SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGY

6 | R i g h t C h a i n ™ something about that five hour mark. Maybe it was that two DVD movies had finished playing. Whatever it was, it was bad, whiny, and loud. That’s what it sounded like in the conference room with eight, six figure executives and a bewildered facilitator. I remember thinking, “I need to refund the consulting fees because I’m doing such a poor job facilitating this meeting.” To be candid, I would have been delighted to return the fees and exit stage left. By the Grace of God there was a scheduled break at 9:00 am. During the break I remember thinking, “Lord, why am I having such a hard time facilitating this meeting?” Then it dawned on me what the problem was. The executives in the meeting that day included the heads of manufacturing, transportation, warehousing, materials management, finance, marketing, I/T, and the nephew of the chairman of the board. Of those, none had worked for any other company and none had worked outside the areas they were currently in. So, if an “expert facilitator” starts talking about supply chain logistics, and you’ve only worked in transportation (fill in the blank with any other area), guess what you think he’s talking about? One of two things. Either you think he’s talking about transportation or some other strange world that you can only conceive of through the perspective of transportation.