Lost Opportunity

“Retirement is an ongoing, relentless effort in creativity. You can try yoga, like to cook, bought some plants, took classes in Mandarin.?Believe?me, I've tried everything. I just know there's a hole in my life and I?need?to fill it... soon.” Ben (Robert DeNiro from The Intern)

I am acquainted with someone who came out of retirement with the desire of "giving back" from a long career with an amazing company, significant learning, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. The experience came from more than 30 years with one of the most successful multinational companies competing across the global economy.

The company mentioned herein has and continues to be a model of study for the most prestigious business schools across the globe. The marketing and process excellence within this company rank among the best, and in most comparisons, cannot be matched.

"Certainly, small and developing businesses would want to take advantage of that experience and learning to accelerate their progress.", thought my friend. He took advantage of an opportunity to work with a company that was going through a transition from being owned by a private equity company to being publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange.

My friend noted that two of the greatest opportunities in this company at the time were those of a) creating and deploying a robust S&OP (Sales & Operations Planning) process and, b) establishing a category/product management model which enabled effective alignment and coordination of cross-functional efforts in delivering step-change business results.

My friend reported to one of the vice presidents (functional) in the company and sought diligently to communicate and elaborate those opportunities, to no avail. After four years he decided it was time to move on and seek to share that experience elsewhere.

The aforementioned company continues to operate at the same stock valuation level since 2019. For reasons not entirely known by the author, the company continues to operate at the same level over a 5-year period.

Two years ago my friend joined up with a young pharmaceutical company! Although he joined the company in a junior position the thinking was that over time he would be able to deliver improvements which would facilitate opportunities to influence upward.

While there have been significant improvements delivered, the upward influence has been limited, to say the least. In speaking with my friend just the other day he shared an unfortunate experience which had recently transpired.

The company for which my friend works has recently hired a new Vice President of Supply Chain. After three months on the job the new Vice President has initiated an effort focused on segmenting the Contract Manufacturing suppliers and implementing Power BI as a digital governance tool. The "selling point" has been focused on the need for segmentation of suppliers as the company grows and the ability to have consistent reports of performance (via Power BI). It is expected that the development of this approach and associated tool will require a period of 2 to 3 years.

My friend has worked with Power BI for years and is familiar with the significant business insights which can be gleaned through proper application of this tool. However, based upon his internal knowledge and experience with the company over the past two years, the key benefit to be gained from Power BI in the current proposal is the creation of nice management reports of Contract Manufacturing performance. There will be minimal impact to the current challenges faced with a small quantity of the contract manufacturers. The current challenges can be resolved through proper issue definition and appropriate development and management of multi-functional action plans.

During the past two years of employment my friend has likewise developed an "experience-based insight" regarding the key needs of the company related to the end-to-end supply chain. The key elements of that plan is three-fold:

1. Mapping and Sensing - mapping of the current end-to-end supply chain (touchpoints, times, responsibilities, constraints, opportunities, issues to be resolved).

2. Strategic Planning - the development of capabilities, resources, organization structure, process(es), skills, data, and technology, based upon learnings from the Mapping and Sensing phase. The desired future state would be illustrated in the form of a transformation Matrix.?The Matrix would be a simple, yet powerful view of the desired end-to-end supply chain future state.

The Matrix would articulate the sequence of the transformation and associated target timing(s).

3. Execution - Realizing the strategy requires achieving consensus across multiple functional leaders and securing buy-in of key stakeholders.

The Matrix helps determine how all the interconnected parts of an end-to-end supply chain interact with one another. This multifunctional approach facilitates adoption across the entire organization.?

Based upon my friend's experience and assessment, this approach would deliver a more holistic and comprehensive strategic plan for the future of the end-to-end supply chain.

My friend sought once again to share and influence upward by articulating the aforementioned approach. Consistent with his previous experience, the receipt of information was acknowledged by his immediate manager never moved further.

As we've all experienced, there is always more than one way to solve a problem, drive improvement, and deliver step-change results. That said, there is also a clear difference between the ideas of Good, Better, and Best. The key objective in sharing this experience is to communicate and articulate the "expense of Lost Opportunity".

In this particular case it is the "lost opportunity" of experience. I personally am not knowledgeable in regards to the reasons for the lost opportunity (opportunities) but assume it may be related to:

- position within the company

- age of the employee

- geographical location (being based outside the headquarter office)

- leader(s) feeling threatened by lower level employees

I love the following quotation from an article entitled, Why Lived Experience Matters:

"Lived experience matters for many reasons, not least of which is that only someone who has been through an experience knows the nuances and complexities of dealing with it. This is why, for instance, it is so important for company boards, policymakers, and even community surveys to make sure they are diverse and include the voices of people who have been through experiences as different from each other as possible."

Hopefully, more leaders and companies will have the humility to recognize, acknowledge, and leverage the experience residing in their organizations through those of a different generation.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-neuroscience-perspective/202109/why-lived-experience-matters