Ellery's Essays

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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Ambitions & Fears Help Make Our Dreams Come True

Ambition drives us to work for our dreams. Fear makes us hesitate. Both are important in motivating us.

Fear motivates? Yes. While ambition gives us impetus to wake up and work, fear moves us to sense risk and hesitate.

We know the sayings and how they seem to contradict each other.

“He who hesitates is lost” teaches leaders not to deliberate for too long, otherwise they will miss opportunities.

But “haste makes waste” tell us that rushing into action and ignoring the risks can lead us to disaster.

There is “nothing to fear but fear itself” gives people the idea that we shouldn’t let whatever scares us rule our lives.

However, “fear is a good thing. it means you’re paying attention.” Fear is a gift in that it helps us sense and evaluate our environment for risks and adversities.

Social media is rife with posts of those who claim success because they did not hesitate. Executives boast early changes in their careers which brought them to prestigious high-salary positions. Entrepreneurs pride themselves for quitting college and working long nights to invent products which made them millionaires.

There are those, however, who decided not to dive in, who decided that the potential for riches was not worth the trade-offs to their personal lives.

Gordon Bowker founded Starbucks with two friends in 1970. Mr. Bowker sold the business to Howard Schultz and investors in 1987. When he was asked if he regretted his decision given the multi-billion dollars’ worth of Starbucks years afterward, Mr. Bowker said he was “rich enough.”

Gordon Bowker passed away on August 21, 2025. The Wall Street Journal obituary* quoted his long-time friend David Brewster citing Mr. Bowker:

“I think that he decided early in his life that he would master business, and then later in his life that he would master the art of living.”

If this isn’t a fine example of a man who weighed his ambitions and fears, I would not know what is.

*Chris Kornelis, “Gordon Bowker, Who Came Up With the Idea for the First Starbucks, Dies at 82,” The Wall Street Journal, September 6-7, 2025. https://www.wsj.com/business/hospitality/gordon-bowker-starbucks-dead-6c2ca37c

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The Supply Chain Problem Many Don’t See

The escalator at the shopping mall was out of order for four (4) weeks. The mall managers perhaps didn’t think it was a big deal. Mall customers could still walk down the broken escalator from the ground floor to the lower level or take a nearby elevator. Never mind that any elderly person or parents with small children (or pets) would have had a hard time negotiating the steep steps.

The mall owners spent money to buy and install elevators and escalators for the convenience of mallgoers. When an escalator isn’t running, the mall owners aren’t getting their money’s worth. One may argue that one shut-down escalator won’t deter people from going to the mall but that’s beside the point.

Most elevator & escalator companies don’t provide prompt & satisfactory maintenance. It would sometimes take weeks, if not months, for these companies to repair an elevator or escalator. One major reason is that the companies avoid keeping inventories of spare parts.

To the companies, keeping stock of spare parts is a non-value adding activity; company executives see no benefit from having inventories of spare parts. Inventories tie up cash after all and faster repairs or maintenance don’t outright translate to significantly higher sales. Managers, therefore, would rather order parts only when needed, and that is such as when the elevators & escalators break down.

Clients like mall owners could keep stock but the elevator & escalator companies would insist that the clients advance cash for the spare parts. As many critical parts are imported, that would mean shouldering not only the purchase price but the shipping cost as well, not to mention disbursing the cash at the onset as importation typically requires the money (in the currency from the country of origin) up front.

Clients, therefore, find themselves stuck with the slow maintenance service. They perceive themselves being held hostage by the elevator & escalator company, as they have no other viable option other than wait a long time for the service.

Clients could replace their equipment outright but it’s costly. Getting another service company would be futile as most of them are no different in taking too long to repair equipment.

This dilemma occurs not only at shopping malls but with many high-rise buildings as well. Elevators break down; people wait very long to go up and down floors; maintenance takes too long and parts are expensive.

It’s a supply chain problem, as clients are unhappy with the delivery of services and service providing companies exert effort to avoid inventories and control costs. It’s a problem in which the first step towards a solution is for customers such as the shopping mall suffering from a long broken-down elevator to take the initiative to recognise, acknowledge, and define the problem.

Unfortunately, many don’t.

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Banks Have Supply Chains, Too

I went to the bank to cash a check. The teller said there was no cash available. She also said the automatic teller machine (ATM) also had no cash and was off-line.

The teller, however, told me to wait. She then left the bank, went next door to a rival bank, and withdrew cash from a personal account she had there. She returned and deposited the cash into her account in the bank I was at. She used the cash she now had to cash my check.

The teller’s boss, the branch manager, told me that the armoured car which delivered cash daily was late. The amount the armoured car delivered the day before also ran out due to high demand from clients.

The bank does not keep much cash and relies on armoured car deliveries the bank’s main branch dispatches daily. Cash withdrawals had outstripped cash deliveries, however, such that the bank runs out of cash periodically. Deliveries of cash from the supplier, the central bank (known as the Bangko Sentral in the Philippines) also are sometimes haphazard, leading to shortages of currency bills and coins.

Just like merchandise, there is a supply chain for money. And just like with many other supply chains, shortages occur. There are times when the bank has no money or too much cash. And sometimes, the bank has too many of one denomination (e.g., 100 peso bills) and none of others (e.g., twenty [PhP 20] peso coins).

The causes are not too far off from those of other industries. Production & transportation delays, not enough trucks, late arrival of raw materials to bill printing or coin manufacturing facilities, are some reasons.

The difference observed between banks and enterprises selling products is that the former tends to deny the need for supply chain improvements. Banks insist they are financial institutions; they haven’t fully accepted they are just as much involved in operations like procurement, manufacturing, and logistics, especially when it comes to cash.

Supply chains are everywhere, even at banks.

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‘Who You Gonna Call?’

There is no such thing as ghosts.

But there is such a thing as unexpected problems.

And when unexpected problems do arise, whom do you call to solve them?

The 1984 hit film, Ghostbusters had the hilarious premise of ghosts haunting New York City. But it also was about wacky scientists inventing devices to capture the ghosts. New York residents hailed the scientists as the go-to group to get rid of pesky ghosts, hence the theme song, ‘Who you gonna call?’

Whether ghosts exist or not is a debatable topic. But unanticipated problems are a certainty.

You often know whom to call for many problems, like the police for crime, the fire department for burning buildings, and lawyers for legal issues.

But whom do you call for problems you’ve not experienced too often or had never happened before?

The answer isn’t about finding whom to call, but about identifying and solving the problem. In Ghostbusters, people praised the scientists for figuring out how to fight supernatural beings. The clamour to call the scientists for their ghost-busting services came after they successfully solved a problem no one anticipated and didn’t know what to do about.

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All in the Mind

My dad would tell us that any difficulty was “all in the mind.”

When I and my siblings were kids and we found anything hard, he’d tell us it was “all in the mind.”

It could be whenever we’re sick, we’re stuck in homework, or we’re just not feeling like eating or drinking. He’d just say it was “all in the mind.”

That’s all he would say, and he would just walk away with a deadpan face. We’d just stare but eventually we’d hurdle whatever hardship was preoccupying us.

Once, when my dad, I, and my siblings were much older, we went on a trip abroad. While sightseeing at a tourist spot, my dad said he couldn’t walk another step and had to find a place to sit. That’s when we pounced and told him, “it’s all in the mind.”

He didn’t stop laughing.

My dad left a long time ago. But I tell myself whenever I feel reluctant to do something important, it must be all in my mind.

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The Four Types of Supply Chain Relationships

How do you want your supply chain relationships to be like?

Supply chain relationships consist of the connections between enterprises such as those between enterprises and their vendors, service providers, and customers. They also include the interactions between internal operating groups within enterprises, such as purchasing, inbound & outbound logistics, manufacturing, and planning.

There are four types of supply chain relationships:

In Lose-Win, the other party benefits; the enterprise doesn’t. The ‘partner’ gets the better deal; the enterprise does not. The enterprise’s leadership adopts a defeatist mindset while its ‘partners’ dictate the conduct of the relationships. The enterprise finds it futile to wrangle for better terms. An example is when a larger multinational retailer lays down a take-it-or-leave-it approach to competing small businesses. The ‘winning’ small business firm adheres to the multinational’s terms & conditions even if the firm finds them unfavourable.

In Lose-Lose, the enterprise and its partners resign to a relationship that they see as necessary but hold no hope for benefits. An example is a courier service who loses money from shipping packages to a client’s customers who are in faraway rural places. The courier service shoulders high transport costs it cannot pass to its client because of government-regulated restrictions. Meanwhile, the firm’s order-to-delivery performance is below par because the courier firm will not give priority to transporting the firm’s products. Both parties incur losses as they pray their business environments would change someday.

In Win-Lose, the enterprise sees benefits only coming by having things done its way and not favourably for its partners. Winning can only come when the other side loses, much like in games of sports. Concessions from partners is the goal. An example is when a large fast-food corporation demanded a winner-take-all approach to its chicken suppliers. The fast-food executives insisted chicken suppliers allocate all their supply to the fast-food’s commissaries as well as preferential pricing which would be lower than the rates sold to competitors.

The ideal of any relationship is Win-Win, where the enterprise and its partners benefit from each other’s businesses. A tangible proof of a win-win relationship is a mutually beneficial contract, such as that between a service provider and a client. Exclusive dealerships, distributorships, and 3^rd party outsourcing services are where we can find potential win-win relationships. Apple corporation’s long-time partnership with Taiwanese firm Foxconn is a close example of a win-win relationship.

Aiming for Win-Win relationships is the principle behind building supply chains. Whatever structures & systems the enterprise and its partners set up must support a Win-Win ideal.

Supply chains are not meant to have one or more losers among their relationships. A losing partner in a supply chain relationship will inevitably lead to losses in productivity and to higher risks.

The small business awarded a Lose-Win contract from a multinational retailer was reluctant to invest for further growth. It decided to seek other avenues to grow. The small business offered to distribute for other suppliers even if it violated its contract with the multinational. The multinational fired the small business but by then, it already had established more favourable agreements with other suppliers.

The transport firm & its client stuck in a Lose-Lose relationship decided to go their separate ways. The client firm discovered it could save costs by buying its own trucks to deliver products to customers in distant rural areas. The transport firm, meanwhile, refused to adapt its transportation to changing infrastructure; it eventually lost market share to upstart companies.

The fast-food corporation in the Win-Lose scenario was caught off-guard when its suppliers one day could not deliver needed quantities of chicken to its restaurant branches. Shortages ensued. The fast-food firm’s market share dropped as it suffered a public relations nightmare due to out-of-stock of its flagship chicken product. The fast-food firm was forced to shut down branches to wait for supply to catch up and was compelled to renegotiate its contracts with suppliers.

Apple’s Win-Win relationship with Foxconn is not perfect. Both had faced issues such as labour conditions and spikes in trade tariffs. Yet, both continued to collaborate in manufacturing & delivering new products of high quality to their global customers. Both had over their years of working together built a system & structure which strengthened their product supply chain. And both continue to find ways to improve.

It is in continual improvement where we justify the Win-Win relationship for enterprises in the supply chain. Relationships between individual enterprises enable the flow of merchandise. In a scenario where there’s at least one loser, productivity suffers and everyone loses.

In supply chains, relationships matter. When everyone wins, everyone benefits.

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The First Step is Always the Hardest

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“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” In building a supply chain, that single first step can be a doozy.

When we construct a home or facility, the first thing we think we of doing is plan. Seek a site. Draft a layout. Determine our budget. Schedule the construction.

But that is not really the first step. We consult real estate agents to find the best place to build. We engage architects to draft the designs. We talk to accountants to budget funds. And we hire contractors for construction. In short, we establish relationships before we build.

The same very much applies for building supply chains.

Before we build supply chains, let alone improve them, we’d need to first acknowledge the relationships that underlie them. These include whom we buy from (vendors, service providers), whom we sell to (customers, clients, consumers), and the functions & departments within our own enterprises (e.g., manufacturing, logistics, purchasing, planning, sales, finance, marketing engineering, quality assurance, human resources).

The contracts we sign with our vendors, the orders we accept from our customers, and the standards & policies we conform together with our enterprise counterparts form the bases of the operating structures & systems of our supply chains.

Because supply chains are multi-tiered, our relationships include not only whom we buy from or sell to directly but also those who our vendors buy from and who our customers trade with. We connect with all individuals & enterprises from where merchandise & services originate, to where they are converted or transformed, to who conveys or transports them, and to who are the final end-users or consumers. Ideally, this includes all parties all along the supply chain, whether big or small, near or far, and within or beyond the borders of our enterprises.

Connecting with our relationships is the first step in building supply chains. We assess our links, recognise the strong & weak ones, and renew our ties, if not make new ones.

It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be a doozy. But how we connect with our relationships will define our supply chain’s fate.

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The Changing & Un-Changing Supply Chain

Since Keith Oliver and a Mr. Van ’t Hoff coined the phrase in the 1980s, supply chain management has evolved from an obscure middle-management responsibility to a high-echelon business priority. Supply chains had become hot topics in executive suites and business school lecture halls. At the same time, operations managers face endless enigmatic problems as external factors from natural disasters to geopolitical events rock global trade.

Supply chains are far more different from what they were in the 1980s but at the same time, they’re not, in some respects.

What did change?

Supply chains have advanced technologically.

Thanks largely to pioneers like Amazon, consumers order many products via e-commerce portals. Warehouse management systems (WMS), artificially intelligent (AI) algorithms & robots assist logistics workers in allocating, picking, loading, and dispatching deliveries.

Supersize containerships, self-driving vehicles, drones, and longer-range energy-efficient aircraft are propelling the transportation of merchandise not only faster and farther but also at greater volumes.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is also enabling enterprises to upgrade not only the automation of their factories but also of their offices. Executives had been aspiring to apply AI in the planning and execution of all supply chain operations.

What didn’t change?

Supply chains are global, but they always have been since civilisations began buying and selling from one another. The ancient Silk Road connected Asian merchants with Europe. Europeans, in turn from the medieval ages, shipped goods by sea to and from the American New World and the Far East. American railroads, at the onset of the 19^th century Industrial Revolution, transported products & people from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. In the 20^th century, nations trade globally via the Internet and elaborate transportation networks.

Supply chains had been predominantly dependent on contracts which organisations haggle and hammer out with vendors & customers. At the same time, nation-state governments had taxed & regulated supply chain operations, such as manufacturing and export & import activities.

Executives also had tended to limit supply chain management to operations which they have direct influence over. Even before supply chain management became a buzz-phrase, enterprises already were forecasting demand, processing orders, controlling inventories, planning production & capacities, inspecting & assuring quality, reducing expenses, spending for fixed assets, supporting new product initiatives, and measuring performances.

A good number of business owners, however, continue to treat supply chains as nothing more than logistics or transportation. Manufacturing and purchasing functions have remained outside of supply chain managers’ scopes in many firms.

Worse, some managers have blamed supply chain management for undelivered pending sales orders, product stock shortfalls, customer complaints, runaway costs, and high working capital.

What also hasn’t changed was the perception that computerisation and automation are the best solutions for supply chains. Much of what have been talked about in supply chain social media sites and business articles are how much hope executives, academics, bloggers, and consultants have been putting in on state-of-the-art artificially intelligent (AI) driven information technologies (IT) to drive supply chains to the next level, whatever that would be.

And finally, what has also not changed since Keith Oliver’s time is that supply chains could only be improved via management. Supply chain management is operations management, one of four basic branches of business administration which included sales & marketing, finance, and people. Supply chains are components of the business of operations.

Executives had thought they could improve supply chains via management, they saw themselves as ready experts as per their business acumens. They saw themselves as more than qualified what with their education from business schools and/or from their hands-on experience in their respective industries. Executives had been confident they could manage supply chains via the basic management principles of planning, organising, directing, and controlling.

Managers have gauged supply chains based on assessed capabilities. Hence, to improve supply chains, executives simply needed to hike capabilities. The obvious options would be in tactics such as increasing production capacities, adding more logistics assets such as storage space & handling equipment, and hiring more people.

Managers also leaned toward information technologies to drive supply chain improvements. Executives just needed to invest in IT hardware & software to automate processes and streamline the flow of data & merchandise. Never mind that almost one out of two enterprises have not succeeded in implementing new IT into their business.

Also hardly changed was the bias of executives towards the other branches of business administration, namely sales & marketing, finance, & people (organisational development). Many executives tended to delegate supply chain management to subordinates because they either had no professional experience, or they just didn’t see it as an avenue for personal career development. Supply chain management was a slow-growth career path. Much attention to supply chains in many firms stemmed from crises, such as when materials don’t arrive or customers complained about unserved orders, late deliveries, or off-quality goods. Many executives did not see supply chain management as an equal to strategic planning.

Supply chains had, therefore, gotten stuck. Executives stubbornly held on to the belief that supply chains were no more than internal operations which they by themselves could handle. New attractive technologies like AI & robotics, were the easy answers for improvements; all that was required was capital investment.

If we want to improve supply chains, we’d need to change how we perceive them:

Supply chains are not limited to the internal operations of an enterprise; they encompass activities that add value to merchandise & services from the point of their creation to their final usage or consumption.
Supply chains consist of relationships in which their effectiveness & efficiencies rest on the maturities of the partnerships forged between parties.
Structures & systems underlie the operations of supply chains, and they are where we should focus any improvement, not only in their capabilities, but also in their achievements to meet the strategic priorities of organisations.

It would be quite a tall order for executives to veer from the mindset of meeting their enterprises’ individual priorities to that of nurturing supply chain win-win relationships and building structures & systems beyond the boundaries of their internal operations.

This is not something entirely new. Past civilisations had recognised the need to work with partners such as vendors & customers. Merchants, craftsmen, and shipping owners had always been active in improving methods and workplaces.

What’s different is that we should take in a more holistic approach in dealing with our supply chains. As much as we may continue focusing on minute tasks, we should also be approach supply chains as relationships working together in unison. We should define how every link should perform and how every connection should work together.

It is from there, we can build the supply chains we want, regardless of how different they may be from the ones of today.

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