Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
As a visionary leader, Steve Jobs has inspired millions of people in the world, that certainly include myself and so many others in the field of supply chain. In his best- known commencement speech at Standard University, Steve said “ Stay hungry, stay foolish” in front of thousands of senior students who will graduate from college.
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
After ousted by his founded company in his 20’s, he went back and took his company from the bankrupt bench to the largest company by market capital; After became one of the most successful CEO’s in the 21st century, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Steve Job said “ Stay hungry, stay foolish”.
After working in the supply chain field for over 16 years, I often hear people saying “Been there, done that”. True, after spending so many years in different disciplines of supply chain: distribution, logistics, purchasing, inventory management, quality and manufacturing. I find history often repeat itself. Overage or shortage of inventory is caused by the same reason; commodity price goes up and down; our previous experiences often build the connection between new challenges and current knowledge and helped us identify solutions “intuitively”.
When Apple opened its first retail store, the whole entire industry predicted it would fail, because it will screw up your other distributors when you setup your own conflicting channel. And more, look at how much money Steve threw at it, it was ridiculous and it was selling low margin product – personal computers! You gonna be kidding me, you must think you are a bank office or selling diamond Jewry.
Well, it turned out that Steve had the vision to market, instead of a personal computer, a digital user experience and a luxury consumer lifestyle. Today Apple store became the highest-grossing stores in the world!
Stay hungry, stay foolish! Therefore next time, when there is an over stock, or inventory shortage or a huge price increase, please do not jump to the solution. Go a bit deeper, think out of the box, if everyone of us is not afraid of trying a few new things just because other people aren’t doing them, the whole world may become a little bit better, that includes your entire supply chain.
Focus and Simplicity
From ipod, ipad and iMac to Apple’s black and white website, you can tell Apple’s elegance and sophistication originated from Steve Jobs’ philosophy.
Steve once said “Focus and simplicity has been one of my mantras. Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it is worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
In supply chain, because of the nature of the complex process and broad scope, I found sometimes it can be very difficult to measure. Just use inventory turn measurement as an example. The inventory value can be used from standard costs, purchase prices, or finished goods values; the total inventory can be used from sales dollars or yearly (12 month rolling) total inventory volume; then we add in finished goods, work in process and raw materials, or seasonality adjustment and other factors. Very soon it can be too complex to understand.
I found many supply chain professional can easily immerse themselves in the complex formulas and hence lose their focus. So when someone overwhelms you with fancy excel and pretty charts, don’t forget to ask yourself – can these charts or formality actually solve any issues? Or they are just a simple measurement tool, and your decision or actions based on the data will actually matter the most.
Your Feedback