Teach, Teach, Teach for Even More Supply Chain Savings!
I like to tell my students at our Certified Value Analysis Leadership™ Course* that education (at all levels of the supply chain) is the “magic bullet” for their supply chain success. In fact, I believe that 80% of a supply chain professional’s job should be to teach, teach, teach their bosses, peers, staff and suppliers how to save money and improve quality for their healthcare organization.
I just read an article that states that “teach, teach, teach” is Costco’s corporate philosophy too. Judith Logan, a Costco Assistant GMM, says in this article that it is Costco’s goal “to have buyers who are better educated in their products than their suppliers who sell them, to see through the marketing speak and offer the best value possible.” Costco even has Costco University to train their 130,000 employees in all aspects of their jobs, from food safety to buying Bordeaux wine. This speaks volumes about Costco’s never ending commitment to educating anyone and everyone who touches their members in any way.
That’s not all! At Costco’s “laundry college” their employees “work with laundry manufacturers to understand the science behind what makes a better laundry detergent. They spend time in the labs and touring the production facility” to make them experts in their respective disciplines.
Costco even has stringent certification and licensing programs for their gas station, hearing center, optical store, pharmacy, photo center and tire center employees. Costco invests this money in training because they want their employees to be held to the highest standards of professional competencies. “This translates to better service and value for their members” says Tammy Clark, Director of Training for their Hearing Centers.
What’s this all mean to you? If you aren’t creating a “a culture of wisdom”, as Costco calls it, with your internal and external supply chain community in every aspect of your supply chain management then you aren’t building the future of your supply chain on a sound foundation. Only through never ending training and education at all levels of your supply chain can you sustain, maintain and hold everyone that touches your products, services and technologies to the highest standards possible.
* Our next Certified Value Analysis Leadership™ Course will be held on November 4-6, 2008. Book now to save $200 before September 4th!
Fail Often to Quickly Succeed!
At our CVAL Training Course last week one of my students, a supply chain operation’s manager for a large system in the Mid-West, told me that he goes out of his way to let his value team members know that it is OK to stumble, falter or even fail on the projects that they are working on given that it will lead to even more successes more often and quicker than ever before.
I was very impressed with this operation manager’s attitude toward failure since it is one of the critical success factors in trying, evaluating, experimenting, and adopting or discarding products, services and technologies that you are investigating. More importantly, “rapid decision(s) and swift follow-through are essential to keeping an organization innovative” according to Dan Quinn, CEO of Rath & Strong Management Consulting.
Unfortunately, too many healthcare organizations espouse “finger pointing” as their predominant management style which only stifles innovation, instead of encouraging rapid decision making. It should be your goal therefore, to encourage your project managers to “fail often to quickly succeed”, even if your management is preoccupied with the blame game.
As Thomas Edison once said about inventing the light bulb, “I haven’t failed; I just found 10,000 ways how not to make a light bulb”. If Thomas Edison can fail 10,000 times before he succeeded in making a workable light bulb, then I think that your project managers should be able to fail often and quickly while on their way to million dollar savings success.
