“I prefer talking about this topic [supply chain transformation] without technology as the leading discussion point. I think technology is completely irrelevant if you can’t bond on the motives for change and you can’t bond on the way of life you’re looking for. You have to start there first.”

-John Sicard, CEO, Kinaxis

In this episode of TECHquila Sunrise powered by Supply Chain Now, host Greg White continues his conversation with Kinaxis CEO John Sicard.

Greg White (00:04):

It’s time to wake up to tequila, sunrise, Greg white here. And I have spent my career starting leading, deploying, and investing in supply chain tech. So we take a shot and talk founders, execs investors and companies in this hot industry. If you want a taste of how tech startup growth and investment is done, join me for another blinding tequila sunrise. Wow. Did we get a lot of feedback on the first half of this interview with John Soccard? I’m so happy to bring you the second part of this. So you can hear from this incredible supply chain leader, listen up,

Greg White (00:44):

You know, the wisdom is saying, you know, ignoring the techniques that would, that make you more agile, okay. Is where disaster lives. That’s where companies will ultimately fail. If they do not, you know, recognize, you know, the flaws in legacy techniques, right? There are flaws. And by the way, if we went back 30 years ago, we would be talking about the previous 30 years and talking about the flaws that existed in those techniques, right? If you went back to Henry Ford, before he invented line manufacturing and line stocking and, and so on, you know, people still were working in sales and so on. Well, he invented and improved manufacturing lines. And so now I think what COVID has done is it’s accelerated in the minds of chief supply chain leaders and thought leaders it’s accelerated the need for generational change. What will the next 30 years look like?

Greg White (01:43):

It’s time to think differently. It’s not time to, well, let’s do the same as we’ve ever done. It’s harder. It was from that famous, uh, you know, same as it ever was only better don’t think so. I would argue that a lot of people recognize this aspect of supply chain and a lot of people need to recognize it. And that is that supply chain is not an optimization exercise. It is not a forecasting exercise. It is a risk management, risk mitigation and risk responsiveness exercise. Because if we go back to the very first supply chain transaction, I imagine it was something like this, Hey, John, I got this tasty tomato here. You don’t happen to have an extra spearhead laying around because I’d love to trade you for that. Yeah. Right, right. Sharp stick for a tomato. You know what? I’ll take the sharp stick. I’ll do that. Right. So that, that was a simple, simple negotiation. It was a simple transaction, right? It was very proximate and very little risk in it. Except you stabbing me with the sharp stick, which I did not think about. And then just taking the tomato. But I know you, John, you wouldn’t do that. No. The thing that

John Sicard (03:00):

We have to recognize is that in our desire, either as a consumer, for things that are out of season like tomatoes, we have to get them from far away or in our desire as a supply chain practitioner, retail manufacturer, distributor, whatever, to constantly optimize pricing. We introduce risk into the supply chain by getting stuff from farther away using cheaper carriers, whatever we change about it, the supply chain in and of itself is simple. The things that we do to manipulate the economics or to manipulate the availability of goods in the supply chain, either as a consumer. And I think it’s important that consumers know their part in this as well, or as a practitioner, those are the things that introduce risk and we have to acknowledge and manage risk appropriately. And exactly what you’re talking about. Risk requires agility. It requires that responsiveness, that resiliency and that sort of thing that enables you to confront and overcome the inevitable disruptions that come into play. When you take on that level of risk in a supply chain,

Greg White (04:12):

I thoroughly agree. And I think what we’re learning as it relates to what skills then, you know, what are the skills and what are the attributes that make for an agile, resilient supply chain. And again, those are descriptives that you can talk about without bringing technology into the equation. That’s, uh, you know, as I started saying, you know, I prefer talking about this topic without technology, as the leading discussion point. You know, I think technology is completely irrelevant if you can’t bond on the motives for change and you can’t bond on the way of life, you’re looking for, you have to start there first. And so what we’re learning now, and again, you know, I’m learning this through conversations with some pretty forward-thinking two supply chain officers from some very large corporations. Here’s what we have to completely eliminate the blindness that exists between the silos that we have created in supply chain.

Greg White (05:17):

So this is fascinating. Again, if you look back the last 30 years, it’s all been about functional excellence. Okay. When I think about a supply chain, but when I think about a chain, do you think about disconnected chain links or are they connected? I mean, they’re connected and each chain link of a supply chain has a purpose. It might start with demand. I mean, in fact, without demand for goods, there’s no need for supply chain at all. There’s nothing to respond to. So it starts with a demand signal and that carries with it, whether it’s forecasting or master scheduling, or capacity planning or inventory planning, or distribution planning and all these little functions, right. And over last 30 years, many of these, you know, functions have been hard at work, becoming experts at what they’re responsible for.

John Sicard (06:10):

Yes. That tiny, tiny niche. Right.

Greg White (06:13):

Imagine, you know, I personally think that supply chain is a team sport. It makes perfect sense to be a team sport. Okay. Well, let’s, you know, in Canada, the only sport that exists is hockey, right? We’d like to say football, be a great sport. If it were only like hockey, hockey, I love hockey. It’s very aggressive.

John Sicard (06:29):

Canadian football is very close to hockey. Everyone is always moving and Hey,

Greg White (06:35):

You know, what about them Raptors? Uh, so it look, but, but let’s take hockey as an example, you know, how well would a team perform a team? If the goalie just sat with their goalie coach all day, every day for a year, never played with their peers. Just say, I’m going to be the best. I’m going to stop every shot. And, Oh my goodness, I’m the best goalie there is. And the defense you separate the defense and all they do is sit there and practice their skill. They don’t talk to anyone else. Nobody else you get the point, right? If everybody focuses on their unique skill and they become the best player of all time, okay, then you put them together, you kind of get an all-star game. And let me tell you anybody who watches an all-star game, it’s not, you know, it’s a bit of a, uh, you know, a gold Fest, right? Like no one knows anything. They’re all just running around, playing their own game, right. It doesn’t make for great teams. I think what practitioners are saying now is we have to eliminate this siloed thinking, thinking that you’ve optimized your function doesn’t mean you optimized the chain

John Sicard (07:39):

And often you’ve sub optimize the entire chain by optimizing your function. Because that my OPIC view of your area of responsibility, discounts that impact the butterfly effect. If you will, on the rest of the organization or supply chain,

Greg White (07:54):

That’s how you score on your own net. That’s what I like to say because they’re accidents, nobody scores in their own net by on purpose. Right? Okay. It’s extremely painful when you do it. It’s embarrassing and it’s painful, but I’ll tell you mostly it’s by accident. It’s it’s the, I didn’t know. Excuse. I didn’t know you weren’t going to be there. When I, when I, when I blind passed behind me, like I expect, I didn’t know you weren’t gonna be there. It was a good move. I looked good doing it. You know what I mean? But, um, you know, so, so I think this is what this blindness between functions, the fog between functions is causing, you know, people don’t come to the office to, to do harm, but there are, you know, in many cases, hundreds of accidents that happen, they’re all small. But when you take a hundred small accidents, that creates a bit of a tsunami.

John Sicard (08:42):

I think that’s, I mean, I do think that’s what the transparency and visibility initiative that we see going on does, because I’ve heard people in manufacturing say, they’re not in supply chain. I’ve heard people in procurement say they’re not, or, or be told they’re not in supply chain. Uh, well, uh, well you’re dealing with indirect goods. Well, that’s the pulleys and the rollers and the racking that moves the stuff through the manufacturing facility or the distribution center or the retail store or whatever. So yeah, you’re in supply chain. I would argue if you touch the goods or you touch any component of the goods or the raw materials for the components, for any of the goods, then you’re in the supply chain. I think you could argue even today that even the merchants who design or select the product in the retail store, they’re in supply chain because they are determining things like where the materials come from and in what quantity and making commitments like that, all of that has an impact.

Greg White (09:47):

And, you know, getting visibility or transparency that I think it’s a core attribute. It’s, it’s one of those core things that’s emerging. And it’s, it’s really testing if you will. The constructs that the current supply chains are run up, the other one and it’s related is time. Okay. So, you know, again, I’ll, maybe I’ll use a football analogy right. Where you absolutely have perfect visibility. You can see yourself being sacked I’m Oh, um, I I’m going to be I too late you’re sack. Okay. Because you’re not moving fast enough. Right. And, and so I think time has become the new thing. People are, you know, are looking to optimize. How, how long does it take for me to know a thing, anything, you know, whether it’s the speed at which I can determine the effects of material, failing inspection at a factory in hungry and knowing with great precision, what customer promise did I just put at risk as a result of that?

Greg White (10:55):

There’s a time dimension to that, right? And again, this goes back to, well, you’re talking about something that happens way down the value chain and connecting to something that happens. You know, what, what I might call the very top of the promise chain or the value chain, which is a promise made to a customer, I have to protect those promises. So what is the speed to detecting the impact that that unexpected event has at the very top of the value chain? So it’s more than visibility now because you get a lot of notions that say, Oh, we’ll just create a big data Lake and we’ll stage it, you know, weekly or maybe even daily. And so it’ll be 24 years, 24 hours of latency only, right? Well, again, uh, practitioners today are saying a minute is an eternity in our business. Now 60 seconds is a very long time to wait for anything.

Greg White (11:47):

And so that the time dimension and understanding the impacts, um, you know, cause and effect impacts of that, of the entire value chain. You know, practitioners are saying, I, I’m not going to wait. Right. This has to happen in near real-time real-time I’m not waiting 24 hours and that’s absurd 60 seconds. I need to know. And, and it’s, it’s only through that kind of breakthrough thinking. I think that you’re going to see a giant leap forward, you know, for the next generation, you know, it’s, it’s elements like that are attributes like that, that are really driving. Uh, I think, you know, ultimately where will supply chain be maybe 30 years from now, we might still be around, you might be around. But my point is we might be talking about the things that decisions that we made today to revolutionize the next 30 years and why we made them. And, uh, I think there’ll be almost a, an obsession with compressing time in the supply chain because speed to detect leads to speed, to correct. It’s as simple as that,

John Sicard (12:51):

Say that again, that’s really, that’s really important

Greg White (12:53):

To detect leads to speed, to correct. And if you can compress that into 60 seconds, no one will ever walk into your office and say, I’m sorry, I was unaware. I’m sorry. I didn’t. No, no, no. I mean, things happen in 60 seconds, you’re aware and it gives you an opportunity to correct. Yeah.

John Sicard (13:12):

I think that’s really poignant. And as you were saying, 30 years from now, I was thinking the level of, or the quantity or the quality of evolution in the supply chain that’s happened the last 30 years will probably happen in the next five years. So hopefully John, by 30 years from now, you and I are sitting around watching, I’m not a huge hockey fan. Did I say that in Canada? But I’ll watch hockey with you and watch American football with me. All right. And we’ll spend half times or, you know, whatever they call it in hockey, between periods, we’ll spend the time between periods talking about how much the supply chain has changed. Right. It’s changed a hundred years worth in 30 years, right? Because the capacity in you as a systems, software engineer, you know, that the ability to transform via technology. And I mean, I know technology is not the solution. Well, it’s not the core solution, but it is the hammer with which we build the house. Right. And it allows us to build the house much, much faster now.

Greg White (14:29):

Right. I, I often describe, you know, people look for analogies and I’m a big analogy guy. Cause you know, this comes back to, you know, how do I abstract this problem? How do I extract this notion? Well, I’ll describe it this way. And I feel like we’re sort of in the similar kind of a circumstance, if you went back 200 years and you were talking to a farmer that was building their business and you know, there’s a, I dunno, one kilometer, raging river, whatever raging river between their farmlands and the next available market. There’s a, you know, town over there, of course, raging river. You can’t just boat your things across this current. This takes you away. And you walk into that farmer and say, why don’t you just float, fly your produce over the road, just fly your produce over the river. Now farmers 200 years ago, absolutely understood flight birds fly over that river every day.

Greg White (15:24):

Right. I know exactly how they do it. The other thing that’s fascinating is they sure as heck know the value of that. How many, how many dreams, if you have a fly, everybody does at some point in their life dream that they could fly. That’s an amazing thing. Now, 200 years ago, that farmer just wouldn’t know how they could fly, but they absolutely understand the value of their business that they could. So it starts with that, understanding the value, understanding the attributes that you’re after. And then you have to talk about technology. And so then you, okay, well then how do humans fly? Well, you know, somebody invented thrust and lift and wing foil and all that stuff. And you get into the technology that actually enables it. I think right now we’re in a similar situation with supply chain where people understand the attributes thereafter.

Greg White (16:08):

They’re like, I refuse to allow, you know, the lack of time, right? The fact that I ha I don’t have time to correct. Right. I could, you can feel the pain, but by the time I’m feeling the pain, there’s no time to correct. Right. It’s back to that. You know, I could, I could see the pain. It ain’t too late. I’m sacked. I, you didn’t give me enough time to get out of the way. So the obsession with time and color absent cycle time from end to end will be critical. Eliminating all the blindness of functions, which will ultimately change people’s roles will be another democratizing learning, right? No one should ever be made to make, to guess what to do. That’s absurd to people guess because they don’t, they don’t, they don’t see what with the implant patients of their decisions will be on their peers.

Greg White (16:56):

Okay. So again, if I, if this is a, a chain, imagine I grabbed one chain link and I pull it down. What happens to the chain? The rest of the links move, right? They’re instantaneously affected by the decisions. So I think this notion of democratizing learning, like being able to test the decision before you make, it has to be a part of the attribute of the future, right? No one should be left to guess. Yeah. You have to know before you go, you know, these are going to become key, key and critical attributes. I do think there is a place for automation, although I think, and maybe I’m going to say something controversial here. I think the next fool’s errand, the next absolute red herring will be those who believe that you can live with lights out planning. And I, and look, I’m know, I’m a software engineer and I know the technologies out there that, that are hard at work, but the notion that, you know, some technology will eliminate the need for human judgment in the future, I think is absolute flawed thinking. You know, and it’s not to say that the endeavor is flawed, right? I think we can get to a point where 80% of it let’s, let’s automate 80% of the obvious and we don’t need humans doing obvious things, right? The notion that you can end up with a technology that can automate and produce a lights out planning kind of a scenario is just as foolish as believing that you can, you could invent a, a forecasting algorithm and hit a hundred percent forecast forecast accuracy every day for a year.

John Sicard (18:24):

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And you gave the best analogy earlier. It’s, it’s flying an aircraft through turbulence, right? It’s when the turbulence hits that you need the discernment of a human who has, or can interpret the experience to intervene, right? Cause even AI, I mean, people think of AI as this all knowing monster, it’s really a child that only knows what it’s been taught. And if it has not experienced something specifically before or been primed with information about that specific experience, it doesn’t know what to do. And, and that’s why human intervention will always be required. As you said, at higher, more theorial and less frequent levels or less frequency. Right. But still always intervening and always doing what a human mind can. Can that a computer mind can’t

Greg White (19:20):

Yeah. A hundred percent. I think that’s true. I think, you know, even at Connexus, we have an incredibly strong machine learning and AI team and, uh, and their purpose is pretty clear. You know, it comes back to, you know, our, our endeavors to see what does it take to automate the obvious and that’s, those are the terms we actually use automate the obvious, safely confidence. Okay. And I think when you’ve solved the other prerequisite attributes of, you know, I’d say high-speed, end-to-end flawless visibility of the entire value chain people stop arguing about the data and start focusing on performance of the chain, not performance of the chain links. It starts there. Then you could apply some of those techniques to automate the obvious, you know, as it relates to though of absorbing future volatility. And I say this to every practitioner, so is your business exactly the same as it was five years ago?

Greg White (20:14):

You know, you usually get a chuckle, do you think it will be the same five years from now? You get a chuckle because they know that man life is all about absorbing, absorbing uncertainty or absorb, as you said, absorbing risks. So then it, it changes the kind of machine you have to build. The kind of process you have to build for supply chain. Agility has to have an equal place if you will, in your procedure to accuracy. And I keep saying this and you know, people think sometimes I’m, I am somehow indicting, um, you know, the notion of math based models. And I’m not, I’m just saying they have, they have massive limitations and they’re, they’re incredibly important. You have to know roughly where you’re going, but the notion that you could absorb the uncertainty generated by those algorithms is just foolish. You know that that’s not the muscle you need, you, you need to, you need to have accuracy and agility live in perfect harmony. They live in perfect equilibrium. They both are vital.

John Sicard (21:09):

And I think whether it’s a mathematical model or it’s AI or ML or whatever it is, the beauty of, of those is the consistency, the repeatability and the scalability, AI, once it’s learned something. And by the way, all we do is impart human intellect into AI. Once AI has learned something, it never forgets it. It never fails to consider one of the inputs and it never acts emotionally. So it takes out all the bad parts of human judgment and imparts the knowledge of human judgment consistently 100% of the time. And that is the beauty of it. But it’s also the reason that it has those limitations you talked about, because it doesn’t know anything that it wasn’t taught, as we said before, or anything that, any knowledge that hasn’t been, uh, or any data I should say that can’t be imparted to it in this situation.

Greg White (22:05):

No, exactly right. It’s it’s software written by human hand. It’s, it’s fascinating. And again, as a software engineer, I’m always fascinated and stunned by some of the results that the techniques around machine learning can produce. You know, again, I never see it as, Oh, this is the past to lights out. No, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll just flat out. Never believe that, you know, but at the same time, I think, you know, I would, I would be telling practitioners to beware anybody who suggests that somehow this leads to lights out it’s it’s it would be like somebody saying, Oh, now this algorithm, now this one’s the one that gets a hundred percent forecast accuracy. Everyone seems to agree that that’s absolutely. I mean, that’s absurd. And so if that’s absurd, well, it’s equally absurd that somehow this particular software is going to harness all of the world’s volatility. And, you know, I think you mentioned this, which I found very intriguing, and maybe you can, you can, uh, expand on this because I’m going to steal some of your languages. Yeah. Was trying to harness human, human behavior somehow that somehow human behaviors and how humans will buy things in the future can be completely predicted.

John Sicard (23:18):

Yeah. I, you know, I, I can’t say that it’s completely predictable, but I can say that it is the forecasting of the future, right? This myth that we, that, you know, we use this language, or at least I’ve used this language as both a practitioner and a solution provider of this item did that this item trended, it increased its sales. It ha it had seasonality, right? This items, sales grew or tailed or whatever. And the truth is the item is simply an object, right? It, I would encourage everyone. Who’s watching this to look around at any item in front of you or behind me and tell me precisely what those items have done. And it is nothing items don’t do anything. They don’t fly off the shelves. Even though we say they do right. They don’t trend. They don’t have seasonality. Right? They don’t have patterns or anything like that.

John Sicard (24:11):

What th what items do is they wait, they wait for the customer or consumer to act on them. So what we need to be predicting is we need to predicting the, predicting the action of that consumer. In the case of a manufacturer, this has been a folly, in my opinion, in supply chain, for a lot of years manufacturers, they want POS data, which means absolutely nothing to them. Because if a store sells one, they don’t order one. If a store sells one, they wait until the other stores in the chain accumulate to a case of 12. Then they have to round it to a pallet because this manufacturer requires you to order in a pallet, but then it gets rounded to a truckload because your contract with them requires you to order in truckloads. So you really need to assess the means by which your downstream, I say, by the way, manufacturing is at the top of the supply chain.

John Sicard (25:05):

Some say it, the other way, your downstream demand is, is triggered, not what has occurred in the past, but what triggers it, or will trigger it to happen in the future that accumulation of stores to a truckload, and then project that truckload to the manufacturer do likewise downstream, you know, what made Billy Bob go in and buy some beef jerky today because deer season opened, right? Whatever, and accumulate that up. And you’re right. It, we do need to be more cognizant of the customers downstream in order to close, whatever, to keep the supply chain accurate. Right.

Greg White (25:43):

I think now more than ever, and I encourage anybody who is in the predicament that they’re in, they’re feeling pain, you know, to reflect on the attributes they’re looking at, looking for first don’t, don’t start shopping for technology. I think that’s, that’s the wrong approach. And the right approach is to say, what are the attributes of the future that matter most? What are, what are the attributes? And it does take some introspection. And it does take some humility in recognizing that yet, perhaps some past decisions have been part of the problem, right.

John Sicard (26:19):

Or flawed processes or blind misses. Right?

Greg White (26:24):

Yeah. Look, I, as I say, you know, nobody, nobody, you know, you, you don’t move forward. You don’t move, you don’t fall. If you’re not moving, that’s the, that’s the line. Right. So yeah, everyone’s feeling the effects of COVID as a massive, you know, I’d say shockwave and for those that are trying to figure out, okay. And I think this is happening in every boardroom and every boardroom CEOs are being asked by their board, where are you going to do next time? What are you going to do? And same as it ever was, isn’t the answer, right? That isn’t the answer, right. People are saying, but it’s a great song, but same as it ever was Nina. Well, we’re going to experience the same level of pain. And so now people are saying, okay, so what is it, what competency are we missing? What design flaws are in the process? And that’s where things like, yeah, well, there’s blindness between functions. What one team is doing the other team, doesn’t see, that’s a problem. There’s duplicity and data. How many times have you replicated your demand signal? And how many times do you walk into a meeting room where the first argument is about the accuracy of the data and everyone has their own personal spreadsheet.

John Sicard (27:32):

Gosh. Yes. The whole meeting winds up being about that, right? Yeah.

Greg White (27:36):

I think now’s the time to think about generational change. And, you know, if, if you’re at the top of this craft, then you have to leave it better than you got it. And I think that’s what, that’s, what has a lot of practitioners now thinking, like, what attributes have I missed? And, you know, what does the future of this craft look like? You know, for the next 30 years for the next generation that comes after me.

John Sicard (28:01):

So let’s speak to that next generation a little bit, or maybe some of your fellow leaders in, in supply chain, either on the solution side or on the practitioner side. So I’m all, I always love to help you express your gifts, your thoughts, your perspective to the community here. So give me an example of something you wish you had known sooner and what you think it might have earlier right earlier in your life, maybe. And, and what you think that might’ve changed for you. I mean, and I don’t mean necessarily supply chain could be a leadership lesson, anything, but whatever, some, something that you think would be valuable for folks to take away from it.

Greg White (28:43):

Yeah. We talked a little bit about this, I think, is this notion of an appreciate, a deep appreciation and a thirst for learning new things every day? I think progress happens through learning. And when I was younger, I think I didn’t appreciate the power of, of learning a new thing and how compounding that is, you know, to, to build a better future. How do I leave the planet better than I got? And as it relates to, you know, all the conversation that we’re having now, I think I I’m, I’m somewhat saddened that it’s taken, it’s taken a giant, you know, catastrophe to draw attention to something that I, I have believed for many years now that you know, the, the legacy approaches and the legacy techniques have been failing the planet. And if it wasn’t COVID well, I’ve, I’ve visited and talked to enough practitioners to know that we’ve been eroding core, natural resources, it’s water, energy, any of those things, right. We’ve been eroding those things. I wish I would’ve known earlier, you know, to be able to really educate in, in, in a way that we now can, right. Educate in a way that we know now how to, you know, how do we combat this challenge?

John Sicard (29:58):

I think the fortunate happenstance for you and I in the next 30 years, John, is that I think people are really aware of that. What it makes me wonder about at the same time as what they’re, they’re unaware of that 30 years from now, someone’s going to ask them, what do you wish you had known 30 years ago? And it’s so hard to predict that, but at the very least, we’re much, much more aware of our impact on one another and on, you know, on this planet we call home.

Greg White (30:28):

No, I, I agree. I, you know, I think we have to be cognizant and especially as a technologists, right? It’s another lesson that I learned. I wish I would’ve learned earlier too. Uh, as a software engineer, I used to love the product, uh, you know, engineers love what they bill and I recent while recently enough realized that what the products do is less, it’s less important than what the products need. And, and, you know, when you say, what does Connexus mean to the world is a different question than what can access does. And I wish I would’ve learned that lesson earlier. I think, you know, educating more people to talk about value, not, not just technology for its interest sake, right. Technology can be interesting, or it can be valuable when you’re forced to describe what you do by answering the question. What do you mean you’re talking in, into the, in the consumer’s language, right? It’s what can access does is only interesting unless it’s valuable, seem valuable by it by practitioners. And so, you know, I, I’m now one of the, it’s a lesson for every engineer out there fall in love with what your technology means,

John Sicard (31:41):

What it does. It’s probably a lesson that you learned maybe in, in your stint, in marketing. Right? One of the things that I have had described to me is there’s what it is. It’s a technology for whatever purpose, what it does. It does X to solve a problem. What does it mean? That’s the meaningful part? And that’s the part, as you said, that the marketplace cares about what does it mean? Right. It saves you cash. It eliminates risk in your supply chain. It makes your day to day life better, right? It allows you to communicate with your audience and with your, with your ecosystem. So whatever, whatever it is, the, what it means is really, really important. And it, you know, it’s really a gift. And I bet you, I don’t know if you deal with them directly, but I bet you have people like that in your community, probably even in your, your development organization, that they get the, what it means. They don’t fall in love with the problem. They don’t fall in love with the code. They fall in love with solving,

Greg White (32:42):

Right? Yeah. A hundred percent. It’s, you know, the higher, this comes back to just cause as Simon Sinek calls it, you know, the higher order purpose for being what makes us relevant. And, you know, I think our success and can accesses, you know, our relevance in fact is built on what we mean, not what we do. And you know, when I think about the meaning and what we’ve done for some of the greatest largest manufacturers in the world is, you know, help them eliminate waste, become hyper, hyper efficient and hyper agile. You know, the great philosophical question I often start with. And it’s a, it’s an interesting way to think about the problem. And, you know, in terms of a debate, would you rather be infinitely accurate or infinitely agile as a person, which would you pick? And it’s funny because you know, it’s hard, you really want balance, okay. You do want balance, but the longer you think about that, very simple philosophical question, the clearer, the answer becomes, if you were infinitely agile, you don’t need any accuracy at all. It means that you can absorb positively every uncertainty in every unknown. Now, of course, we know that that’s not true, but it does draw the potency of having agility as, as part of the, uh, part of the process. People start to get it.

John Sicard (34:05):

Perfection is the enemy of the good, right? I mean, it’s another interpretation of that statement, right? I mean, to accomplish anything, you have to accept some imperfection,

Greg White (34:19):

A hundred percent probably should

John Sicard (34:20):

Wrap up though. I feel like we could probably do this all day and then play a little music and have a shot at Keela. But, but I know you’ve got SEOing to do so. Is there anything that I haven’t asked or we haven’t really discussed that you just feel like our community could really take away that would re really be valuable for them in their supply chain journey, technology journey, life journey, career journey.

Greg White (34:43):

Yeah. I would say have the managerial courage to question norms. It’s this the first path to breakthrough, right? Make no assumption that the norms, um, you know, will lead you, lead you for the next 30 years. It does take courage. And I’ve had enough conversations with people saying what we’ve invested. I that’s how the conversations usually start. We’ve invested so much time and so much, you know. Okay. You know, you have to set those aside and have the courage to question the legacy techniques against the attributes that matter most to survival for the next 30 years. I think the word courage is, is what’s necessary there.

John Sicard (35:27):

That’s a really great insight. I immediately thought of Sears. We’ve invested so much in this means of doing business. Right, right. Wow. That’s powerful. I mean, you could say that about anything. It doesn’t have to be about a whole business. It could be about a trait or a career or anything that you’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis. That’s fantastic. All right, lastly, thank you. First of all, thank you for that. Lastly, how can folks get in touch with you or learn more about you or connects us? I mean, you are a public company, right? Your symbol is KX S right on the Toronto exchange.

Greg White (36:06):

That’s right. Caixa so we are public, uh, easily, easily enough, uh, to find out there I’m, uh, I’m certainly easy to find on, on LinkedIn. I love having debates and dialogue, especially with practitioners to positive outcomes happen. Right. I either teach somebody something or I learned something and both are incredibly powerful and valuable. You know, anybody who wants to have these types of conversations, uh, I’m fully open to having those just reach, just find me on LinkedIn is probably the easiest way.

John Sicard (36:39):

That’s awesome. Or connexus.com. Correct.

Greg White (36:42):

Exactly. Right. You know, we’re happy to, to engage. We’re pretty different though. You’ll find us. We won’t lead with technology ever. We bond first on technique, if you don’t bond on technique technologies, you relevant.

John Sicard (36:56):

I remember, uh, looking longingly when little old blue Ridge was at the Gartner executive supply chain conference at your massive and impressive booth, and then talking to some of your folks and not really understanding what you guys did when I walked up there and walking away, understanding exactly where you’re positioned in the marketplace was. So you guys have done fantastic work there. I’m pulling for you. I can’t lie. You know, I have this tequila, sunrise supply chain tech stock index, and can access was one of the first companies that I talked about in one of my first tequila, sunrise episodes. And I can tell you that since tequila, sunrise has gone on the air, absolutely no impact on your stock. I just wanted to let you know that I wish I could claim it, but no, there’s nothing there.

Greg White (37:49):

Well, I appreciate it, Greg. You’ve got some great insights and you know, you’re a kindred spirit. So, you know, anytime I’d love to have another event like this the other day,

John Sicard (37:59):

Anytime, anytime, next time we will have tequila and hockey, all right. At your place. All right. Big, thanks to our guest, John Soccard president and CEO of Kanaxis technologies. Thanks so much, man. I really appreciate you taking time out of your day. We’re gonna, you’re gonna, I’m cutting into your prep, prep time for your next meeting. So you feel free to blame it on me. Most people do anyway. All good. I’ll be ready. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks everybody for joining us. Enjoy tequila. Another chain now network,

Greg White (38:36):

The voice of supply chain, featuring the people technology’s best practices and key issues in the industry. And Hey, listen up to build your supply chain knowledge listened to get this supply chain is boring, or Chris Barnes connects you to the who’s, who that got supply chain, where we are point as to where we’re going and take us to the next level or check out this week in business history with supply chain now’s own Scott Luton, to learn more about everyday things you may take for granted and pick up quick insights you can use as inspiration and conversation starters. Our logistics with purpose series puts a spotlight on inspiring and successful organizations that give first give forward as their business model. If you’re interested in transportation, freight and logistics, have a listen to the logistics and beyond series with the adapt and thrive mindset, Sherpa Jaman Alvidrez and also check out tech talk hosted by industry vet and Atlanta zone. Corrinne bursa supply chain pro to know of 2020, where Korean discusses the people, processes and technology of digital supply chain for sponsorship information on tequila, sunrise, or any supply chain. Now show DME on Twitter or Instagram at Gregory S. White, or email me@greggatsupplychainnow.com. Thanks again for spending your time with me and remember acknowledge reality,

Speaker 4 (40:04):

But never be bound by it.