(with apologies to Peter Norvig)
Some time ago, the wise and well-respected computer scientist Peter Norvig wrote an article called “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years”. I read it recently and found it so full of good sense I couldn’t resist taking the spirit of Norvig’s thoughts and applying them to supply chain management.
Norvig’s attention had been taken by the slew of books – you may have seen them yourself if you’ve walked past the computing section of a bookstores – with titles such as “Learn C++ in 3 days” (not a made-up title).
Study hard... only 9 more years to go - photo by Mateusz Stachowski
In response to the misleading claims, trivial treatment and impossible promise of instant gratification of these titles, Norvig set out a series of practical ideas for how to “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years”. He draws on well-attested notions of deliberative practice: the way learning comes from long and repeated application of “not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes”. (These ideas have recently been popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers – you will have come across his “10,000 hours” rule.)
I’ve seen a lot of bright young people apply themselves energetically to supply chain management positions, and while many do remarkable things they have all admitted there is an incredibly steep learning curve. Not only that, more experienced managers often say that the more they know, the more they recognise the gaps in their knowledge. Whereas the most experienced people often have seemingly effortless intuition for getting to the root of problems, seeing pitfalls, identifying workable solutions and guiding them to completion. I believe that intuition comes from long and varied deliberative practice in supply chain and general management.
Here are my ideas for how to do that:
■ It doesn’t matter where you start from, whether you have a degree, what kind of degree. You need some aptitude (including good numeracy and a capacity for conceptual thinking), but you also need a curiosity about the world and an interest in solving problems and making things work better.
■ Get experience of some general operational excellence approaches, preferably outside a strictly supply chain role. Most supply chain issues are enmeshed in general business issues, and knowing how to improve the quality and productivity of processes in general is extremely useful. Learn Lean from a manufacturing engineer – for my money automotive engineers have the most depth of skill. Join a project with them and get out onto the shop floor. Pay attention to the soft skills too – bringing people along with the change. Learn John Seddon’s Systems Thinking approach on a project in a service operation, and see how customers interact with processes. Try not to get caught up in sectarian conflicts between supporters of different approaches – keep an open mind to the merits, weaknesses and appropriateness of various methods.
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