Resiliency in the Supply Chain: Does it Really Mean What You Think it Means?

Since the pandemic, a new buzzword has taken the supply chain by storm: RESILIENCY. It didn’t even have its own Wikipedia page until March of 2021.

So what is resiliency, how does it affect your supply chain, and why should you care?

Watch the replay below to find out.

During this free webinar, Ryan Uhlenkamp (SVP Alliances & Strategic Accounts at Longbow Advantage and former VP of Supply Chain Transformation for Blue Yonder) and Josh Owen (CEO and Co-Founder of Cycle Labs) discuss what it really looks like to build a resilient supply chain and the importance of building a firm foundation for your business before jumping on the latest industry buzzword bandwagon.

Host

Ryan Uhlenkamp
SVP Alliances & Strategic Accounts
Longbow Advantage

Host

Josh Owen
CEO and Co-Founder
Cycle Labs

Moderator

Leigh Chesley
Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer
Longbow Advantage

Webinar Replay

Webinar Transcription

Leigh Chesley

All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the webinar. Thanks for joining us today. I personally am super excited about what we’ve got coming in store for you a few housekeeping things. We do you have a Q&A box, please feel free throughout the conversation, throw your questions in there. If we can answer them during the conversation, that’s our aim to do that. If not, we’re going to save some time at the end, we’ll pull those questions up and go through them.

We are recording this so you’ll get the recording after the webinar. Feel free to share that with any of your colleagues. Come back and reference it. And again, just would love for this to be engaging and interactive. So please use that Q&A box liberally. So with that, I’m going to ask our panelists to take a few minutes and introduce themselves.

Ryan Uhlenkamp

Hi everyone, Brian Uhlenkamp. I am the SVP of Alliances and Strategic Accounts at Longbow Advantage. I’ve been in this space, in the supply chain space for a little over 21 years, which kind of makes me feel old, as I say that out loud. But I’m happy to be here and talking.

Josh Owen

Awesome, thanks. My name is Josh Owen. I’m a co-founder and I’m the CEO of Cycle Labs. Not quite as wise as Ryan in this space. I think I’ve only been doing this for about 18 years. But it’s been the only thing I’ve done as a professional and really love working in this space.

At Cycle Labs, we actually have a focus on modernizing enterprise solution deployment. We do that through a mechanism of test automation. And I’m excited to be here today to talk to you guys. Leigh and Ryan, I appreciate you having us.

Leigh

Awesome. Thanks, guys. So let’s dive right in.

You know, there’s a lot of conversation about resiliency in supply chain. And in fact, you know, I think it’s become a huge buzzword since 2020. We’ve joked among ourselves that it didn’t even have a Wikipedia page until March of 2021. I think, Josh, you dug that up, which is super hard to believe. But what I’m curious about is, is anything actually changing? Are companies doing things differently? Or is this still very much just a visionary conversation?

Josh

I guess I’ll start with that one, Leigh. I think it’s a great question, because I think in the supply chain space, and maybe it’s like this in other industries, but at least in our space, you know, I think we have a tendency to latch on to these sort of like buzz-wordy type concepts, right?

And I think, you know, we’ve seen them, there’s things like cloud native, digital twin, AI, ML, digital transformation. And I think, if we’re not careful, we could, you know, sort of use resiliency in that fashion, it can become one of those things we’re all saying, and we’re all talking about it, but we’re not practically doing that much with it.

So as you said, like, even from a Wikipedia perspective, this sort of idea of resiliency, in the supply chain space has only been around for a couple of years. But I think that’s interesting, not to say that it’s this brand-new thing necessarily, but to say like, I’m not sure we should have expected to see monumental change when it comes to resiliency in a short period of time like that, you know.

I think change takes time, especially really meaningful change. And I think that, you know, one of the things that we should do as a space is make sure it doesn’t become one of those buzzword things, but also not just sort of write it off, because we haven’t turned everything on its head in a two-year period of time.

So, I think, you know, we shouldn’t have expected anything meaningful and long-lasting to have taken place in two years. So, I think what we have seen, what we’ve seen customers and companies do is have some, what you might call, a reactionary adjustment. So things that have surfaced through pursuits, like dual-sourcing or creating a sense of redundancy. And I think, you know, to some extent, doing things like implementing visibility (as you guys well know) but I think, you know, visibility has been one of the things we’ve been talking about for a long time, I think we sort of aligned it to this idea of resilience. And I think there’s a nice fit there.

But I think, in a supply chain space, if we think about resiliency through sort of these three facets, like this idea of persistence to adaptation and transformation, these sort of like three things that I think what we’ve seen a lot of is the persistent space. And I think we do that, well. In the supply chain space, meaning like, we want to make sure that we can do tomorrow, what we did today, and that’s where this idea of like redundancy comes in.

I would say, if anything, I would say that we should just be careful to ensure that we continue to have a follow through, right, that we don’t just say, you know, redundancy is resiliency, and that that we should attend to go ahead and continue to focus on adaptation, transformation, and forward-looking versions of that concept. And to keep at it at that, you know, it’s not going to happen in two years.

Ryan

Yeah, and I agree, Josh. I would say I think things changed, but they had to, right? We had an amalgamation of a ton of events. We had a global pandemic, we had ships blocking the Suez Canal, we had labor shortages, we had all of these things happening at the same time. So kinda like a five-year-olds soccer game, everybody had to run to the ball and try and figure something out, right? So, it changed the question, I think.

I have, and you highlighted too is, is it here to stay? I hope it is. I think there were a lot of positive changes, right.

So, to your point, redundancy, dual-sourcing, multi-sourcing. A lot of your inventory management strategies pivoted, and safety stock wasn’t a bad word during this time, right. So, a lot of that pivoted. I think the question I have is, how much will, as the dust settles and we get on the other side of some of those challenges, will we see that pendulum swing back?

I don’t think you’re going to lose a lot of those strategies. There is going to be a natural regression, though, right? You’re gonna see some of the, you’re gonna see who really has a long-term strategy that they operationalize. You’re gonna see, “we did something in the short term I was just hoping to get through,” and then that was going, “Okay, I gotta get back to what I was doing before to drive the same margins.” So it’ll be interesting to watch.

I think there’s a lot of wait and see, to see how companies really adopt some of the strategies they put in place. How strong will the C-suite push back on the board when they start to push for better margins than what they were seeing during a pandemic? And how strong will the C-suite say, “Actually, those are in place, because we don’t want to go through this again”? Or will they start to pull back and say, “You know what, it still is really cheap to source through China. So let’s start flexing back to that model”? It changed because it had to, I think it’ll be interesting to watch and see how much of that stays in place.

Josh

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s my fear. Right. I think as an industry, we should just take notice that what we had to do we needed to do to sustain despite where we are, but we have to keep focused on making sure that we continue into those adaptation and transformation phases.

Leigh

Yeah, absolutely. And you guys have both kind of hit on that flexibility was kind of what was super important, right? Josh, to your point, massive change isn’t going to happen in two years. So we did what we could when we could. And then Ryan, to the boardroom conversation. So do you think that boardrooms are going to be willing to forego some of the margin to have a more flexible or a more responsive gameplan ongoing into the future?

Ryan

I think I think the short-term short answer is yes. I think that, right now, is still very fresh in everybody’s minds. We saw that during the pandemic, you get more into a survival mode, right? The boardroom understood the changes that had to be made, that flexibility became much more important. You know, we had a bright light shining on these challenges in supply chain. You knew those challenges existed in supply chain, but now they were public, like they were, you know, front page news in the media. So I’d say right now, it’s still fresh. In the long-term, I’m kind of wondering if that isn’t to be determined still, right? Like, what happens if we don’t have another major event or major disruption for the next three years? Five years?

As we get further away, is a company going to start to say, “Hey, I gotta get that margin back,” and start falling back—like we were saying earlier—falling back into those trends of what they were doing before? At what point will they start to sacrifice some of those strategies that got put in place for more immediate impact on their margin? And which companies are willing to make those arguments and blend that margin impact, so they are de-risked and ready for the next event, even if it’s not a pandemic—which I doubt it would be—to be able to pivot and know that they they’ve got practices and programs in place? And which companies are signing up to do the peaks and valleys, right? Like, you’re gonna see, “Oh, I got my margin back, but when next event hits, I’ve got to go through all that pain again.”

So I think time will only tell. But either way, I do think flexibility will be a major driver and conversation in the supply chain. I’m just curious what the indexing will be, as we get further and further away from, you know, what was a very crazy time—and I’m sure it will, we’ll have another situation. So it’ll be interesting to watch.

Josh

Yeah, I completely agree, Ryan. I think, you know, as humans, we sort of have this tendency to sort of naturally progress to the need, you know, to deal with what’s hot at the moment, and then, you know, as that sort of plays down, sort of revert back to what we’re used to doing, what we’re comfortable doing, things like that. And I think if we’re not careful here, you know, as an industry, we could do that and just say, “Okay, well, we survived. Now let’s just get back to the business of doing what we’ve always done.”

But I think, you know, so if you think about, like I said—and maybe I’m projecting my own sort of, you know, purview into this a little bit—but like, when I got my first job out of college implementing warehouse management systems, truthfully, I didn’t know what a warehouse manager system was. When I signed up for it, I didn’t really think about supply chain or have any idea what that was. And so I think that’s kind of some, you know, sometimes how we look at it as a society. And even, you know, as organizations and leadership within organizations who have supply chains, you just kind of like, that just happens, it just works, right. So our real thing is product, and putting product in customer’s hands. But getting it there,  that’s the easy stuff. It’s putting it in a box and shipping it. But I think, you know, what we’ve learned through the past few years is that a well-run supply chain can actually be a massive resource of differentiation.

As an organization, like during the past few years, sometimes just simply having inventory and having the ability to ship it was all it took to win, to beat the competition. So I think there’s this idea of like, supply chain is simple. It’s just putting stuff in a box and shipping it, so why invest in innovation and things like that around it? But I also think there’s this idea that it’s just complex. So when you start to look into it, there’s a lot of really cross functional areas. I mean, you’ve got things like sales and sourcing and financing, IT and operations and manufacturing. And when something’s, you know, that complex, and that cross functional, in order to have any kind of, like, you know, meaningful change or sustained change over a period of time, especially changing people’s outlooks and measurements of success and KPIs, things like that, it’s going to take the C-suite, and probably the CEO, you know, just sort of have the purview that says this is where we want to take the organization and be able to communicate the value of that to the board and help convince them that there is value in this longer term investment.

I think you alluded to this a little bit, but I saw a McKinsey published a story a while back that said, you know, every 10 years or so, there’s roughly 40% of one year’s profits that are lost at some type of supply chain disruption. And the point they made was that it doesn’t happen on average that way, right. So like, every year, you lose 4%, and you can plan around that you don’t know when it’s going to happen.

And so when organizations are planning, you know, innovations, investments, supply chain strategy, if you want to account for that you very often have to take the longer-term look like a three, five, 17 year look at are these investments going to pay off because you don’t look at it like that, you know, with that period of time, and assuming that you’re going to have some type of disruption during that period. And probably the justification to make some of these investments isn’t there. And so you find yourself in this sort of stagnation and never be able to justify true long-term meaningful change. And so as a result, it sort of relates to resiliency, I think we have to have that long-term view and say, there’s going to be something that happens, maybe it’s not a pandemic, maybe it’s something else. We don’t know what it is.

And so unfortunately, that means we need to make some investments now for something that we’re not entirely sure what it’s going to look like. And when you’re trying to invest for that, and you don’t know what the answer is, probably flexibility is the right place to invest. That gives you the optionality to move and shift when things happen.

Ryan

Yeah, we can’t have short memories, right? We talk in athletics about you have to have a short memory and let that play go. This is one where you can’t. We have an incredible amount of lessons learned through that process. I think the real opportunity is for organizations to make programmatic change, based on those lessons learned now that set them up for future flexibility and success.

Leigh

Yeah, absolutely. And I know we here all agree that technology and data are really driving a lot of the foundational pieces of this resiliency discussion. And, Ryan, I know you’re having those conversations all the time. How important really is the tech and data strategy as it relates to a programmatic resiliency strategy?

Ryan

Yeah, it’s critical. And as you said, it’s foundational, right? I was at a conference recently, and I had multiple customers, multiple conversations, where the comment was made: I have all this data. I have all this data and I don’t know what to do with it. But I know I need it. So I’m putting it in a data lake, but I don’t know what to do with it.

I think, you know, the question really becomes how do we leverage it, right? How do I take all that data—I just went through one of the most disruptive times ever in a supply chain that we had to deal with—how do I take the models, the scenarios, the things I addressed and did?

How do I take that data and review it and say, “Could I have done it better?” I don’t think we have the tools yet. To be truly prescriptive where you can say okay, just tell me what I should do next time, right? We don’t have that we still need to blend the human and the machine and really work with the data that we have. And I think where that can come to fruition is getting better in scenario planning.

So back to Josh’s comment about that McKinsey study, one of the things they mentioned in there, as they did surveys throughout the pandemic, the very beginning of the pandemic, and in 2021, like the focus was visibility, right. And the visibility, I need to know where all my product is, I need to understand where in the warehouse, where, you know, in the ocean, on the containers. Where’s all my stuff? And as that evolved through the pandemic, you saw [missing] a five and I don’t think people have solved it yet. But they were starting to get better visibility, they really started realizing I have to plan better, but have to have a better idea of if this then what? Like, how can I start to pivot? And what does that mean as an impact?

So I think you’re gonna see scenario planning really rise up to the top of things we can do now, with the data we have access to, and start to model, and again, to come up with the ideas or say this is what the result would have been had I done that, and then it’s on us to operate, operationalize it, and make again, go back to making programmatic change in our organizations, so that we’re ready.

Because I agree with Josh, like, the next thing probably isn’t going to be a pandemic, it’s going to be geopolitical or something, we don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. And now we’re gonna have to pivot and it won’t be a, “we’ve dealt with this before,” it’s going to be, “we’ve dealt with something similar before and I’ve run some scenarios, and I have an idea of how to pivot.” I think that’s going to really be the way we can use that data.

Josh

Yeah, great, great points. And I think you’re right. So I think sort of as an industry, we’re like, oh, the answer for readiness and resiliency is data, or it is this ability, and I think it is those things, but it’s just, I would say those things are necessary, but not sufficient, right? Meaning like you need those things. But you also then need to be able to react to what that data, what that visibility is giving you insights into.

And so I think, oftentimes, that means we look at tacking on new things, but shying away from revisiting, sort of the foundational thing. So I’m talking about, like, you know, execution systems, like the software that powers the warehouse management systems, oftentimes, those are upgraded every five to seven years, sometimes longer, right. And so you can have fantastic visibility, you have all the data in the world, and you have these great insights, but as an organization, if you don’t have the processes and flexibility within the technology to actually adjust and account for the insights yet, you really haven’t answered everything you need for the full equation of sort of obtaining resiliency. 

So I think, you know, we’ve got to say, “Okay, where are we lacking,” but also then sort of like at the core of the foundation, “what technology, you know, should we focus on, that’s actually going to allow us to react to what these new things are giving us insights into?” And I think, sometimes we just, you know, it’s, it’s easy to strive for the next thing, the new thing I think we’re lacking, but you know, you have to challenge yourself to come back and sort of start at the foundation sometimes too.

Leigh

Yeah, so speaking of the next new thing, and I don’t think we’ve even gotten this far into the conversation without it coming up a couple of times. But obviously, one of the hot topics right now is generative AI. I don’t think you can go to a conference without seeing it 20 times, right? So how do you see AI and other technologies like, you know, machine learning continuing to impact resiliency going forward?

Josh 

Well, so I started this conversation by saying we have a tendency to sort of latch on to buzzwords and things like that. And AI/ML is certainly one that you might even throw into that category. And I’ll preface to that I don’t view myself in any way as an artificial intelligence expert. You know, nor am I even close, but I will say, you know, with my cursory level understanding of sort of where that talent technology is taking us and what capabilities it’s presenting, sort of as it relates to resiliency.

I would say—and Ryan alluded to this a minute ago—I think a place that might be interesting to start is sort of like predictability, right, or having it help us think of scenarios that maybe we wouldn’t think of on our own when it could take a look at the data and actually sort of coalesce things like global scenarios, macroeconomic situations, events, data, weather…

I think, artificial intelligence, machine learning, things like that can actually be a pretty interesting asset to the scenario planning teams helping them better evaluate the likelihood of any particular scenario, maybe helping us understanding which ones are most likely to occur and potentially even over time suggesting things that we might consider doing or adapting to, sort of alleviate or even void, some of these scenarios that we believe could be coming down the pipe.

I think that is where what Ryan said really is meaningful, which is like we can use that all day for helping us sort of, you know, come up with more ideas, think about things that may happen, and maybe which ones are most likely to happen. But I think where it stands right now, you still need an experienced human to look at that and say, “Yes, that makes sense. Yes, there’s something we can do about it. Here’s the path, we should we should take.”

So it’s a great idea for these technologies to help with what I started calling “progressive resiliency,” right? Or the idea of not just knowing what to do when disruption happens, but what can we do now to potentially even avoid that. So not reacting in the moment, but investing now to avoid or account for something before it even takes place. And I think we can use insights that some of these technologies provide to us to make those adjustments now for something that may not happen.

I think that’s gonna take, you know, a cultural change internally to say, we’re going to invest now for something that we wouldn’t entirely have all the answers to. And that’s not easy, right? Because margins are tight, expectations are high. And so you kind of have to balance that. But again, I think as humans, what we’re really good at today is knowing how to react in the situation that we’re in, knowing how to make adjustments for something that we just experienced. But I think this is where, you know, potentially technology can help us move beyond that persistence phase and sort of helps us account for things in the future. So adaptability, flexibility, things like that.

Ryan

Yeah, listen, data and AI go hand in hand, right? They just do. And AI is in an evolutionary phase. I mean, it is it is it’s come a long way. I was seeing a presentation from Ray Wang at Constellation Research recently and he had a slide and it said most AI projects will fail due to lack of relevant data to reach a precise decision. I think that’s true, simply because I think our expectations are so high. We got a chunk of AI with ChatGPT and these things, and we’re like, “Oh, this can just solve everything now.”

It’s not, it’s not there. And I think to Josh’s point, we still need the human to steer, guide, refine the outputs, right, that becomes critically important. So let’s use AI what it’s really good at right, it can replace monotonous tasks very well. It can crunch data at machine scale, which is a totally different level than human scale. Right.

I think that’s how we should that’s how we can be leveraging it. And then I think we need still need to apply that human element to figure out how do we deploy that strategy? How do we better equip ourselves and make ourselves flexible going forward? Use AI to crunch the data, to process the scenarios, take the creative human element to say, “Okay, what else can I challenge it to do?” But how do I take and bring that into my operations and put my company in a position to have better resiliency and supply chain success going forward?

Josh

Yeah, I heard this statement, I think, right. It’s interesting, because you know, some folks, you say, oh, we should be fearful that AI is going to take our job. But what i heard the other day was actually, probably—at least in the short-term—what we should be fearful of is not AI taking their job, but someone who knows how to use AI, taking our jobs.

Leigh

Yep. So, um, with resiliency being such a hot topic, you know, we’ve talked about boardrooms, I’ve heard CEO thrown out there. It’s obviously impacting technology and budget decisions, where are you both and your interactions seeing ownership for the overall strategy set? And do you think that that will change in the future?

Josh

Yeah, I mean, well, I think right now, it is at that C-suite level, but I think a large part of that is because, you know, it’s the hot topic, right? It’s in the boardroom. And the reason it’s in the boardroom is because it’s the immediate pain point, it’s the thing that everybody’s talking about. It’s, you know, it’s coming to the limelight for whatever reason, and I think it’s probably things like the Amazon effect. And, you know, it actually is seeing a lot of innovation and investment, but it’s also the pandemic, and it’s elevated it to that conversation. So like, but I think as an industry, we have an opportunity to capitalize, right? Now that we’re there, let’s capitalize on that momentum and conversation with the opportunity to be a part of the boardroom conversation.

And just like a quick personal story:

So you know, I was talking to my wife the other day, and she was saying that if you go and look at like our Amazon account as an example, the last like eight or nine transactions were returns. And so I think that’s interesting because I think it’s kind of a, you know, a microcosm. It’s like an adjustment in how she is sort of like you know, in a B2C world, changes how she shops. So instead of going into the store or trying out some things or coming home with the things she likes, she’s ordering a plethora of things, finding the one that she likes best, whatever that is, and then returning the rest.

And so like, when I started my journey, and supply chain reverse logistics was very often like the exception, right, but now it’s becoming much more commonplace. So the reason I’m talking about this example is because I think we’ve got this opportunity now to make supply chain a part of the complete product experience, meaning like, you know, organization’s ability to like, show you a variety of things, get them to you, have you have an understanding when they’re going to arrive, make it really easy and seamless to get them back like, that is all that’s actually bringing, you know, supply chain to the forefront and making it a part of how a customer interacts with an organization.

So, you know, I think we’ve got this really interesting opportunity now, because we’re in the boardroom conversation to say, this is a differentiator, right. And it does warrant someone owning it and having a long-term view of the role, and the differentiation, this logic can provide to an organization. And I think resiliency goes right alongside of that. So if you have a resilient supply chain then you can ship when others can’t, if you can handle returns, more breaks, and you can get them to the destination faster than everybody else, you’re putting yourself and your organization in a position to win. So I think, like they say, you know, don’t waste that opportunity.

Ryan

Yeah, I think the easy answer, like when somebody was asked that, would say, “Oh, it should just be the Chief Supply Chain Officer, right?” Um, I think to Josh’s point, though, you know, let’s be honest, this isn’t a role that every organization has yet. It’s still fairly new. And I think a lot of what falls under that role Chief Supply Chain Officer is evolving and was forced with the pandemic too.

I could see a role inside of supply chain organization dedicated to resiliency. But I would agree with Josh, I don’t think I think that can set strategies, but I think it has to be at the entire C-suite. There’s so much impact of those decisions, everybody has to be aligned. So, you know, a CFO has to understand the cost and the impact that these strategies have to some of their margins, right, I’m going to carry more safety stock, I’m going to source out of or do regional sourcing, that’s going to be more expensive. And they have to be aligned with that, that idea of blending the cost and the impact margin over time, instead of dealing with peaks and valleys.

The CEO has to be the champion of it, who’s going to the boardroom and having a conversation and sharing that this is a long-term strategy, right? This is not a pendulum swinging back and forth. This is something we’re committed to. And the entire org has to collectively be aligned to delivering resiliency in a supply chain. So I think you can, you’ll probably start to see roles focused around it. But I think it still has to be noted, it’s critical for the adoption at the C-suite and across the C-suite.

Josh

Yeah, I think you’re exactly right, Ryan. I mean, we talked about it earlier, where it’s like, you know, supply chain in general is cross-functional. And so to sustain any investment, innovation there, to make it, you know, something that it fits on to the C-suite level, like it has to have that level of support. And so like some of the things that I’ve seen organizations focus on, which I think sort of bolsters that message is that, you know, to obtain resiliency, to stay relevant those conversations, we need orchestration across common processes, right—I’m sure you can attest to this—but like, it’s incredible if you’re within, you know, different facilities within in the, you know, individual organization, supply chain footprint, and maybe they’re all having the exact same thing, but at an, you know, a site by site basis, they’ll do it slightly differently. And if you talk to the operations teams, they’ll have found, you know, efficiencies, it makes sense for them to do it slightly differently. But I think someone has to take a, you know, a larger purview set back from that and say, Yes, and that sort of unit economics situation that that gains efficiencies, but the ability to support unique processes at each facility actually erodes those efficiencies.

And so, you know, there’s certainly some value in having commonality. And then, you know, in order to find that commonality, you need IT solutions that support it, you know, that help us make sure that you’ve got processes that can be supportive of all the various regions and time zones and requirements and compliance and things like that, that are going on.

So you got to have an IT ownership that supports it. And you’ve got to have someone from a business perspective that wants those kinds of business processes to understand what makes sense for the business as a whole. And then you’ve got to double down on that scenario planning, right invest in that help give those folks the tools they need to come up with realistic scenarios, and then actually do something about it planning now, making changes now, in order to avoid it.

Ryan

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, this isn’t—we’re not solving a simple problem. This is a complex problem, right? So how do I provide that flexibility, while somehow still maintaining the secret sauce that makes me unique, right?

Josh

Yeah, it’s a balance. It’s a balance for sure.

Leigh

So I know we’re at time, which I hate because I think we could keep talking for the rest of the hour, but we did promise to answer at least one question. So if you guys don’t mind hanging out for a couple more minutes, if you’ve got the time, I did want to. We’ve got a few in here. I’m going to pick one so we can make good on that promise.

So the question says, “All right, this is awesome, but what should I wake up tomorrow and do to begin to impact change?” So Ryan, I’m going to kick that one over to you to start with.

Ryan

So I would say there’s an opportunity to reflect on the challenges you solved, the mountains you climbed, the big rocks that you moved out of the way when faced with something completely new. And then as you reflect on that, think about how you can operationalize those fixes, right? How do I not just react? Because in that moment, you had to react, but how do I take and not lose those lessons learned, right? What are the things you did really well, as an organization that you should build on what are the things you didn’t do well, that you need to address going forward, and start to put programs in place that allow you to pivot more easily in the future, right?

I think we said it earlier in this in this discussion, the next thing probably isn’t another pandemic. So the next thing isn’t going to have the same reaction and pivot that you had this time. But you can use the lessons learned here to be better next time, especially when you start to put programs in place that are based around flexibility, right, and resiliency.

Josh

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, if I if I’m making a technical answer in there too, Leigh, we’re talking about big, monumental things here. It’s complicated, it’s complex, it takes years, but it has to start somewhere, right?

So this is something that you’re passionate about, then it’s not necessarily always, you know, top down, budget-funded things that can make meaningful change within these organizations. If you care about it, talk to other people in the organization, see who else cares about it, find someone else who’s actually passionate about doing some of these things too, and then find a third person, right? And together, you can actually build a team that can maybe make the case that this is something your organization can be focused on.

Leigh

Awesome. Great. Well, thank you both. It’s been a super insightful conversation. Thank you, everyone, for joining us as well. And with that, I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of your day.

Josh

Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Ryan

Yep. Thank you.