Designing and implementing a Flowcasting process is hard work. It requires people to change how they do things. Most folks ain’t to keen on changing their ways.

So, what to do? We can all take a lesson from Seth Godin, the marketing genius who’s brought us fresh thinking like permission marketing, purple cow and the ideavirus. Here’s what Seth had to say in a recent post:

Belief

People don't believe what you tell them.

They rarely believe what you show them.

They always believe what they tell themselves.

Wow! What a brilliant piece of change management advice. Seth is a marketing genius in our humble opinion. We had no idea he was also a change management expert.

You reckon we should tell him?

Posted by Mike Doherty at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently, Supply Chain Management Review - one of the most highly respected supply chain publications around - reviewed Flowcasting the Retail Supply Chain. Here's what they had to say:

"It crackles with a sense of mission. The authors’ commitment to the concept is certainly evidenced by their decision to make the entire first half of the book available on their Web site at www.flowcastingbook.com. Clearly written and organized, this book makes a strong argument for the power of flowcasting."

On behalf of my co-authors, I would like to publicly thank Supply Chain Management Review for their balanced and thoughtful review of the book (you can read the complete review here).

The praise was great, but they also made a couple of keen and insightful criticisms that we will address in the coming weeks.

We know that other folks are reviewing the book as well. When they do, we'll let you know about it on this blog!

Posted by Jeff Harrop at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you believe you can do something, you can. If you don’t think you can do it, you can’t. Either way, you’re right. Your thoughts create your reality.

Think back to 1954. Before 1954 no one thought that a person could run a 4-minute mile. Then, along comes some dude named Roger Bannister and he rocks everyone’s world! Guess what? Within weeks many more people broke the 4-minute barrier. Why? Cause they told themselves they could.

So, what are you telling yourself?

Posted by Mike Doherty at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the directions of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.” - Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895)

If Thomas Huxley were alive today, he would be a supply chain manager in a retail organization.

When you look inside a retail organization of any size that’s been around awhile, you’re likely to find a myriad of different systems and business processes.

- a “home grown” ordering system for the stores
- replenishment software for distribution centres that has undergone so many modifications over the years that it bears no resemblance to its original state
- a special system that does ordering for promotions

As the retail business environment has changed over the years, the systems being used to manage it all have continued to sprout more special bolt-on logic, flags and dip-switches. Direct store delivery, vendor managed inventory, cross-docking and internet order fulfillment were never within the original design of most retail replenishment systems.

And to manage it all? Printed reports of every variety - so thick that they’re measured in pounds, not pages.

Such is the retail organization that comes to be through the forces of evolution. Nobody ever intended it to be this way, it was just “a constant remodelling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions”. Something changes, apply a quick fix and move on. It’s like a “cork in the tempest” approach to managing business change.

One wonders what would be possible if retailers were given the chance to wipe the slate clean and start all over again.

If they could start all over, they would build their entire supply chain around satisfying the consumer. Theirs is the only demand that would need to be forecasted and all of the upstream supply decisions would be made in automatic response.

When dealing with suppliers, there would be far more than lip service behind the offers of partnership. There would be a concerted effort to make them as successful as possible by providing them with a full year of advance notice about product needs – updated every day.

And most important of all, the linkage from consumer to store to DCs to suppliers would be so natural and seamless that it could be logically explained to everyone – with no interpretation or leaps of faith required between steps.

Now that sounds like the theory of intelligent design, supply chain style.

Posted by Jeff Harrop at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)