Reflecting on Mistakes

I started my company, Supply Chain Insights, in 2012. The focus was on providing new and unique insights to the supply chain community by redefining the industry analyst model. In some ways, I succeeded. In many ways, I failed. Failure is tough.

What is an analyst? As the market changes, an analyst triangulates the market to determine the right questions to ask. I am always pushing boundaries and pulling the market in new directions. I write and speak to try to drive the industry towards greater value. My target audience is the business innovator. What is the difference between a consultant and an analyst? A consultant knows the answers based on the current state of the industry. The focus of a consultant and an analyst is very different.

Talking about failure takes courage. I think that we do not have the discussion on failure often enough. Here I share my insights on stubbing my toe over the decade:

1. Company Presentations at Conferences Represent Leadership. As a practitioner, I attended many conferences. I had a thirst for knowledge. My learning? Most business leaders speak in glowing terms of their accomplishments, but performance is never vetted to their peer group. I made the mistake of writing and amplifying the stories without verifying performance against their peer group. As I matured in my career, I found that frequent speakers on the conference stage from companies like Cisco, Colgate, Dow, HP, Intel, Lenovo, Mondelēz, PepsiCo, and P&G underperform against their peer groups. In contrast, relatively unknown companies like Asso Abloy, Monster, Nvidia, Paccar, Sleep Number, and Toro outperform but never make the conference stage. The reason? Leadership is assumed. Performance is not measured. And most true performance leaders don't want to be on the stage. Wouldn't it be fascinating to hear P&G share why they underperformed against their peer group on growth? Or PepsiCo to discuss why they underperformed against the beverage peer group on growth and margin? How do we know what good looks like? We need to have this discussion.
2. Sharing Feedback Freely. When I started the company, I believed business leaders would freely share their experiences with software with a broader community. Consumers freely share ratings and review data about consumer products, so why not business leaders on their use of software? I built a community for business users to share data (like rating and review) on their implementations. I was wrong. The reality? Business leaders want to avoid going on the record and sharing information about their software deployments. I wasted two cycles building community software based on this false belief. My takeaway? The industry isn't mature enough to be transparent, and many businesses fear retaliation by software vendors.
3. The Impact of the Retirement Cycle. Business leaders retire faster than analysts. Over 25,000 of my 345,000 contacts were wiped from my LinkedIn feed this year?due to death and retirement. Social reach and research drive my reach, but I constantly have to re-educate the market.
4. Innovation Is Slow. Business shifts are faster than technology implementations. The evolution process of supply chain technology adoption needs to be revised. The projects are long and slow. In contrast, the business cadence of change is quick and ferocious. As analysts, we are looking at the long-term processes of evolution and adoption of new technologies and approaches. The problem is that there are few true innovators.
5. Surviving The Long Claws of Analyst Relations Teams. I believe in freely posting my point of view (POV) as I see it when I see it. No one pays me for my ink. The analyst relations teams in marketing within software companies want pretty press. Over the last two decades, I find the individuals in analyst relations getting younger and more naive. Many are tasked with controlling the analyst. (Can you imagine trying to control me?) My reader expects a provocative and insightful view written for the business innovator, so when these worlds collide, sparks fly. These ugly cycles are draining. Instead of the software provider trying to listen to a different point of view, I get a beating. Buffeting these cycles is tiring. I underestimated the mental anguish of standing up for the business leader in these battles.

At 69, I feel a bit beaten-up, but I need to celebrate my successes as well as my failures. Thanks for all that have helped me in my journey.