People – The Heart of the Supply Chain

People – The Heart of the Supply Chain

Hosts: Steve Boese & Trish Steed

Guests: Maria Villablanca, Founder of Villablanca Consulting and Host of Transform Talks

Today, Steve and Trish sit down with Maria Villablanca to explore the intricacies of supply chain management and its impact on the workplace and everyday life.

– Supply chain complexity, demand, and delivery with a focus on people issues

– Supply chain management and its evolution during the COVID-19 pandemic

– AI impacting supply chain management, job roles, and training

– Supply chain skills gap

Thank you for your continued support of the show and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

This episode is sponsored by Paychex.Whether you’re looking to enhance employee career growth, improve your onboarding process, or understand the importance of flexibility in today’s workplace, this guide has got you covered. Grab your free copy at  paychex.com/awia to unlock the secret to building your dream team today.

Transcript follows:

Announcer 0:00
Welcome to At Work in America, sponsored by Paychex. At Work in America digs in behind the headlines and trends to the stories of real people making a difference in the world of work. And now here are your hosts, Steve Boese and Trish Steed.

Steve 0:28
Welcome to the At Work in America podcast. My name is Steve Boese. I’m joined by Trish Steed, Trish, how are you?

Trish 0:34
I’m fantastic. How are you?

Steve 0:36
Every time you ask me that I say I am well. I give the same answer every time. And I noticed that in the transcripts when we publicly we say I am well, so I have to say something different. I’m fine. I’m just fine. How about that?

Trish 0:47
Tell me a good thing that you’ve done today. How about that?

Steve 0:52
I got I went to Starbucks in the rain, because I just wanted a like a proper hot coffee. And I did that. So that was my highlight of the morning.

Trish 1:02
Okay, that’s fair. Aren’t you also at the beach somewhere? I love how we used to say like an undisclosed Beach, aren’t you?

Steve 1:09
I’m in an undisclosed location.

Trish 1:12
Okay. We’ll leave it at that. The beach is a good thing.

Steve 1:15
It is a good thing. So we are, I just wanted to say thank you. Once again, Trish, we’ve sort of formally wrapped up our 15 year celebration shows for the HR Happy Hour. We did like three shows about it. But we had a lot of guests across the last two episodes, I won’t name them all. Again, a lot. You can look at the archive over the last couple of weeks of shows. But we had some fantastic conversations, fantastic guests going back to the original days of the HR Happy Hour Show. And it was really phenomenally fun to do all that.

Trish 1:47
It was and I think it’s been interesting to me, I don’t know about I won’t speak for you, but to learn the impact that some of the things we’ve done, or shows we’ve hosted over the years have made on on other people that we might not have been aware of. So that’s always special when you can get feedback like that, that what you’re doing actually makes a difference. And so it’s not just us kind of you know, being fans of the people that appeared on the show, it was kind of a little bit of, you know, what we’re doing over these last 15 years has really made a difference for some people.

Steve 2:20
So yeah, it’s surprising. I was worried a little bit before we did those shows about all this, these people won’t really have anything to say about the show, right? But they did right. And it was really heartening to hear some of the stories that those great folks share with us. So thanks again to all of them. And look at the last couple of weeks of shows if you want to listen back to those ghosts. This show today, though, is super exciting. And 15 years, we’re heading a subject we never really talked about in any kind of detail before.

Trish 2:50
No, we’re going to be talking with Maria Villablanca, who is one of the global influencers and leaders when it comes to all things supply chain. She makes very impactful connections between the people in the business and the skills needed for supply chain and really is going to just educate everyone us included on kind of the strategies and struggles that that people who are working in supply chain today face, you said we haven’t done a show and the only one I can even think of is when it was early in COVID. Right when things were starting to shut down. And it was difficult to get masks or things like that. I know you and I’ve probably just scratched the surface on Oh, there’s a supply chain issue. But right I think I think this it’s definitely overdue to have this show.

Steve 3:38
And we’ll talk about some of that with Maria about how all of a sudden when COVID hit the supply chain became a thing on the nightly news that everybody was talking about, or had to be informed about. Like when when previously, most people didn’t really think about all that much right until something’s not on the shelf where it’s meant to be.

Trish 3:57
I’m glad we’re thinking about it because it really does impact every single person on this planet in some way shape or form, no matter where you are in the world.

Steve 4:06
Good stuff. One more thing I want to add Trish. I want to thank our friends at Paychex. Check out the video we just released a few days ago with I sat down with Michael Majors from Paychex at the SHRM conference. I did about a 10 minute conversation with him talking about small businesses and HR and technology and the balance between all of that and Michael is super cool. I hadn’t met him before. And he was great. And so check that out. It’s on our YouTube page, as well.

Steve 4:35
So I do want to thank Paychex, Trish, Paychex is one of the leading providers of HR Payroll, retirement and insurance solutions for businesses of all sizes, and they have developed an essential guide for finding and keeping your dream team to help organizations attract high quality employees, keep them engaged, keep them motivated. It’s full of strategies on benefits, plans and programs. Using technology, enhancing the employee experience and plenty more Trish, you can get to this guide at paychex.com/awia. It’s fantastic stuff once again Paychex, creating great resources free to the HR community.

Trish 5:21
Yeah. And as you were reading off what it covers, those are the very things sometimes that we wish and human resources, whether you’re a small business and maybe you’re not even an HR title, right? You’re an office manager or something like that, or an owner all the way up to the large enterprises. We just think you don’t have enough time to think through some of these things. They do a great job of just putting it all together for you to really ignite that conversation in your business.

Steve 5:45
Yep. So link to that in the show notes as well. And okay, great. Let’s get Maria on board and talk about the supply chain. We are excited today to welcome our guest Maria Villablanca. Maria is the founder of Villablanca Consulting and the host of the Transform Talks podcast. She is one of the world’s leading supply chain procurement, manufacturing and digital transformation experts and her career spans over 25 years of global commercial experience, entrepreneurship and content creation. Maria has interviewed 1000s of leaders from public and private organizations worldwide on the topics of business transformation, her insights and experience as an influencer advisor and commercial leader, have married Maria, a trusted name and all things related to supply chain transformation. I’m so excited to welcome Maria to the show. Maria, how are you?

Maria Villablanca 6:39
Hi, Steve. Hi, Trish, thanks so much for having me. I’m great. Really excited as well.

Trish 6:43
You know, Steve, I’m so glad that we get this opportunity because I met Maria a little over a year ago at a vendor event. And I was so impressed because not only is she truly like all the things, her bio says she really is an expert in this field. But to see a strong female leader in this role, someone who big companies look to for advice. And then also that tie in between the people side of the business, and how important that is in the supply chain. I’ve talked to many supply chain people over the years. And Maria was the first one who ever, almost right out of the gate in our conversations made that connection. So Maria, we’re so excited to have you on the show for that reason.

Maria Villablanca 7:28
Thank you so much. I mean, I loved meeting you. And I think you and I hit it off, like right away as well. And so you can’t talk about supply chain without talking about people you just can’t. And I think a lot of leaders sometimes get sidetracked by the shiny new objects and the technology and the really cool things that are out there. And those don’t really solve any problems unless you address the people issues first.

Trish 7:52
So true. Well, why don’t we as we get started, let’s just learn a little bit more about you for anyone who hasn’t been following you. Hopefully, by the end of the show, everyone will be following you and learning from you. But how did you get started working in supply chain? What kind of piqued your interest or drew you that direction?

Maria Villablanca 8:09
Well, like a lot of people in the supply chain field, I didn’t really set out to go into supply chain, I kind of fell into it. I had studied business, I had also studied political science. And I had interests in I think I wanted to be a lawyer, if I go back to when I was, you know, pretty young a long time ago. But I fell into a manufacturing business and started to do what was then 20, almost 30 years ago, import export operations, that kind of thing. And I just was fascinated fascinated by the complexity of not just getting goods from one place to another because I think a lot of people misunderstand that. That’s not what supply chain is. It’s not just about getting things from one place to another. It’s about making a business operational for any operate business that has goods requires these goods to be brought in to be built some from you know built, and they require the end product to go out as well.

Steve 9:06
Yeah, Maria, that’s fascinating, because I would have said what’s the supply chain? I would have said to myself, the supply chain is the the business of getting things from one place to another looking at it very simplistically. But as you said, okay, at the very center, maybe there’s there’s that but there’s so much more around it. And it’s so complex, it’s it must have been fascinating to you. Maybe as a young person, maybe still today. It’s like a big puzzle to solve. Right? And organization. Puzzles got to be pretty satisfying.

Maria Villablanca 9:39
Of course, I mean, I think a lot of times people misunderstand the supply chain, they think it’s all about ships, trucks, planes, you know, and trains right, or warehouses, and it’s more complex that’s about it’s about putting all of these puzzles together understanding demand, understanding supply, being able to get goods from one place to another to do deliver on that demand. And so it’s negotiating a balance between supply and demand. And I think from an economic perspective as well, it’s really fascinating. Then you add into into the mix, the complexity over the last couple of years, right? We’ve got economic issues, we’ve got geopolitical issues we’ve got, we’ve got COVID, we’ve got the pace of technological change, we’ve had the change in consumer behavior, we shop online, you know, all of these things together, really create a bit of a pressure cooker for straining the supply chain, which is the perfect recipe for disaster or innovation.

Trish 10:37
Yeah, I really like how you’re explaining how you got into it. Because we speak with a lot of young people, we even have a podcast specifically for Gen Z. And one of the questions that I get the most from, especially business majors is they don’t know what this really, you know, constitutes. And I love how you’re saying, you know, it is that sort of political aspect of what’s going on in the various economies and how that’s working, or not working together, that almost dictates some of the decisions. These are extremely complex decisions that are that are made, I think one of the things that most attracted me to human resource, were some of those similar type issues that arise, right? It’s why are you making the decisions you’re making to make something work in a certain way? I’d love to hear about, you know, you specifically talk a lot about transforming the way that we’re doing business with related to goods and services, what really kind of took you down that path to thinking about more holistically in terms of advising companies on how to do this versus you may be working as a practitioner? In one organization? Was that a thought out process? Or how’d you get there?

Maria Villablanca 11:52
It kind of was I remember sitting in a room, I used to organize conferences as well. And I was sitting in a room about 10-12 years ago with the great in the good and supply chain manufacturers to large scale manufacturers, high level C level executives, and we were starting to talk about digital transformation. So these are a lot of the companies I work with are large scale, you know, enterprises in the Fortune 1000, right? And sitting in that room are about 15 people, mostly men, I will add 15 people and they were talking about digital transformation. And most of them were scratching their head, they were saying, How are we going to move our business that’s maybe 100 years old, 50 years old, from manual processes, to digital processes. And I thought, if this is the great and the good, these are the best that the industry can offer. And they don’t know the solution to this, what hope is there for other people as well. And so the conversation initially was about digitally transforming business. And then I realized during the COVID years, that we’re not talking about just whether you apply this computer program or software, you’re talking about how businesses are transforming to operate in this age of complexity that we operate in now. So it’s to me less about technology, tech technology is the enabler. To me. It’s all about how we reframe business, how do we reframe operations, to be able to be resilient, robust, sustainable, diverse, all of the things that we require from an organization in today’s world?

Steve 13:23
Yeah, Maria, you mentioned the COVID years, right. And when I was thinking about this show, and getting ready for today, I might have thought, well, most of us don’t think we’re not in the business, right? We’re not in your industry, most of us don’t think a ton about the supply chain, right? Until COVID hit, then all of a sudden, on the nightly news, right? In addition to things about quarantines and vaccines and all that there was also all of a sudden the supply chain became a thing. And we all had to learn about it, even if we didn’t care too, because we would go to the grocery store, or what, you know, the pharmacy or whatnot right here certainly happened here in the US for a time and most of the things we needed were sporadically missing or missing entirely. And all of a sudden that supply chain became something that we were confronted with. So I’d love your thoughts on just obviously, you could maybe reflect a little bit on that that era, right and, and massive disruptions in the supply chain. But maybe let’s talk a little bit more about sort of what’s come out of that. And as you work in the supply chain, and advise companies who are still trying to reckon with maybe the fallout of those those years, kind of what have been some of the changes you’ve seen?

Maria Villablanca 14:29
Well, you know, the first big change is that my neighbors finally know what I do. I think what I first would talk about this with you know, when you move into a new neighborhood or you meet someone, what do you do, you’d say supply chain and eyes would just gloss over and people would think oh my gosh, I have no idea what that means. Whereas now like you’re absolutely right, we see it on news. You may not know the intricacies of it. But you do know that maybe you ordered a car and you’re not going to get it till next year or you know that you’ve gone to the supermarket and And they’ve run out of whatever product, I think since World War Two. So we’re going back a long time, we’ve lived certainly in the west with plenty, you know, we, especially in the US, we don’t really understand rationing or scarcity, right. And that is because supply chains have worked.

Maria Villablanca 15:19
And so what happened during the pandemic is that it exposed a lot of flaws within this supply chain, especially because we get our products and goods all over the world. That’s all well and good when it’s not broken, right. But when it breaks, you realize how vulnerable it is. And so now, what’s happened is that the public is made aware that, oh, my gosh, it’s not that easy for me to just get strawberries in the winter. If I live in Wisconsin, you know, it’s something that requires a complex supply chain. And so now I think we’re we’re realizing that this vulnerability can impact our day to day lives. Now, those are the I guess, negative things that have come out of the supply chain, the fact that it’s not, you know, that’s, that’s vulnerable, we saw it in the United States with the baby food, the formula shortage, right, would have been that the government had to get involved in that. We’re a bit concerned, what does it mean, we’re now vulnerable to maybe issues with geopolitics in China, tariffs, with issues with volcanoes etc. So we that’s sort of the negative aspect. However, the positive aspect of that is that we realize that we can make an implement change, and, and also that it’s an exciting place to work. And it’s an exciting place to operate. And back to your initial question, I got into supply chain because I love solving problems. And supply chain is a complex series of problems. And so a lot of what’s good is also the fact that we’re understanding that our supply chains aren’t as robust as we thought they were. But that needs work that needs help. And so we’re building more sustainable, more resilient supply chains.

Trish 16:53
You know, as you’re mentioning some of these things, I’m like, frantically making notes. For anyone watching on YouTube. I mean, I’m constantly looking down making notes. But a lot of what you’re saying really resonates. Because it’s not that different. It’s an overall business conversation across the different silos of a business. Many of the the phrases you were using are similar to sort of the challenges people are facing if you’re in human resources, right? You’re talking about scarcity, you’re talking about vulnerability, and whether that’s to you know, weather issues, disease issues, disasters, I know, we I just saw this morning, you know, there was a, that big supply chain interruption when there was the the big ship over here that hit the bridge. And so there’s just anything can happen. And I’d love to hear your perspective. I know, you use storytelling as a way to kind of make the supply chain side of the business really solidified with the people side of the business and what’s needed. Could you maybe talk about, about that where the things like scarcity of of things. And the scarcity of people actually do have a very direct correlation and and how that you’re seeing from the people you talk to on your podcast, transform talks? Are they feeling that there’s a similarity?

Maria Villablanca 18:14
I mean, we have a big skills gap problem in supply chain. A lot of the older generations that were operating in supply chain are aging out, right. And so going back to the question, you asked me about getting into supply chain, it’s, it’s not like you even hear it in school, it’s like, my counselor says, oh, supply chain is great. You know, no one told me supply chain was a great career to go into. So we have a problem in supply chain, we’re not making it sexy enough, we’re not making it. Interesting enough. So not many younger people are coming into the supply chain, that is leaving us exposed in a very big way. So the big people issue that we have in supply chain, it’s just not enough talent and a lot of people aging out. Second issue that we have is there’s a lot of automation in supply chain. And so there’s a lot of fear in supply chain about being replaced by automation and technology. But yet, the supply chain is so complex, whatever product you operate it, you’ve got to think of anything I mean, when I, when I train, you meet new members of staff, or when I talk to younger generations, I say supply chain is everywhere. It’s in the clothes that you’re wearing, it’s in the food that you’re eating, it’s in the, you know, drugs, you’re taking for, you know, headaches or whatever, it’s in everywhere, right. And so that requires the number of people.

Maria Villablanca 19:31
And I think the biggest challenge that we have is to get that balance right between improving processes, getting the right technology and getting the right people to implement the that technology. So yes, 100% it is a big silo issue that we’ve got that’s that happens across all businesses where they’re segmentation in silos and, you know, sort of what I call sort of the, you know, thinking within my one little cubicle, and not necessarily thinking of the wider business This. So all of those things need to be overcome. I talk a lot about cross functional collaboration in my podcast, which is working with finance it supply chain HR, to really further the, you know, the goals and objectives of the business. So 100% There is no way we’re going to solve the issues in supply chain without people.

Trish 20:22
I’m thinking about this from a practical standpoint of, you know, working in organization myself, and why do you think that we’ve always had these silos? I mean, we seem to be saying this for the last 30 years, right? We know that we have silos, we know we need to work longer, right or longer. And, gosh, why are we still I don’t know. What do you think like, why are we hanging on to this? Are we Is it fear of losing our own jobs? Is that is that it? Is it fear of sharing information?

Maria Villablanca 20:53
We have, I think that there’s a lot, there’s a lot, there’s a lot at play here. And I think one of them is perhaps maybe the way that we’re incentivized and remunerated. The way people are bonused. You know, so you might be bonused in this particular job, because you have to hit these KPIs and these targets, and that you want to hit them, regardless of the collateral damage, it may cost somewhere else down the line, I have seen, say, for example, optimization projects where someone’s like, I’m going to optimize our manufacturing processes, and they’re optimized and amazing. But that optimization resulted in extra work or extra inventory down the line and extra costs down the line that were then passed on to the consumer. And but yet the person here in the manufacturing plant is only looking at their, you know, their square footage because that’s how they get remunerated. I think it’s a question of remuneration. It’s a question of KPIs. It’s question of management, leadership. And of course, fear. You know, if I do my job, you know, if I let that other person in, they might screw up what I’m doing. And so it’s all of the above.

Steve 21:59
Yeah, and I think some of it harkens back to just especially in large enterprises, like a lot of the ones you talked about working with Maria. Just by nature, they become complex entities among themselves, and they have to be organized right in some manner. Right? Often, right, we see that functional organization, right is what most, say most many organizations adopt, right? So procurement in the box and facilities in a box and HR in a box and finance in a box. And often, as Maria said, gets down to real renumeration, and KPIs and just really requires a really skillful approach to both organization and we had Dave Ulrich on the show few years ago, Trish, we talked about this, the impact of organizational design on sort of people outcomes, and some of it is very complex, as Maria started getting back to your point earlier, both managing the supply chain, it’s complex itself, but also managing a 50, 60, 80 100,000 person organization globally, you know, also incredibly complex. And so some of that falls into the conversation we’re having now. And really, what I’m thinking about here is we’re talking about the complexity, and the difficulty and kind of organizing all these moving parts and these huge problems to solve. And I feel like we’re obligated in 2024 to ask anyway about AI. Right, because we’ve been talking about it a ton on this show for a few years now. And Trish reminded me earlier this week that she and I had been talking about it in HR context since 2017, which I was shocked to think we were talking about it back then but we were in is that something is coming up on transform talks or in the work you’re doing with organizations about specifically around Hey, this is how AI is now being developed, implemented, impacting things fundamentally in the supply chain.

Maria Villablanca 23:54
Hundred percent, I think we’re talking about complex problems, right. And we’re also talking about a lot of data and a lot of data points, a lot of moving parts, of course, generative AI and AI is going to be something that’s going to help us, you know, solve some problems that maybe our own capacities have breached the limitations, right. So, yes, we are definitely seeing that. Now, the challenge we’re then seeing is what does that mean? Because it’s changing the profession. It’s changing people’s jobs. And yes, there’s fear. What does that mean? Am I going to be replaced? So I think we can have a conversation on AI without having a conversation on the training and development of people around AI retraining people for different roles. So you know, it may be that yeah, the job of say, for example, a planner is someone who plans and purchases goods, right, and has to understand how many things to how many widgets to buy for X amount of demand, right? That might change with generative AI. But so what does that person do? If it frees up their time and they no longer have to do these things? What can they do? So I think we have to talk about the responsibilities company. He’s have with retraining their staff for a different type of world. And and one of the things that I’m hopeful about is, if you go back 100 years, right?

Maria Villablanca 25:09
There were no marketing managers, there were no manicurists. There were no you know, right, the kind of jobs that existed back then and don’t exist today. Well, humanity always finds a way, we always find a way to to thrive. And I think it’s the challenge this time around, though, is that technology is moving a lot faster. And so instead of intergenerational, seeing generational change, we’re gonna see chin change within five years, or three years or four years. So I think a lot of the questions I get asked, as well as what should I be doing to prepare for this type of world of generative AI. And to me, it’s about learning as much as you possibly can, having an open mind or a growth mindset to be able to acknowledge that you don’t know everything, but you’re gonna have to train and learn things. And I think also, it’s less about being extremely technically savvy. A lot of people say to me, should I go and study coding and Python and all this stuff? And I say, not really. No, you know, I’m not a mechanic.

Steve 26:07
I know I’m interrupting you, Maria, that learning to code thing, boy, that’s coming back to bite people right in the bud. Right? And for a very long time, we told everybody, every every person, every young person, especially go learn to code. I’m not sure that’s great advice today, by the way.

Maria Villablanca 26:23
Listen, the example I always give people is, every morning, when I get in my car, I just push a button, I know it works, I don’t have to tell you how the, you know, fuel injection pump works. It’s your I mean, I don’t need to know that someone else knows that. So to me, technology is going to become a lot easier to use with large language models they’re gonna get you’re gonna be able to talk and the interface is going to be a lot simpler. But what you do need to know is you do you need to have critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, you do need to have, I think more generally, although specialism is of course, important. But you need to also understand the world that you operate in. What are the implications of say, for the, for the business, commercial understanding, maybe financial understanding, maybe geopolitical at least curiosity, but more important than anything? It’s that critical thinking, that ability to solve problems?

Steve 27:14
Yeah

Trish 27:15
I love every single thing you’re saying, because I’m like nodding my head. This is the conversation that HR leaders, managers, directors, CHROs have every day, and it’s how do we bridge that gap with the business? And to me, what you’re talking about is that way, right? I feel like this maybe is our time, where if we know, if you think about a large enterprise business, if the supply chain, people are thinking about it this way, they know they have that skills gap, they know they need training and development, here’s your opportunity. If you’re an HR and listening to this, this is your opportunity to reach out to those other people in the business and say, now’s the time. Right. And it’s so strategic. That’s the other thing. And Maria, I don’t know, I’d love to hear your thoughts on if you see this in the other side of the business. But in HR, it’s always like, we wish we weren’t doing so much compliance in which, you know, obviously, automation will help that, but we wish we could be more strategic with the business. Is it the same on the other side?

Maria Villablanca 28:19
No one wants to be dealing with data, no one wants to be dealing with, you know, inputting all this information or having to do contracts on a regular basis, they want to be part of the strategy. So I think the things that you need to understand to be strategic is you need to have an a very over, I guess, an overview or an understanding of commerce, finance, business, in general, geopolitics, economy, all of those things above and also human nature. This is to me, a good leader, a good manager of people is someone who gets results through other people. And so you have to have that emotional intelligence as well, all of those things together, to, you know, be able to advance in your career, right, I think the the person that’s going to be advancing is equal parts, technologist, right? Interest, or at least technology curious, you know, commercially curious, financially curious, but people in you know, curious, emotionally intelligent as well.

Trish 29:14
I thank you for mentioning those skills. I’d love to just hear about like, again, for people who are maybe studying right now, where they’re studying business, or they’re, maybe they’re not even in a university, but they’re thinking like, I really want to, I want to work in business, but I don’t know what to do. What advice do you have for them in terms of skills to develop, to get into the supply chain as a way of seeing a career there?

Maria Villablanca 29:41
I think first of all, is understanding that it’s not as it’s not as hard to get into as you’d think. Right. And you don’t need to have that kind of specialism you don’t need to be an engineer per se. It’s one of the things I talk about quite a lot as well is that we are not going to solve the problems of today, using the methodologies of yesterday. Today, so I’m seeing a lot of people look for non traditional people in the supply chain. Whereas before you couldn’t get into it unless you had an engineering degree, I’m seeing people with more creative backgrounds, more marketing backgrounds, more business backgrounds. So that’s really exciting and fascinating. So to me, it’s about, first of all, knowing that this is an option, number one, number two, knowing that it’s an exciting option. And going back to my earlier point about how we don’t make it sexy enough, you know that supply chains in general, are the largest polluters in the world.

Maria Villablanca 30:31
So if you want to solve the problems of the world come to supply chain, if you want to make a more sustainable world come to supply chain, there’s a whole lot of innovation and technology, the usage of robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning to solve problems. So understand that there’s so many facets to supply chain that it isn’t just about, I’m going to drive this truck or get this truck from A to B. It’s about getting that truck from A to B whilst the world is on fire whilst we have climate change issues to stainability issues, economic issues, geopolitical issues, how do you balance all this stuff together?

Steve 31:05
I’d also add Maria, there’s just a lot of really cool elements here in this in these types of jobs. I mean, I’m not being flippant, here, I’m being serious, like those giant trucks are cool. Trains are awesome. Those massive boats when they’re not tearing down bridges by running into, those are the coolest things ever. Man who, like I can remember, like being in Shanghai church and seeing those giant container ships go through that river, it’s the coolest thing ever.

Maria Villablanca 31:32
Now you’ve got to figure out, okay, because there’s so many things happening at once. That’s the problem of the world that we live in today. It isn’t just one crisis over there. There’s multiple things. We have the Brit, you know, the ship in Baltimore that you’re talking about, you had a ship stuck in the Suez Canal, you’ve got changing consumer behavior, you know, the fallout is that we’ve got a lot of demand in one place. Supply is diminishing in other places. So how do you solve all these problems together? So it’s an exciting time as well. It’s like a puzzle.

Steve 31:58
And it’s tied up with HR and people all the time, too, right? Because wasn’t that long ago, I’m pretty sure it was in LA, right, the dock workers were on strike, right, there was a there was a lot of labor issues in those ports in the west coast in the US for a while, which had huge ripple effects, Maria knows much better than I would be. And there’s some of the ripple effects. But the connection between the people side of the business, right labor relations and negotiating a labor contract and the people issues and the supply chain, it’s tied up immeasurably, and it’s so that’s why it’s one of the many reasons why it’s so fascinating.

Maria Villablanca 32:31
I’m also seeing a lot of specialist HR specialists for supply chain. So you know, supply chain is also very people intensive, it’s people heavy, you’re talking about everyone from you, like you say, the dock worker, the truck driver, the warehouse person, all the way up into, you know, manufacturing processes, even part of the subconscious part of sales, marketing, product design, right? If you’re gonna design brand new pair of sneakers, you know, you’ve got to take into account where am I gonna get all the products from, you can just design a sneaker or design a car without realizing that you’re gonna have to pull parts from all over the world.

Steve 33:06
If you decide I’m going to make sneakers out of bamboo, right? That’s your great idea. Well, where’s all that bandwidth coming from? And how are you gonna get to where it needs to go? Right? Yeah.

Maria Villablanca 33:15
Is it sustainable? Is it ethical? You know, all of those questions are supply chain questions. And I think so going back to the point that you made about what should people do? Well, first of all, understand that supply chain is everywhere. And it’s everything. And there’s so many different parts of supply chain, you can work in the financial part of supply chain risk, is part of supply chain, the people part of supply chain that is never gonna go away. That is enormous. So I’m seeing a lot of people, I’m going to say, for example, people related fields in supply chain there are, I’ve seen CHROs that are supply chain specific CHROs, you get organizations that have maybe 10 20,000 People just in their supply chains. And so and then, by the way, a supply chain by its very nature is not just your supply chain, because you’re buying product from someone who is also buying products from someone who is also buying raw material from someone that whole chain has a lot of people out of a lot of contracts.

Trish 34:09
You know, as you’re talking about, and Steve, you too, as you’re talking about, like trucks and boats, and all these things are cool. One of the things I think, if I’m thinking my own experience, I’m not remembering the word supply chain being used, but my dad worked in zinc refining, when I was growing up, and he was constantly talking about all suppliers who would bring you know, the ore and then you, you know, refine and then it would all the byproducts and so forth. So, I think that is parents, right? Regardless if you’re an HR listening this or not, or whoever’s listening to this, make sure that what you’re telling your children right as they’re out there in the yard when they’re little and they’re playing with their trucks and their boats in their cars. And we should be using that language I think, to show them it’s not just about playing when you’re a little kid, you can transfer those things that you enjoy. As a child into your career, and I don’t know that I ever put that together until just now listening to the two of you, is this something like you said, you know, you didn’t set out to be in supply chain? Do you see that now, though, are you seeing that there are younger people who are thinking like, wow, I’m really interested in the movement of transport, right? Or is this something we still need to really work on?

Maria Villablanca 35:26
What I’m seeing more, but we need to do a lot more about it. Because, again, we keep talking about the transportation side of things. There’s other facets, there’s, like I said, product design, there is understanding the sort of buying process, you know, the purchasing, if you’re going to let you know, when supply chains fail are one example. For example, you go to get your new iPhone, everyone’s waiting for their new iPhone, or their new PS5, and there’s just not enough PS5s, we’ve seen that happen many times, or when you go into the supermarket, and there’s an Indian summer, it’s really late, you know, and there’s a huge heat wave, and you’ve, you’ve got all the winter clothes out, you know, that that is where supply chains break. And so there are multiple pressure points within the supply chain, that are more than just the trucks and the, you know, the trains and the planes and so forth. It is about managing inventory, managing, you know, managing manufacturing process managing people. So to your point, Trish there, we still need to do a lot more to show how exciting and how much of value or how much of contribution this makes to the GDP of a nation.

Maria Villablanca 36:31
For instance, you know, most people that work in the United States work in one way or another, directly tied to a manufacturing process or a transportation process, or determine, you look at the Postal Service, that is supply chain, they move goods and packages every day, so that, you know, some of the biggest employers in the world, whether it’s the government or you know, whether it’s a private organization, our supply chain, so the world is changing, it’s changing extremely fast. And so there are there’s a huge need for critical problem solvers, to to come into this with their they have a creative background, you know, or they have an engineering type background or business background. That’s what we need. And so we need to do a better job of making sure that people understand there are a wide array of roles in the supply chain that need filling.

Steve 37:19
We could we could talk about this for an hour, or more or more hours. I love this stuff. I’m so fascinated by the post office is a great example, too, because I don’t like when people complain about the price of a stamp going up here in the US, which they do all the time. I’m thinking it should be like $100. And you tell me I can put a little piece of paper in an envelope with a tiny little sticker on it. And they’ll take it to any address in the United States. Anyone I want in three days. That’s amazing. Remarkable that that happens. And it should cost $100 not $1 or whatever it costs.

Maria Villablanca 37:49
Come rain or come shine. What is it that they say you know, in all kinds of weather?

Steve 37:53
That’s extraordinary. So last thing we’ll ask you before we let you go is we are we have wrapped up sort of our official celebration here on the podcast network. We did we’ve done 15 years of the shows. And I used to joke around Maria that we are in the early days of the HR Happy Hour, which was our original podcast that there was no supply chain happy hour, I literally made that joke, like 100 times on the show. So even though your show is not called the supply chain, happy hour, it’s awesome to have it. Yeah, the transform talks podcast is out there. So I’m glad now that you know I know about this. But what is the one thing we use you’d like to celebrate with our audience and we can join you in celebrating say whether it’s in your work in your personal life just in the world? What’s the thing to celebrate from your point of view?

Maria Villablanca 38:39
Well, to me, I think it’s seeing more diversity in the supply chain in terms of people of all different ages, all different races, groups, colors, creeds, backgrounds as well, you know, so there are people without university degrees or people with PhDs. So to me, there’s two things. One is seeing that level of diverse thinking and diversity in all aspects of the supply chain at all levels. And the second thing is that we kept things moving during the pandemic. And during all of this crisis, you know, you still we still live in a world where if you do want to eat strawberries in the middle of winter, you can and that is supply chain.

Steve 39:17
I love it. That’s fantastic. Maria, we have loved chatting with you and learning more about the supply chain and geeking out a little bit about it. I’m so fascinated by it. And I think Trish is too and this has been great, great stuff. So thank you for taking some time to join us. And we of course share how folks can find you how they can find the Transform Talks podcast as well as your other services page that in everything you do, but it’s been so great to get to chat with you today. Thank you so much.

Maria Villablanca 39:47
Thank you both for having me. It’s really been absolutely amazing.

Steve 39:50
Awesome stuff. All right. I am so happy we finally did this Trish. Thank you for organizing it. You were the impetus behind the show.

Trish 39:59
You’re welcome. I just think, you know, when Maria talked about we just had an instant connection when we met. And I think that’s what’s exciting is is you talking about it goes beyond the borders of your silo in the business world and you meet other people and you both get excited and you’re talking about how it can work together and so for me, it was like that little that little conversation just shows that all organizations can have these kinds of ties right to the rest of the business leaders and and really move mountains I think when you partner together like that, so I’m excited we have Maria on.

Steve 40:36
Me too. Great stuff. We will of course, share all the information about getting in touch with Maria. Thank you once again, Maria, Trish, thank you, thanks to our friends at Paychex of course for all their support. And that’s it. My name is Steve Boese and this has been the At Work in America show. Catch all the show archives that HRhappyhour.net and we will see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai