Chellie Phillips: 0:00

A lot of time people think we got to look at the data, we got to look at the processes, we need benchmarks to be able to improve or change things that are happening inside the organization. All that's true, but I think there's one thing that a lot of people leave out, and that's culture. Because culture inside an organization is what causes things to get done, or not done, if the case, you know, however the case may be for you

Tom Raftery: 0:27

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, and welcome to episode 340 of the Digital Supply Chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery, and I'm excited to be here with you today, sharing the latest insights and trends in supply chain. Before we kick off today's show, I would just like to welcome a new supporter of this podcast, Luis Olivarria. Luis, I hope I'm pronouncing your surname correctly. Luis signed up over the past couple of days to support the podcast. Thank you so much for that, Luis. Much appreciated. If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like minded individuals who are passionate about supply chain. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable with options starting as low as just three euros or dollars a month. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee and your support will make a huge difference in keeping this show going strong. To become a supporter, simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode or visit tinyurl. com slash dscpod. Now, without further ado, I'd like to introduce my special guest today, Chelli. Chelli, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Chellie Phillips: 1:48

Sure. Thanks for having me, Tom. My name is Chellie Phillips. I've been in corporate America for over 25 years. I'm an international best selling author. And now I'm really focusing on corporate training and building strong cultures inside the workplace.

Tom Raftery: 2:04

Okay, fantastic. And you've come up with, I don't know, is it a philosophy, is it an organisation name, but it's Successfully Ever After. So what is that and how is that helping people?

Chellie Phillips: 2:24

Successfully Ever After is the name of my company and what I do is after people work with me, I hope that they find their successfully ever after. Whether that's an individual, that's a professional, maybe looking to make a change after they've been in a, in a position for several years, or if it's a company that just wants to become more irresistible in the workplace is what I call it, where they can attract and they can retain the kind of people that they want to work there that make a difference in their industry, in their organization, and they really bring the joy and value to the office.

Tom Raftery: 2:57

Okay, so this is the Digital Supply Chain podcast. Normally on this podcast, I'm talking or my guests are talking about digitalization, technology, soft skills that kind of thing you're talking about here is not something that we talk about much on the podcast. So it's great to have a new kind of perspective come on the podcast. Thank you for that. But, could you, let's say, tell us a little bit about why that's important for organizations or for individuals?

Chellie Phillips: 3:32

Yeah, you know, a lot of time people think we got to look at the data, we got to look at the processes, we need benchmarks to be able to improve or change things that are happening inside the organization. All that's true, but I think there's one thing that a lot of people leave out, and that's culture. Because culture inside an organization is what causes things to get done, or not done, if the case, you know, however the case may be for you. Culture can be both a hinder, or it can actually improve the supply chain that you have going on inside that organization. And I speak directly to a process that I call building a value culture. And value is an acronym and it involves vision and value, accountability, leadership, the uniqueness of the people, and engagement. And if you work on those five areas, the issues that you have across the organization will get straightened out and you'll see more productivity and more profitability.

Tom Raftery: 4:29

Okay, and how do you go about improving those five key topics or, um, uh, let's, let's go with topics. For want of another word. How do you go about improving them?

Chellie Phillips: 4:42

So absolutely, you can tie accountability, leadership, your people, and engagement directly into any kind of problem or issue that you might have inside that organization. You can also see elements of vision and value. And if you look at them, you know, in particular, And you tie them to the hindrances that most people see in, in the workplace, lack of collaboration is generally 46, 46% of what, supervisors and leaders say is an issue that there are no, no collaboration across departments or inside the organization. Process requirements, 38% of people say the processes and the things that we put in place, keep people from doing work effectively. The lack of workforce engagements, 35% people's notice that are happening in there. And that's strictly how people show up. What effort are they putting into the work that's being done? Are they contributing in a way that's providing value? Another is communications, communications impacts everything top down inside an organization and then bottom up. And so, you know, 34% of managers say that that's an issue inside the organization. And then change management because things are changing rapidly these days. We're throwing new things at employees all the time, but have we created that environment of trust or security so that they're not afraid to ask questions and really embrace those things that are happening. So when you look at some of the big hindrances that are happening, you can directly tie those back to the elements of culture that we were talking about.

Tom Raftery: 6:14

Okay, okay. Interesting. And how do you measure that? Because I know, for example, if I am looking at a machine on the factory floor, it's very easy for me to tell what temperature it's at or what RPM it's running at or any of these kind of things. But management communications, for example, is one of the ones you mentioned. How do you measure that and, you know, it, how do you measure whether it's improving or disimproving? And, you know, similarly with the other things you talked about.

Chellie Phillips: 6:46

Yeah. So there's a couple of different ways. One of the easiest ways is to, and it doesn't require any effort or any paperwork or anything like that, is to practice what I call active listening. Get out of your office. Start talking to people. Get their feedback. Are you getting the information that you need? Have you heard about the new things that we're investing in? You know, do you have ideas? Do you have solutions? Do you have, you know, is there a problem that you can solve based on what you're seeing every day that you might want to talk about? You know, just getting out of your offices and getting on the floor and working with people in the lines, meeting them at their cubicle and letting them feel like you value their input. You're going to find out pretty quickly whether or not the communications that you want to happen are actually taking place. The other thing that you can do is that there's several studies that you can actually incorporate into your organization. One of them that I really like that I work with clients on now is called a culture MRI, and it actually gives you a dashboard. You can actually put dollars and cents to these culture attributes and see, you know, like if we improve in this area, where can we see an increase in our profitability? Where can we see an increase in retention and hiring? And what has it done to our numbers over time? So, you know, if you're interested in, and, and I come from, the corporate world and where there's a lot of engineers and everything else. So I, I get people like data and they like the Excel spreadsheets. And so if you're one of those, there is actually some very tangible information that you can pull, requires you to do a survey. Again, it's about listening to your people and then putting them, you know, putting the dollars to them to see if we make these changes, what can we expect to see in return?

Tom Raftery: 8:35

Okay, very good. That sounds easy enough. You, you talk a lot as well about personal branding. What do you think are some common mistakes professionals make when it comes to their personal brand?

Chellie Phillips: 9:21

Yeah, you know, so one of the things is like with with you know, personal branding is that you're setting yourself up as a thought leader. You're setting yourself as some as a go to resource whether that's inside your company or whether it's inside an industry as a whole. If you're that leader inside that organization, you want your team to respect you. You want them to look at you as a knowledge resource you want them to look at oh, they're doing research. They're learning on their own. They're continuing to grow. You want to emulate the things that you want to see happening in your team. And one of the easiest way to do that is through your personal branding. A lot of people think personal branding is simply how they, what they put on LinkedIn. It's so much more than that. Your personal branding is how you show up every day, the personal encounters that you have with people in the office, the way that you communicate with them, the way that you make them feel valued or a part of the conversation that's happening, the tone of your emails, even we all know how texts come across sometimes in that, you know, like I'm in a totally generic and you took it that it had tone in it. And then we have to have a conversation. No, I wasn't upset. You know, this is what it is. I was just getting that, getting it out there and getting it to you so you could get on with what you needed to do. And so really learning the demographics of your team that you have in place and how they like to be communicated. Now we have over four generations in the workplace. And each one of them, based on, you know, a profile, I mean, there's going to be some oddities and they're here and there, but as a general rule, based on their profile, there's certain types of communications that each group responds to more than others. Some of that's the personal touch. Some of it is very tech oriented, whether it is a text, an email. Maybe it's a platform that's out there now, like a sauna or monday. com or some of these where I can just check in and let you know what's going on. And you leave me alone the rest of the week as long as you see my productivity is hitting what it needs to be. And so it's all about the leaders now becoming very adaptable in the workplace. And then on the flip side for employees, personal branding is a great way for you to show that you're interested in developing your skills as a professional, that you're increasing your knowledge and that you're preparing for that next step inside that organization. And it, you know, it puts you on the radar for all the right reasons is what I like to say is that you're showing up, you're talking about the great things that are happening inside the organization. And that in turn helps the company itself recruit great people because we all know I'm going to listen to what my friend says more than I'm going to listen to what a company puts out there. So if I know someone that works there and I see on their LinkedIn profile, oh, they're offering these great training opportunities or hey, they're investing in my, you know, my friends, sending them to conferences and doing these kinds of things so that they can grow and develop. I'm probably going to be more likely to give you a chance if I'm looking for a new opportunity, then I would be, if I just ran across your post online or something like that, saying, here's a new job opening. So personal branding is something that companies don't need to be afraid of investing in both their leaders and in their employees. And you know, when you can really help and then also help provide some collateral, maybe you provide them with photos from training events, or you provide a headshot day that day, so that everybody is showing up and their logo gear and they have a new headshot to put on, you know, their profiles or everything. You know, you're helping increase the value of your, your brand recognition as a company itself. But you're also helping that employee feel that they're part of that organization and they're contributing to the success too.

Tom Raftery: 13:02

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's often said that people don't buy from companies, they buy from people, so having your employees be able to grow their own personal brand can only help the bottom line of the organization, right?

Chellie Phillips: 13:16

Absolutely.

Tom Raftery: 13:20

You talk as well about how a positive company culture can impact the efficiency and successes of organizations. Can you expand a little bit about that?

Chellie Phillips: 13:31

Yeah, you know, our employees will thrive in an atmosphere when they feel like that they are contributing when they feel like they're being heard. And, you know, one of the best ways that you can do that is through some recognition efforts. And when I say recognition, I'm not talking necessarily about a pay raise. Sometimes it's just about being called out in a meeting, or asked to share an idea that you've shared with your direct supervisor, maybe it needs to go up a level so that someone else can hear from it and you're providing that value back to that person as an employee. And when they feel like they're heard and they feel like that something is happening with what they're offering, they're way more likely to continue that process. They become problem solvers instead of people showing up with problems. And we all love that. I mean, I've had my own team of people for years and I love when somebody shows up, Hey, I got a problem, but I got a solution for you to think about too. And you know, that in itself makes us more efficient that we're not sitting, having to stop what we're doing and work through it. If you've got somebody that's already been proactive, that is coming up with solutions to your process, or maybe they've come up with, Hey, we can, you know, we can skip three steps and make this much more quicker so that we can turn around and impact our customers in a much more positive way. You're growing the customer satisfaction of those things as well. And when you share that recognition in a public way, you know, that your employees contributed to this, that we have implemented this change that, you know, Joe Smith has offered or that Jan Blow has offered, then, you know, we are actually building that environment in our organization that adds to the efficiencies that take place there. Because when people feel like they can actually change the workplace and when they can have a positive. impact on it. Not only are they making their day better because they're not following a tedious step or a tedious process that might actually be a hindrance. They're seeing that recognition then and feeling that value that they've given and they're more likely to be more productive like we talked about earlier.

Tom Raftery: 15:43

And that kind of connects into to empowering employees to make decisions, you know, which is crucial in any organization. What tips can you offer companies seeking to empower their employees?

Chellie Phillips: 15:57

Yeah, you know, I think it starts simply by having conversations. Have you asked your employees what they value? One of the best things a company can do is connect personal values with corporate values. I did a training not too many months ago for an organization And I asked the question if you could do anything you wanted and a paycheck was not the option, like it didn't matter, you're going to get paid, you know, whatever you needed to survive, but you could do anything that you wanted, you know, the majority of that class, about 80% of that class came up as something that improved the community in some way, whether it was helping elderly, whether it was food banks, whether it was animal rescue, whether it was kids in need, whatever it was, they wanted to feel they had an impact somehow in the society that they lived in. If you can take that drive and you can take that and you can tie it into what your company is doing, then you're going to see, you know, vast return on your investment of just this one small conversation. The company that I w as working with, they had a program where employees could give, they gave them eight hours basically to volunteer. And so, but it wasn't something that was really promoted very heavily through their HR department. It was kind of like you kind of had to know the policy was there and go ask for it. And, and so they started actually putting it out there saying, hey, if you have something you're interested in, we can help you make a difference. The other thing that you can do with that same kind of information is, you know, say you have, um, customer service agents inside your organization and they're dealing with customer calls all day long. Maybe there's a problem. If you empower them to be able to make some small changes and small decisions on their own, where they feel like they're impacting that customer in a positive way and that they're able to improve that customer experience just by being able to provide them, maybe it's information on timeline. Maybe it is something was wrong with the order, but I don't have to go through 12 steps to get it fixed for you. I can fix that for you right here on the phone now. Whatever it is, when they feel like they, that's something that ties into their personal values, ties into those that the company sees as well. You're going to set yourself up for a long term employee, one that feels like, Hey, we have similar goals and similar desires here. And I want to continue working here. Plus you're going to also impact your customer experience, which is going to lead to greater customer satisfaction, hopefully repeat sales, and then great word of mouth that maybe it'll bring in new sales for you as well.

Tom Raftery: 18:26

Nice, okay. Collaboration is a word that's used a lot or required to be used a lot in supply chain, particularly between partner companies, within teams, you know, all around the whole ecosystem of supply chain. How do you go about fostering people to better collaborate either internally or externally?

Chellie Phillips: 18:49

You know, first they have to see their leaders doing it. Like, like I said, you have to get out of your office. You can't just sit in your office and make, you know, decisions day in and day out and expect other people to collaborate on projects and get the best feedback that you have. You need to let your employees see you asking other people for input, going across departments and getting feedback from them. Are there things that you've seen because you're not in this every day, like we are, maybe you've seen something that could help us make an improvement and you can take that back to your team and say, Hey, I was talking with, you know, warehouse. And this is something that they said, this would help them be much more efficient if we could get the orders in X, Y, Z way, instead of you know, the way that we're doing it now. But being able to demonstrate that collaboration is the first thing. The second thing is that you have to show your employees that you trust them to have these conversations. There are so many organizations that feel like that when I've done some training and stuff that their employees feel like I can't leave my walls. I have to stay right here in this wall. This, this manager doesn't want me to be seen talking to this manager or this, this department doesn't want me to be seen talking to that department. You're setting yourself up for major issues. If that's the way that your business is structured. You want your employees talking to each other. You want them seeing the whole process that's happening inside that organization so that they can get a bigger picture of what it is that we do and how we impact our customers and what the end goal is that we're trying to get there. You can also start by fostering collaboration on your team. Partner people up that don't normally work together. Have them try a project together, or maybe bring in two different departments to work on a project and see what feedback that you get. You can do some of these things smaller before you start impacting them on a larger area. And then, you know, it's the way everything works in life. If you show up with small successes on your team, the next level is going to see the small successes happening. They're going to want to know what you're going to doing. And then that's going to be something that they're going to emulate on a larger scale. And then finally, the decision makers are going to be saying, Hey, something's happening over here in this department. They're having huge improvements on productivity, coming more profitable. Our wellness dollars not being impacted as much. People are showing up. They don't have the turnover that others see. What's happening? So when you can, when you start small, you're gonna see that trickle start to happen across the organization and people will start paying attention.

Tom Raftery: 21:14

Nice, nice. And I mean, you mentioned as well earlier change management and change is obviously something that is challenging for people. People find it hard to deal with change. And I mean, you're talking just In your answer just now, you were talking about change as well within organizations. How can you help? What kind of strategies can individuals and companies adopt to better navigate change?

Chellie Phillips: 21:40

You know, that goes back to the communications thing that we talked about initially. I think everything inside an organization can be, can come back to communications at some point down the road. The first part is, is are they aware of what's happening? You know, like people don't like change just thrown on them. They like to prepare for it. Human beings. We resist change. We like things to be normal. We like thing. We know we're going to show up at eight. We're going to leave at five. This is what's going to happen. I'm going to take lunch here. And we like our day to be pretty structured. Most of us. There's a few people that thrive on the seats of their pants, but I'm not one of those. And so, but as a rule, you know, people like to know what's going to happen, why it's going to happen, when it's going to take effect. So the first thing is communicating the change very thoroughly making sure that people are aware of what's going to happen and give them the why people love to know why we're doing something. It's not just because it sounded good. It's not just because, Hey, the salesperson showed up and it was something great. They had a great, you know, a great pitch and I want to give it a try. There's a why behind it. Make sure that they understand the why. When people understand the why, they're more apt to get behind it. The other thing that you can do is if you've had these conversations, if they've seen you as the leader of that department, you're going to have established that feeling of trust. And when people trust their leaders, they trust the things that they put in front of them. They're not worried about, is this going to impact my job security? Is this going to mean I'm going to lose hours? Is this going to mean they won't need me anymore down the line? They're going to trust what's happening and they're going to trust that their leaders have prepared them for this shift that's coming in place. The other thing is that you have to be careful that you don't, you don't have so many changes all at once that people just become numb to them. Where they say, Oh, we're just changing to change the process again. So, you know, people become very resistant at that point in time. Again, it's because they can't see the why, why something's happening. But if you can go back to that, if you can be very communicative, if you can start from the beginning of the process. Talk about timelines, let them know what the impacts to them are going to be. Let them know the benefits of why we're doing this and how it's going to impact the company. You're going to be able to mitigate that change process in a way that becomes a very positive experience, not only for the company, but for the employees going through it as well.

Tom Raftery: 24:04

Nice. Nice. You're Successfully Ever After formula is in part designed to land individuals in an ideal career. On a personal note, I was impacted by the tech layoffs last year and I'm right now looking for a new role, but can you talk about how this formula could be applied to people, professionals in supply chain, for example, to, you know, land that ideal role.

Chellie Phillips: 24:31

Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes it comes down to just reframing, you know, like, what are the skills that you've picked up over the years doing what you're doing? Do you want to first is identifying? Do I want to stay in the industry that I've been in for years? Or is there something that, hey, I've always wanted to try? Is this the time for me to do that? So once you've made that decision first, then you take the skills that you have and you look at being able to reframe them to perfectly match a job description that's out there. You know, like it or not, we talked about this being the digital world that we're in, you know, a lot of resumes and a lot of cover letters never get read by a person to begin with. They go through a screening process and unless you've built those documents in a way that that, that gets through that screening. You won't ever be seen by a person in HR to even know whether you're qualified for that or not. And then, you know, we were talking about the personal branding aspect. That is so important these days. Before I know I I'm guilty of it. Before I bring someone in for an interview, I go look at their LinkedIn, I go look at their social profiles. Is what they told me on that resume and what they told me on that cover letter a match to what I'm seeing on their social profiles? Or are there red flags that I'm seeing that I'm like, uh, you know, and I don't know if this is really what I, you know. Are there a lot of misspellings? Are there a lot of, you know, political issues that could be a problem in the workplace? Are there, you know, are there other things that are showing up on their feeds that are going to make me go? I, you know, I might want to reconsider. I've got candidate B over here that is just as qualified and I've got no issues with. And so I'm going to start with B before I even bring in, you know, A to see what it is. And so, you know, that is part of it is just being able to set yourself up for success. The other thing I always tell people to do is if you find a career that you're interested in. If you see a job description that you says, Hey, this, this sounds like something I really want to do. Is I want you to go through with a highlighter and I want you to use a couple of different colors. I want you to take it and I want you to mark through what are the hard skills in one color that you have to know XYZ software, or you need to be able to do this, or there's a certain program that you need to be able to run, or you have to have X number of years and something. All those are hard things you can't change. Mark any of those in a certain color, and then I want you to go through with a different color, and I want you to mark the softer skills that we're talking about, collaboration, teamwork, all these kind of things that people are talking about. And you can really make an impactful presentation in your cover letters and in your interviews, when you give specific examples from roles that you've been in, where you're already demonstrating these things that they're looking for. And then use their words back to them in both your cover letter and in your interviews, if they're talking, you know, if they use collaboration over and over and over again, you want to make sure you say collaboration in your interview, and you want to make sure you say it in your resume and in your cover letter because it's going to score. It's going to get picked up. That's how you're going to be able to continue through that process. And so there's a lot of little things that you can do that if you've done the work in the, in the meantime of building that personal brand of setting yourself up as someone that's been, you know, a thought leader, in this particular industry, or you can show that you've been able to make a shift that I can use these same skills to be able to do this for you inside this organization because I've learned it here and all it takes is a little tweak to be able to apply it here for this, then you're going to set yourself up for that successfully ever after that you're talking about.

Tom Raftery: 28:03

Nice, nice. Shelly, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had or any aspect of this that we've not touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Chellie Phillips: 28:16

You know, just with personal branding or with, building that culture inside the organization that I talk about is that you really have to hone in on the uniqueness of the people that you have inside. Every team's different, and it's really vital that you as a leader, take the time to get to know your team, what matters to them, what are their personal and professional goals. And when you can set yourself up as the person that's going to help them achieve those, then you're going to get so much more value, productivity, and profitability out of that group.

Tom Raftery: 28:50

Nice. Nice. Chellie, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Chellie Phillips: 28:59

Yeah, absolutely. If you'll just go to my website, you can find all the information there. If you go to the corporate training link on there, you can download one of my free resources, which is a worksheet for leaders to go through about the engagement that they have inside their organization. And that's a great place to start if you're looking at developing that culture inside your team.

Tom Raftery: 29:19

Great. I'll link to your website in the show notes so everyone has access to it. Chellie, thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Chellie Phillips: 29:26

Thanks so much, Tom. I've enjoyed it.

Tom Raftery: 29:29

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.