Ellery's Essays

What’s the Metric for Resilience?

Many executives insist their organisations need to be resilient. Given all the adversities and disruptions businesses had experienced, it’s understandable to believe resilience is vital.

Resilience is “an organization’s ability to adapt to and recover from disruptions, such as natural disasters or market shifts, while maintaining core operations and continuing to function.”

But how does one measure resilience?

Metrics are performance measures which tell stakeholders how well their businesses, in terms of their activities, products, & services, are doing versus standards or goals.

There are many metrics for areas like sales, quality, reliability, and cost. But what metrics do we use for resilience?

Is a metric for risk mitigation a metric for resilience? An audit for risk can provide assessments for concerns such as safety and security. But could it tell the whole story about an organisation’s resilience?

Inventory turnovers, or how an item swings in relation to demand and supply, indicate how well executives are managing working capital. Can it be an indicator for resilience, in how products are weathering challenges in a given period of time?

Making resilience an objective is not easy when one can’t pinpoint standards or targets directly corresponding to it.

When one can’t measure an objective, one then cannot manage how to get there.

It becomes nothing more than a buzzword. And so far, that is what resilience is: an unmeasurable buzzword.

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Scolding My Subordinate Was Wrong

I scolded my subordinate manager the other day. Yelled at him, in fact.

It was wrong. I should not scold, much more yell, at a person whether he works for me or not.

When I scolded my manager, I negated the value of pointing out his mistake. The manager ended up not realising his error but instead felt my wrath which made him feel bad. The manager became a victim of my aggression.

I should, therefore, learn to control my temper. I should have calmly pointed out what unacceptable result the manager’s decision led to and then listen to the manager’s side. I then should explain to the manager if his side was not satisfactory and instruct him to correct his mistake.

If the manager’s infraction was a recurrence, I should warn the manager that repeating his error would lead to more severe measures.

But this was not a serious mistake. The manager simply did not follow an agreed plan. It led to me having to spend double the budget for a project. I got angry and yelled at the manager for it. He made a mistake, and I made the mistake of scolding him.

Trouble is I know I’ll do it again. I’m human after all and I do need to let go of anger. I just need to at least control it to not lose the value of correcting whomever didn’t do the job well.

I got angry, I scolded someone, but I don’t regret it. Yet.

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Goals Lead to Tangible Benefits

In one scene from the movie, Rocky, the title character played by Sylvester Stallone, is seen waking up at 4:00am, helping himself to a glassful of raw eggs, and then starting a jog. Rocky’s jog is the start of his preparation for his boxing fight with Apollo Creed, the current heavyweight champion in the movie.

Rocky is seen running on the dark deserted streets of Philadelphia. The director, John G. Avildsen, apparently wanted to show how alone Rocky is as he begins his training. Despite the hype that surrounds his upcoming fight, Rocky is by himself.

I am also by myself when I wake up three mornings a week to work out. I wash up, change to workout attire, walk the short path to where my equipment is and lift weights for an hour. Afterwards, I take a shower, eat breakfast, and go to work.

My routine has been like that when I began working out years ago and it has been like this up to the present day. There is no background musical score nor is there any person cheerleading me on. I am alone.

It can be difficult to sustain the momentum. Urgent phone calls and tasks that wouldn’t wait disrupt my workout routines; so much so there will be times I would not be exercising for a month, and I’d be forced to reduce weights whenever I restarted lifting to avoid injuring myself from suddenly lifting heavy weights after a long hiatus.

What was John Avildsen’s point in that scene of Rocky jogging alone in the darkness? What is the point of doing my workouts?

Everyone has an aspiration, an ambition, or just plain wish. But just as much as we have one, how much do we work for it? How much do we work before we discontinue and decide to quit?

Rocky’s aim was to be at his best physically for his fight with Apollo Creed. His goal was to show he would fight to the best of his ability.

My goal is to be strong enough to lift as much weight I possibly could.

In the movie, Avildsen presented Rocky as a typical human being who was willing to give his all in a fight many expected his opponent will win.

I work out to become stronger with the aim to be as healthy as I could as I age.

Rocky had a personal goal and so do I.

Marketers of fitness gyms promote the picture of perfect physiques. Would-be customers adopt the picture of perfect physical shapes of celebrities and athletes which fitness gurus sell as the come-ons for gym subscriptions.

My mistake was to adopt someone else’s vision of a sculpted physical body which many fitness gyms sell as their come-ons to would-be customers.

My goal is not only my own but also mine alone to create and define. Hence, strength and not an attractive physique has become my goal.

Rocky’s goal was to be at his best physically and mentally in his bout with Apollo Creed. It was not his aim to win despite what everyone around was telling him to aspire for. When the time came, Rocky gave Apollo a good fight, one that surprised everyone who watched.

Our goals are ours alone. We make them and we achieve tangible benefits largely by our own initiative and hard work.

What we should avoid is adopting someone else’s vision as our own. Because when we do, we risk working for something we not only may not be able to achieve but we also may end up attaining something which does not really mean much for ourselves.

I am solely accountable for what I aim for.

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What the Supply Chain Must Be

There are many things we like supply chains to be. Popular examples are resilient, sustainable, and agile. For some of those at the end of the chain, they’d simply want them to be dependable or on time, especially when it comes to deliveries. And for many supply chain professionals, they’d want vendor supplies to be low-cost and zero-defects.

From hearing so many of these words and from my professional experience, I have narrowed down that supply chains must be:

Visible
Reliable
Versatile
Productive

‘Visible’ depicts how accessible and transparent operations are for observation. It entails determining performance areas and setting up the means of monitoring & measurement.

‘Reliable’ means how one fulfils demand in terms of completeness, timeliness, quality, and with no errors. Some enterprises use the measure of perfect orders, which applies the same dimensions but based on orders or requisitions from customers. Reliability goes one up in it addresses demand not only of end users but also the needs of each step in the supply chain.

‘Versatile’ describes the ability to change as one chooses. Versatility covers how fast one changes (agile), how one responds (adaptability), or how one stays the course (resilient).

‘Productive’ is how much progress one makes versus the costs of doing so. In the supply chain context, it is the efficiency of using the least amounts of resources in fulfilling demand.

These four ideals best summarise all the buzzwords that organisations seek from supply chains. They are a step up from my previous thoughts about the traits supply chains should have.

These ideals help us form the visions of what we want our supply chains to be. Enumerating them, however, is the easy part. The hard part is how to attain them. Managers would be quite in the dark on where to start and how to lead their supply chains to such ideals.

Supply chain engineers could help in making these ideals realities. We just need to realise we need engineering as much as we need management when it comes to improving supply chains.

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Make It Visible

The planet Earth and its Solar System reside in the Milky Way galaxy, a spiral collection of a 100 to 400 billion stars. Yes, that’s billion, not million, and far more than a thousand or hundred. We can only see only a few thousand of stars in the night sky and only so much more even with the most advanced telescopes available.

There is also only so much light that is visible. Visible light, as in what enables the human eye to see anything, is a thin sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. Light in its other forms, from gamma rays, x-rays, and ultraviolet light to infrared, microwave, radar, and television & radio waves are invisible.

https://www.nachi.org/gallery/infrared-1/visible-light

Likewise, we hear only what is audible.

The sound spectrum ranges from the infrasound to the ultrasound, in which in-between is the audible, or what our ears can hear. We cannot hear sound outside the audible range.

Our five senses are limited. We can’t see, hear, smell, taste, or touch all of what are near or far from us.

Hence, we boost our senses with devices such as the telescope, microscope, radar, and sonar. We rely on experiments and instruments to map ocean floors, ascertain the composition of faraway stars, and determine the nature of microorganisms.

It’s interesting that as scientists have made much headway into making the natural world more visible, enterprise organisations have not made similar progress when it comes to their operations, more so with the supply chains they are parts of.

As much as enterprise stakeholders can witness their operations, many have limited up-to-date awareness of what is happening with the merchandise they buy, store, handle, produce, and deliver.

The chairman of a company importing and selling computer printers & supplies, for example, expressed surprise when I presented a flow-map of his logistics operations. “I did not realise how complicated it was to bring in and deliver products,” he said. It was the first time in his thirty-year career that he saw the complexity of his corporation’s supply chain activities.

Many enterprises had not been successful in improving their operational visibilities. Despite the availability and investments in sophisticated information technologies, many organisations had not been able to make their operations visible, at least visible enough to manage or improve them.

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A Toast to the Ordinary Day

An ordinary day starts with me waking up, feeding the pets, exercising, and having breakfast. I then go to work and come home by 6:30pm. It’s a routine I do daily, even on Sundays (except I’m home by 3pm).

We take for granted ordinary days. Ordinary days lie in between the extraordinary ones, which are occasions or life-changing moments.

Extraordinary days can be happy ones like weddings, graduations, and the birth of a son or daughter, or they can be unhappy ones like hospitalisations, funerals, and termination from employment.

Extraordinary days etch into our memories; ordinary days don’t.

It’s in the ordinary days when I am in my element, when I feel comfortable with what I do and the progress I make.

There are more ordinary days than extraordinary ones, but both are finite. They become fewer as we age.

I, therefore, look forward to the ordinary day as much as I may plan for (or dread) the extraordinary one.

And I toast to the ordinary day every morning, giving thanks I have at least one more coming.

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Dedicate, Not Commit

Commitment is placing the highest priority to another. When people marry, they commit; they promise to put their partners above everything else.

Enterprises try to enrol employees to do the same. Managers expect subordinates to place first-priority to their jobs.

I don’t commit to employers; I dedicate. Dedication is compliance to mutually agreed contracts. Focus is meeting terms & conditions and getting results.

When corporate executives demand commitment from would-be sales reps, the answer should be No. Employment is not a marriage. The most anyone should do is dedicate, which is: work hard, add value, and receive compensation.

It does not go as far as selling one’s soul.

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The Supply Chain Surrounds Every Product

The enterprise sells, its customers order, and the enterprise delivers. This constitutes the basic process of demand fulfilment. As the enterprise creates demand through marketing & sales, it fulfils it.

The enterprise and the customer agree on the terms and conditions of the latter’s order. Delivery of the order should arrive at the right place, at the right quantity, at the right quality, on schedule, and without any error whatsoever. Customers in turn pay the enterprise for what they received, as per the agreed terms & conditions.

Customers don’t really care how the enterprise delivers the orders. What matters is that the customers obtain the products they sought or asked for.

A product is made up of two parts:

Its Core
Its Surround

The Core is the product’s tangible characteristics made up by its characteristics (e.g., shape, weight, size) and features (e.g., functionality, technology).

The Surround is how the product is supported or presented, e.g., quality, service, availability, delivery and cost (price).

Entrepreneurs tend to focus a great deal on the Core of their products especially when they are starting their businesses. Executives would put more emphasis on the Surround as their businesses grow and compete for more market share.

There are many people who became famous for their product Cores. These include Johannes Gutenberg (movable type printing press), James Watt (steam engine), Thomas Edison (electric incandescent light bulb), Carl Benz (automobile), and Steve Jobs (Apple devices).

But how many famous people are there who created great product Surrounds?

One person who does come to mind is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. At the onset of the Internet in the 1990’s, Mr. Bezos started a virtual bookstore which he developed into an e-commerce behemoth.

Amazon emphasised availability (its slogan: Everything from A to Z). It optimised the Surrounds of products it advertised and sold online. It offered customers a very user-friendly means to seek and order all types of products as it offered vendors a reliable platform to market and sell their wares.

Amazon also set the trend for online publications or e-books via its Kindle e-reader devices and applications. The company also forayed into streaming of online entertainment from movies to television series. Amazon also has become a leader in information technology, offering web services such as cloud computing, database storage, and content delivery.

No commercial product, whether it be physical or virtual, is out of reach from Amazon. And it’s all made possible from Amazon’s focus on providing outstanding Surrounds for the products it sells.

Because of Amazon’s success, others have emulated its Surround strategies, with its rivals offering their own e-commerce portals or upping their customer services.

Enterprises build and develop their products’ Cores from the talents and resources within their organisations. Organisations, however, must negotiate and collaborate with partners to build and develop their products’ Surrounds. Amazon marketed the Cores of products, but its success relied on contracts with sellers and transporters for the products’ availability and delivery to customers, which together comprised the essence of the product Surrounds Amazon was selling.

Amazon and its admirers boast how productive its supply chain is, but it wouldn’t be where it’s at today without its partners. Amazon’s success via its advantageous support of products’ Surrounds hinged on its partnership with the products’ owners and the service providers who delivered to customers.

This leads to what supply chains really are and that is they are not only an enterprise’s purchasing, manufacturing, & logistics activities; they are not only information-driven networks or systems; they are not only an integrated department within organisations. They are also relationships founded on partnerships that work together in supporting the final finished products.

True, Amazon has grown large enough to own a fleet of trucks, airplanes, & ships, distribution centres, and automated equipment & data centres. It, however, still relies on partnerships for its global market reach. As much it may dictate pricing & terms, Amazon still needs relationships to sustain its economic prowess.

Every product has its Core and Surround. Enterprises invent and build their products’ Cores but develop their products’ Surrounds via their supply chains and the relationships that are inherent in them.

Find Ellery

Arguing for Engineering

Engineers have been the go-to people to solve problems or implement pre-decided solutions. Engineers build edifices architects design, install equipment which executives prefer, and fix things that were creating problems no one else could solve.

Engineers deal with the complicated technical stuff like designing rockets and constructing skyscrapers, repairing nuclear reactors, setting up oil drilling rigs in the middle of the ocean, or refitting a ten-kilometre bridge. When there are problems managers can’t handle, they call engineers.

Well, not all the time, unfortunately.

Managers, sometimes (if not a lot of times), try to fix problems on their own, which often are the ones they think they don’t need engineers or they feel they can solve on their own (many managers are engineers by college degree).

It can be a simple thing like a household electrical circuit breaker. A house’s circuit breaker trips, and the owner tries to reset the breaker. But the breaker trips again, prompting the owner to call an electrician. The electrician changes the breaker with one that’s of higher amperage capacity or one that has a higher limit for electrical current. The breaker no longer trips. But a few years later as the owner installs more appliances, the breaker not only trips but the wiring short-circuits and causes a fire which burns the house down. The fire department cites faulty electrical wiring as the official reason. The owner in response blames the electrical engineer who certified the house’s electrical schematic plan when it was constructed many years ago, long before the incompetent electrician changed the breaker.

Managers engage engineers when they think they need them. Just like we’d go to doctors or lawyers when we either need urgent medical or legal assistance respectively.

If we don’t think we need them, we don’t call them.

That leaves a lot of problems unsolved or not altogether fully solved. Many solutions are temporary and don’t last long. When engineers aren’t involved in tackling problems they’re positioned to solve, many so-called solutions turn out to be not the best ones.

And this isn’t limited to simple issues like a faulty house electrical circuit breaker.

The SARS-CoV-2 or CoVid-19 pandemic which began late 2019 and continued to rage through 2022 is a prime example of neglecting engineering as an approach to solving a crisis.

Many people saw the pandemic as a medical problem, to be addressed and solved by doctors and scientists. But as doctors and nurses treated patients and scientists developed vaccines and anti-viral drugs, no one was solving the bigger problems the pandemic was bringing.

Managers combatted the CoVid-19 virus via lockdowns, border closings, and mandatory protocols like wearing masks, prohibiting gatherings, and limiting employee attendance at workplaces. The solutions were close to draconian which led to shortages, unemployment, and a resulting worldwide economic recession.

And just like the house that burned down by an overloaded circuit breaker, many businesses closed.

And just like the owner of the burned-down house, executives blamed Just-In-Time, Lean, and other previously favoured management concepts for the failures. They finger-pointed those gurus and consultants who had helped set up their businesses’ efficient low-inventory operations even though many never fully adopted the ideas in the first place. Executives did not accept that engineers could have helped solve their problems.

Engineers solving problems is the paradigm organisational leaders need to pursue and accept. Engineers, not managers, solve problems.

The world has changed in that products and services are no longer 100% tangible. Entrepreneurs are cultivating ideas as much as they are introducing products. Engineers can and are instrumental in making those ideas into realities.

But do the entrepreneurs and executives ask engineers for help?

Unfortunately, no.

Technology firms hire software developers to program state-of-the-art information technology (IT) applications.

Mass-market companies engage 3^rd party service providers to handle their logistics.

Industrial investors employ finance executives to work out the best options for wealth accumulation.

Executives & entrepreneurs don’t get that engineers are more than competent and able to build & improve systems & structures just as, if not more than, effectively as software programmers, logisticians, & finance executives.

Engineers after all don’t just invent. They also innovate.

Both invention and innovation are what turn ideas into realities. And engineers can do both.

Engineers approach ideas the same way they do with problems. Whether it is an idea or a problem, engineers define it, lay out options, evaluate each option via predetermined criteria, and recommend the best course of action. They do the job of figuring things out as well, if not better, than any other professional.

This is the rationale for engineering in a world that is especially trending toward a digitised information age. Where ideas have overtaken inventions in whatever industry, engineers would still be more than helpful in bringing them to fruition.

Engineers are needed and it would be a shame if leaders ignore them.

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There is No Such Thing as a Benevolent God

How long did the dinosaurs live on Earth? 165 to 180 million years, according to Britannica.

That’s a really long time. Humans and ancestors have been on Earth for 6 million years. Homo sapiens, for about 300,000 years. Civilisation as we know it has existed for a mere 8,000 years.

The universe began 13.8 billion years ago. And scientists speculate it has at least another 100 trillion years before the last star fizzles out. It would take trillions of years more for whatever’s left like protons, black holes, and anything left to dissipate, if at all.

We live in a very big universe which has been here for a very long time and will likely last for another very, very long time. We might just as well call it Eternity.

There is a chance that some time and somewhere in this very big universe, superbeings, if not humans, will somehow figure out how to build and live in a place which would last for as long as the universe exists.

It does make sense that there already may be a God with such a place that has lasted for a very long time and will still be around for a very long time in the future.

It may also make sense that such a God would be capable enough to create our world and the trappings we now live in.

It, thus, makes sense to have hope that such a God may have communed with human beings on Earth and offered them and their descendants a spot in that possible place that would last for almost eternity.

It also would make sense that there would be conditions for humans to qualify going to go to such a place. Belief & faith in the God, plus following the rules communicated from representatives (e.g., prophets, Messiah, angels), praying, and simply being a good person, would be examples.

If individuals qualify, they go to that place which some would call Heaven. Those who fail would not enter that Heaven and would end up in a not-so-aspiring place some would call Hell, or they just simply die and become no more.

Religions, especially the older ones, are more the wiser in asserting their authorities to who is God and what the rules are to go to Heaven. They have throughout history ingeniously devised & rationalised rules which reward those who believe and threaten those who don’t.

This essay’s discourse would be no exception to their scrutiny and criticism. I could be banished, excommunicated, or plainly labelled an outcast by outspoken clerics of these religious faiths.

What the religions do not guarantee is a good life here on Earth. They may say there are rewards waiting for their followers but if experience teaches anyone anything, everyone goes through some good and bad in their lives; some will have better; some will have worse. There is neither equal balance nor equity. Nothing is fair. It rains on the just and the unjust. The sun shines on the gentle and the wicked.

There is no such thing as a benevolent God. God won’t be kind to all people, unless you happen to be one of a few He (or She or It) selected out of some special favour.

God, however, is a provident God. God provided people a planet with abundant stuff to live their lives comfortably and with genes that give human beings talents to dominate the world. Everyone goes through life suffering and enjoying depending on how they utilise their God-given skills and available resources. But there would be people who’d be lucky or unlucky. Some would be fortunate, and some won’t.

Live with what you have and what you can get and play by the rules you’ve come to believe in, whether from the religions you learned from or from what you concluded from your own thoughts.

While doing so, be mindful that the future is an eternity and that there may be superbeings we call God who may judge us worthy to join them in a place called Heaven that would last as long and have amenities much better than what there is presently on Earth.

Otherwise, well, sorry. We could say we tried and hoped.

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