Ismail Safi

Special Guest Blog Post written by Parabola Founder & CEO, Alex Yaseen   Operators are under pressure. They’re expected to move faster, do more with less, and somehow keep everything running smoothly while their systems, tools, and data are a mess. Now, AI is adding a whole new layer. On one hand, it’s exciting. The potential is real. On the other, a lot of teams feel stuck. They know they should be using AI, but they’re not sure where it fits into their day-to-day work. These are the five questions I get asked most often—whether someone’s trying to get started with automation, or trying to figure out how AI actually helps. 1. Can we automate this, or is it too messy? This question usually comes from someone deep in a spreadsheet that was never meant to scale. The short answer is: yes, you can probably automate it. But the longer answer is that you’ll need to rethink the process first. AI can help summarize, transform, and clean data—but it won’t fix a broken workflow. That’s on you. The best teams pair structured automation with lightweight AI to get leverage. Think: using rules and logic to standardize a workflow, and AI…

Companies spend enormous amounts of time debating sustainability strategy. They invest in emissions reduction. They launch environmental initiatives. They publish ESG reports. They set ambitious goals. Yet many overlook a simpler question: Who is helping shape those decisions in the boardroom? Recent research published in the Journal of Business Logistics suggests that board composition may influence environmental performance in ways that executives do not fully appreciate. The study examined more than 2,000 firm year observations across 306 publicly traded business-to-business companies. The researchers explored whether having a customer or supplier represented on the board of directors affected a firm’s environmental performance. The answer was yes. But not in the way many executives might expect. Most discussions about board diversity focus on demographics, functional expertise, or independence. This research points to another form of diversity that may be equally important: where directors sit within the supply chain. A customer and a supplier can look at the same sustainability decision and see very different priorities. Those priorities often shape the choices firms ultimately make. The researchers found that companies with customer affiliated directors generally achieved stronger environmental performance. Customer representatives appeared to bring market knowledge and external stakeholder expectations into board discussions.…