organization

Adopt a start-up mentality.

Yes, it’s that simple. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears will still be required, but, getting it right really is that simple. And a big thank you to Mark Suster, regular TechCrunch contributor, who wrote a great article on Whom You Should Hire at a Startup that allowed me to realize this.

As you may have noticed, a number of issues have been on my mind of late. In addition to Next Generation Sourcing and Supply Chain Education (or lack thereof), I’ve been trying to figure out how an organization without any modern supply management capabilities, a follower if you will, can go about laying the foundations of a world class supply management organization to become tomorrow’s leader. Obviously if next generation sourcing is the goal, it can’t be the starting point, and education, while critical, requires a foundation. And, more importantly, you can’t turn a “B”-Team into an “A”-Team if there is no raw talent waiting to be released, molded, and shaped under the leadership of the right Colonel.

But if you want to build a new capability, you’re essentially building a new organization, and how do you build a new organization? You create a new start-up, and since, as an organization, you have the one thing that most start-ups don’t — money (and lack of adequate funding is the biggest reason most start-ups fail), you’re almost guaranteed to succeed if you follow successful start best-practices. And since there’s really only three best-practices that you need to remember, this isn’t hard to do.

So what are these best practices?

  1. Hire a talented team
  2. Give them a goal
  3. Get out of their way

Taking these points in reverse order, the biggest mistake many first-time entrepreneurs make is that they overvalue their importance in the start-up success equation. They think that no one gets it like they do or that it won’t succeed if they don’t champion it 24/7 or that the team will lose momentum if they’re not constantly preaching the doctrine, when, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, entrepreneur ego is the second biggest reason most start-ups fail. An entrepreneur who believes the start-up can’t succeed without him or her tends to make multiple, deadly, mistakes which include micro-managing top-talent who get frustrated at the inability to do their job and the lack of forward progress (because the CEO isn’t an expert in finance, technology, marketing, or other critical functions that the top-talent is supposed to be leading); overchampioning the cause 24/7 to the point where the talent gets sick of all the cheering and actually loses excitement and drive to succeed; refusing to step to the side and play nice when new leadership is required to take the company to the next level; and overvaluing the company and turning away reasonable investment offers, which drives away any future investment when the rumour gets out the founders are too greedy.

A good entrepreneur realizes that they are the enabler, not the doer, and after giving the talent they hire a goal, gets out of the way of the team and, moreover, does everything they can to remove distractions and barriers to team success because a good team wants to excel and will do whatever they can to shine if allowed. Because, as Suster’s great article on Whom You Should Hire at a Startup points out, an A-Team

  • punches above their weight class,
  • doesn’t care above roles and stretches their job description to do what has to be done,
  • has the right attitude, and
  • gets the job done.

So if you want to build that world-class supply management organization, adopt a start-up mentality, hire an A-Team, give them a goal, provide them with whatever they need (including the right training and technology, which they will help you identify), stand back, and don’t be surprised if miracles happen.

The 9 Cs of Site Selection

A couple of weeks ago I penned a post on Finding the Right Site where I discussed a recent article in Strategy + Business on five factors for finding the right site and noted that I thought there were at least six critical factors. It wasn’t long before Dick Locke corrected me and upped the count to seven. However, after reading this recent article in Global Services on “Location Selection Best Practices”, I am now convinced that there are 9 Cs of site selection.

In addition to the five Cs, outlined in the Strategy + Business article, of:

  • Cost
    What is the total cost of the location, including the costs of land, office equipment, communications, wages, training, taxes, infrastructure, and wages. etc.
  • Capacity
    What is the current availability of talent in the region and the expected availability in years to come? etc.
  • Capability
    What percentage of the talent has the specific engineering skills that the company needs (and/or can be easily trained to acquire those skills) and how easy will it be to find the talent to build and maintain the appropriate operational environments? etc.
  • Communications
    What will be the ability to seamlessly share information between the site and headquarters without cultural, language, or distance obstacles? etc.
  • Culture
    What is the ability of the location to attract talent that will fit in with the company culture? etc.

And the two additional Cs identified by myself and Dick Locke of:

  • Competition
    How many similar companies are setting up in the region? etc.
  • Citizenship
    What is the marketing impact of the location? Are you going to participate in the local economy? etc.

I now believe the following two factors are equally important:

  • Core
    Is the core infrastructure sufficient for your operations? Chances are that you’re going to need a lot of power and water. Can the infrastructure handle it, or is it already at capacity? If the operation can’t go down, are redundant power, water, and/or communications feeds available? You can’t always wait for the infrastructure to catch up.
  • Call
    An extended site visit is absolutely essential before you make a long-term commitment to a new location. A 2-day fly-by to sign the papers and celebrate is not enough to make a selection. The location has to be surveyed, the talent pool has to be evaluated on the ground, and the local living conditions have to be experienced. Someone has to spend at least a few weeks, if not a few months, evaluating the ins and outs, ups and downs, and pros of cons of any location on the short list before a final decision is made. And unless this factor gets its own category, and weighting, it won’t be done and “gotchas” will go undetected.

Selecting the wrong site will cost you tens, if not hundreds, of millions, so take your time and use the 9 Cs to select the right one.

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Why Haven’t You Put a Knowledge Retention Policy in Place Yet?

While reading a recent article in Corporate Executive on “solving the problem of the aging workforce”, I was shocked at a statistic they quoted from a 2008 study conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4CP) that noted that 30% of companies admitted they retained knowledge either poorly or not at all and 78% of companies admitted that they did not have anyone responsible for organizational knowledge retention. In other words, 4 out of 5 companies do not have an individual responsible for insuring knowledge in their company does not get lost!

Without anyone responsible for insuring knowledge retention, a knowledge retention policy will not be created and knowledge will not be captured. As a result, as your aging workforce retires, key knowledge will retire with them. With between 29% and 36% of your workforce eligible for retirement within the next 9 years, that’s 1/3rd of your corporate knowledge at risk of disappearing. Given the amount of knowledge that’s already been lost in the outsourcing craze, where many companies just handed functions over to outsource providers in their entirety — without any thought as to how key knowledge would be retained in case the tasks needed to be reassigned, brought-back in house, or managed internally — can you really afford to lose 1/3rd of your corporate knowledge? I doubt it.

It’s time to put a knowledge retention policy in place … before it’s too late!

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Looking Behind the Knowledge Network Curtains

Today’s guest post is from John Shaw, the Director of Education Services for Supply Management at BravoSolution.

In a recent post, the doctor asked, “Where is the Knowledge Network?” and “What is an aspiring supply management professional to do?”

Our industry is offering a growing list of online resources and supply management organizations. We can use these resources to augment the knowledge we gain through our professional activities and personal networks. As the doctor stated, each of these resources takes time and effort to build, so naturally, the goals and objectives of these networks are aligned with those individuals who invest in building each network in the first place.

Our challenge as supply management professionals is to navigate this forest of information in a way that maximizes our personal development. To do so, we need to understand where our personal objectives align with those of a knowledge network. The better we understand how each network’s objectives align with our own, the more value we will receive out of the limited time we have to invest in them.

So as both a consumer of these networks and a developer of some (see discloser below) I’d like to offer some questions for you to ask when trying to determine if participating in a particular knowledge network would be valuable to you:

  • Does the intent of the network align with the needs of the membership?
    The Network Guidelines should clearly state the audience, and the types of information exchange the network facilitates. If they are not stated, or they do not align with what your current development needs, your time may be better invested elsewhere.
  • Who are the thunder lizards?
    Look to see who the most active participants are. The most active people in a community will steer its direction. If these people are your peers, or better, if they are in roles that you aspire to, look further into participating.
  • Who is in charge?
    Successful communities are driven by the membership. If enough thunder lizards march in the same direction a community will move and take a life of its own. The builder can find him/herself in the passenger seat. In the best scenario, you’ll find that the thunder lizards are your peers, and they are in charge!

So what are we to do? Unfortunately there isn’t a simple answer. Whether we are learning about supply management, following politics or trying to get the best advice online for fixing a leaking pipe, we need to look behind the curtains to understand our information sources

Thanks, John!

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