[00:00:00] Mike Griswold: There is this thing called a reverse supply chain, reverse logistics, returns management, whatever you want to call it. There was a stat at one time that for, for many retailers, the volume of returns, right, the aggregate dollars of returns, if it was a supplier, would be a top five supplier for most, um, organizations.
[00:00:21] Mike Griswold: So we’re dedicating more resources, more horsepower, more brainpower. To figure out how do we do this effectively? Because like many other things, it’s not gonna go away. Welcome to
[00:00:37] Voiceover: Supply Chain. Now the number one voice of supply chain. Join us as we share critical news, key insights, and real supply chain leadership from across the globe.
[00:00:46] Voiceover: One conversation at a time.
[00:00:48] Scott W. Luton: Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be, Scott Luton and the always special co-host, guest co-host, Mike Griswold here with you on Supply Chain. Now welcome to today’s show. Hey Mike. How you doing today? I’m doing very well,
[00:01:01] Mike Griswold: Scott. Great to see you. Good to be here.
[00:01:04] Mike Griswold: Looking forward to today’s discussion.
[00:01:06] Scott W. Luton: So I got, you know, I’m, you know, you see me sitting here in short sleeve shirts, although the weather’s kind of cooled down a little bit here in the Atlanta area, is still in the low eighties, and I see you with a hi hoodie on Mike. Is it, has it gotten brisk up where you are?
[00:01:23] Mike Griswold: A little bit, actually, it’s probably more a function of the air conditioning in the upstairs of the house than necessarily outside the, uh, we’re still in the, in the upper eighties here in Boise. We’re gonna drop into the seventies, uh, over the week. But, um, multiple years ago. I made the decision I wanted to have the biggest air conditioner on the block.
[00:01:42] Mike Griswold: I have succeeded and uh, and now the upstairs from time to time does get a bit chilly.
[00:01:49] Scott W. Luton: Outstanding. Yeah. Some extra refrigerator space as needed, maybe. Well, good stuff. I’ll tell you this, one of the most beautiful times across the states is a pun of soon as we get into early fall, and it’s just a lot of.
[00:02:01] Scott W. Luton: Beautiful time to be outside. And that’s gonna be a, a little bit of a, a theme here in just a minute, folks, is, uh, today we continue one of our longest running podcast series, one of the most popular series of that supply chain today and tomorrow with Mike Griswold from Gartner. So Mike, of course, serves as vice president analyst with Gartner.
[00:02:18] Scott W. Luton: We’ve got a fun, informative conversation teed up here today. So, as I mentioned. It’s late summer, early fall. It’s time for back to school and of course American football. So what inspiration can supply chain leaders find from this season of the year? Well, we’ve got Mike here to fearlessly weigh in with actionable perspective as always.
[00:02:39] Scott W. Luton: So stay tuned as we walk through an outstanding discussion with the one only Mike Griswold. Okay, so Mike, let’s get going with a fun warmup question. So today when we publish this podcast. It will be September 29th, 2025. Goodness gracious. Where did the year go today, folks? Couple things here. It’s International Day of Awareness for Food Loss and Waste.
[00:03:02] Scott W. Luton: And by the way, did you know the USDA estimates that we waste here in the States? About 30 to 40% of all food. Wow. It is national Silent Movie day. I can’t say I’ve ever watched one of those famous silent movies. Maybe you have. And it’s National Coffee Day. So I would argue there’s two things that keep global supply chains running.
[00:03:26] Scott W. Luton: Coffee and wine, or maybe beer or maybe. So I wanna explore National Coffee Day with you, Mike. Two questions. What is the best coffee that you, one of the best coffees you’ve ever recalled having? And number two, what’s your daily coffee routine, Mike?
[00:03:44] Mike Griswold: So this will probably be a one of our shortest segments, Scott, because I’m actually a tea drinker.
[00:03:51] Mike Griswold: I will drink coffee from time to time. I’m gonna go back home to visit my parents. They have some Dunkin’ Donuts. I love a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. My best coffee experience, though, I will tell you is. I had a meeting in the Starbucks offices in Seattle, and I was sitting in on their sales and operations planning meeting, and they kick off a lot of their large meetings with coffee tastings.
[00:04:20] Mike Griswold: So someone in the meeting will bring in one of the Starbucks coffees, either one that’s been around or a newer one that maybe is gonna launch in their stores. And they all have a tasting. The, the person goes through the history, like where was it made, stuff about the beans, all things that were, you know, frankly Greek to me.
[00:04:40] Mike Griswold: But it was fascinating because there is definitely a, as you would expect, a coffee, a coffee culture, uh, that’s ingrained in Starbucks. Yes. Period. So my morning, my morning routine is, is basically make myself, uh, a cup of usually a Earl Gray breakfast tea. And, uh, I’m off. I’m off. So sorry about the, uh, the not a great coffee story for our folks that are gonna be listening and watching.
[00:05:08] Scott W. Luton: That’s okay. My son’s a big T fan as a matter of fact, so I’ll have to steal some best practices from you, but I love the Starbucks component. My favorite coffee of all time is in the mom and pop coffee places. I think just the vibe. I’ve never, I don’t think I can recall having ever a bad cup of coffee.
[00:05:25] Scott W. Luton: Oh, sure. At the local mom and pop places around the world from Cape Town, for that matter, to Atlanta, to to, you know, across the country. And then secondly, I drink coffee. Me and Amanda both drink coffee religiously every day, but we don’t drink as much as we used to. We used to drink easily the full pot and sometimes think about a little bit more.
[00:05:45] Scott W. Luton: But now it’s about, for me it’s about two cups. And for Amanda it’s about 20. So you gotta put it with me. So, yes, yes. One more thing. You mentioned going to Starbucks, the corporate and kinda having that experience. Similarly, I went to Lamb Weston, one of their production sites in the Pacific Northwest years and years ago.
[00:06:05] Scott W. Luton: And of course at the time they still may do it now. At the time they made most, if not all, Chick-fil-A’s crinkle cut french fries, uh, from this facility, right. And we started a meeting the best way you could ever start a meeting, if it’s not coffee, it is perfectly fried. Chick-fil-A french fries. And I’m telling you, Mike, I had to restrain myself from, you know, grabbing fistfuls of these perfect, perfect treats.
[00:06:32] Scott W. Luton: You, uh, is that we should start all meetings with Chick-fil-A French fries. Huh?
[00:06:36] Mike Griswold: The Chick-fil-A waffle fries are unbelievable. My, my oldest granddaughter has started playing soccer and. I’ve been taking her to Chick-fil-A before practice and then going to practice. So I used to, for some un unknown reason, swap out the waffle fries for the side salad.
[00:06:57] Mike Griswold: And the side salad was quite good, uh, and it was probably much better for me. But yes, it’s really hard to beat the uh, the Chick-fil-A waffle fries.
[00:07:07] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. That’s right. So kudos if Lamb Weston still produces all those delicious fries, kudos to the whole team and all those wonderful frontline professionals making it happen.
[00:07:17] Scott W. Luton: Uh, so we all get to enjoy them. So let’s, we gotta get to work. We’re talking about big two big topics here today, Mike. Uh, I wanna start with this back to school season that we’re all in for some of us. Our kids have been in school since early August here at Georgia. Like. August, first or second, as I recall.
[00:07:32] Scott W. Luton: For others, they’ve just started a few weeks ago, which must be nice. But regardless, Mike, when I think of Back to School in many ways, I think of back to the basics. ’cause at least for those early weeks in the school season, teachers are, are making sure a firm foundation is in place with all the students back in school.
[00:07:52] Scott W. Luton: They can build on top of that foundation with new skills, tools, lessons, and more. So when you think of this season, this back to school, back to basic season, when it comes to the supply chain world, what comes to mind for you?
[00:08:06] Mike Griswold: Yeah, I think there’s two things, Scott, to come to mind. One is a topic that we’ve talked a lot about over our time together over the years, which is just the general idea of planning, right?
[00:08:19] Mike Griswold: Forecasting replenishment. You know, I mentioned sales and operations planning, Starbucks, but this whole idea of of how are we gonna match demand and supply, and if you think about the back to school season is really the beginning of a whole set of planning challenges for supply chain, right? Or at least in many instances it could be the execution component now, because we would’ve planned for back to school Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
[00:08:49] Mike Griswold: Post Christmas, all of those things probably were planned months, if not years ago, and now we’re in execution mode. But I think what’s a little bit different, picking up on the idea of we, we’ve got these core foundations, but now we need to start augmenting them, I think last year to a degree. But I think moving forward, we’re gonna see much more of a role of AI in this idea of planning and execution.
[00:09:16] Mike Griswold: And I think the skill. That’s required now is figuring out where does AI fit within these planning and execution processes, whether it’s upfront and using AI to give us a better demand signal, or whether it’s using AI to help us do a better job around positioning the inventory right, wherever it needs to go, whenever it needs to be there.
[00:09:44] Mike Griswold: That idea of planning, I think always comes to mind. For me, when I think about the back to school season, if you think about it, we’re running from one major demand signal to another, right? The back to school, as I mentioned. Then we have Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, right? Those demand signals and how we respond to that are a big chunk of most companies business, right?
[00:10:10] Mike Griswold: Happens in that last quarter, so. That’s the first one that comes to mind when we think about the back to school season.
[00:10:19] Scott W. Luton: So quick comment. ’cause it is getting it’s go time. It’s go time. This is our time of year. The supply chain shines. And especially those that don’t make the headlines, if supply chains aren’t in the headlines, that’s a good thing.
[00:10:30] Scott W. Luton: But hey, really quick, Mike, speaking of planning, and I love your, uh, mentioning of AI because we’re seeing AI manifest itself and really change the nature of planning in so many different ways. I was at the Reverse Logistics Association. Private leadership event, uh, a week or two ago, uh, actually several weeks now.
[00:10:49] Scott W. Luton: And I was, it, it was a closed session, so I couldn’t record anything. And, and we’re getting, we’re getting outstanding insights, especially from retail leaders about what they’re seeing from a reverse and returns management standpoint. And one of the coolest things I heard. Was the gains we’re making when it comes to better planning for returns, which is outstanding from a technology standpoint to disseminating best practices so we can have better visibility into the reverse side, you name it.
[00:11:22] Scott W. Luton: But we’ve gotta get better ’cause Mike returns last year according to NRF. National Retail Federation, $890 billion in returns in just the US in one year alone. So I’m hoping that we can build on some foundations we made when it comes to reverse and returns management. Your thought, Mike?
[00:11:43] Mike Griswold: Yeah, I, I think it’s a, it’s a great perspective, Scott.
[00:11:47] Mike Griswold: I mean, I think we’ve had this conversation as well, I think for the longest time. Supply chains in, in general, were one direction, right? I need to get stuff out. I need to get it from A to B in my, my job is done when I get it to B, whatever B might be right. I think what we’ve realized now over time, particularly in the retail segment, but I don’t think it’s not just the retail environment, what we’ve now realized is there is this thing called a reverse supply chain, reverse logistics.
[00:12:19] Mike Griswold: Returns management, whatever you want to call it. And I think there, there was a stat at one time that for for many retailers, the volume of returns, right, the aggregate dollars of returns. If it was a supplier, would be a top five supplier for most organizations. So I think we’ve kind of realized now that, that this is another component of our supply chain.
[00:12:44] Mike Griswold: We’re dedicating more resources, more horsepower, more brainpower to figure out how do we do this effectively? Because like many other things, it’s not gonna go away. So we can’t like put our head in the sand and ignore it. So it, it definitely with folks like NRF pointing out some of those statistics, I think it has created a sense of urgency for organizations to now recognize we have this reverse supply chain.
[00:13:12] Mike Griswold: We need to treat it like our regular supply chain. Same from a, from a kind of an intellectual perspective. And, and many, many organizations are now doing that.
[00:13:21] Scott W. Luton: Mike, you’re so right on so many levels. And really quick before we get your second back, back to basic thought, just to close the loop on returns.
[00:13:30] Scott W. Luton: The number one theme I heard through two days spent with, with leaders on the front line of handling returns and of course, the reverse world fraud, fraud, and more fraud, fraud, bad actors. Fraud is, is, is innovating as much as anything else in supply chain. Secondly, to your point. We’ve got to invest in professional development curriculum, just like we’ve seen supply chain on the on the forward side, just explode in the last 20, 30 years.
[00:13:57] Scott W. Luton: We need that same. Movement taking place when it comes to returns management and reverse logistics, dedicated programs. And then lastly, while this came on mind in the first place, is of course, January comes the tidal wave of returns each year, although it’s, it’s throughout the year, but January, of course, after the holidays, folks, uh, take those paisley ties back and, and everything else.
[00:14:20] Scott W. Luton: All right, Mike, we’ve come full circle. You’ve got one more key thought when it comes to, back to the basics for supply chain.
[00:14:27] Mike Griswold: Yeah. It’s, it’s a recurring theme across a lot of conversations we have at Gartner, which is just the, the general concept of agility. And I think when we think about the back to school season and, and, and what we just talked about in terms of planning.
[00:14:43] Mike Griswold: Right. None of our plans are gonna be completely perfect, and we know that. So the ability to be responsive, both from a demand signal perspective, but also the supply response to that from an agility perspective becomes really important. So things like how much inventory and where do we put it when. All of those types of things.
[00:15:10] Mike Griswold: The, the, for retailers, the allocation strategy around where are we gonna pre-position inventory, but the more agile a company can make their supply chain, both from, you know, a process perspective, but also the physical placement of stuff. Right. We typically think of inventory, but it could be things like trucks and drivers and those types of things as well, right?
[00:15:35] Mike Griswold: We need to create some agility within our supply chain, particularly this part of the year, because we have to be responsive, right? We have to be able to use some of the advanced tools that we’re getting from AI around demand sensing, and we have to be able to to shape and respond to that. And the only way we’re able to do that is through agility, which means we can’t lock inventory, too much inventory ahead of time in a particular location.
[00:16:03] Mike Griswold: Right. And as we think about, we haven’t used the T word today, maybe we can get away from not using the T word, but you know, we’re, we need to become much more global with how we think about where we source stuff from and where we place our inventory. And that is another element to how we can be, you know, more agile.
[00:16:24] Mike Griswold: All
[00:16:24] Scott W. Luton: excellent comments. I love your holistic definition of agility and just how important it is across the ecosystem and a, and a variety of iterations. But I gotta go ahead and break the seal on that T word. So tariffs. One more? Yes, one more thought. One of the things I picked up at the Reverse Logistics Association event was there’s not as much visibility but.
[00:16:48] Scott W. Luton: Tariffs apply to returns too, and that is creating multiple headaches from a returns and reverse standpoint. So the plot thickens folks, the plot thickens, but let’s, let’s talk football. So we’ll get away from tariffs talk football for a minute. So. The grand tradition, Mike, that late summer and early fall brings each year American football college football’s getting deep into its schedule.
[00:17:15] Scott W. Luton: The NFL is already several weeks in all kinds of stories, all kinds of fantasy sports, uh, the losers and winners and all points in between. So, Mike, when you think of. Hall of fame football teams or champions or individuals, legendary VI figures in the game. What supply chain analogies come to mind? And let’s start with the first one here.
[00:17:37] Scott W. Luton: We got three. Let’s start with the first one.
[00:17:39] Mike Griswold: Yeah. And I think what I wanna do, Scott, is, is I’ll use a American football teams as a starting point. But I think to your question, the lessons that at least I pull out of these three teams. I think our, you know, they cut across sports because I’m sure there’s, there’s an international soccer team that has had similar experiences.
[00:18:04] Mike Griswold: And the lessons that they’ve learned, my guess are pretty similar to some of the lessons that we’ve learned from the American football teams. Yes. The, the first one I’m gonna use, and I’ll provide a little bit of context, uh, and I’m, I’m from Western New York, which is home of the Buffalo Bills, and there was a stretch in the 1990s where the Buffalo Bills went to four straight Super Bowls.
[00:18:25] Mike Griswold: Which is the championship game in American football and they lost all four games. They lost the infamous for us in Western York, the wide right game, right against the Giants. They got hammered pretty well by the Redskins and they got beat pretty handily twice by the Cowboys. But the story there is really, I think for the bills over that four year stretch is a story of resilience.
[00:18:51] Mike Griswold: They recognized kind of who they were. They recognized. They, they had assembled a very strong nucleus, right? So for those Buffalo fans, that’s the Jim Kelly Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith, Marv Levy, Andre, the wide receiver, Dan escaping me. But anyway, Andre Reed, very good. Thank you. And I, all of those, just to name a few.
[00:19:15] Mike Griswold: Were all, are all, uh, hall of Famers currently. So. There wasn’t, which, which you tend to see in, in, in business. Right. Even though success in the NFL is defined by winning a Super Bowl, getting to the Super Bowl and getting to the Super Bowl for straight years is no small seat and has not been repeated by anyone since the nineties.
[00:19:39] Mike Griswold: So. From a supply chain perspective, the operation was very sound. The fundamentals were very sound. They were able to avoid things like, I will call like the shiny object syndrome. They didn’t fire the coach. Free agency was different. Salary cap was different or maybe even non-existent in the nineties for that matter.
[00:20:00] Mike Griswold: But there wasn’t a mass. Um, exodus of players. They like the culture in Buffalo. They like the coach. And I think as it relates to the supply chain, it’s around understanding what success looks like and what good looks like, and not necessarily beating yourself up if you don’t win, whatever your, your equivalent of a Super Bowl is.
[00:20:26] Mike Griswold: The bills were, you know, had had a team. Uh, over the course of four years, which was incredibly strong, they had a bit of bad luck against the giants. They ran into some better teams in, in some of their other Super Bowls, but they were able to remain consistent, remain true to who they were, and not fall into the trap of, okay, we, you know, particularly after losing the second Super Bowl, it would’ve been very easy for someone to come in and blow everything up.
[00:20:53] Mike Griswold: Right and say, Hey, this isn’t working. We need to replace this. We need to replace that. They didn’t do that, and were able to, while not win the Super Bowl, get to the Super Bowl. So to me it’s, it’s a great example of, of resilience.
[00:21:08] Scott W. Luton: I’m with you. You know, we could talk about this one example for an hour, but a couple thoughts as I, as I heard, listen to you unpack that.
[00:21:16] Scott W. Luton: Number one, argue, uh, arguably. I gotta say, it’s gotta be tougher to get to the Super Bowl four straight years in a row. Yeah. Than winning once. And maybe, maybe I’m wrong, but to your point, to overcome the let down and not let that impact the system, not let that impact the aspects of the formula that work well and the core of the culture and all, to your point.
[00:21:39] Scott W. Luton: It’s remarkable. It’s absolutely remarkable. And when I think of how you tied that to supply chain, supply chain and sales have a lot in common sales. You get nos all the time and you, you gotta, you know, you gotta take the hits and keep on moving, right? Because the more nos you get, eventually, the more yes you get.
[00:21:59] Scott W. Luton: And in supply chain, unfortunately, the nature of what it is. There are lots and lots of opportunities for things not to go right, and that doesn’t even include the surprises that we get big and small, right? And, and the successful organizations and teams that can process all those letdowns and keep on moving, those are the Super Bowl winners or the teams that show up at, at the Super Bowl knocking on the door for straight years.
[00:22:25] Scott W. Luton: So Mike, that is a terrific one out of the gate, and folks check out. Is it the Falls of Buffalo Mike, the documentary on ESPN that tracks all four of those teams, I think it is. Oh, hard knocks folks. Check out that 30 for 30. It’s a great, then the, uh, it could be, well I know hard knocks focused on the bills too, but there’s a documentary.
[00:22:46] Scott W. Luton: Okay. The ESPN 30 for 30, I think it’s called The Falls of Buffalo, and it goes through all four seasons. Oh, wow. Okay. Fascinating stuff. Excellent. Alright, so we got more. There’s, wait folks, there’s more. So the second supply chain leadership analogy when we think of American football is, I think a team up in Baltimore, right?
[00:23:09] Mike Griswold: Yes. The Baltimore Ravens Super Bowl winners 2001 and I think 2013. Quite a span, two different teams. But I think the, the, the supply chain example that I think of when I think of, of Baltimore. Is around this idea of core competencies and recognizing what you are really, really good at and surrounding yourself with enough other high quality capabilities to get the job done.
[00:23:41] Mike Griswold: Baltimore, over the course of its history, has really been known for its defense in 2001, 2013, probably two of the better defenses the NFL has seen. That’s the Ray Lewis and Ed Reed. Whole bunch of other folks. What people probably couldn’t name or may not, may name easily, was who were the winning quarterbacks, right?
[00:24:02] Mike Griswold: For those two Super Bowls, right? Trent Dilfer and, uh, Joe Flacco. Now, Joe Flaco is still around. He’s the starting quarterback, or at least when this airs, he may or may not be, but at the beginning of September, starting quarterback for the, for the, uh, Cleveland Browns, neither of those two I think are gonna go into the Hall of Fame.
[00:24:22] Mike Griswold: I think they would be probably classified as game managers. But what the Ravens were able to do was, was say, our core competency is gonna be defense from a supply chain perspective, it’s what is our core competency gonna be around our supply chain, and let’s ensure those other areas around it are good enough.
[00:24:47] Mike Griswold: To enable the defense. What I mean by that is when you have a defense like the Ravens, you need a quarterback that’s not gonna hurt your team, right? Not gonna turn the ball over, not give your, make your defense work on a short field, play. Complimentary football, is how they would describe it. When you have, whatever your core competency is gonna be for your supply chain, you need those complementary capabilities around that, right?
[00:25:11] Mike Griswold: So if your, let’s say your core competency is gonna be speed. Right then you need ancillary functions within your supply chain that are gonna support that core mission around speed. When I was early in my career at a company called a MR before we got bought by Gartner, there was a gentleman who was, you know, kind of leaving our research who said.
[00:25:34] Mike Griswold: Walmart is a supply chain company that just happens to have thousands of stores, right? Right. Walmart’s core competency is the supply chain, and they support that by having lots and lots of of well run store locations. But I don’t think anyone would put Walmart and I’ll say a Wegmans shopping experiences on the same level.
[00:25:59] Mike Griswold: So for folks out there, the, the le, the lesson I would leave you with from the Ravens is identify your core competency as a supply chain, whatever it might be, speed, cost, service, whatever it might be, and ensure that those areas around that are able to support whatever that core competency is gonna be.
[00:26:19] Mike Griswold: And I think the Ravens have demonstrated that for sure with those two Super Bowls.
[00:26:24] Scott W. Luton: Mike loved that. And I’ll tell you, the 2025 Ravens and the recent Ravens teams look a lot different. And they’ve got the superstar Lamar Jackson at quarterback. And I gotta tell you, I wasn’t a big Lamar Jackson fan in college.
[00:26:37] Scott W. Luton: ’cause he gave my Clemson Tiger teams fits. But I’m a big fan now. I’m a big fan. And we’ll see if he can take the Ravens to the promised land. We’ll see Mike.
[00:26:48] Mike Griswold: Yeah, I mean I, I think if you look at. And I hear a lot of the, the announcers and analysts talk about this, right? The, the, the perception now of the ravens has shifted to Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry.
[00:27:03] Mike Griswold: Right. And, and the defense is, is much less of a focal point. And the pendulum may be shifting, but at some point. The Ravens will have to stop. Somebody will need their defense to show up if they wanna get to the Super Bowl.
[00:27:19] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. Ray Lewis is over there. Grit and smiling probably. Uh, yes, because I’ll tell you, that was, those were quite some defensive teams with Hall of Famers.
[00:27:27] Scott W. Luton: Yes. Okay. Number three. And this, uh, in interesting supply chain analogies found in football. I love this stuff, Mike. Uh, let’s talk about the Patriots. The Patriots, the Patriots, your thoughts.
[00:27:40] Mike Griswold: I’m sure the, the, the, there will be a significant number of the American audience who say, oh my gosh, not more Patriots taught.
[00:27:49] Mike Griswold: And by no means am I, I’m, I’m not a huge Patriots fan, but I think Right. Similarly to what the bills put together for that four year stretch, right. In terms of kind of sustained excellence. I, I think the same would be said over the Patriots for a longer period of time, but they did it in a very different way where, you know, if we go back to the Ravens example, right?
[00:28:13] Mike Griswold: They had a core competency, which was defense. I think the Patriots. Had a core competency around a a, what we would think about from a supply chain perspective as, as orchestration. If you think about how, as a team, as a coaching staff, right, it was all built around kind of the, this philosophy of, of Belichick and craft and, and then embraced by the players where.
[00:28:42] Mike Griswold: No one person is bigger than the team, right? In order for us to be successful, offense, defense, special teams, we, we all have to play our part. We all have to do our job. We all have to know what, what our kind of lane is and our boundaries are, and we’re gonna be the best that we can be within each of our boundaries, within each of our swim lanes, for lack of a better term.
[00:29:06] Mike Griswold: Yes, it doesn’t hurt to have one of the greatest of all time quarterbacks. Does it hurt to have one of the greatest all time coaches, but you also have to have 53 people buy into that? Buy into the fact that I’m not gonna be doing, you know, super exciting press conferences. I may not be doing any press conferences.
[00:29:30] Mike Griswold: My job is to do whatever my job is so that we win games and ultimately win Super Bowls. When the dust settles on, on all of this, I think what we’re gonna see is, is the stretch the Patriots had. Tom Brady and Belichick will be one of the greatest stretches we’ve seen in NFL history. But if you look at the composition of those teams, much like the composition of a supply chain, right, it is a perfect example of, of a case where the sum of the parts is definitely greater than the whole, even though the whole delivered a whole lot of success.
[00:30:05] Mike Griswold: You know, you will not find probably a whole lot of Hall of Famers spread across those Super Bowl teams. You’ll certainly find some, but you won’t find them, say in the qua, the quantity that you might find in other teams that won far fewer Super Bowls. Yeah, and the reason for that. Just like a well run supply chain is, is everyone knew what they needed to do and they did it to the best of their ability.
[00:30:34] Mike Griswold: So in a supply chain, right? The demand planning team says, our job is to create the best demand and supply plan that we can. And that’s what we’re gonna get really, really good at. I’m not gonna worry about how other people do demand plans. This is how we’re gonna do it. ’cause it fits with. How we wanna run our supply chain.
[00:30:56] Mike Griswold: If you think about kind of how that team was constructed, right? It was constructed over time so that the offense and the defense were highly complimentary. Again, doesn’t hurt. They had one of the greatest kickers of all time, clutch kickers of all time, and Adam Vinatieri. But if you look at when they had it, when they got Randy Moss as an example, the offense got a lot more explosive.
[00:31:19] Mike Griswold: When they didn’t have Randy Moss, the offense was still highly effective. But it wasn’t a big play offense. The defense was always because of Belichick’s background. The defense was always gonna be solid and consistent, not make mistakes, right? I think as we think about supply chains and the Patriots, Patriots were, were not gonna be, they weren’t gonna lose because of self-inflicted wounds, right?
[00:31:42] Mike Griswold: Turnovers, penalties, supply chains need to ensure they’re gonna be successful. By not creating their own self-inflicted woos, bad forecast, bad inventory decisions, and so on. So I think the Patriots are a great supply chain example, albeit a little bit different than what we talked about with the bills and the ratings.
[00:32:02] Scott W. Luton: Yeah, Mike, lots of good stuff there. And the orchestration where you started, it’s perfect. And I would argue, I, I’ve never seen a system, kind to your point, a system or, or really a, an enterprise. An enterprise. When it comes to the Patriots, they were so synced up and aligned from ownership. All the way down to probably the water, water boys and stuff.
[00:32:27] Scott W. Luton: Everyone knew what their role was and that’s why they, it produced I think, six Super Bowl championships. The proof is in the pudding, Mike, right?
[00:32:37] Mike Griswold: Yeah. I mean, I think you, we were talking kind of in the green room beforehand about I’m a long suffering, frustrated Cowboys fan. Right. And if you just look at just one element.
[00:32:49] Mike Griswold: As it relates to the supply chain, right? If you think about Bob Kraft versus Jerry Jones. Yeah. Bob Kraft. And you know, you used the word enterprise, I think that’s a great word. You know, Bob Kraft, it was his enterprise, but he was smart enough to delegate what needed to be delegated to push things down.
[00:33:11] Mike Griswold: To the level of people that had the most insight to make the decision. Right? He wasn’t talking about the draft. That’s what he has a general manager for. He wasn’t talking about coaching. That’s what he had. Bill Belichick for you. Contrast that with Jerry Jones, who I would argue had probably more talent to work with within the cowboy structure than than craft had with the Patriots.
[00:33:37] Mike Griswold: Right? And, and Jerry’s inability. To delegate, inability to push things to the levels where the best decisions could be made by the best people. Lead you to a, just to a complete divergence in success of two franchises that had, I would say, both had an equal chance to be successful, one had a much better leader than the other, and then obviously the results speak for themselves over the last, you know, 12 to 15 years.
[00:34:09] Scott W. Luton: Well said, and, and folks, I can’t remember the name of it, but if you’re a Cowboys fan or if you find intrigue in the Cowboys, especially their nineties teams, right? Where they turned it around from like one in 15 or to win this year, whatever that was, to winning several Super Bowls and then what followed kind of the, some of the futility that that Mike’s talking about.
[00:34:29] Scott W. Luton: Yes. Go check out the current Netflix documentary. It is incredible, even for non Cowboys fans like me. Okay, one last tie in and then we’re gonna give a, a sneak peek of those of, uh, things coming up at Gartner. So I had a little, as you’re talking about the Patriots, I had a little flash flashback because when I went to basic training for United States Air Force, that was 1994 and I had a, uh, one of the 50 or so folks in my flight.
[00:34:56] Scott W. Luton: We’re talking about the Patriots. They had the new uniforms. They had Willie McGinest, who they drafted in the first round as a linebacker of USC, and he was, I think, playing pretty well and that I didn’t know until what you were sharing here. That was Bob Kraft’s first year. As an owner, and gosh, he had no idea what he and that organization was gonna have, uh, in their hands.
[00:35:20] Scott W. Luton: But a lot of good stuff. I really enjoyed your perspective as always, and Mike. I think we’re kindred spirits and one of my favorite things about your analysis is how we can find business leadership and supply chain lessons in so much of life outside of the business world. So I really enjoyed the American football analogies here today.
[00:35:40] Scott W. Luton: Well,
[00:35:41] Mike Griswold: think about it, Scott. We, we have done, and I don’t know how well their archive, but we have done so we’ve done football. Yeah, we’ve done movies. Yeah, we’ve done songs. Or music. And I believe we’ve done books, uh, that were non-business books. So there’s, there’s four things right there that I think, I hope people find interesting.
[00:36:01] Mike Griswold: I, I, because it’s very easy to find supply chain stuff that in our kind of day to day stuff, I, I always think it’s fun to go to some of these other, take these other avenues or go to these other kind of aspects to pull out supply chain learnings because you’re, you’re. A hundred percent correct, Scott.
[00:36:18] Mike Griswold: They, they are out there everywhere, right? That’s right. We just need to work for ’em.
[00:36:22] Scott W. Luton: Uh, I’m with you a hundred percent. Okay, so let’s talk about what’s coming up next at Gartner before we wrap here. And a, it’s it’s planning season in a number of different ways. We got some really popular planning summits that the Gartner team has been putting on for several years now.
[00:36:37] Scott W. Luton: We’ve got. The planning summit in London, in the United Kingdom in November, 2025, and we’ve got the Denver Planning Summit coming up in December out in beautiful Colorado. I’ll be, I’ll be at that one and that’ll be my first planning summit. So we, me and the team will be out there. Looking forward to that, Mike.
[00:36:56] Scott W. Luton: Y’all have gotten a lot of praise and recognition from the market of on these tightly focused and targeted. When they say planning summit folks, it is a planning summit. All the presentations, all the conversations, and it’s a really tar targeted audience as well. Tell us, uh, what folks can expect, Mike. So
[00:37:17] Mike Griswold: we really try to tailor these events to the audience, both from.
[00:37:24] Mike Griswold: The content perspective, but also the level of content. So if you think about our symposium really targeted at chief supply chain officers and their direct reports, you know, you’ll find that content probably 60, 65% at kind of that strategic level for C SEOs. And then, you know, certainly some hands-on stuff for their direct reports that that gets flipped on its head when we come into the summits, right?
[00:37:52] Mike Griswold: Because we will have. People that own planning teams for sure, right? We might have the head of planning that reports to the CSCO, so we still need 25, 30% of our content, you know, at that strategic level. But 70% of our stuff is for planners, right? It’s for the people that do the job day to day. We added a track this year around talent.
[00:38:16] Mike Griswold: Which we think is growing to be a huge component of, of the success of a planning team, is who’s in it, right? And what skills do they have? And, and even in today’s age, what skills do they need to acquire? So there is a lot more hands-on type of, um, activity, both in the breakout sessions that we present.
[00:38:38] Mike Griswold: The workshops that we do that are really, really hands-on. So that’s, that’s the big difference is, is that mix between, uh, strategic and tactical. Because of, of who we’re targeting, you know, to be at these events.
[00:38:51] Scott W. Luton: Yep. Mike, a lot of good stuff and I really, I’m a nerd out in December as I’m at the planning summit in Denver.
[00:38:57] Scott W. Luton: I’m really looking forward to it and I bet I, I love the addition, additional focus on talent. It’s so timely and my hunch, Mike, is we’re gonna learn all sorts of the good, the bad, and ugly when it comes to. Adopting AI in our planning activities. I bet we’re gonna hear some of what went well and some of what never will be tried again.
[00:39:17] Scott W. Luton: Mike, your thoughts? Uh uh No, I would
[00:39:19] Mike Griswold: agree. Uh, I think there, there’s a lot of emerging, um, lessons learned for sure. There’s also a lot of emerging use cases around how do we deploy, you know, the AI tools to the best of our ability to support. I think the. I think one of the underlying themes you’ll hear though, is really around kind of an augmentation strategy.
[00:39:44] Mike Griswold: Right? You know, I think our position at Gartner is, you know, we see many, many more instances of AI augmenting processes with people than we see AI replacing people, particularly in the planning environment. That may not be true across the board. There may be other areas where AI. You know, has a higher propensity to, to be able to do things faster than people.
[00:40:10] Mike Griswold: Planning is not the, is not one of those instances that we see planning as a heavily augmented space where AI will provide value add right to, to, to decisions that people are making all the time. I will caution people, first of all, I have, I have no control over the venues or the dates. I, I would be watching whatever your local weather app is, London in November, Colorado in December.
[00:40:39] Mike Griswold: Who knows what you’re gonna get. It’s probably safe to say you will not need shorts and t-shirts. That’s right. Other than that, I think just keep an eye on the weather. Yeah.
[00:40:48] Scott W. Luton: Mike, as always the old saying, uh, we all, everybody talks about the weather. No one does anything about it. Exactly. We’ll see what the weather looks like Exactly.
[00:40:56] Scott W. Luton: In Colorado in December. Exactly. Hey, one last note and then we’re gonna make sure folks wanna connect with you, Mike, uh, a couple weeks back. In an episode of The Buzz, I spoke about some research from the World Economic Forum and it focused on chief people officers right around the world, not just in supply chain, but across all sectors.
[00:41:14] Scott W. Luton: And as you might imagine, AI adoption is a big concern that these talent, these incredible talent managers think about and, and act on and get this. The top AI adoption concerns, I found this interesting, the top two out of all their polling, the CPOs around the world. Number one, employees not adapting or learning quickly enough.
[00:41:35] Scott W. Luton: Makes sense, right? Number two is almost in the other direction. Career stagnation and skills loss from overreliance on ai. Isn’t that two interesting bookends when it comes to the challenges of AI adoption?
[00:41:50] Mike Griswold: Yeah. We, um, I was sitting in a internal meeting a, a few weeks ago, and we’re getting close to the, the broader Gartner issuing our predicts.
[00:42:02] Mike Griswold: These are the things that we think are gonna happen over the next, you know, three to five years. Not surprisingly, almost all of the predicts have some AI related theme. The first two that really resonate with me, selfishly, because they affect the team that I look after, which is talent. Uh, one of our predicts is around, in the not too distant future, there’s going to need to be a requirement for AI certification that as part of the recruiting process.
[00:42:30] Mike Griswold: People are gonna look for people that have been AI certified. I think the question right now is, is no one’s doing that, right? There is no real entity or entities that are going about creating. This is a standard AI curriculum. Do this and you can be certified. So I think that’s gonna be an up and coming thing to watch.
[00:42:51] Mike Griswold: The second predict is exactly aligned with what you just mentioned, which is within the next two years there is going to be a a significant degradation in non-AI skills, critical thinking, things like conflict resolution, things like consensus building. People skills, what we would call soft skills, a very real prediction around the decline of those.
[00:43:19] Mike Griswold: For the exact reason you mentioned Scott, which is a reliance, I would maybe say overreliance on ai and some of these, like thinking for yourself, independent thinking skills we’re just gonna not use. And I don’t think that’s a good thing. Uh, I think that is something we definitely need to keep an eye out for.
[00:43:39] Scott W. Luton: Mike, well said In supply chain in academia. I think of the, um, the AI experimentation that my kids are doing, you know, in middle school and high school because we, we, it’s such a fine line to walk to. We’re, you know, using and utilizing in an optimized fashion, uh, artificial intelligence. But then that overreliance where we almost stop thinking yes, and just go over to AI with hallucinations and all.
[00:44:04] Scott W. Luton: Yeah, so it’ll be interesting. We’re gonna have to have, we’re Mike, we’re gonna have to find some deep AI technologists and explore this, uh, yeah. Risk, uh, in a future episode, but for now. For now, Mike, lots of great stuff going on. Big fan of the great work you continue to do within the Gartner ecosystem and outside of it.
[00:44:24] Scott W. Luton: We got, we’ll, we’ll explore your latest coaching exploits on the next conversation. But in the meantime, how can folks connect with the one and only Mike Griswold from Gartner,
[00:44:33] Mike Griswold: uh, LinkedIn? And by all means, just drop me an email, mike.griswold@gartner.com. Still pretty old school around that. As a quick side note, where we were, yeah, we were talking a lot about our summits.
[00:44:45] Mike Griswold: We’ve just kicked off internally our call to papers process for our symposiums in May. So maybe in the October November timeframe. You know, we could talk a little bit about what, what symposium 2026 looks like. ’cause there’s some exciting things coming for in that area as well.
[00:45:04] Scott W. Luton: Oh, I can’t wait. Can’t wait.
[00:45:06] Scott W. Luton: It’d be a great topic. But regardless, folks, uh, big thanks, Mike Griswold, vice President, analyst with Gartner. As you heard it from him, reach out, compare notes, let him know what you agree with. Let him know what you disagree with, and, and who knows. You may be a part of the next episode. But Mike Griswold, as always, thanks for being here.
[00:45:23] Scott W. Luton: Thanks for having me, Scott. Great conversation as always. You bet folks. You can also venture over to gartner.com where you can learn all about the planning, summits, symposiums, research, the top 25, you name it, right? Uh, all kinds of good stuff over there. So check out gartner.com. So hope you’ve enjoyed folks.
[00:45:41] Scott W. Luton: This conversation as much as I have, I’ll tell you, Mike really makes you think and in a fun, informative. Educating fashion. Right. Uh, let us know what you agree with, Doug. I’d love, I know we got a lot of football fans out in our audience. I’d love to get your thoughts on this. There’s lots of opportunities out there to change how supply chain happens both today and tomorrow, but it’s powered.
[00:46:02] Scott W. Luton: By deeds, not words. With all that said, Scott Luton challenging you do good, give forward, be the change that’s needed, and we’ll see you next time. Right back here on Supply Chain Now. Thanks everybody.
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