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March 28, 2022

Supply Chain Planning Live - Speaker Spotlight: Supply Chain and Culture Transformations.

Courtesy of Innovation & Excellence's José Pires below is a transcript of his speaking session on 'Supply Chain and Culture Transformations: How Great Enduring Organizations Scale People, Innovation and Value' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at the Supply Chain Planning Live Virtual Conference.

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Session Information:

Supply Chain and Culture Transformations: How Great Enduring Organizations Scale People, Innovation and Value

In a world disrupted by exponential technologies, how do you build a culture where extraordinary performance becomes ordinary? How great enduring organizations consistently deliver exponential leaders, growth, and value creation?

We will explore how the best cross-industry organizations leverage "the right" culture, methods, technologies, and people as the ultimate engine for value creation and sustainable competitive advantage. 

Session Transcript:

Let me change hats, because I want to share with you performance benchmark from great Enduring organizations, and what that looks like, and how do they shape their supply chains with their culture to achieve great, enduring results?

So, changing hats here, I'm going to shift to from conference hosts chew, presenter on this subject around the connected worker that we have today that we all have become connected workers in different ways. Although there have been physical distances and separations they have that have been imposed on us. Some may argue that we have become more connected than ever before through different technologies that we're using, like the one we're using today, so as we as we discuss the supply chain and cultural transformations, let me share my screen here with you.

You should be able to see my screen there momentarily.

We are going to discuss how a very small subset of organizations in the world, are being successful, of integrating their supply chain and culture into meaningful transformations that create value.

And I want to be clear. This is a very small subset of organizations. There are success for doing that.

Because, although we hear about, you know, digital transformation as somewhat of a trendy word and expression, the reality of digital transformations is that most of them are failing miserably, because just automating or bringing in technology to what we do without transforming our business without transforming our culture is ineffective.

And the mace is It's incredibly tempting.

But as we discussed before, technology can make things. great things happen. But it can also make stupid happen at the speed of light. So how do we make sure that our transformations and our supply chains are aligned with the best practices for this great, enduring organization? So what do those practices look like? What are the concepts? What are the mechanisms that they use?

José Pires-3And what can we learn from them, and how can we apply to our organizations? Now, as a preface to the discussion, culture can be this big ward. And we're going to talk a little bit about what culture means in the context of our discussion. We could spend hours debating some of these items.

But I want to emphasize to you that none of the things that I'm going to share it with you are based on my opinion, on what I like and what I don't like, or any book that I have written about the subject.

This are truly the perspectives of Graham doing organizations and practitioners who are doing this today.

So, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude for the collaborative leaders across many, many organizations that have helped me build this understanding of great enduring organizations. And by all means, I'm not saying that this is organizations shown here are all great enduring organizations because they are not.

Achieving greatness is one thing. Maintaining that greatness is incredibly difficult, especially on the very rapid changing times that we're living through right now, with tremendous uncertainty and lots of disruptions.

But I do it all to them the, the, this, this understanding of what it takes to shape your culture towards enduring greatness. And I want to start by showing the winners. This, this goes back to the digital Transformation Operational Excellence awards that we had in December of last year, and we were able to award prizes to the best of the best organizations. And they get here on the stage, and they, we celebrate them.

But the impression that it gives is that there is a whole lot of organizations there are at this level of greatness.

And the reality is that what this picture doesn't show is that for the few winners that we see on the stage, there is a long road littered with failures on digital transformation.

And for the ratio that I would say for the people that you see here on the stage, for the actual people who think they are there or the organizations will think there are there, it's maybe a 1 to 100 ratio.

Some people will talk about, you know, 80% failure rate, 90% failure rates. I think if you look at the intended outcomes of digital transformation and what's and the actual results, that those failure rates are much higher.

And so, now, what do the winners look like? What did they have?

What have we learned from doing this and across now 20 years now and certainly digital transformation has intensified in the last maybe 3 or 4 years, but what have we learned from the organizations that make it and what have we learned from those that there really never make it?

So, I want to start by identifying the blockers that we have seen for practice, And there is some research that has been done by different organizations, that conclude the same things.

Btog CTAThis specific one was, instead of 5000 organizations by I Triple E, that I use as research evidence, but the reality is that our practical experience show the exact same thing.

And the so called confirmation bias, if you will.

But these are the things that we also seen in practice that are become blockers for organization is speed, innovation and growth and really failed digital transformations, including supply supply chain transformations.

What we see is that organizations think that technology is going to solve their problems, they implement technological solutions, starts with a bang, and then dies as low death slowly chewed away by the jaws of the culture of that organization, now what you see are things like, wow, organizations is incredible siloed. That's why it's so hard to do this, we need more collaborations, or we have a lack of faith in the objectives of our organization. There is no higher purpose here, so I can align my purpose as an individual to the purpose of this organization to achieve this great performance.

There's fear of failure that permeates all organizations at the individual level and the social level at the structural organizational level. Fear, abounds in organizations, especially in times of great change and great disruption.

And then there are organizations and professionals who just can't deal with uncertainty. They have a hard time of ambiguity. And this are the top five blockers for this journey of transformation.

Now, what's behind this blockers? And what's behind this blockers is what we call the jaws of culture.

Because the, every organization has a culture, that's whether it's being designed, or has evolved, exists, and culture exists at the highest law. That enterprise wide culture exists a local levels.

A geographic locations, culture is certainly segmented, But the jaws of culture, if what you have, what are you doing? I don't care if it's technology. If it's supply chain, whatever initiative you have in your organization. If it's not a line of the jaws of culture, it's going to chew it up, and it's going to spit it out.

So, let's get a little bit deeper on this. So what is, what is really culture and the context that I'm speaking about here?

And we can spend ears discussing this topic. I will not. I'll look at it from a practitioner's perspective.

And from a practitioner's perspective, we need to simplify what culture is, to get the most results out of that.

And what culture is simply, are the habits and the behaviors of the individuals and teams in the organization.

What people feel, and what people think, and what they say matters quite a bit.

But ultimately, culture is created by what people do.

And then the question becomes, well, if it is about the behaviors of individuals and teams and disorganization, and I want to have a good culture, what does that mean, what does it mean to have a good culture in our organization?

That's a very, it's very good questions are very difficult question.

In the only common denominator that we have seen on great enduring organizations is that they have a very clear answer to that question.

And the clear answer to that question is that they certainly have a strong set of core values, but the behaviors that's demonstrating their organization, that shapes their culture.

The only common trait and behavior that we have seen across all this great enduring organizations is that they have built a good culture, build on value creation behaviors. Now, value creation can be financial value creation for sure, but it also includes social value creation.

How do we use our talents and gifts to serve the world?

So, it's financial and social value creation behaviors is what they demonstrate.

OK, so if I need to demonstrate the social value creation behaviors.

So, we should be transforming towards that and developing and implementing and making those of you hit behaviors visible to everybody else, That's sounds good, But why is that so hard to do that, But why so many organizations go into this culture and business transformation, but they fail.

Well, they fail because, number one, they don't even understand that they need value creation behaviors and choose that even if they understand that, your culture will resist what most needs to change.

So, it's it's like telling a smoker that they need to stop smoking.

It's pretty obvious, right, But it's not easy because there's a reason why the old habit was built, and that you don't get you changed the old habit by. Just by saying, Don't do it anymore. You have to have an entire system that needs to be created for that transformation to take place successfully, and before we get to self righteous about transformation and I'm gonna say, Oh yeah, I'm really good about it, but everybody else's bad about it. Just understand that. We, as human beings, are not wired for change, and organizations is the collective reflection of who we are.

So change is good, as long as it does not affect us personally, right?

So remember organizations are like that they longed for safety and predictability, change and transformation is painful.

And who wants to do that?

So if you don't have a set of got a set of clear directives on why you want to transform, you want the successful. So what does it take, just successfully transform that. And what will we have seen is that it takes a holistic view, which very few organizations have, including very senior leaders. I am privileged to have collaborated with more than 50,000 excellency, innovation leaders across all industries in more than 20 countries. And you'll be appalled about the things that I'm going to share with you here. And you're going to say, well, this stop CEOs, you know, this is common sense, isn't it?

SCP GraphicsCommon sense is the least common of the Census, especially large organizations. So what I'm going to share with you here at a holistic level, and then are more tactical level, is not common sense for those organizations, because you're not practicing it.

And if it is common sense, it's not a common sense behavior that they're demonstrating, So the successful ones that transform themselves. So what did they do?

So I could spend hours on just this item, But I would just going to give you the quick view of each one of the segments, and move on.

They start with a clear purpose. They backup, they, collectively, specially a senior leaders in the organization. They understand that, if you're a for-profit business, yes. You are looking for profitability in your business. You have to create value, tangible value for your business. That's fine. That's taken for granted. But what is your ultimate purpose of the organization? How do you serve the world?

You must have a clear purpose today to be at Great Enduring organization.

And that that's not enough, because now you have to solidify that with a strong set of core values and beliefs that you're going to build in your organization.

And those strong set of core values and beliefs are going to support that clear purpose, to things that sound easy, but are hard to do.

And then, you need to attack the moods and feelings in your organization, or maybe not the right word. Because I actually want to use a more positive, Or you need to elevate the moods and feelings, because the reality is that the standard modes and fill is in every organization is negative.

And why is that?

Because we are wired for safety and predictability, our brain was not wired for innovation and transformation.

Our brain wants to keep things safe and reliable for us to survive, and organizations are like that, so the natural state of an organization is one of: somewhat of fearful, and the avoidance that wants to avoid risks and wants to keep things safe. And tends to be a bit on the negative side.

So you need to work on elevating the moods and feelings in your organization because to act at a higher level, you need to set the moods and feelings at a higher level in your organization. So there's a whole or work on elevating moods and fill is an organization. This is not about just making everybody feel good. It is about elevating moods and feelings gradually. It's about getting organizations are typically on the negative side in their moods and feelings. They are the press. They are stressed. They are burned out, and you start moving them to the point, at least, that there are neutral, where they can look at things and be interested in things first, even if they're not positive about them, and then over time to move them to be more collaborative, to be more trustworthy, to be more innovative, as higher levels of moods and feelings, permeate the organization.

So that needs to be worked on systematically as well. And then you need to follow that up with the right mindset for whatever it is that you're trying to achieve with your purpose of your core values. So, just to give you an example, If you want to be a more innovative organization, Yana create value for innovation. Wonderful.

But then you need to understand how to develop the mindsets of innovation.

And the mindset of innovation needs to be built on, the right principles of innovation, And this is where it's really tricky, because the principles is not something that you read in a book.

You have to look at practitioners.

You have to look at the principles of the practitioners and the successful practitioners deploy.

And those are the principles that you want to adopt. And some of those principles, I will share them with you today, specific to innovation. But remember, this mindsets have to be built on key practitioner principles, not theoretical principles.

And then the principles are not enough, You must develop in your organization, the mechanisms, that translate the principles into actions, because it's not helpful to tell people in your organization to just be more innovative.

There was a breach of that.

But, they don't know how to do it. They don't even know what innovation means to them.

So, how, how do you set the right mindset, some principles, and then you have the mechanisms that translate the principles into actions.

And these, those actions with value creation actions that will demonstrate the value creation behaviors that start shaping the culture that you want to have.

Now, this is incredibly simple when I show like that. It's very, very hard to do.

And on in our organizations where the average CEO in the United States anyway has a tenure of three years, it's not easy to be great enduring at anything because they don't have chronically consistency with their purpose and the signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness for you to change.

The signature of mediocrity for organizations, and people, is chronic inconsistency with their purpose.

And that's the ultimate definition of discipline. Being discipline is not falling arrangement. A set of rules being discipline, is being caught chronically consistent with your purpose.

Now, you may find that this kind of fluffy Maybe.

But that's what it takes to be a great enduring organization. Because you can do lots of intelligent automation projects, and you can do more efficiency in your supply chain. But that just gets you to play on. there may be awkward level, because any organization can do that.

But if you want to be at a level where you consistently develop and deliver, it's value, at scale, over long periods of time.

Now, you need more than just a few cases here and there, you need an entire organization that's aligned with a clear purpose, and that fulfills every one of these requirements here for successful transformation.

So let me go and get started getting more practical with you.

So, when the organizations that do it that are successful, what do you think matters most of those organizations? Do you think that they are really good at what, do you think they are really good at coming up with new ideas? Do you think they're really good at the discipline methods for execution?

Do you think they're really good at implementing technologies like RPA, AI, machine learning, you know, and blockchain, and many other technologies that are being implemented today?

Or do you think that it's all, it's all about the people, they just valued their people? Their people are their most important asset. So, it must be about the people.

So what do you think, What matters most on this successful journey for transforming yourself in a in the great Enduring Organization: ideas, methods, technologists or people, so I'll briefly go through each one of them.

one could argue its idea is because we need ideas, ideas are very important, but I'll also say that while we observed, is that in mediocre organizations, ideas are everywhere, they don't have a shortage of ideas.

What, what they don't have is people who are willing to put their reputation behind ideas.

Screenshot (4)OK, So it must be methods, right, Joseph? You must be about agile, and chew and supply chain optimization. It must be about digital twins, and digital twins applications. You must be about lean. You must be about six Sigma.

Methods are important for creating a discipline approach for execution.

The methods alone do not transform businesses, people do.

I have been a certified Link, six Sigma Master Black Belt for nearly 30 years, but for most people, that sounds like a dangerous mental condition.

It doesn't help them, Methods, do not transform businesses.

People do, OK, So it must be technologies, technologists, like you have mention. We did RPA and intelligent automation. Next week, we're gonna be talking about enterprise architecture a couple of weeks from now. We have machine learning, and AI, and blockchain and natural language processing. And we have all this amazing new technologies are coming to the world today, and changing the way we work. We'll end with the way we live.

That is true, but it's also true that that the wrong technology can make stupid happen at the speed of light.

So the question becomes, is it about tech knowledge, ideas, methods, technologists, or is it people people? ha. I have already mentioned people a few times. People, after all, are our most important asset.

We say that, and when we say that, we don't behave in ways that showed that we actually, when we start saying that people are most important, asset, we start treating them like assets and when things get tough, you know, what we do with certain assets, We get rid of them.

And we get rid of them very quickly, and people are the first wants to go. In heavy industries, they are the, the first one out of the door.

So, if there are most important asset, I don't think our behavior is being very consistent.

So, people are not assets to start with, People are.

So, we need to treat them like such.

And most important, what we have found in great enduring organizations is that they have, they value and respect all people, but make no mistake.

There is a smaller group of people in their organization, what we call the right people who amplify their purpose, who amplify their core values, Who amplify value creation. And those people are the people who make successful transformations. Transformations do not happen without tremendous leadership.

And those are the people that you need to find in your organization.

Those are the people that you need to become, if you're complaining about things not working in your organization.

Maybe you're the person who needs to step up, and lead that transformation for the organization.

So, as I said here, the world of greatness is very confusing because he has this forces that pull in very different directions. Everything that I said, I had a kind of statement that was a contradiction, to a certain extent.

I was saying, this is good and bad.

The world of greatness is not our world. The world of greatness is an and the world where we have to blame the intelligent land, forces, the pull in very different directions.

Made the AUC pretty spends endless hours debating between option A or option B greatness, realize that in most cases, what is required is an intelligent blending of the forces that pull in different directions.

It is option A And option B The question is that, how can we live with that? And there is no greater contradiction than the forces of excellence and innovation. Because on one side, you have excellence. That is all about setting high performance standards and meeting and exceeding those performance standards. Nothing wrong with that, you should do that.

But if you only do that, you're destined to become obsolete and you're irrelevant irrelevant, especially in times of rapid change and technological change, like we're observing.

Now, then, you may say, OK, got it. So you must be all about innovation, right? So, the most innovative organizations are the great and learning organizations of our time.

And, that's actually not true.

The evidence doesn't bear that what we have seen in the organizations that are great and during organizations that they are actually not the most innovative in their segment.

If you consider most innovative as they come up with innovations all the time, what we have seen is that the green enduring organizations, they have innovation, but they are not the most innovative. Because the most innovative organizations, they tend to fall in love with technology, They tend to fall in love with innovation for its own sake.

They continuously innovate, but they are not consistent with their purpose.

So, they innovate, they, they pride themselves about being nimble and agile, but if you look them long term, it's a straight line performance With a zig-zag around that straight line performance, they're just doing an undoing things all the time.

José Pires-3That doesn't make you great, That makes you mediocre.

You must be chronically consistent with your purpose. How do you get there? You'll have a foundation of excellence and that's why we have seen in this great enduring organizations a foundation of excellence, and then they have the discipline just step away from that and say, there's gotta be a better way. Not a five or 10% better way, but a 5 or 10 fold that away. And when I find the fun new perspective, that innovation, now I have the discipline to scale that innovation better than anybody else And you know how great into your organization's a scale innovation.

They scale innovation by applying the principles of excellence to the innovation that they created.

So although excellence and innovation despise each other, they are absolutely necessary for each other in the church to transform organizations integrate enduring organizations.

Now, there's a lot to absorb here. There's a lot to digest. That's the practice that we have seen, and what comes out of that practice.

Now, I have advised hundreds of organizations around the world, but it's different when I am actually the leader of excellence and innovation for these organizations. So, because now, I have to live of the consequences of that.

So, very briefly, I want to share with you, what does it feel like when you're leading these things for organizations? And what are the lessons that I can share with you, as a leader, not as an advisor?

So, as a leader, my background was in engineering and investment banking.

I was born in Brazil, study in the United States. My first job was to work for a Japanese company. And I was in the most advanced technological development positions as Sony in the beginning of my career, so here's a Japanese company where I have my boss, his name was ..., and I went to Sony thinking that, whoa! I'm going to be doing technology development and design for Sony, you know, back then, was like, I'm at the top of the world, right? This is amazing. And when I got in there, ...

told me that I was not going to get any training. That was not going to go into some sort of engineering, a rotational program, that he expected me on my first week of work to come up with 100 innovations on the most advanced technologies that we had a company.

100.

I thought it was going to fail. one day I can tell it the true horror of this story when we have more time. But I'll summarize. By the end of the week, I barely made it.

I came over a hunter or innovations.

I was hoping that he was going to give me some training assignments for next week, and then he looks at me and says, good job. Next week you have to identify 200 innovations.

So, hash Hassan became one of the greatest mentors of innovation for me for value creation to this day Anda.

I have been very fortunate to have someone like that in my life early, my career.

So what is the lesson that I want to share with you who may not have been fortunate enough to have someone like that guide you on true innovation?

When it comes to real innovation, your gender, your race, your ethnicity, or how many certificates you have hanging on the I love myself wall, doesn't matter.

Because when it comes to great innovation, especially in times of uncertainty, a rapid change like right now, the only way that you'll find the real innovators in your organization is by create a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms.

And by doing that, clear a meritocracy of ideas and clear execution mechanisms that the tasks of innovation execution will reveal who they truly innovators are in your organization. So here is less than one summarize for you.

On supply chain, specifically to this topic and implementation of automation and innovations or just supply chain optimizations.

Your job as a leader is to create a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms for people who are working with you to identify paradise and implement what creates the most of that in the shortest time and simplest means.

Absolutely, you have the view of the whole, and then you identify, prioritize and implement what creates the most valid. The shortest time is simplest means, and it is by doing that, that you're gonna be able to differentiate those who do versus those who talk about it.

And those who do are disproportionately important because they are demonstrating the behaviors for success in your organization.

So, when I left soni, we joined a startup that changed the world based in California and San Diego, California, Simer XML, develop technologies for the semiconductor industry that to this day, allow Moore's Law to take place. I'll let you look up what Moore's Law is.

This company had the best scientists in the world, in this startup, and for a few years, they couldn't get anywhere.

How come I thought it was about getting the best, brightest people in the world in the place. So then they'll figure out how to solve hard problems.

Isn't that what we're told, doesn't work that way.

A lot of very bright people, we spend endless hours trying to convince other people in the room that they are the brightest person in the room.

So it doesn't work to just get the best and brightest people in the room, you have to teach them.

Collaborative leadership.

Collaborative leadership is the least understood leadership principle and the most important leadership principle for great enduring organizations.

Collaborative leadership requires you to surround yourself with people, with diverse perspectives who are willing to voice those perspectives without fear of retaliation, towards a common purpose.

I'll let you rewind, if you're watching this on video, and listen to that again, it's incredibly hard to do that.

But there exists a set off principles, methods and techniques that we need to equip our professionals with so that we don't just tell them or be more innovative and collaborative. That we actually showed them how to do that effectively and efficiently.

So collaborative leadership is essential for great enduring organizations because it allows people with different perspectives to build something great with a common purpose.

Now, when I left that very successful startup in the semiconductor industry, I wanted to spread the award of excellence innovation across great organizations.

And there was no better one than Nestle 850,000 professionals, 585 business units all over the world, and the question is, how do you accelerate innovation? And excellence in a setting like that?

And the short answer and the lesson that I want to share with you, is kind of the, the topic of this whole presentation.

Is that, before you go in, in any organization, including yours, and tries to transform it, be empathetic and respectful on how they got to where they are.

So, if you don't, if you're not empathetic to their history, if you're not empathetic to how they got you, where they are, the jaws of culture are going to chew you up, and spit you out, because, if culture eats strategy for breakfast, excellence, innovation, supply chain optimizations, are just side dishes in the jaws of culture.

So especially in a company that large, with so many cultures and subcultures, how do you start?

You start by understanding how they got there, showing respect and empathy for how they got there, building value to them, where they are currently, and then bringing them along.

SCP GraphicsIt's not easy, and it's not fast. And my next case is just a very great example of that.

you may not have heard of Black and Veatch is one of the greatest organizations on infrastructure development from around the world.

More than 100 years of innovations in more than 160 countries building infrastructure for energy, water, telecommunications, 12,000 of the best engineers doing that as a private organization. That is incredibly successful.

So, what, I want to show some data now behind this discussion. So, what does it look like now, when you're in the organization like that? It sounds wonderful, right? 12,000 engineers, ready to innovate, right?

I had the CEO come in and say, oh, let's accelerate innovation. Our company. It's a 100 year old company, Do you think it's, it's, it's everybody. There was happy to see the innovation guy come in and do it?

No.

Because when you have 12,000 smart people in the business, you have 12,000 different opinions about how should be, how anything should be done.

And then, did I go in there and I say, OK, forget about what you have done for 100 years. Let's just going applied the principles of excellence innovation.

No, if I did that, they will fire me.

And everybody who looks like me, I have to show respect and understand their history, and what is their history.

History Of Wonderful innovations for more than 100 years.

History of incredibly capable technical people, project management disciplines. Me, incredible, talented folks, in the end, very robust business processes.

So were they interested in, like, shifting should this entrepreneurial model where you'll find the best people by setting a meritocracy of ideas?

Not at all.

Not at all.

What they're interested, they're interested. They thought, I need discipline approaches. We're gonna implement Lean six Sigma in this company, and we want to do it well. We're gonna focus on ideas, methods, and technologies.

Notice not on people, We focused on ideas, methods, and technologists. Why did you do that?

Shows that you just said that people was the most important, because you have to show respect and empathy for where the organization is currently, and you gotta bring them along, so otherwise, I wouldn't survive there to bring them along.

So I gotta show value first before I can move them, And it took six years to show that value, so that we can move to the next level of development.

Do you have the purpose, the passion, the discipline, and the resilience? should do that with your organization.

Then, it's not only meeting them where they're at with ideas, matters, and technologists to build real value. And what you have here is the vetted that was created by them in their teams by applying the methodology of Lean and six Sigma to their systems.

Wonderful. We got 3 or 6.

We shouldn't be celebrating becaus, 50% of transformations die by year three, 99% die by year five.

So we got you your six, we're part of the 1% club.

We should be celebrating.

But as a leader of excellence and innovation, quietly uncomfortable with the status quo.

I felt that I had built enough of our reputation with adequation with the key influencers in this organization to truly transform it, and how do you truly transforming now?

We need to address the people issue.

We need to now that you understand that ideas, methods, and technologies. Yes, we can do that, and we're just going to be good by doing that.

To be great, we need to find the right people in our organization. So I can go into my CEO now and say, hey, listen, look at the track record that we have here in the last 5 to 6 years, and what are we going to be doing to this point forward? Is that we're gonna change, we're gonna make people the center of our next level, Not should be good, but you'd be great.

And if you say that in your first year at the job, you're going to be considered a flower child that doesn't understand the business, and they're going to get rid of you, or make you irrelevant.

So make sure that you create a lot of value. before you talk about things that are not normal to that culture. That is not the emphasis of that culture.

So with that, we have made the change because I had built the capital with the senior leaders and the key influences their organization to try and experiment with something that was audacious in that organization.

And what we did then is an experiment. We said forget about, you know, ideas are cool. Methods are interesting. Technologists can be interesting.

But they come and go, can we focus on the right people? Can we focus on people with purpose, passion, discipline, and resilience because those are the traits that we've found on the right people.

So, can we focus on those people to create disproportional value? And you know in the beginning what happened? People were skeptical? They still want to stay true just from two methodology and I have nothing against the methodology. But it's not about link, it's not about six Sigma. It is about building, value creation behaviors, collaborative leadership and innovation, value creation behaviors, skills and competence across the organization.

So when we did that, we had some skeptics who are not sure if they're going to jump into this, and then people realized, wow, this is true. It's a meritocracy of ideas, clear execution mechanisms there. They're allowing everybody to participate on this now. And they are allowing the test of innovation execution to separate those who can't do, versus those who would like to talk about it.

So what we found is that over a five year period now, we had spun national growth and value creation and explanation from growth, involuntary engagement at a global scale, and we went on to win multiple global awards.

Now, what is the lesson here?

The lesson here is that the empathy for culture, the and the meet your organization where they're at.

Show value with what they currently believe in and then systematically change that with the focus on the right people. Now, this took 10 years. In an organization that has 100 years old, maybe you can do this in three years.

In an organization that's smaller, an organization that doesn't have such rich history of success, maybe you'll have a burning platform, There was no burning platform here.

So now, in my next challenge, I didn't have 10 years. I needed to do it in 18 months.

So this is what I'm going to share with you.

We had an organization now that was nothing but ordinary and that was asked to come in and lead a program in this organization.

And the motto was, Let's go for extra ordinary.

Wow.

Ah, oh, by the way, we have 18 months to make this happen.

In an organization that's now, 10 times bigger than the previous organization, I'm talking about a Fortune 100 organization here.

So what is the story here?

The story here is that into 2010 this organization had a change in leadership.

This organization had a change in leadership the name of this company, ... Corporation, and what they had at that time was a $2 billion market valuation which was less than the book value of this company.

The market did not think much of this company, and the, the idea, the perception is that, they're just gonna go into bankruptcy, and they're gonna disappear.

Screenshot (4)But there comes, a new leader, and the ... leadership team looks at what we can do here to separate ourselves with competitive advantage. And there wasn't a clear competitive advantage.

So what did we do?

Why did we did?

And what they did, what the leadership team and the CEO did, was incredibly smart, but very courageous.

Because what they decide is that our ultimate competitive advantage is our culture, and we need to build the sculpture. You go back to the picture of the Django and the components of building. And transforming a culture, we need to build the sculpture.

For excellence, we need to build this culture for value creation. We need to build a culture as a competitive advantage.

So how did they do that?

They did that by creating a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms for excellence and innovation, for value creation.

They develop collaborative leadership skills widely in this organization.

They create this meritocracy of ideas and made it accessible to everyone. Everybody can participate.

We equip you with the ability to take different perspectives, the problems, and Dan, we allow you to identify, prioritize.

And if successful, in aligning those priorities with the organization, strategy, with the structure of the organization, you will be given time to go implement those innovations.

So, you fast forward on building this discipline, on an annual basis.

And by the time that I got in, and we are supposed to scale this back in 18 months, we got to the level that we had now.

2000 innovations being identify, prioritize, and executed by IR professionals everywhere in the organization.

From supply chain, to commercial, to business development, to marketing, to logistics, to refining to, to downstream operations, suit over 2000 innovations. That on an annual basis, by 2018, we're delivering more than a billion dollars in additional earnings for the organization.

Validated financial earnings for the organization.

And this $2 billion company by 2018, had a market value of $35 billion.

How do we do this?

So I want to summarize this concepts for you once more. How did we do this, a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms widely develop collaborative leadership skills and innovation, execution skills?

Now, ultimately, the greatest competitive advantage that you have in your organization is to unleash the power of your people to go for extraordinary.

And this is a contact sport, even though we live in this connected world where we are at a distance from each other.

You still have to touch people, and you have to touch, you have to touch their heads. You have to touch their hands, and you have to touch their hearts.

You have to be there with them in this journey to go for extraordinary. So, if you could zoom in into the picture that I have here, you would see that, this people.

I was there with them all along to make these things happen. Now, we only have certain times here, there's much, much greater depth to each one of these areas.

But I want to summarize this concepts for you here, and I want to summarize them.

Let me do a quick change here for you, and I want to summarize for them as the following.

We have to identifying the organizations who are the right people, and the right people. They have purpose. They have passion. They have discipline, They have resilience.

Once we identify the right people, then we equip them with collaborative leadership skills and innovation execution skills.

Now, how do you identify those right people in the beginning? You don't know who they are. You may have a gas or who are the people with purpose, passion, discipline, or resilience?

But I'll say that that guests may be wrong.

So your job as a leader is to create a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms. And when you do that, what you're going to see is that some of these people have purpose, passion, discipline, resilience.

They also have a little bit of courage and they step up, and once they step up, you say, OK, let's equip them now, with the ability to take different perspectives at problems and opportunities. Innovation is a discipline. It is a discipline of taking different perspectives, the problems and opportunities to unlock new value.

So we must equip them with collaborative leadership skills and innovation execution skills.

That's not enough.

We also must share with them the message that, listen, we're going to manage the risks in our organization as we do this new things to create value, but make no mistake. Even after we manage risks, you must have courage.

SCP GraphicsYou must have courage and you must have discipline just step off the ledge.

And then you're going to be safe.

But it will be a ride, and you will not be fun in the beginning. You will be very rewarding as you transform yourself and your organization.

And remember that, ultimately, our responsibility as leaders is to create an environment in our organizations where this great people, in this great ideas can connect. That is the ultimate accelerator of innovation for value creation in any organization.

So, because of our reduced time, I will, I share this concepts with you here as a beginning on this journey.

I want to remind you that there are only two types of people who predict the future, Those who don't know, and those who don't know that they don't know.

So, do not outsource your thinking when it comes to predicting the future, because nobody knows.

And the best way to predict the future is to create the future.

The best way to create the future, is to build a culture of excellence and innovation in your organization, because that will indeed become your only true, sustainable, competitive advantage, because ideas and methodologies, and technologists, they'll come and go.

But the right people in your organization that build that culture, with adequation behaviors, those you better keep. Otherwise, you're gonna lose your true, most valuable asset.

Now, this journey continues. You know me from here. You can fall on LinkedIn. The journey that we carry on until my end of life in this planet on accelerating excellence innovation with this great enduring organizations, and learning from them what it, what I am allowed to publish, publicly used. Is available typically on LinkedIn and other areas where I can do public announcements. So, thank you for your time today. I will take any questions, you can ask them, on the LinkedIn posts that we have on there. Under this conference. I'm gonna change hats here now back as a conference, a leader. And I want to talk about what's coming up tomorrow. Tomorrow, we have an incredible lineup of industry leaders who are going to be sharing their expertise with us. And so let me change my hat back to that of conference host.

And I'm going on here.

And that let's talk about what's coming up tomorrow. So we have.

Sure my cameras offer you. Yep.

So we have tomorrow, an incredible lineup of cross industry supply chain leaders in industry thought leaders as well. So, we're gonna start tomorrow in the morning with Carsten ..., who is the co-founder and advisor of as Certify and that's certified.

Um, cars, them has tremendous credentials, I'll save for tomorrow to go through all of them.

But his main topic is about certifying supply chains for a number of things, including using blockchain technology for that, but he has a strong focus on sustainability and ESG, whereas it relates to supply chains. But he will talk about everything related to supply chain and the monitoring and tracking of supply chain entry, and that's that.

That's becoming a big deal: organizations that need to track where things are coming from reliably, Not only from a compliance standpoint, sometimes try unethical perspective, and I'm talking about mineral production, and how that's done, and how that moves through the supply chain all the way to the end products on semiconductors, and, and so on and so forth. After that. We're going to have Bethany ... with us. Daphne is the leader for automation and AI for Siva logistics.

She's going to her presentation is going to be focused on how automation is bringing value to supply chain management, Using, certainly using digital transformation, and, uh, the big data machine learning, AI, S foundations for that.

And, and then we're going to have a very intriguing presentation on rethinking just in time.

And this is going to be delivered to us by Go **** Duval, who is the Director for the Lead Center of Excellence for Variable. And he is going to be discussing with us how the concepts of lean are being updated and upgraded to the new realities that we have today.

And we're gonna finish tomorrow with a presentation from Christopher Hodges and you do not want to miss the presentation with Christopher Hod, just he's the author of the book called Noble Automation, but again, we like book authors, but we really like practitioners. So beyond being a book author, most important thing. Christopher Hodges has had an entire career of practice at great companies like General Electric and he is a top consulting a Top five consulting company as well, before. He became an independent advisor and author, and he, he's going to be sharing all that. He has learned on this intelligent automation path related to supply chains and as the name of this book reflects, the name of his book is Noble Automation. The question is much related to this culture question. That we discussed the topic that we just discussed.

How do you build automation?

But you build automation with people still being at the center of that automation.

Which I believe that you got from my presentation that great enduring organizations do that. So it's a different perspective from Christopher Tomorrow on, on this topic, And he has incredible, incredibly relevant experiences and case studies that he's going to share with us.

So without further ado, let's break now, wherever you are in the world, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening.

Thank you for spending your valuable time with us today. For those of you who are watching this as a broadcast, thank you for taking the time to watching the videos from this amazing speakers that we had today. There's more to come in the next couple of days. In the meantime, go into LinkedIn, under my name, post comments. Thank our speakers for being here and sharing their wisdom. If there are questions that you have, you can post there under the comments as well. I want to thank you I path for sponsoring this conference.

None of this will be available at this level of quality, if he wasn't offered the sponsorship from UI path.

So, we had, of course, ...

with us, and representing ..., But the reality is that he's supporting all of these presentations here. And bringing this quality content to all of you, and no cost. And we can only do that, because of the great sponsorship and leadership of UI path. So, thank you, ... leadership, for making this happen. And thank you again for being here with us. Great. First day of very engaged in discussions. So, I look forward to the continued discussion in the days ahead.

Thank you, everybody, And have a great rest of your day.

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About the Author

more-Mar-07-2022-06-26-57-89-PMJosé Pires,
CEO,
Innovation & Excellence.

José Pires serves as the Global Excellence & Innovation (E&I) Leader for Andeavor Corporation, where he oversees the global identification, prioritization and execution of mission-critical business improvements and innovations that add value to the company, business partners and external clients in multiple markets.

Prior to his current role, Pires held Excellence and Innovation leadership positions in large, global companies in electronics (Sony), semiconductor (Cymer-ASML), food (Nestlé), and infrastructure (Black & Veatch) industries. Throughout his career, Pires developed and refined E&I as an award-winning program for innovation, leadership development, strategy execution, and value creation globally.

Pires is an advisory board leader and keynote speaker for several global conferences on innovation, operational excellence, leadership development, strategy execution, business transformation, customer engagement and growth acceleration.

He holds a Bachelor in Engineering Physics from the University of Kansas and a Master in Business Administration focused in Investment Banking and Entrepreneurship from the University of San Diego.

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