In autumn 2007, while working as Supply Chain Director with Procter & Gamble, I applied internally for a job, which sounded interesting … and daunting. The role would be to lead the integration of the Wella business in Asia by harmonising all 1,500 employees onto P&G contracts and moving Wella’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system onto the P&G SAP platform. The job was far too big for me at that stage.
English Blog
The Power Of Creative Problem-Solving
It’s 1.30pm on March 30th, 1983 when Holger Bethke and his friend Michael Becker arrive at a particular corner in Schmollerstraße in East Berlin. The house they are looking for is right beside the “death strip” … the area surrounding the Berlin wall (s.above).
Disguised as craftsmen in blue work suits, they carefully open the locked doors with a picklock, making as little noise as possible. Once they are in, they hide in the attic for nearly twelve hours, eating sandwiches, drinking schnapps, and smoking cigarettes. Their plan to escape across the Berlin-Wall is highly risky, daring and dangerous. But, if it works, it is also a compelling tale of innovation … pure genius really.
What really matters to you?
When I worked as Supply Chain Director in Procter & Gamble, every year we completed a loss analysis. To do that, we picked a specific skin-care product and leveraged a tool called value-stream-mapping to map out the whole supply chain for each of the components and ingredients on a large white-board. The captured flow could lead back more than 12 months, when some of the raw materials were prefabricated.
Then, we looked at all the steps in the supply chain which actually generated value. For example, when we mixed the ingredients, filled the jar, put a label on, and added a cap to close the jar. You can imagine the actual value-creation-time was only a few minutes, whereas there were weeks and months lost in waiting, transportation, as well as other non-value-added movements.
Getting A Difficult Message Across
You may remember the newsletter about a client of mine who worked through a highly emotional situation with “the dictator.” Only a short while later, I encountered another client with an even trickier situation.
Chris is a calm and friendly 35-year-old manager, who struck me from the beginning as someone who was very kind. In a “fast-track” career, he had risen rapidly through the ranks of a medium-sized Swedish consumer electronics company. Based in the UK, he was now leading its global supply chain operations.
Chris absolutely loved his job. He viewed it “like a hobby” where he enthusiastically “created top-notch service solutions” for his clients. His passion for the job had him working 60-hour weeks for the last eight years. By his own admission, he’d been close to burn out two times and was currently doing double duty… handling two important job assignments within the company.
It presented a massive challenge.
Chris was not getting along well with his interim boss, the Managing Director of UK operations. “He attacked me personally” Chris said. The strained relationship created an unprecedented level of emotional turmoil, anger, and frustration in Chris.
How to support someone in a really difficult place?
I had started to collect my 450 client-therapy hours towards becoming a UKCP registered Psychotherapist. It was tough, as I was exposed to psychological and personal challenges I was absolutely not used to as a Coach.
I was trying my best, but something wasn’t working. Some clients came for a few sessions, then abruptly stopped. That was hard to take emotionally, and I began to question my ability to support psychotherapeutic clients.
As I was talking the cases through with my supervisor Steve, he leaned back, looked at me, and asked if I knew the story of the wind and the sun. I did not. It’s quite profound.
“The wind and the sun were talking one day as they observed a man sitting on a bench. It was rather cold, so the man was dressed in a scarf and a coat. Out of the blue, the wind suggested a little challenge to the sun. The wind said, “I’ll bet I can blow that man’s coat off.” The sun scoffed. “I’ll take that bet and I raise it. You can’t do it … but I can.”
“You?” said the wind. “What power do you have? No way.” And so, the contest was on.
The wind began to blow in chilly winds from the north. The man tugged his coat up tighter around his neck. So, the wind kicked up the intensity of the wind speed a few notches. As the wind blew stronger and stronger, the man struggled to sit upright on the bench. The more powerfully the wind blew, the tighter the man wrapped his scarf and coat around himself. Now, the wind was blowing at full force and it was freezing cold. The man, gripping the bench with both hands, pulled his knees up and huddled in a kind of ball in a desperate attempt to keep from freezing. No way to take of his coat! The Wind had failed.
Now it was the sun’s turn.
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