determination

What really matters to you?

Joerg Kuehn · Jul 4, 2023 · Leave a Comment

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.

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Getting A Difficult Message Across

Joerg Kuehn · May 31, 2023 · Leave a Comment

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.

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What does life expect from you?

Joerg Kuehn · Mar 29, 2023 · Leave a Comment

Nine months after he had married his wife in 1942, the Austrian psychiatrist Victor Frankl and his family were captured by the Nazis and transported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto – a waystation en route to the extermination camps. They were forced to abort their unborn child, and Frankl’s father died only months later of starvation and pneumonia.

In 1944, together with his wife and 1,500 other inmates, Frankl was placed on a train. They assumed they’d be transported to one of the Nazi armament factories to be used as forced labour. After days cooped up in the windowless wagon, one of the inmates glanced at a signpost outside. What he read out made the desperate passengers shiver with fear. “Auschwitz!,” he screamed in disbelief.

Separated from his wife upon arrival, Frankl was a man without any connection to his former life.

A Christmas tale of a dream come true

Joerg Kuehn · Dec 14, 2022 · Leave a Comment

I was in a complete panic … sweaty, jittery, and close to throwing up … when I entered the audition stage in Singapore on a Thursday afternoon in March 2012. I had gone to the wrong venue initially and only made my audition slot with a desperate 1km sprint in tropical conditions. The 5 judges invited me to take a seat and told me they were ready whenever I was.

All my life I’ve had this dream. I wanted to play an instrument, bringing people together and have them sing along with a smile on their faces. And, all my life I had stood on many stages, usually slightly tipsy, telling myself one day I would be a musician too. But sadly, I did not do anything about it.

My good friend Sascha discovered my longing and during Christmas 2010, he bought me a guitar. But a busy job and terrible experiences during my singing lessons kept me from progressing at all towards my dream. (Sascha surely remembers my desperate attempts at rendering Hotel California, which made my singing teacher resign).

It was not until the end of 2011 when I suddenly discovered a perceived short cut… the ukulele. With only 4 strings, I was relatively quickly able to play 4-5 songs. As part of my self-discovery and self-expression journey, I thought it was time to do some busking. “Naive” is probably far too nice a word to describe my expectations.

Please don’t let the good life pass you by

Joerg Kuehn · Jun 29, 2022 · Leave a Comment

It was one of these days when everything seemed to go wrong.

I had helped a client prepare for an important meeting with one of their major customers. Just before the meeting, we realised there was a substantial flaw in the presentation. It was so bad the meeting had to be cancelled and moved to the next day. An embarrassing and tricky situation. I dropped everything, frantically trying to understand the issue in our calculations. It was highly complex, but, by all means, we had to have an answer by the evening. Stress! Pressure! Anxiety!

While I was scrambling for solutions, an email popped in. And it pushed me over the edge. I had planned a large personal event in June. Suddenly, the hotel provider “had to sadly cancel all 22 room-bookings due to a technical error.” All other hotels were full due to a major sporting event. This meant we had to cancel an event for which guests from all over the world had made travel plans. A complete disaster.

determination

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