Alan Amling: 0:03

One of the things that we've learned from the digital economy is being quick to act with the right solution is so absolutely important. Because you generate knowledge capital early, And if you're able to be the first dog to the hunt, capitalize on knowledge capital you can create a a winning system and really become a, forever company

Tom Raftery: 0:31

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Digital Supply Chain podcast, the number one podcast focusing on the digitization of supply chain, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Digital Supply Chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery and with me on the show today, I have my special guest, Alan. Alan, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Alan Amling: 0:56

Yes. Thank you Tom. It's so great to be here. So my name is Alan Amling. And I am currently a distinguished fellow at the University of Tennessee Supply Chain Institute and, and CEO of an advisory firm called Thrive in Advance llc. And this is my second career after 27 years at UPS in a variety of marketing strategy roles. My last role was leading the UPS corporate venture capital fund called UPS Ventures. Absolutely the funnest job that I had at at ups, it was fantastic. I really enjoyed my years at ups. But there were other other adventures, other questions that I had that couldn't be answered at the place that I was. So I started on a journey which we'll talk about today, which kind of led me to where we are today. And and you know, over the course of my career at ups, I was able to meet a lot of fascinating people, and of course you were one of them. We met what, God, 10, 15 years ago?

Tom Raftery: 2:11

Not, not that much. It was Frankfurt 2017. We met

Alan Amling: 2:15

Oh, was it 2017? Okay.

Tom Raftery: 2:17

A Leonardo live event that SAP was putting on.

Alan Amling: 2:21

right,

Tom Raftery: 2:21

and you were talking about a 3D printing initiative that uh, UPS were putting out.

Alan Amling: 2:27

Yes. Yeah. Fantastic. And They're still they're still marching down that line and it's it's really interesting how, innovations go and when I think of 3D printing it's one of those innovations that is wait, wait, wait, gosh, that came fast because it is, it's really hasn't hit it's tipping point yet. Right. The. It's like that proverbial lily pad on the pond that, doubles, you know, every, every month. And you don't, you just don't notice it in the early days when it's only taking up less than a quarter of the pond. But then once it gets there, it's, you know, in the next few months, it covers the pond. I, I think that's going to be the way in what we see with, with 3D printing. And, but it's, you know, that journey is just a, it's a tough one.

Tom Raftery: 3:22

Mm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we met again recently in Chicago at the ASCM 2022 Connect event. And you were talking about your new book, Organizational Velocity that you just brought out. Tell us, tell us a little bit about that. What's the, what was the, the genesis of it? What was the thing? Why did you decide to write this book?

Alan Amling: 3:44

I can tell you the, the exact time I was, I had presented a, a very forward looking initiative at, at ups. And one of the things that I will say is that in terms of innovation I would say UPS is a very innovative company. But there are different types of innovation, right? And if it's a sustaining innovation, if it's one that allows us to do what we do today better, quicker, faster, cheaper UPS's, state of the art, if it's an innovation that opens up new value propositions to new customers requires a change in human behavior. Those are much more difficult because of the uncertainty. If you tell me that you have a new robotic solution that is going to improve the throughput of parcels through our facilities by 30%. I can measure that, I can do a return on investment, I can do a net present value. Whatever you want to do, it's really easy. But if I tell you this is a, a new innovation that requires a change in human behavior,

Tom Raftery: 5:06

mm.

Alan Amling: 5:07

I can't predict that. I can tell you all day with all the confidence that I can predict it, but I can't. And those are much more difficult because you get into and everyone that, that has ever presented in a corporate environment has gone through this is there are levels of questions, and you can always answer the first and second level of questions when they get into the third level. Either you have to essentially lie or you have to admit that you don't know,

Tom Raftery: 5:46

Hmm.

Alan Amling: 5:47

and as soon as you say you don't know, it's blood in the water and the sharks are all there, right? And, and so. I, I had come back after presenting and, not succeeding in my, my presentation and I was sitting there with head in hand and saying, why is it, that, you know, not just ups, but I worked with a lot of other, other companies. You know, this disruptive innovation had been around for 25. It's not new. There's all of these practical examples of industries that have been disrupted. And it's usually not that the businesses, you know, or like a Blockbuster or a Borders books, you know, goes out of business. It's typically the business just gets damaged and it ends up merging with another organization, right? Or it, or it gets purchased, something like that. And so we're seeing this over and over again. And so my question was, was just that why, why is it the companies that have the financial resources, the human resources the existing customer base. Why is it that they can't get out of their own way and move at the speed of change? And it's the question that sent me back to get my PhD at at an advanced age, let's say. Which I would not recommend to anyone. It was uh, I, I gave up several years of, of, of my life doing that. but the passion was there, right? The curiosity was there and it drove me through this. And so Velocity is all about my journey to answer that central question about how can companies get out of their own way to move at the speed of change and what are the obstacles that keep them from doing it?

Tom Raftery: 7:52

So how can companies get out of their own way?

Alan Amling: 7:58

Right? Yeah. That's, I guess that's the obvious followup question, right? Yeah. So the challenge is, it starts with a mindset, right? and so one of the chapters in the book early on, is called Do You Wanna Live? And what I was trying to get out there is, are you trying to build a forever company? Are you trying to build a company that does not just have sustainable competitive advantage, which, I think sustainable competitive advantage was lost in the nineties as, new connecting and thinking technologies allowed companies to span these moats that companies would create. It was always, when I first came to UPS and when I was getting my mba, it was all about how do you create these competitive moats to keep the right, to keep people out. And I don't think it's about sustainable competitive advantage, I think it's about persistent advantage. So how do you create new advantages that keep your business moving forward? And so as I, was doing this research, I, I talked to you know, fortune 500 level executives, C level executives. I went down and when I could, I, I would talk to mid-level executives in the same company, which was enlightening. And then startup executives as well as colonels and generals in the military. And it may sound well, why the, why colonels in generals in the military. Well, you know, one of the things I was trying to understand is how do you make high stakes decisions? Under conditions of uncertainty

Tom Raftery: 9:48

Right, right.

Alan Amling: 9:49

with bureaucracy in the background. Right. And colonels and generals in the military have to do that, all the time. and I'll, I'll just get back to, I, I mentioned the senior level leaders and the mid-level leaders, One of the insights that I came up with in interviewing those two groups was around this idea of we're data driven. If you talk to any executive, they will tell you, oh, yes, we are data driven.

Tom Raftery: 10:25

Hm,

Alan Amling: 10:26

everything that we do, it's driven by data. Okay. All right. That's good. And then you talk to the mid-level people that actually need the data you find out something very different in, in order to get data it's often siloed. Permission based. I have to go through a certain group and get in line to get my data. And it varies by companies. There are companies I, I remember talking to a lady who I had known for years and worked at, she worked at ups, she had worked at DHL and she went to Amazon and of the things that struck her the most when she went to to Amazon was her access to information, to the point where she said when she was doing her first project and now she's been there now 10 years. When she did her first project, she uh, Said, Hey, I need access to this information. Oh, and her boss said, okay, you contact this person, you'll get, you'll get access. And she got access to what she wanted and a lot more. And she went back to her boss and said, Hey, I just, I went to access this information. I got. I ask for, and this other information that is bene is very beneficial, but it's more than I ask for and I want to make sure I'm not getting access too much. And the boss looked at her and said, Hey, we hired you for a reason. We trust you. Don't betray the trust.

Tom Raftery: 12:09

right.

Alan Amling: 12:09

And, there's a lot of lessons in that, not just around access to data. There's a lesson around trust and there is this, kind of what I grew up on is trust is earned.

Tom Raftery: 12:22

Mm-hmm.

Alan Amling: 12:23

And this was when I heard this, I went. Huh. In this case, trust was given it wasn't, you had to prove yourself first. It's that we hired you, we trust you, and we're going to give you access to information. This information, don't screw it up.

Tom Raftery: 12:41

Hm.

Alan Amling: 12:42

And

Tom Raftery: 12:42

proven guilty.

Alan Amling: 12:44

Exactly, exactly. And so many companies. Don't do that. Right. And when you think about what is the connectivity, what is the, the secret sauce that allows companies to perform at a high level? Trust is one of those things, one of those foundational things. If there's, if there's not trust in the company you. You know, tremendous amount of water, cooler talk and e you know, I don't, I don't know what the digital equivalent of water cooler talk would be

Tom Raftery: 13:19

Slack probably.

Alan Amling: 13:21

Right, right, right. but even in these days where, we're doing a lot of our, our, our business online, there's still that water cooler talk that goes on. And it's really fundamental. It's, it's, it's just fundamental. But to answer the original question, I didn't forget it There is a kind of a three part process that after, the hundreds and hundreds of pages of manuscripts that I had had collected and, and gone through it, it came down to a a really simple formula of observe, accept, and act. And so we'll break that down a little bit. When I talk about observe, it's about using technology to cast a wide net of observation. And I would say that most companies that I talk to are pretty good at that. It's not that they aren't getting information in. And then let me skip to the last part. Act is once there is agreement it's, it's the ability to execute on a plan. And generally companies are good at that as well. Where it breaks down is accept. That is where all of the challenges are, or most of the challenges are for companies and how they get in their own way. And it's, you know, you've got the the issues around committees. So a lot of, lot of decision making in large corporations takes place with committees and sometimes, you know, you have to go through, a committee in order to get approval to go to another committee. And one of the, the challenges, one of the it's not even a challenge. It's one of the things that's just a universal truth of people that have gone through this understand, and that is that if you want to do something truly innovative and you bring it to a cross-functional committee, the only thing that you will know for sure if it's unanimously accepted, is that your proposal is not innovative, right? That is you know that a hundred percent. That's the only thing that you know, and the the challenge is that whenever you're doing something, you know, even think about You know how, how SAP works, right? When you're doing SAP implementations, one of the historical challenges around that is it changes how information flows, it changes how work gets done. Well, that's a threat to somebody. And so one of the biggest challenge with innovation is how do you bring everyone along? Because information is power, everyone knows that. And so if the information that I have that gives me power is taken away because it's being democratized with a certain solution, which is often the case with, you know, an innovative solution that is leveraging today's technologies. You will have a group of people that are gonna throw fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Tom Raftery: 16:51

Mm

Alan Amling: 16:52

or fud. So when they're gonna throw the fud and the biggest challenge, and this is, you know, again, around the accept is that executives don't kill the project. They kick the can down the road, which is worse. Because if you kill the project, I can go on and I can start doing more productive endeavors with my people. If you kick the can down the road, I'm just prolonging the inevitable. And the way that is done is Tom, this was a great presentation. We still need, you know, more depth on points, X, Y, and Z. Go get that depth and come back, you know, next month. And then next month you come back and it's, you know,

Tom Raftery: 17:38

something has changed.

Alan Amling: 17:40

something's changed or whatever. Right? And so, that's one of the biggest challenges. the other, and this, this is, also around the accept is that, I heard this great quote from a CEO who said I need to see a 5 million dollar truth before someone asks me for a $50 billion budget. And what he was saying is, I want to see the test. I wanna see a small test that shows that, this can work, that the be behaviors will change. And the challenge with that is we tend to do serial tests, so, The, more advanced companies that I interviewed will actually do multiple tests at the same time getting after the, you know, a certain project because they don't, they don't really know. And most companies will look at that and say, okay we'll do one test. What, so choose the test that you think that we should do. And if you don't even know what test you should do, we're not gonna fund you, right? And then you end up saying, okay, well if I can't do these three tests, I'm gonna do this one test. And even if it's successful, what you don't know is how it meets a certain customer need or market need compared to other ways of doing it. And so you kind of continually suboptimize. and that's another real challenge that, companies have. And you know, and again, it, it all comes down to this mindset. If I want to be a forever company. And it, takes a specific kind of leader. And it shouldn't have been startling to me, but it was cause I, I expected, you know, successful leaders to be Type a, competent, press, press, press, great executors and there are a lot of executives that are, are like that. But the executives that are driving innovation, the number one characteristic that is common across all of them is they're humble. And the point being is if you're not humble, you're not open to other ways of thinking, of new ways of doing things. And even, you know, someone like Steve Jobs. So, you know, you read about Steve Jobs and, yes. I mean, he, drove his mission home. But you, you read about how he interacted with his executives, he was always drawing insight from his executives. And so, those are points that are just absolutely um, absolutely key. And and it, leads to a way of, just interacting as a, as as a company. And I, I think, you know, if I had to boil it down to three things, I would say. I would say one offense is the new defense.

Tom Raftery: 20:49

Hmm.

Alan Amling: 20:50

So, I highlight a story in the book around a German General who was captured, you know, at the end of World War ii. And, the US and European military would interrogate these, these generals to ask him questions about how they did things because the German army, put aside just the horrendous. I, I mean, I, I can't even put it into words. But they, they created a big presence. They created havoc with a relatively small army. And you think about one general in particular, I'm looking over here at my books, general Herman Balk. He was known for a battle with Russia's vaulted famous fifth infantry. And he was outnumbered. I think it was like 15 to one in infantry. It was like eight to one in tanks. and he ended up over several weeks wiping out the, Russian foe. And when he was asked how he did that, he said, attack. Attack. Attack, he said people make the mistake of thinking that the less risky option is to play defense and it rarely is. And if you, take that, that story and, Transport it into what we're talking about with the digital business, the digital the digital supply chain, e-commerce and and so forth, one of the things that we're seeing with these leaders is they're just moving at such a rapid clip. I remember when I was with UPS Logistics and Distribution when Amazon had just started their big build out of their logistics capability, it would take us quite a long time to get approval for a, you know, the facilities are usually anywhere from 500,000 to a million square feet. And they would have to be half sold before we could get approval to even break ground. And that was very typical. Right. Cuz it was a big investment. At the same time, Amazon was putting up distribution centers. At an extreme pace. And, it's funny people, have talked about, well, you know, Amazon's slowing down now. Well, yeah. They're slowing down. And in 21, I think they put up a facility on average every day throughout 2021. They're gonna still put up 200 facilities in 2022. They're moving very quickly and they've, got their competitors on roller skates. And it's really tough. And I advise a lot of companies in the, in the supply chain, and one of the things that I'll, I'll hear from time to time is, oh, Alan, we've got this. We're just gonna do what Amazon does. And there's a kind of a, a saying here in the South where, I've lived for the last 25 years. That goes something like, oh, bless your heart. And, that's kind of my internal dialogue because yeah, you're not gonna, beat Amazon at Amazon's game. But you can beat them doing it differently. Right? And that's what it takes. It takes imagination. I think that my focus is in supply chain. One of the examples that I'm, I'm looking at right now is American Eagle Outfitters. So. American Eagle is one of the myriad of companies that are finding it very hard to compete in this retail environment that's just so dominated by Amazon, Walmart, and Target, right? And, and so when you have that kind of size, and volume, it allows you to do some different things. And so what American Eagles said is they actually, they bought a company called Quiet Logistics and, brought their logistics in house, started doing their own, and then created a company called Quiet Platforms, I think it is. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to, reach Amazon, Walmart type, scale through shared systems

Tom Raftery: 25:20

Mm.

Alan Amling: 25:21

and through cooperative contracts, right? Because if you wanna compete at that same level you can't do it with just your own, volume. And it creates all sorts of opportunities for cost savings to take carbon out of the supply chain. Cause one of the big issues in transportation is that, we spend all this time talking about, okay, we need to make our move to electric and we do. But if your strategy is around electric trucks,

Tom Raftery: 25:52

Mm.

Alan Amling: 25:53

That's gonna take a while to develop. Right. It's going to happen. And when we were in Chicago, I just, I I thought you just gave an excellent overview of kind of where we were with EVs and clean power. Right. And and, and how. Yes, there's a lot of coal that makes electricity today, but that whole transition is happening. Right. And so we are gonna get to um, clean energy. But in the meantime, one of the areas that is creating such issues with sustainability in the supply chain is loads that are suboptimized. You can't see it because, you know, you don't have plexiglass on the outside of, of trucks. I wish, that would be a rule that you had to have that because you would see that a lot of trucks are less than half full. if I could through cooperation have trucks that are 80% full I've just taken thousands of trucks off the road

Tom Raftery: 27:00

Yeah,

Alan Amling: 27:01

And, and so there are things that that can be done. So I, I'm sorry. We're, we're going through a lot of different areas here.

Tom Raftery: 27:11

And we're, we're running outta time too. So, learnings for people who, who are reading the book or who should read the book, you know, what kind of learnings can they expect to get from it?

Alan Amling: 27:20

Great. So, great question. So, my vision for this book would be, Leaders that are struggling with, how do I embed innovation in my teams? And for them to take these learnings and, and talk about portions of the book in their, for example, in their Monday staff meetings, like set aside 10 minutes. So let me give you an example. So, one of the lessons in book is around creating optionality, right? Because we need to have more sustainable businesses especially with the, you know, get hitting with the, pandemic. One of the ways that you create more consistent performance is to have options. And options could be, different ways that the organization invests in learning. Right. Building up the skills of their employees. It may be through pilots and experimentation. So that there are different options depending on what happens in the external environment. If I have options in my back pocket for different scenarios, I'm gonna be much quicker to react. And one of the things that we've learned from the digital economy is being quick to act with the right solution is so absolutely important. Because you generate knowledge capital early, And if you're able to be the first dog to the hunt, capitalize on knowledge capital you can create a a winning system and really become a, a forever company. And so, the way that I, wrote the book is really for. Business people. And I think most people listening to this podcast, if I tell you, I, if I ask you, well, the last business book that you read, how did you read it? Did you read it cover to cover? Or did you go to a certain section that interested you? And most people will say, I went to this section and then I went to this section, and that's the way most people read it. And, and that's the way I wrote the book. So there is a section on if your challenges are, are around managing up, right? How do I do that? If the challenges around interactions with the board of directors, there's a chapter on that. If it is around how do we get alignment internally in our organization, there's a chapter around that and, and so what I did in the book is I said, okay. What are my experiences for my 27 years? How does that meld with what I heard from all of these dozens and dozens of business leaders that I talk to? And then what are the gold nuggets? And I pull out those gold nuggets and one of the best ways to read the book is in the back, I have a summary of all the insights. And just go to that. Just, you know, take five minutes, read those insights, and if one of those hits a chord with you, it gives you the page number. You can go right to the page number and say, okay, what's the context behind that insight? And then how might I apply that in my organization? And that was really when I set out to write this book. It was for senior leaders to make better decisions, to become more aware of how they may be getting in the way of progress and not even realize it. And one of the biggest lies told in business is, that it's just business.

Tom Raftery: 31:23

Hmm.

Alan Amling: 31:24

It's not true. Every, business decision affects the people in that business. They take it home with them. And I've seen both sides of this. If you can get that virtuous circle where people really feel like they're working towards a larger purpose, that their opinions are valued and that the overall organization is heading in the right direction, you've not only improved your organization, And the people in your organization, but all of the people that they touch in their day to day lives. And if I can help move that just a step closer, boy, that's my idea of success.

Tom Raftery: 32:11

Cool. Cool. And I should just say the book itself is about 160 pages long, so it's not a big academic tome. It's, it's actually nice and easy to read. And you, you referred to the appendices at the back, and I actually, I have it here and I have the appendix the summary of gold nuggets. I have it bookmark cuz I, I, I have gone through it and it's really interesting. And it's not just that you've got the summary of gold nuggets there. Just after that you've got the summary of truth bombs and the, the, the two of those make for fabulous, fabulous reading. And they're short, they're only like two pages or three pages each. But again to your point, they lead people right to exactly what it is they, they could be most interested in. So it's, it's, it's beautifully laid out. I've, I've not seen that done in other books before. I'm not sure where you got that idea from. You probably saw it in some other books that, that I didn't, or maybe, maybe it was entirely original to yourself, but it, it made for, for me, it made the book a lot more accessible,

Alan Amling: 33:07

Yes. And that, that was the goal. And the uh, you know, getting my PhD I had to write a lot of academic papers and I wouldn't wish that on anyone to have to go through that. So this is, I tried to make it very accessible and easy to read, and easy to, to pull out the insights.

Tom Raftery: 33:24

Cool. Cool. We're way over time, . And so we're, we are going to have to wrap up. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast. It's been fascinating. If people wanted to know more, Alan, about yourself or about organizational velocity or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Alan Amling: 33:43

To uh, my website, which is allen amling.com.

Tom Raftery: 33:47

Perfect. Nice and easy. I'll have that linked in the shownotes. That was fantastic, Alan A, it's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Alan Amling: 33:54

Great. Thank you, Tom.

Tom Raftery: 33:56

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, simply drop me an email to TomRaftery@outlook.com If you like the show, please don't forget to click Follow on it in your podcast application of choice to be sure to get new episodes as soon as they're published Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find a show. Thanks, catch you all next time.