There is lots of country and western music blaring from my speakers at my apartment this week in Baltimore. I love to write with my toe tapping. I do LOVE music. <Much to the chagrin of the folks that share my little office, country and western music is my preference to get the creative juices flowing.> As it blares, I become the Supply Chain Shaman. This is my 130th post on supply chain excellence.
I founded the company Supply Chain Insights on February 9th. The company is now six months old. No doubt about it, the Supply Chain Insights team of five hard-working people, have a lot going on. We are all pounding away to try to help supply chain professionals everywhere. We are working hard to change the analyst model. We want it to be more open, friendlier and more relevant. This is happening on many fronts.
The Book is Coming!
The book is on its way. I am excited. I received the first edits back on the book, Bricks Matter, co-authored with Charlie Chase, this week from Wiley. The publication date is finalized for December 24th. This date will mark one year since I first started putting words on paper.
I pounded on this manuscript for 40-60 hours a week during the period of December 24, 2011 to July 31, 2012.  The book reflects what I learned from interviewing 75 supply chain pioneers, analyzing 25 years of financial balance sheets, and reflecting back on seven years of working with over 300 companies. It represents seven months of solid writing and five months of editing for publication. In the process, I learned how little I knew about supply chain excellence, and how much more there was to learn.
Yikes!  Did anyone say that publishing a book would be fun?
Two forwards and the preface were finished this week. The hardest part of writing the book was getting the approvals for the case studies and the quotations. I laughed out loud when Michael Dell’s corporate communication team commented, when they got their box containing the manuscript, that they thought that they had received a copy of the “Bible.”  Yes, it is that thick!
I asked Keith Harrison, former Product Supply Officer for Procter & Gamble (for the period of 2001 to 2011), to write one of the forwards for the book. Working with Keith was great fun!  I love his insights. To prepare his forward, Keith read the manuscript cover to cover and gave me great feedback. (He even found that I had missed a period on page 19 of Chapter 6.)
In his writing of the forward, he reflected on his 20 years of leading the P&G team. Here is an excerpt:
“A challenge I see is one that’s critical to every business: leadership. Just as any company is always tweaking its marketing or innovation strategies to better anticipate and respond to marketplace dynamics, its supply chain strategies need to evolve as well. It’s the supply chain leader’s job to recognize how things are changing, where they are going and when it’s time to tear down and rebuild.
 While we like to think that our people on the ground are best positioned to identify what’s not working or what could work better, in my experience that’s not how it happens. Organizations, by nature, generate inertia; there is always a tremendous investment in the status quo. The supply chain leader must be the one to take on transformation – the organization simply won’t go there on its own.”
Keith continues, “A strong supply chain culture is about cultivating people with a healthy dissatisfaction, people who believe that what’s good enough, or even great today, isn’t good enough for tomorrow. When you develop a critical mass of people who take ownership for their results, that’s when magic happens. When everyone is pulling in the same direction, people transcend their functional boxes because they are aligned to a bigger idea – a larger vision of success.”
When the book publishes, it will be accompanied by industry-specific training materials.  The design is to help global teams personalize and adapt the concepts from the book.
I am busy building the training now. Each chapter will have case studies, fun team building games, simulation exercises and experiential activities. The workshops will be tailored to be sure that leaders can better understand and apply the concepts of supply chain excellence. The first test of the materials will be at a workshop in Australia on September 19th. They will be adapted and refined based on work with clients in the period of September through December 2012.
Newsletter Designed for You!
Our third newsletter publishes this week to 6,000 supply chain professionals. To make this successful, I am writing on my 9th report. We remain committed to research. The company also launched our 11th survey on supply chain practices into the field this week.
I am gratified that over 65% of the revenue for Supply Chain Insights is coming from line of business supply chain leaders. The newsletter is my commitment to the industry to drive open research and share thought leading content. I strongly believe that the model for open research works. I am also convinced that analyst research should not be locked up behind a paywall. I think that it needs to be placed in a discussion group to allow supply chain leaders to discuss and debate the concepts. This will happen in the Supply Chain Insights Community on September 5th.
SCI Community Launch
The SCI Community is on schedule to launch for supply chain professionals globally on September 5th. This community is a Jive-based community that is being skinned by 7Summits. I think that when you see it, you will quickly agree that there is nothing else like it out there. It combines all that I learned while I hung out with the folks at Altimeter Group. It combines a Facebook-like interface with Foursquare fun and Craigslist referencability. It will also have a mobile application that will allow supply chain professionals everywhere to stay connected.
It is our goal that the community will be the go-to site for the supply chain leader. It is open to all. It is a place where academics, students, analysts, press, manufacturing leaders, supply chain consultants, technology leaders, and business leaders everywhere can converge to better understand why supply chain matters. It is supported by advertising and is free for all to join.
In preparation for the community launch, we have worked for six months to build content. The community features a service for all supply chain leaders to access benchmarking data (custom views of 25 years of financial ratios), latest research reports, ratings and reviews of software and consulting services and supply chain professionals’ ratings of events. Software leaders everywhere can blog, lead discussion groups and post content (videos, podcasts and reports). It is also a place where job postings, help wanted requests and RFPs can be shared and discussed. And, like any good office space, it has a water cooler where anything goes.
It is open. It is designed to be global. It will be free for anyone to join. For a fee, manufacturers or distributors can be granted private access to personalize the experience. We want to make it viral. The only thing that we ask is that you follow the Shaman’s Rules of Order and limit your posts to educational materials. Marketing materials will be strictly off-limits.
It is also designed to be fun. It is place where you can let your hair down and network with supply chain professionals like you. You will be rewarded for sharing and contributing. There is a special area where you can ask any question to a “Supply Chain Superhero” (friends –authors, ex-analysts, professors granted superhero status by the Shaman). The Shaman will also be busy picking the best posts each week and leading discussion groups around trending topics (probably with irritating country music blaring in the background).
At the top of the community will be the Shaman’s Circle. This is a special group designed for senior supply chain leaders. It will be an invitation-only group. This private section of the community will be designed for supply chain leaders around the world to network with open dialogue free of software consultants and technology providers. It is designed to help this elite group better understand the challenges that they are facing on building supply chain talent, executing supply chain strategies and implementing end-to-end practices.
When you join, be yourself and have some fun. It will be facilitated by a team steeped in a supply chain understanding with specific skills. You will easily recognize them. Each member of the Supply Chain Insights team will have fun avatars with names like Good Karma, The Social Orchestrater, Index Girl, Ivy Insights and Smart Transport.
To encourage participation and sign-ups, there is a special contest. For the supply chain team (manufacturer or distributor) that signs up the most team members to the community by September 30, 2012, they will win a free on-site training class and signed copies of the book Bricks Matter for their team. (The contest is limited to the manufacturing, distribution, or retailing company that signs up the most community members and is defined as one session for a group of 25 or less for January 2013.)
Now, how can you resist an invitation from a gal with a name like Good Karma? Here she is with a big smile and a pony tail. She is coming to your inbox soon!  Come join us and have some fun. And for some lucky supply chain team, that signs up the most members, they will get a free workshop customized to help them understand why Bricks Matter.