CSCMP EDGE Day 1 focuses on resilience, adaptability

Keynote speaker Eric Termuende kicked off the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ (CSCMP) Annual Conference Monday by noting that society has seen more innovation in the last five months than it has seen in the last five years due to the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic—and that, as a result, it has never been more important for organizations to be able to make small changes that will keep them focused on meeting short- and long-term objectives.

Termuende calls these small changes “one-degree shifts” that allow organizations to build a more intentional culture and, more generally, to succeed in what he refers to as the “future of work.” The message comes at a pivotal time, he suggested, given that CSCMP had to shift its conference to a digital platform due to the pandemic, moving more than 100 educational sessions online and creating a virtual exhibition packed with networking opportunities. Termuende, a motivational speaker focused on employee engagement and company culture, delivered his speed via video as more than 1,400 attendees logged in on the first day of the conference.

“Sometimes it’s not just how we act, but how we react,” to what’s happening in the world around us, he said, emphasizing the importance of envisioning goals, evaluating progress toward those goals, and experimenting by making changes and “pivoting” along the way.

Termuende said organizations should ask themselves five key questions when addressing problems or challenges—that is, friction—within their operations: 

1. Where is the friction?

2. What should I be doing about it?

3. Where is it going wrong?

4. Where is it really going wrong?

5. What is the smallest viable change I can make?

Hand-in-hand with that work, organizations should ask three questions that will help them build an “intentional culture” focused on improvement: 

1. What should we start doing?

2. What should we stop doing?

3. What should we continue doing?

Finally, Termuende said, organizations of all shapes and sizes should discover their “HART”—the Habits, Artifacts, Rituals, and Traditions that make them unique—as a way to create a positive environment in which people have the “courage to make the one-degree shifts” required for success.