Intentional Reflection & Strategic Career Moves

[00:00:00] Mike Ogle: Welcome to the Supply Chain Careers podcast, the only podcast for job seekers, professionals, and students who are focused on career enhancing conversations and insights across all aspects of the supply chain discipline. This podcast is made possible by SCM Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm.

Visit SCM Talent [email protected].

[00:00:36] Rodney Apple: Welcome to the Supply Chain Career Catalyst podcast series. This is a brand new series that we’re dedicating to empowering supply chain professionals. At every career level to proactively manage and advance their careers. My name is Rodney Apple, one of the co-hosts. I’m joined by Chris Gaffney and Mike Ogle.

In each of these episodes, we’re planning to equip you with actionable insights, proven strategies, and expert advice, specifically designed to help you accelerate your career growth, avoid common pitfalls, and achieve your professional aspirations within the supply chain career discipline. Today we’re gonna focus on a crucial but often overlooked step career planning.

Through intentional reflection, we’ll discuss the importance of thoughtful decision making, explore powerful self-assessment tools, share personal stories, and introduce you to practical strategies such as informational interviews. The core objective is to help you target the right opportunities and to avoid making a regrettable career move.

So we’re gonna start out with why career reflection matters. Chris, you wanna kick us off? Rodney?

[00:01:50] Chris Gaffney: Thank you. This is the crux of so many conversations that I have with professionals. In my network, yes, I have them with students for sure, but it’s very different when you’re going into the workplace for the first time.

Whereas our professionals who are in their career, in whatever portion of that career, the next move is a big deal, right? It no matter where you are, if it’s your second job or your second to last step before you wrap your career, and what I have found in my own experience is that. Emotion comes into play, it’s unavoidable, right?

It’s either a huge opportunity that you perceive, and this could be internal or external, and or if you’re in a tough spot where you are, your emotion may be, how do I get outta. What I’m in right now and my own experience, and for most people who know me, my advice is because I would’ve benefited from receiving the advice myself at an earlier point in my career is really having people pump the brakes when they’re in that situation.

I, myself, I think I’ve talked about this before, took a move at a time in my Koch career for a variety of reasons. Went out, didn’t go the way I wanted. I came back and I was very lucky that didn’t, and I would say extreme when it comes to being fortunate to be able to get back to K. And I just, there were a lot of lessons learned in that process for me that I try to share.

So I think the first thing that we wanna make sure people do is take emotion out of it. And I always say to people, what do you want to do? And what do you need to do? And depending on where you are in your career. Those two axis may have different weight. It’s wonderful if what you wanna do and need to do are the same, but that’s not always the case.

So I think having people move away from something that’s an emotional decision and something where they slow down, really get reflective, not just from a short term, there’s this potential door number three in front of me and or this ticket out of this bad situation. In almost all cases, getting more rigorous around your assessment of where does this fit into your overall career goal?

How does it fit with what you, your family feel is important right now? I think all of those things and getting the right objective input from people who care about you in, in assessing that situation, I think is just absolutely

[00:04:29] Rodney Apple: critical. So Chris, that’s a great perspective you offered there. I know I’m guilty of running away from something and sometimes you being a recruiter, sometimes you do get that recruiter call and it sounds like a rosy opportunity and you, if you don’t do the proper due diligence, proper reflection, though, you can end up in a bad situation.

I guarantee you most people have been around long as we have 20 to 30 years in their career. You’re probably gonna have a, an example of making that move. And what we’re trying to do is to bring in our own perspectives and good best practices to help you avoid that. And reflecting is on, on the kind of work you like to do, the kind of work you really don’t wanna do that drains you.

All of those, we’ll get into that here in a bit. And before we do, I think it’s important to talk about broadly career paths in supply chain. And depending on what your goals are, there’s definitely some steps you may need to take from a functional perspective, right? Leadership perspective, maybe detour from a corporate analytics role into operations.

Mike, could you give us your perspectives on just. Career paths. A lot of people think that you climb this ladder from the bottom and work your way towards the top in this linear fashion. And in some cases that may be true, but we’re finding that’s pretty rare these days compared to the times in the past.

So what would you like to say on this particular topic?

[00:05:46] Mike Ogle: Thanks, Rodney. I think one of the things I’ve definitely noticed, especially with all the podcasts that we’ve done to emphasize that most career paths are non-linear. They don’t end up following that, that straight ladder or the straight drive down the road, or the walk down the path in the woods, whatever way you wanna look at that.

Not all of them end up being non-linear, but some do end up being linear. Summer scattershot, you get blown around by the winds of change whether you were forced or an unforced change that ended up happening. We do really want to put that visualization in your head, the kind of thing that makes you think about your career as less of that linear, wooden, or metal ladder that people tend to put in front of you and more like a multi-path climbing wall.

If you’ve ever seen the little handholds that you end up having, trying to make your way up, and a variety of people can be on those at once, so you might have to grab different kinds of handholds. That might even require that you go sideways a little bit to move up, or you might have to make some downward moves on occasion, which people tend to get very.

I think going back to Chris’s point, a little emotional, if you’re put in that position where you think, oh my God, I had to go down, or I had to go sideways to be able to make the move that I wanna make, but sometimes just realize you’ve gotta do that. We talk with a lot of people in this industry and we’ve seen so many different kinds of career paths and we go, wait, how in the world did you start out with a degree in finance or a degree in public relations, or a degree in whatever?

How did it not end up being supply chain? How was it not operations management, manufacturing, something where we end up having a reaction oftentimes as a supply chain careers podcast host when we hear somebody’s career beginnings and hear where they are now. But take a look at a lot of LinkedIn profiles in this industry and you’ll see the variety.

As their exposure to supply chain or other areas grew, they felt the draw to move into another area, area or stay put. Now we’re gonna emphasize through this particular podcast episode that, you know, we don’t end up having that linear path, but some do. Some people are really good at establishing a path.

They have a plan, they follow it carefully and they even resist a change of direction. They may, maybe they get that to what Chris talked about, that emotional type of thing where it says, oh, wait a minute. I’m not comfortable with this possible change. And then there’s a lot of people that bounce around every few years.

Sometimes PE they get labeled as a job hopper. They may seek different challenges and interests, and it may constantly change. They need to keep that reinvigoration that goes along with it. Just realize there’s people that are all over the place. So if you’re reflecting, especially if you end up becoming a manager, for instance, realize that people are different.

You need to be able to look for that. We’re gonna talk about this as well. I think Rodney is gonna talk about this in a little bit as well, but you need to understand yourself first. If you can’t do that, like you said, what motivates you or demotivates you? Are you a linear path follower or are you happy to be blown around in the wind?

So there’s lots of evaluation tools, and I think Chris, and I’ll talk about this a little bit later on. But it also includes family, friends, mentors, and others. I’d say in my 15 plus years at the supply chain organization, MHI, I ended up noticing through hundreds of industry interactions, so many different kinds of people, and the paths that they followed and the reasons why they followed them.

There were a lot of boom and bust times in the supply chain industry that led a lot of people to change. Sometimes they were made to change. Sometimes they just found an opportunity. Uh, sometimes they had to change just to simply get a paycheck. But I would say for the most successful, even when the change was forced on them, they had a broader based curiosity mindset.

They kept up on industry changes and they carefully maintained and kept up a good network. Closing up for the moment, I realize I’ve talked a bit here, but closing up for the moment my mind. My advice, even for the most linear focused path people is keep your eyes and ears open to the various opportunities that are out there that others may be looking at as well.

See how you can dip your toes into what life is like on a different part of the ladder, because that awareness of others is going to help you even if you’re, you’re linear. And feel free to resist being pulled off your path, but stay prepared to know yourself and know the options. So be adaptable, flexible, open to cross-functional roles, lateral moves, and realize that those often provide valuable growth perspective that traditional upward paths might not offer.

So that’s my piece,

[00:11:01] Chris Gaffney: Mike. I think the main point of emphasis that I would put on is there, there may have been times over the last decades where. You were riding high if you were in a particular field and you could be pretty reactive ’cause no matter what was going on, if you needed to jump back into the market, it was an upward flow.

I think as we look forward, at minimum, the future of work is a bit more uncertain than it might’ve been 10 years ago. So I truthfully was probably more reactive and took advantage of the, my 25 years at Koch to say there’ll be something to do. I don’t advise the path that I took for others. I think you need to be actively engaged in your own career, even if you’re perfectly happy with where you are right now, and have high confidence that there are two or three more roles for you.

There’s just too much going on to not be actively engaged in that. Rodney, I am curious from your standpoint, given that framing, what’s the most important first step for somebody? Given that we’re gonna say, part of the reason we’re talking about this is we think you need to be on this ball all the time

[00:12:17] Mike Ogle: during this short break. We recognize that this podcast is made possible by SCM Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm. Visit SCM Talent [email protected].

[00:12:33] Rodney Apple: That’s right. I go back to a saying I heard a long time ago, Chris and Mike, it’s, if you don’t plan out your career, someone else will plan it for you. And it just, it really makes you think you are in charge of your career. You are the CEO of your career and you’ve gotta treat it that way from the very start.

And until you wind down your career at retirement, stay in control. And taking this time that we’re talking about to reflect is super important. ’cause otherwise, I see this all the time. People just make a, a. A reluctant move, they haste. They just go right into, oh, here’s that first opportunity. Or, wow, this is a $20,000 increase.

Wow. They just look at the money part of it. And yes, that’s important, but you have to look into the other factor factors that bring purpose in life and in career as well as passion. And ideally, it aligns with your sweet spot when you think about skills and your strengths. And I think a good place to start the Golden Career rule is, as I look at it, is try to align purpose.

Passion and skills, long-term career, sex career success occurs when professionals find roles that leverage strengths, align with their passion and enthusiasm, and fulfill that purpose and that purpose could change from the beginning of your career. You may not. And understand what your purpose is and what brings that joy and satisfaction, but it can certainly change as you meander through your career On those, on that mesh that Mike just talked about, it’s not really a ladder, it’s a, it’s more of a network that you have to.

To meander and sometimes you, you do make mistakes and just know that’s normal sometimes that’s how you learn. But if we can get out in front of that and we’re gonna talk about some tools that you can use and put into your toolkit to help you land on those right moves and mitigate those mistakes, that can go a long way.

So it all starts, in my opinion, with taking out a sheet of paper. You need to write this down, do a brain dump. Talk about your skills, maybe you list them out and try to force rank in the order of importance. What am I really good at today? What do I wanna get good at tomorrow? You don’t have to understand what you’re gonna do 20, 30 years from now, but having that near term visibility, that is important, especially when you’re countering a potential move.

You could use tools. There’s Clifton strengths, there’s strong interest inventory. There’s a host of tools out there. If you’re not really sure, or you’re starting out your career, or you’re thinking about making a big pivot, it is good to not just do the exercise in your own mind, dumping that onto a sheet of paper, you know your thoughts so you can continue to analyze and help.

Guide you towards that right decision. You can also use some of these assessment tools that are out there. Our company uses a tool for psychometric assessments called Plum, PLUM, and it’s a great tool. Anyone can go out to their website and take a a skills assessment and it helps force rank you. What are these?

Common or core competencies that I’m really good at. And then here are the ones that may, you may not be good at, that may drain you. Some are gonna give you drive and inspiration. Others are gonna, are, you can still complete these kinds of tasks, but it may not be, it may not mesh with your ideal type of work.

So getting out that sheet of paper, you can ask yourself some basic questions to start out like, what are my key strengths, right? What do I wanna be good at? What is that kind of work that either drains or disinterests you? What are some of the transferable skills? And this is important if you’re making, if.

A career pivot, call it maybe from one industry to another, one function to another, but what are some of those transferable skills that you could apply into new roles? What industries are poised for growth versus decline? I think you could apply the same thing with skill sets, and you could certainly factor in.

Nowadays you have to worry about AI that may come in and take certain roles that are here today that may not be tomorrow. So you need to factor in what are the industry analysts saying? What are the experts saying about. A growth or decline of a certain industry or even skillset. And you also wanna think about, uh, if everything’s in alignment, you still need to look at the company, look at the people, look at the turnover, look at the values that the company has.

What are those values that align with your type of values? Right? If you could find that alignment, helps to find, get in with the company that. That has a strong culture that you’re gonna assimilate into and hopefully stick around and grow and learn and develop. Obviously, you’re gonna have some geographical preferences, so if you’re embarking on a new job search, you need to really understand what that looks like.

Obviously, the more areas that you’re open to, the more doors you’re gonna open. So just know that that’s gonna help you start carving out and maybe map out some of the roles that are gonna interest you the most, and then the ones you may wanna stay away from. Most people. Learn over time and they shift in terms of where they want to go at the height of their career.

You’re not expected to know that coming out of the gate, coming outta college or even in your first years of school. It may take you a while to do that. So we’re gonna talk about some things you can do to help you learn more about the career paths of tomorrow and where you might think about going at the height of your career.

The last thing I would say is just compensation. You’ve got to maintain a certain lifestyle. Most people do, especially if you’ve got a family. So you need to bake that in. Understand what these roles, pay that not just the next role, but the role after that, maybe the role even after that, just to help you with achieve your lifestyle goals.

[00:18:04] Chris Gaffney: Rodney, if I can add a comment here, I said before, what do you want to do versus what you need to do? In my own experience and coaching lots of people. I’ve known some people who their purpose was outside of their work, so their mindset was, I need to work to live. Right? So they were thinking about that as a consideration, and so I think that’s fair game for people.

If you say, no, my passion is some nonprofit, but I need to. I need to have money to pay the bills so I do X kind of work. That framing is perfectly fine. So I think that’s that. That’s one consideration. I think the other thing is this, what do I wanna do versus what I need to do? There were times in my career with a young family and bills to pay where.

What I needed to do, overwhelmed what I wanted to do. So in that situation, maybe all of the factors weren’t perfect, but maybe there was stability where I was, maybe there was a learning opportunity, and I think you need to balance that out, right? You may say, I can’t do this forever, but for right now, this may be practically what I need to do.

I think in certain situations that may be okay, and as the economy changes. You may say this is an imperfect situation, but I’m not gonna go from being someone who is well known with a reputation to being the last person hired in a new environment. All those considerations need to be in the calculus for sure.

[00:19:34] Rodney Apple: Great. Ad Chris.

[00:19:37] Mike Ogle: Yeah. And get yourself into a position, even if it’s not a time to be able to move. To have that awareness of still using those opportunities to to work your way forward. Realize how you can get yourself prepared for that next upward wave that would allow you to move if you wanted to. And, uh, it’s just always great to constantly improve yourself in whatever way you possibly can, even if you’re not going to make a move.

[00:20:05] Rodney Apple: In terms of the self-reflection, self-assessment, are there any tools that you guys have used or heard of others using that you’d want to talk about and potentially recommend for our audience?

[00:20:15] Mike Ogle: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know. I could start with one of the things that I already do in my classes, just because we do SWOT analysis in my operations management classes at App State, we always emphasize that the students don’t use this just to try to understand your department, your company, your projects, whatever that that particular area is, but do it a personal version as well.

And I encourage them very strongly to do this before they even develop their resume and try to write how they want to be able to put themselves out there to the world after they do an internship, rewrite it. You’ve probably had an influence in your life that has changed you and prior to entering the job market, but also updating it year to year once they get into their careers.

I’d say one other thing that I would put on a SWOT analysis tool is that you do think about the aspect of your company, but. Your position within it and what it means to your career rather than just what the company’s trying to do. Look at your boss as well if you were trying to write one for them. Or the partners that you work with or the customers that you work with, are there great things that you love about them and working with them or things that you don’t like working with them?

So if you extend this a little bit beyond just yourself as your personal SWOT analysis, I think it’ll help you put these. Up on a board that almost looks like one of those, one of those episodes in a crime type of series where you’ve got all the different players up there on the board and how they connect to you.

It, it may be helpful to your career.

[00:22:02] Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I, I would offer a couple of thoughts. I think this gets back to what you said, right? Rodney is putting things down on paper and it’s a. I think it’s a really important skill now. I think it can eventually be digital, but I actually really for this exercise, think it’s worth having something that’s in a journal or whatever that starts with your hand to it.

It’s a different neurological experience, and I think. This is you and it’s important enough for you to go through that effort. And I agree with Mike on a personal swat. I think the build on this in some cultures is getting feedback from others, right? I’m gonna comment on some other self-assessments.

Some of the most powerful. Calibration I got were when I did Pier three sixties and I just said, I’m seeking this feedback for my development. And depending on how you do it, again, there’s a fair amount of open source stuff. You could get it where it’s anonymous, understanding how you land on the people around you and it.

And you can decide where you are in an organization, whether you’re ask your manager or ask somebody a level below you, but asking your peers. I think some cases can be really important as an additional perspective as you’re going through this. So I’ll say that as a first add to Mike’s on the swat, but I also would say in big companies, in occasion, you’ll get the opportunity.

The group will all do strengths finders, so the group will all do Myers-Briggs or the group will all do the Enneagram. The good news is you can get versions of most of those. Open source for free. And I know that if you go to the open psychometrics.org site, you can get a version of almost all of these for free and do that yourself.

So for some of our folks, that’s important, depending on their situation. And I do think it’s important to say what are, what is the more quantitative view of who I am, and I may. It. It’s never good or bad, it’s just, it’s who you are and it’s in particularly on some of these tests, there’s some drift on over time in some cases not.

This is how you stack up on this. And then I think it’s, that’s the whole self-awareness piece is to say, if I like that or don’t like that, or I feel like some aspect that needs to be changed. That’s part of your development planning. But I think getting to that view of. How you land on other people, how you work, all of those different types of things.

That self-awareness is a huge maturity skill because I think as we go forward and we refer to different types of skills that really matter, and we just published an article at Georgia Tech on this, what are the skills that are gonna really matter? Matter. That’s self-awareness is really a big, super skill, if you will, because you can then self-regulate.

You can also modulate as you move in different organizations, different cultures such. So I just think that’s a key part of this. So I would comment on that one for sure. And as I, I think about my own coaching experiences. This idea, again, of being structured or being disciplined about it. Part of what I say to folks is in many cases the feedback and guidance they’ve gotten is from others.

Somebody in high school said, you’re good at math, science, you should be an engineer. That happened to work out, but I’m not sure that’s the best way to do it. No different than a boss says, talk too much. You don’t talk enough. You listen. Don’t listen, whatever. Having some. Reflection and perspective from multiple sources to where you can own your own reality.

I’m really good at this. I’d like to be better at that. That’s where you can then say, I’m gonna be really invested in that because it’s important to me to build on this area. That’s, yeah. This

[00:25:57] Mike Ogle: can also be a really emotional type of exercise, especially when you invite others in or they’re invited for you.

We did a, an entire company 360 exercise. Now it was a small company. It was about 32 of us or so. But you the hope. The hallway conversations and the water cooler. We don’t really say that anymore much, but the water cooler conversations in the hallway turned into something very emotional, the moment that came out that everybody will be doing a 360.

Here’s how the everything’s going to work, and just, I think the biggest thing was. Don’t panic. Don’t get upset. Take the information. It’s all about trying to improve yourself, understand yourself, and improve yourself. Now, I can say that now, but I had the same emotional reaction as the others did around the office, and when you feed on each other on those emotions, it is not healthy for anybody.

The other piece that I would toss in here is experience, of course, with Myers-Briggs multiple times. We’ve done this with students in a variety of other organizations as well, but I’ve also been on the board of a local nonprofit and chaired it in 2024, and we use the Enneagram. To be able to understand each other better.

’cause there were a few people who were starting to get almost a little testy, halfway combative, and some people shutting down in conversations just because they felt they were being treated incorrectly. And it was different people’s styles of those who just work. Differently. So we made everybody broaden and target their communications better by saying, Hey, go through this.

And like Chris mentioned, it’s free out there. Go do an Enneagram, be able to understand. And as you go through and answer the questions, that alone ends up getting you to a point where you go, oh yeah. There are people who react to things differently than me and ideas that come across. So just know yourself, know others, and you will get better

during this short break. We recognize that this podcast is made possible by SCM Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm. Visit SCM talent [email protected].

[00:28:26] Rodney Apple: Great perspectives, and I think we’ve gotten to a place now where reflected, we’ve asked ourselves questions, we’ve asked peers, questions, we’ve, we’ve taken some self-assessment exercises and now we’re ready to put that learning into use. Before we go down the path of executing a job search, and I think this is especially applicable to those that are first starting out their career in supply chain.

We know there’s a myriad of career paths. You can go down hundreds of different types of roles factoring in the operations piece. Sometimes just talking to others is a good way to learn about the roles. Maybe you’ve got it down to the top three that you want to pursue, and this also applies to those that are, have.

Maybe they’re midway through their career and they’re just looking to make a pivot into something else, something different. They’ve hit a place where they’re just no longer feeling that purpose in their career or joy or both. So one great tactic for doing this, or there’s a few, and we’re gonna get into informational interviews to start out, LinkedIn makes it super easy.

Let’s say I want to look at a. A sourcing analyst. I wanna look at an industrial engineer. I’m gonna look at a transportation analyst. Those are my top three. You can get out on LinkedIn and run some searches by titles and, and figure out, okay, here’s the people that work in those roles. Now, may, maybe they’re in that, that, uh, first job outta school or second job outta school.

Sounds pretty simple, right? You get out on LinkedIn. I recommend, I’m a big fan of creating templates. Chat, GPT or other AI tools can certainly help with that effort. But you wanna write something that you’re gonna send to each of these contacts. So start with your list. Here’s the top three jobs. It could be five, it could be 10, it doesn’t matter, but you’re gonna go out and reach out, be respectful, be very clear in what you’re looking to do.

The goal and the objective is gonna be to figure out what a typical day and the life is and the role. You’re gonna ask them to help you land that first job in their in your career. Ask them what they like the most, or what are some of the common struggles or challenges that you have to deal with? What kind of trends are you seeing in your industry?

It’s just gonna help shape that day in the life. Hopefully provide you some additional in intelligence to make that right decision. This is networking it. It’s a networking exercise. Keep it short, keep it sweet, but again, have the objectives. Have your script ready so you could facilitate these interviews.

Take copious notes and then you’re gonna go back and reflect on what you heard and you may be prompted to do some additional research in that as well. One of the questions I get, I’ve done a lot of career coaching. Sessions individually, also with classes. I just had a university reach out last week that wants me to do a, a career coaching exercise similar to this with, with their students in supply chain.

And the question I get is, where should I start my career? And I’m like, I have to. I go right back and say, that depends. That depends on you. Everybody’s different again, what do you like, what do you not? You gotta go through these. This, this work to figure out where you wanna launch, but we also, it, it led to us creating a series in our podcast called The Day in the Life of a Supply Chain Professional.

And our goal was to do the, the same thing but in reverse to go out and interview people across all the different functions of supply chain. Wanted to cover a good swath of industry segments as well. And look at companies from your giant Fortune 500 corporations to small, mid-size companies to get. To, to really understand the differences, how you do compare, how do you contrast as you move in these different segments.

So you can go out to the website, to our podcast, or onto Apple or Spotify and go down the series and we people break it down in the layman terms, across the different jobs. So that’s another good resource there at your fingertips.

[00:32:10] Chris Gaffney: So Rodney, I would tell you, I got passionate about this idea, actually applying it internally when I was at Koch.

So I would have an employee who, and most of our employees were, they had aspirations, right? And they were chopping at the bit they wanted to succeed in current role, prepare for the next role, and. In a number of circumstances, what I realized was time and opportunity don’t match all the time. You may have an employee who says, magically, gosh, now I’ve been in this role for X, used to be three years and two, then like six weeks, I’m ready to be president of the company.

But let’s just say at that two year mark, I’ve delivered. I’ve developed, I’m growing. Now I’m gonna be worried. I’m not progressing. What can I do? But the job that they were perfect for wasn’t open. So one of the things that, that I thought, and that’s where this idea came, was how do we get to a place where these people are in the pipeline for somebody else’s role in the future?

And the only way, and some companies have very structured succession planning, but that’s very rare. We would talk about what’s a potential role internally, or two or three. And then we would say, let’s get you in front of those people even though the job is not open. And yes, it got them on the radar screen, but I found the most important thing was that they got feedback on their own current capability against the job.

Because I also had an employee, two who got that interview and then was told, wow, you’re missing X. And myself, and that employee looked at each other and said. Man, if we knew that a year ago we could have shaped development planning to easily close that gap. Now here we are and it’s like the Olympics. It might be four more years before the job comes up.

So the most important thing we got was meet and greet, all that other good stuff. But take a look at my resume and say, if this job were open today, would I be a competitive candidate? ’cause then the hiring manager’s not under pressure. They’re not, they don’t have to make you any guarantees. They can say, you’ve got good here, you’ve got there.

But you say, I don’t see this. And at least at that point, you’ve got as much time as you humanly can to say, I gotta go close that perceived or actual gap. So that’s I and I firmly believe in everything else you said. I think it’s great. Externally, I think sometimes you may need your network to help you get in front of people.

Like I would call a hiring manager and say, could you give an informational interview to this person? I think the same thing applies in LinkedIn as well.

[00:34:47] Rodney Apple: Great addition. One of the ideas, this came from me. Someone that we had on the main Supply Chains careers podcast. We talk about mentorship a lot, and this person used a term that has really stuck around with us, but she called it her personal board of advisors.

And I know that was something that you really locked in on Chris, but you want to give our audience an overview of what that is and the value that can be unlocked.

[00:35:13] Chris Gaffney: Yep. A podcaster. I really liked Scott Galloway, who is an NYU professor. He’s pretty visible on social media these days. A year or two ago, I heard him speak about this and he was like, when I was in my mid thirties and early forties, I knew everything, and if I had a big decision to make, I powered through and I made it.

As I’ve gotten older, I realize I don’t know everything and what I. What I heard from him was he said, I don’t make any big moves without my personal board of directors now, and I would’ve been better off in my thirties and forties if I had already had that group of folks. And it resonated with me because in one of the two moves I made my own close in network was probably not as objective as they could be.

And they’re like, wow, he’s really excited about this, so I’m just gonna say go for it. As opposed to somebody who’s a little bit removed but cares about you and said. Hey, this sounds crazy. Why are you contemplating that? And I think that’s where I think the time to invest in that personal board of directors is as soon as you get into industry, and it may take you time.

The people on that list may evolve, but there are people who care about you, people who can give you an objective view. So there may be friends and family on there, but you want a little bit of distance and at least a portion of that board of directors. So someone can tell you if you’re talking crazy,

[00:36:34] Mike Ogle: and it can come and go, it can grow, it can shrink.

There’s no fixed number that you have to have, or even timeframes. Of being able to work with them. Sometimes it’s just things come up and they’re the right person and you’ve spread the capabilities wide enough that as long as you’re constantly feeding that, pruning it, taking care of that list and understand what it can do for you.

It’s such a fantastic idea and I find it to be as, as well as others have said so much better than talking about something that sounds like a more formal mentorship.

[00:37:15] Chris Gaffney: Yep. And Mike, you said it, you gotta feed that, right? If you’re a younger person, you a more junior person, you may say, why is somebody gonna invest time in me?

What I found was, if you’re gonna have a mentoring conversation or relationship and or a relationship like this, you need to have a little bit of currency. And if you’re that younger person in career or in a different industry, what you can bring the people in your personal board of directors is. The current pulse of what’s going on in and around your world.

So you’re actually bringing information to them that they can use in their larger context. So as long as you’re willing to nurture that, as you said, Mike, I think those things can be very sustaining for sure.

[00:37:55] Mike Ogle: Yeah, and I would say one of the things that. Maybe is good to avoid as well is not stating this as, oh, by the way, I have X, Y, Z that are on my personal board of advisors.

And then it’s almost like something that’s locked in and everybody looks at it. Wait a minute, did you get rid of one of these? Yo it, why did you add So, and it’s more for your personal use.

[00:38:18] Rodney Apple: Well said guys, as we come up on time here, Chris, you want to take the audience through just the quick recap, takeaways, next steps that they could think about perhaps getting pen, that pen to paper, but just a quick reflection on what we’ve reflected on.

[00:38:33] Chris Gaffney: I think the first things first, if you’ve taken the time to listen to this, first thing I do is share it with somebody else. Almost everybody who’s gonna listen to this say, ah, I know someone who probably needs to hear this. If you’ll do that, you’ll do somebody else a favor. But then I think you need to take stock and say, where am I right now on my own proactive planning, and if I’m good at it?

Where is something that needs to be refreshed? And if I’m not where I wanna be, what are first things first, right? If I haven’t taken that first step to reflect on my own interests, my own priorities, it’s time to get that down on paper. You could, again, as I said, get it down on paper, then you could digitize it and keep it up to date over time.

I think that’s great. If you haven’t done one of these self-assessments lately. I think it’s not a bad idea to do at least one and say, what am I gonna see on here that surprises me? And these are always, how do I leverage what I do really well? So maybe a bit more intentionality, but how do I understand the things that don’t come naturally to me?

And how am I gonna be aware of those? And in some cases, as I did with personal productivity, so I’m never gonna be really good at this. I need a system. And that’s how I found David Allen in getting things done. And then I think. It’s putting some structure around it for yourself, right? If you work in an organization where you’ve got a development plan and a manager who cares about it, I think that’s great, but you still want to be a week ahead of them.

Like when you come into that meeting with them, be, be ready and be current in your own thinking and your stewardship of what you’ve been doing in your own development plan. 70, 20 10, learning on the job, mentoring, feedback, structured training online, et cetera. Have that calendar no matter who you are.

And then if you haven’t done an inter informational interview, now’s the first time to say, Hey, this is my dream job. Or two, how do I find somebody in my network who knows somebody at that company can get me that informational interview or make a shot, shoot your shot, and go after it yourself. And then I think you need to take stock of your current.

Personal board of advisors in whatever form fashion it’s in and say, what am I missing here? How do I build that up? I think the only other thing that we haven’t talked about that I sometimes say to people who are serious about this is a workbook that’s been recommended to me. It’s called Designing Your Life.

When I first started recommending it was eight bucks. It’s now up to 1295 on Amazon, and we don’t get any royalties from it, but it’s really, it’s a good, it is a physical workbook that you, you use by hand. And so if you’re really serious about it, go out and spend the 1295 and splurge on yourself. So again, I think this intentionality and this self-reflection, self-awareness, getting at your own inventory.

This market is just a no regrets effort. Right. And I know you’re busy, but this is about you. Right? I always say to people, first thing on your development plan ought to be take care of you. And this is part of taking care of you. So it deserves the time. For sure. Yeah.

[00:41:40] Mike Ogle: I would add one more tiny piece on top of that, that you almost treat some of these tools that we’ve talked about as part of be being part of your board of advisors.

If you’re gonna talk to them, it’s almost like having a conversation with the tools. Give me another review. If you’ve done one of them, do a different one, make a change, and who knows where in the world all this AI business is going to go. But start dipping your toes into that. Give it a shot. Ask some of the questions.

Tell it about yourself and see what you end up getting back. I’m curious. I’m a little afraid to dive into that ’cause I really haven’t yet. But put in some of those characteristics and say, Hey, this is me. I’m gonna try to tell you what I’m all about. And you help advise me on different paths or ideas and directions to go.

[00:42:31] Rodney Apple: That’s a great ad too, Mike. Yeah. Nowadays you get the app, whether it’s Quad or Perplexity or chat, GPT, it’s, you can get it on your phone and talk with it and interact with it. Share your deepest, darkest secrets, not just kidding. Alright guys, so we’re gonna wrap up here. We are gonna leave links to resources in the show notes, so they’ll be over at the website as well.

But we do appreciate you joining in. For today’s episode one of the Supply Chain Career Catalyst podcast, we hope the insights will equip you with practical tools and confidence for strategic career planning. Be sure to subscribe or follow us wherever you listen to podcast. And if you found this episode valuable, please share it with one of your colleagues, friends, or anyone else that could benefit.

For additional resources to advance your supply chain career, including more podcast episodes, career coaching guides, articles, tools on resume optimization, LinkedIn profile, building interview preparation, please visit scm talent.com. And stay tuned for the next episode. We’re gonna segue right into those, that myriad of career paths within supply chain that exist today.

And we’re gonna talk about how they might be shaped based on trends for tomorrow. That includes artificial intelligence and how it’s impacting these career paths. So tune in and until next time, keep advancing learning and proactively shaping your supply chain career.

[00:44:01] Mike Ogle: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Supply Chain Careers podcast. Be sure to listen to other episodes and sign up to be notified when future episodes are released as we continue to interview industry leading supply chain experts. This podcast is made possible by SCM Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm.

Visit SCM talent [email protected].