Getting traction on business initiatives is challenging in the best of times, let alone in the current business world we operate in. We hear the words restart, kick-start, jump-start regularly these days in the media, with reference to the economy.
For most supply chains, restarting is not an unfamiliar concept – every year many would shut down for a number of weeks during Christmas and restart in the new year.
However, there’s one specific characteristic of most supply chains that prevents them from maintaining momentum after the restart – trying to do too much and losing traction. This may be worth paying attention to right now, to ensure that we carefully navigate through these complicated times. I’d like to explore how supply chains could benefit by looking to nature and adopting some concepts therein, to improve confidence to win this war against loss of productivity and traction.
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” —Sun Tsu
Lessons from nature: elephants versus turtles
Elephants are gentle giants that fascinate many of us – the largest land-living mammals. While male elephants tend to live fairly solitary lives in adulthood, females live in herds led by a “matriarch” – often the oldest and wisest female in the group.
Female elephants can start to have babies when they are about 14 years old and they are pregnant for 22 months (the longest pregnancy of mammals). At birth, a baby elephant weighs about 90–110kg and can be as tall as one metre. Once the calf is born, its mother and all the other females in the herd, including aunts, grandmothers and sisters (called allomothers), collectively raise the baby.
Calves benefit enormously from the presence of these extra caretakers. Allomothers play a critical role in the development of the calves, protecting them and teaching them social and life skills. Elephants seem to deeply understand a mother’s relative experience because calves born to inexperienced mothers tend to receive more care from allomothers than calves of experienced mothers.
A calf’s first year of life is its most vulnerable time with mortality rates exceeding 30 per cent. A study reported by ScienceDaily claimed that calves of young elephant mothers had eight times lower mortality risk if the grandmother resided with them, compared to those without grandmother’s care. I’m reminded of the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child”.
Turtles are among the oldest and most primitive groups of reptiles that have evolved over millions of years. Their hard shells protect them from predators. There are two main types of turtles based on the waterways they live in – sea turtles and freshwater turtles.
Sea turtles make incredibly long migrations between feeding and breeding areas – up to 6000km each way. Sea turtles mate at sea then come ashore to lay their eggs. Females dig a hole in the sand, deposit their clutch of eggs (can be 100 to 200, depending on species), cover it up, and then return to the sea.
Once the eggs are hatched, tiny hatchlings can take up to three to seven days to surface from the nest. Hatchlings usually wait until night to emerge from the nest to reduce exposure to daytime deadly threats such as seabirds, crabs and other predators. Natural light at the horizon guides the hatchings to the ocean. Unfortunately, at night, man-made lights from the built environment can confuse the little turtles, leading them the wrong way.
When a hatchling reaches the surf it dives into a wave and rides the undertow out to the sea. A “swim frenzy” of continuous swimming takes place for about 24 to 48 hours after the hatchling enters the water. This frantic activity gets the young turtle into deeper water, where it is less vulnerable to predators.
The odds of survival are already stacked against the baby turtles. Researchers estimate that typically, only one in 1000 survive to become adults. So anything that reduces the viability of eggs in the first place has large consequences.
So what?
What do elephant calves and turtle hatchlings have to do with getting traction on supply chain initiatives? Well, If you choose to initiate projects like laying turtle eggs (and believe me, I have seen companies do this) your success rate for these initiatives will also be the same as that of turtle hatchlings. On the other hand, if you choose to nurture a few initiatives with the leadership team working together, like allomothers looking after elephant calves, you can expect a higher rate of success for your initiatives.
So what can you do to ensure your initiatives are nurtured well and completed on time, and deliver the value it promised? Here are three tips.
Identify the right opportunities. As a simple rule of thumb, rate your initiatives on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being best and 1 being poorest), on how well each initiative is aligned to your strategic goal/s. When identifying initiatives, you could either look for the biggest issue that’s dragging you back (usually realised when reviewing your P&L) or look for the opportunities that will propel you forward, closer to your strategic objectives. You need both types.
Prioritise ruthlessly. Staying focused on the right constraints/opportunities and only those, is what sets apart success from straying, exhaustion and defeat. The issue is not due to lack of prioritising tools, but lack of diligence to stay true to the plan you set out to achieve. Prioritising involves choosing what gets done as well as sequencing the timing. We operate on a business calendar with four quarters, yet we behave like there’s only the one – the quarter we are currently in!
Resolve problems effectively. Whether it is a constraint you are unlocking or an opportunity initiative you are implementing, to me they are both problems that need to be resolved. These constraints/initiatives are typically bigger than a task that one person could fix. They require a small cross-functional team. Provide a tight scope to deliver the solution or part of the full solution, that can be delivered within 10 weeks. Why 10 weeks? Well, it fits into a business quarter which is 13 weeks. Ten weeks not only provides sufficient time to properly evaluate and understand the issue, but also provides the right urgency to deliver a tangible result. Set up a governance framework to follow up weekly if the initiative is on track and what support is required if it is not. Ensure that each initiative has a single owner (lead) to improve accountability.
Perhaps, the above tips aren’t all new to you. However, I’ve seen enough to declare that common sense is not commonly practiced. We get excited about the possibility of over-delivering results and in that process we end up laying turtle eggs, burning out people and losing traction. It’s time to stop starting and start finishing.
