Rick McDonald Transcript
Rodney Apple: . [00:00:00] So we’d like to welcome Rick McDonald to the Supply Chain Careers podcast. Rick, thanks for joining us today.
Rick McDonald: All right. It’s my pleasure. I really appreciate you inviting me and I’m looking forward to our conversation.
Rodney Apple: Excellent. We’ll get started. Rick, we’d love to hear overview of your background. You’ve got an impeccable career that has taken you from working in PepsiCo’s Frito Lay company to Clorox’s Chief Supply Chain Officer. Could you share some of those early moments that got you interested in a career in supply chain and perhaps some of the pivotal moments that shaped your path towards that C suite?
Rick McDonald: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for those kind of comments. My my interest in the supply chain got peaked in the summer job. I worked in a metal fabrication factory. And I just I have this efficiency gene in me. I just saw so many things that could be done better and improve better.
And I made a number of suggestions, but I was just a [00:01:00] 2021 year old kid and the foreman on the job really weren’t interested in much of the way of improvement. And that just stuck with me. I thought, there’s a better way to do this. And the company could probably make more money if we were more efficient and Doing things in a better way.
And by the way, the job satisfaction that those of us working on, those those metal fabrication lines had, would’ve been more interesting and more challenging. And I had that mindset when I graduated from Georgia Tech. The best offer that I received was from Frito-Lay. It offered me the most responsibility, the fastest.
And I had learned how to grind at Georgia Tech, and that served me very well in Frito’s upper out culture. I will tell you some of the things, this is. It’s probably easier to take the inventory of this sort of stuff in the rear view mirror than it is at the moment, but things that made a difference for me.
I never said no to a new assignment or a new location. I moved five times with Frito and another five times with Clorox. And I did so even when I didn’t know a [00:02:00] lot about a particular area or discipline. And guess that’s the adventurous side of me or the risk taking side of me. But I just I wasn’t daunted by lack of knowledge in a particular area.
I figured I could learn it fairly quickly. Over my career moving from Frito to to Clorox. And especially at Clorox, I took hard jobs. I took jobs that not everybody wanted, and I accepted jobs where things were badly broken and I earned the reputation as the company’s fixer, at least in the supply chain.
And that was a pivotal thing for me because what I was demonstrating was. I could go into a situation that everybody, you didn’t have to know a whole lot to know that it was broken and I could make it different. And not just me, I could create a team, I could build a team that would make it different.
And that, that served me well over quite a long period of time, especially as, as a Clorox company and all of us we got into the [00:03:00] COVID time period that was immediately followed by hyperinflation and inflation of 23 percent over two and a half years ish. And then for the Clorox company, we had a cyber attack a year ago.
So that ability to build a team and. And lead through tough times really started quite early in my career. I would say last thing about 5 or 6 years before I became the chief supply chain officer, and I was elected to that role. I started having quarterly conversations with most of the then Clorox executive committee members half hour.
I would come to every 1 of them with 3 topics. things that I thought each of them should know about. And what I was trying to do is, first of all, generate a track record of them knowing how I thought them having trust in me and understanding in tough decisions. You know how my mind worked and the choices that I had made because, the reality is the company is not going to give you the keys to the car.
If they don’t know how you think if you haven’t generated a trust and On [00:04:00] tough and strategic topics, you don’t have the experience that allows them to envision you making those kind of tough and strategic decisions when you’re in that that executive committee chair, like the chief supply chain officer role.
Chris Gaffney: Rick you and I have a few things in common, obviously, the Georgia tech experience and the, and the Frito Lay experience, we have baseball in common, but I’m a fan and you were a player, but would like you to comment on a couple of things you reference the Frito piece, but you and I know there are a lot of people who went through that.
Frito lay ops culture, whether that was mid 80s or whatever who went on to do great things in many different companies. I am curious if you would say, what are the few things that you think distinguish the that experience and why it led people to elevate? And then I think that the 2nd, half of that question is, what was that evolution to getting that credibility with the frontline folks that you needed to influence change?
And getting into a position where you started to lead and needed to have more of a [00:05:00] strategic point of view.
Rick McDonald: Yeah. Yeah, Chris, we have much in the way of a shared career here. It’s almost like we’ve been living parallel lives. Listen, on the Frito part and one of the reasons I was there for 10 years was I love the competitive nature of it.
I love that I got to work with and, in some cases were pitted with for assignments with very talented people. It fed the competitiveness in me and the company was always. The company, my manager everybody’s manager, was always interested in what happened the last hour, the last, the first part of your shift, the second half of your shift, how did the shift in its entirety turn out?
What decisions did you make? And, in that environment, you didn’t get to say, I don’t know, I’m not sure very many times you were paid to. To know and to be sure. I think what it did was it really sharpened my problem solving ability. It sharpened my ability to cut through the things that weren’t important in various in [00:06:00] various decisions and get to the stuff that was.
And so that really shaped me in a fundamentally and material way for the rest of my career. That level of accountability that consistency that drive that focus on excellence was really something that resonated for me. And, I was actually the second question I was actually talking to somebody about this today at lunch.
And I said, when I joined Frito I was. I was supervising people, most of whom were old enough to be my parents. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but I came into that environment pretty humble. Some people come in and they think because they’ve got the college degree that that they’re expected to know everything.
And so they act like they know everything and exactly the opposite is true. You really don’t know a whole lot. And if you can humble yourself and ask those who are actually doing the work to explain it to you to show how it works to explain the problems that you might be able to help them solve with their supervisor,
you really, you that man, that, that [00:07:00] creates a lot of trust and it it generates a lot of goodwill and you’re going to need that when you have to make tough decisions, when you have to have a hard conversation with that person, you have to talk to them about their attendance or their performance.
Having to, Having them having explained their job to you and then you being able to help them do it better, do it well. That is a, that’s a very satisfying thing, but it’s also a very important thing is you’re learning how to as you’re learning how to supervise and lead
Chris Gaffney: super Fun stuff, great memories too.
Rick McDonald: Oh, my gosh. Fantastic.
Rodney Apple: Rick, I want to circle back on your career and how you think about your career. I love to hear people that take those assignments that no 1 else wants and run towards the fire. As we like to say but could you speak towards the, your broader strategic thinking with your career plan and goal planning?
I see on your. Your profile here that you’ve taken quite a few lateral moves. I think a lot of [00:08:00] people in there have the mindset that they, they go from, analyst to senior analyst to manager and a director and a V. P. and, a lot of folks want to get to that pinnacle spot that you’ve achieved.
What are your thoughts on that in terms of laterals or even sometimes I’ve seen folks take a step back just to get a certain amount of experience.
Rick McDonald: Yeah, I’ve done both. I’ve done both. And I would tell you, I would not be where I am today had I not done that. And further, I’ll double down and say most of the people I know who are doing what I do my peers and colleagues at the VP level at Clorox they wouldn’t be where they are if they hadn’t taken a number of assignments at the same level.
This Straight up the ladder approach is not in my opinion, not the best recipe for success. You’re going to miss a lot of things along the way that you will find are absolutely essential when you get into these very hard, very complicated sometimes smack you in the side of the head type decisions.
And other times, more times than not very [00:09:00] nuanced decisions. And having had those experiences and being able to relate and connect dots across so much of the supply chain that has helped me and I know it’s helped others. In this same space. I took a number of lateral roles at at least one grade level within the Clorox company.
And I have to tell you, I, it’s one of those things where everybody wants to get promoted and I was always. understanding what this role meant and where it was going to get me. But I was also having a mind on broadening my career. So I learned enough when I got to the point where I had a really big role.
I had some things I had a foundation to build upon. I had a foundation I could rely upon. I’ll say about my career and the career goals and career plans. I am a lot better talking about this Rodney and Chris that I actually I’m doing it for myself. I am not the person. Wasn’t the 12 year old kid who said, someday I’m gonna be X Y Z.
I generally had an idea of the things I wanted to do in the [00:10:00] three to five year window. But I’ll also say at the same time I was approached for a couple three different really important jobs in my career that were not on my radar. They were not on my radar at all. In fact, in one case, I was going to a a group where, you know, you the most the most pleasant and complimentary things were not said about the talent in that group.
And I thought, Oh, my gosh, I may have really screwed up here. They want me to come into this group. And I asked the person running that group. I said, here’s what I understand the reputation is around. This part of the organization, and they said we have to change it. We have to transform it. I know you don’t know anything about it.
But what I need is leadership. I need somebody who can come in with energy and passion who is a bar raiser on who can get things moving. And, of course, I learned the technical stuff. In good time, but that was the sort of thing where you know, one of those lateral moves. I’m like, I don’t really get why I’m doing this.
This doesn’t seem like it’s in my best interest, but I went and had [00:11:00] a conversation about it. I believed it. And then I went and did my thing and it turned out to be one of the best moves I’ve ever made in my career. So my approach to my career has been trusting the company trusting my manager, being very clear about the things that I like to do, the things that I wasn’t as interested in doing more recently.
You know what I’ve said to the person I work with for probably the last 15 years is the surest way to get me to consider leaving Clorox is to put me in a role where you just want me to incrementally improve things that’s not me. I’m not that person. I’m a person who likes to generate significant value as we covered before.
I like to go where things are broken. Because there’s often a chance for extraordinary value to be created, not only monetary value, but also, the human side for the people who are doing the work. They don’t like to be bad at what they do. They don’t like to be generating results that aren’t that aren’t good and productive.
And so there’s a lot of benefit from those roles. But I would say I just I trusted my managers. I hopscotched across the supply chain and I learned as [00:12:00] I went and then I applied those learnings as I’ve. Okay. As I’ve gone forward, the advice I give people is in this space is really find what you’re very passionate about and have an have an eye towards where you’re trying to go, but don’t necessarily don’t do the kind of like this engineering thing where, a must be connected to B must be connected to C and so forth.
Give yourself some room to navigate across the landscape and build your career and build the foundation.
Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I will ask a follow on with that because you said a couple of things that I resonate with that idea of the ladder versus the pyramid and in that foundation you mentioned in one of our other podcast series on leadership.
We’ve talked a lot about confidence, and I advocate that confidence can sometimes be strengthened by looking in the rear view mirror and seeing what you’ve done. And when you take the next step up, you said I’ve already built that other foundation. I know I can do this. Also making [00:13:00] the kind of moves that you make gives you agility, and people may say I’m not agile.
But over time, if you look back, you demonstrate as you move from place to place. You’ve got that own evidence. So what are your thoughts on building confidence and agility through kind of the career map that you had?
Rick McDonald: Man, those are such great comments, Chris. I’ll start with the confidence one first.
I can’t tell you how many times. I’ve been in a tough spot. My team’s been in a tough spot wow we’re not really sure what to do. What are we gonna do here? And I’ve reflected on something in my career that was maybe not as tough a spot, but was equally challenging, and I’ve drawn on those experiences.
And it was at least the foundation to move the conversation forward to get the team thinking about something to, release myself mentally to create solutions. And that gaining confidence is such a huge thing. And you really confidence comes in all shapes and sizes.
But for me, the heart of the job and the more I was able [00:14:00] to accomplish in that job and my team was able to accomplish the more confidence building that was for me.
Honestly, as you go through this, the first time that you’re in a role where it’s really transformative,
most of us, I didn’t have a specific playbook. I created it on the fly. Most of the things I tried to do work, some didn’t. And so then I revised the playbook. And the next time I went in, The playbook was, 80 percent baked and I executed against what I already knew was going to work. Not only a context of the organization, but me personally, like the way that I lead, the things that are important, how I approach individuals and how I get them moving quickly in the direction we need to move.
So that, I would say that definitely creates agility because. The better you know the playbook and the better you’re able to follow it and drive through what needs to be done, the faster you’re going. And all of a sudden, if you believe about yourself that [00:15:00] you don’t have agility, all of a sudden you do because.
You’re doing things that you’ve done before, might have a different zip code on it, might have a different name at the, at the front of the group or the front of the the business that you’re working on, but the concepts are there. And that that mental that mental muscle, that muscle memory is there and you can move pretty quickly when you got that.
Chris Gaffney: Super. Thank you for that.
Rodney Apple: So Rick, we’ve talked a lot about your experience. You’ve made a lot of laterals, you’ve been thoughtful your career and. Gain that confidence and agility is Chris. You guys just talked about that. What about your everybody has to get help from above, right? In terms of coaches or mentors, what’s been your approach to mentorship and seeking out advice from others that have been a level or 2 above that help really guide you anything pivotal that you’d like to speak to there.
Rick McDonald: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Rodney. I
would say I was an infrequent. Coach. [00:16:00] infrequent follower of kind of a mentoring mindset early in my career. I had some help thinking about a couple, three job offers when I was leaving Georgia Tech and selecting Frito that came from a family friend. But, I would say for most of my Frito career, The mentoring I got was indirect.
If anything, I got more coaching, a lot of coaching so that, that showed up early and often. I would say later in my career certainly at Clorox, I have actively sought out mentors because I realized I was getting to a place where and I probably was before, and I just didn’t realize it, but I was getting to a place where I wasn’t the expert on this stuff.
I needed to broaden my EQ. I needed to broaden my organizational awareness. I needed to learn more from outside the company that I could apply inside the company. And over time, I’ve taken on a variety of mentors. I’ve had an executive coach for [00:17:00] the last 15 years. Also turns out he’s a really good friend and we have great conversations about lots of things.
And he stimulates my thinking. I’ve leveraged our past CEO, our current CEO, various general managers and functional leaders as mentors. And I, I found it only works for me. When I have what I feel like I can have a very transparent relationship with that person. If I feel like for some reason, whatever the reason is, I can’t just be 100 percent open and authentic that’s not a mentoring relationship.
That’s just some sort of conversation that you’re having. And I really, As I think about who I want to have as a mentor, I’m really looking at that first kind of first and foremost. The second thing that really is important that I found is listening. I feel like I’m a pretty good listener. Sometimes you have to listen and mentoring conversations between the lines.
But that is something that, as I think about the mentor relationships I’ve had, the people have been kind enough to give me their time and [00:18:00] share their wisdom with me my willingness to listen and then try and apply as much as I can has been a key to that. And I got some really great advice from one of the GMs.
who was serving as a mentor, but also was my boss at the time. He’s now the CEO of a company called GNC that I think most of us know. We were sitting in a hotel lobby in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, of all places. And Michael said to me, I’ve got one piece of advice for you, Rick. He said, hook your star to digital all things, digital supply chain, enterprise, Become knowledgeable about it.
Craft your digital vision, increase your digital fluency. And he was absolutely right. And by the way, this was, this would have been probably 10 years ago, maybe nine years ago that we had this conversation, but it sticks with me today. And it was it was just such great advice.
Chris Gaffney: You’re going to get me to hit all follow on.
So I am curious and I’ll go backwards. But now, if you could give somebody the sage advice, [00:19:00] that’s the, follow digital for the next round. I’m not don’t answer that yet. But think about that. What would it be? But I’m curious in the advice that you give and mentorship what is, what do you think is the most frequent advice you give?
But I’ll also be curious if there’s advice you give that you get frustrated that people commonly don’t take and you’re like, you missed that one. And so I know that may be a bit of a curveball for you.
Rick McDonald: Yeah, no, that let me start with that. Let me start with that. I think people underestimate the bit about developing trust developing relationships, not just transactional, gross margin was supposed to be 45 and we delivered 45.
- Fantastic. Fantastic. But how did you do it? What hard choices did you make? What was your thinking? What was your mindset? How did you involve others? How did you develop the followership necessary to generate the results that were needed? I find people often overlook the need for investing in those [00:20:00] relationships.
And that really frustrates me because, I know for myself, when I’m thinking about people on my team. I am rarely hiring somebody into one of these key roles. In fact, I could probably count on my hand with zero fingers the times I’ve hired somebody into a role that I haven’t really had a really good relationship with.
I haven’t known how they thought. I understand and trust them. I’m willing to hand over the keys to the car. So that’s one of the things that really frustrates me when I give that kind of advice and I don’t necessarily see that followed or it’s just I’ll do it if I have time.
I’m like that, that means to me, you’re not willing to invest in yourself. In getting to where you say you want to go because it’s in my opinion one of those one of those key things that it’s a it’s an unlock as far as advice I give to people it’s very similar to this is the put your money where your mouth is part of the program it’s very similar to what I did for myself.
I take the hard jobs. I try and go places where I think I can create extraordinary value. I invested [00:21:00] myself from a skill perspective or in various roles that I think we’re gonna are going to get me to where I’m trying to get to in my career. I tell them to be able to demonstrate how they solve tough problems.
What’s there, it’s remember in elementary school, maybe even up through high school, you had to show your work in math class. This is the show your work part of the program. It’s great if you solved a problem, but if that actually came as a result of somebody else doing something, maybe you get credit for that.
And maybe you don’t. So show your work in terms of how you’ve solved those tough problems, how you thought through it, how you brought people along. Be visible as a thought leader. I find too many times people get to a certain level and then they just disappear. They’re not they’re not vocal either in group sessions or even in individual conversations.
And it’s hard to envision them being the kind of leader and collaborator and the person somebody would follow if if they can’t talk about what they’re thinking, put their [00:22:00] ideas out on the table. Build on other ideas and that sort of thing. So that ability to influence and collaborate and communicate is a really important piece of my advice.
The last thing I’d say is this. This concept of being digitally fluent. It’s a there, there’s, I, you can’t have a proper conversation about anything without anybody talking about AI or gen AI. And the reality is the digital fluency and how people have a vision for whatever part of the company they’re working in, that is such an important thing these days.
And I just find it one of those things where for people who are not digitally fluent and you’d be surprised who all isn’t that is really something they’ve got a plus up as they work on growing themselves and growing their skills.
Chris Gaffney: Excellent appreciate that.
Rodney Apple: Rick earlier you mentioned leading through a crisis.
What sounds like we’re 2. so you had a double whammy. You have the pandemic. Anyone. Everyone can remember back to the demand hyper demand [00:23:00] for bleach and wipes and those kinds of products, which I can’t even imagine what that was like on the inside of Clorox. And then you mentioned the cyber attack.
So I’d love to hear how led through that crisis, keeping the teams motivated, lots of change, lots of uncertainty. And then I, again, getting hit with that cyber attack, you’ve got it, you’ve got to keep the lights on and keep things running, get product out the door to the customer.
Rick McDonald: How did you get through that? Yeah I’ve got a couple of coffee table books to write, don’t I?
Let’s talk about COVID first. That was one. And just to set the stage really quickly, not only were disinfecting products and bleach impacted by the surge in demand, but really, our entire portfolio was.
We saw demand across things like glad trash bags and Hidden Valley Ranch and Kingsford Charcoal and Fresh Step cat litter up to 500 percent of their normal demand signal. It’s because so many people were staying home for so long. So it was really across our entire portfolio. [00:24:00] And we went from being a six billion dollar revenue company to a 7 billion company almost overnight. And our supply chain was not anywhere near resilient enough to handle that. So what we did for a million the first day is we formed a we didn’t call it a crisis team, but basically it was my leadership team. We were meeting multiple times a day because, the information about what Covid was and wasn’t and how to deal with it was just it was.
It was flowing. You hear one thing in the morning and something completely opposite the afternoon. So we knew that we had to maintain a steady stream of communication between ourselves to to do what we needed to do. Almost from the beginning, I streamlined our objectives. I said, We now have two objectives.
The first one is we’re gonna keep our people safe and healthy, no matter what that takes, because we were deemed an essential business, so we had to continue to operate. So [00:25:00] that was number one. Number two was we’re gonna, we’re gonna keep running our plants. So I keep people safe and healthy. We’re gonna run our plants and everything that we did was in service of those two things.
Anything else, we just moved to the side. And there were a lot of requests for other things. And I just said, no, we’re not. We’re not doing those right now. We’re not doing those until we have our arms around what it’s going to take to operate in this kind of environment. And, my team was extraordinary during both those events.
We were on 24 hours, seven days a week for months, literally months. Thank you very much. We learned some things we learned in COVID that we reapplied during cyber war. First of all, we can make a lot of fast decisions with just the information we have available, just the data we have available and nothing more.
And we’re going to get most of them right. That, that turned out to be true. And we were so close to it. We were very tactically engaged that when we made a choice that was not correct, we were able to fix it quickly. And that was a real confidence [00:26:00] builder for us individually as a team and for the organization.
The second thing is we took some unconventional approaches, early on, probably at the end of the first month, maybe early, I don’t know, maybe early mid May. I hired an epidemiologist based here in Atlanta connected with the CDC, not part of the CDC, but closely connected to them. And so one of the benefits that gave us was When everybody was trying to scramble to find the handheld thermometer so they could take temperatures, didn’t have to worry about that.
I already had ours. We already had ours. When people were scrambling for masks, when social distancing first came out, we had already been moving down that path. We had a big supply of masks and our epidemiologist helped us see what was likely to be coming. And we made the that. And it was very I think it was, I don’t know if comforting is the right word, but it certainly gave our group right down to, every single person in our plants that gave them confidence [00:27:00] that we were on top of it and we were gonna do all we could to keep them safe and healthy.
We consolidated decision making and that was true in cyber as well. Everything in the supply chain, even decisions that maybe some general managers would have made reverted back to my team and me for the supply chain. And again, that element of communicating early and often and with urgency.
That was very important. We streamline our objectives. The other thing I didn’t mention about COVID, but it was also true in cyber, we streamline our SKU assortment and we really focused on maximizing maximizing uptime. And, I would say also the other thing that happened in both cases was we made it a point to celebrate small successes, when things are so difficult as they were during both those time periods, you’re just, you’re reeling from, bad news after bad news, or, things that aren’t going right, or things that aren’t connecting the way that you want them to.
And so when you have those successes, you got to take a moment out and. [00:28:00] And really get geeked out and amped up about it. And that’s one of the things we did that I think was very sustaining to the to the enterprise and to the individuals in it.
Chris Gaffney: I’m going to combine a couple of questions, Rick and they build off of that, but coming out of COVID, there was a big focus on resilience. And I’m curious. If you feel like that’s sustaining or people reverting to the productivity culture, given the inflation piece, and we may get there.
But the other thing is, sustainability. It was a big deal and you had some people maybe losing their nerve on that. So I’m curious your take on those. Those are two big topics, but your sense on those things, given where you sit right now.
Rick McDonald: Yeah, let me hit the first one first and I’ll come to sustainability in a second here.
The sustainment of the resilience we built has been has carried through. It absolutely is carried through. We have much greater and deeper supply chain. [00:29:00] I’ll call them insurance policies. We have much greater and deeper supply chain insurance policies that we had pre covid. That runs all the way from evaluating key pay pain points in our supplier community, who, by the way, in both cases were absolutely spectacular.
I can’t imagine better support from our suppliers and our customers as well. The generosity the collaboration, the amount of understanding we got from suppliers and from customers during COVID and cyber was really just off the charts and something we badly needed, but we’ve taken the resiliency that we built during COVID and we’ve continued to apply that and it’s really helped us get tighter around our performance which is, it actually is serving us in the right way.
We’re back to. margins that are at or better than they were pre COVID. We’re back to the same service level we had pre COVID. So what we did and what we applied is working. Now on sustainability, that is a huge topic. It’s a hot topic. Everybody has [00:30:00] their targets, their goals. I’m not going to speak for Clorox having just recently retired from that role, but I can tell you that there’s really great progress and some excellent achievement of some of the goals early.
But the way that I would characterize the sustainability topic and yeah, I will put the Clorox spin on this. We’ve been doing sustainability for a long time. We didn’t call it that. But every time we took grams of plastic out of a bottle, every time we reformulated with some more earth friendly material, every time we downgaged corrugate and still got the right product in the right condition to the marketplace, every time we filled up a truck better and got our truckload utilizations way up, every time we used intermodal instead of over the road, We were participating in a sustainability culture, and so the way that we think about the way that I think about it is sustainability is good for business, and it’s good for the environment.
And those two things really go hand in hand. And that’s how I think this is really going to gain traction going [00:31:00] forward is making sure those two things match up and as you are performing activities that are good for your company and good for the environment that you’re making sure you tie those to a sustainability mission.
Chris Gaffney: I used to say in our early days at Coke, our sustainability efforts need to be sustainable.
Rick McDonald: Correct. That’s well said.
Rodney Apple: Rick, a segue into, I think, something that is closely related is, we’ve seen this, we’ve all seen this rapid evolvement and adaption of technology. And I think that extends into your material handling equipment, automation, robotics, and now AI what have you seen on your end in terms of these types of advancements?
And where do you see? The next evolution the company should be thinking about.
Rick McDonald: Yeah, this is Rodney. This is such an exciting time to be a supply chain professional with respect to the digital capabilities that are existing and that are being built. And I you can tell I’m [00:32:00] a huge advocate and very passionate about this.
That’s something we’ve been doing, and I will speak on behalf of Clorox here in this moment. There’s something we’ve been doing for the Last 6. 5, 7 years at the company with respect to deploying digital assets across the supply chain, whether that was demand planning, using artificial intelligence, machine learning for customer deductions the TMS platform that we’re on has all sorts of great digital toys that allow us to do many bids and bounce back and forth between the spot market and contract.
They’re just The maybe at some point I’ll show you guys the road map that we develop and it’s really a spectacular digital transformation of the supply chain and very proud of that. It’s going to continue. I was I was speaking to a group of Georgia State group yesterday.
And, Walmart has declared 2024 is the year of the drone. They’ve made 20, 000 successful and safe drone deliveries. They’ve declared that the Dallas Metroplex and a [00:33:00] hundred 1. 75 million households in Dallas are now eligible for drone delivery. Guess that, guess what that means for those of us who are trying to have demand plan and supply plan and schedule lines and materials for manufacturing sites.
That timeframe just collapsed even more. And so the nature of having autonomous tools That can induct the good data that you already have, the hard data, plus all of the unstructured data is going to become more and more important. Now past that, the other thing I think is, as you think about the mindset, skillset, toolset of digital transformations, most people run directly and think first about the tools.
It’s actually the least important of those things the leadership mindset. Having a digital vision, being digitally fluid. That’s one of the most important things that will enable a successful digital transformation. And then the upscaling and reskilling of your group, whether that is somebody working third shift on one of your [00:34:00] automated operations or somebody who is handling deductions and cash applications, the skill set improvement is going to be absolutely essential.
And then. Often underinvested in and overlooked is change management. And I, I’ve said frequently, I think these digital transformation projects are really just giant change management exercises with some technology applied to them. And in my opinion, if you approach it in a way that values change management that way, you’ll do a much better job of realizing the the return on the investment that you’re going to make in those digital assets.
Chris Gaffney: Now, rick, you and I have talked about this topic on stage, and one of the things that you said was we’re going to lean in, but we always struggle with trying not to kiss too many frogs. How did you evolve your view of bringing new technology and trying to increase your hit rate, but not losing, not being discouraged because, not everything’s going to play out the way you’d like.
Rick McDonald: Yeah, that’s that’s that’s a good question, Chris. [00:35:00] I’m still kissing frogs if that helps. Just maybe not as many. I think I’ve sharpened my team has sharpened its ability to ask questions. And the thing that we’ve done a much better job of say today than six or seven years ago is it’s much clearer to us what problems we’re trying to solve.
And I was speaking to a group at the last January, and I was asked to talk to the tech founders in the room. If, if I could wave a wand and have them do one thing, what would it be? And I said I would love it. If you wouldn’t come to me and tell me what your solution is.
I’d love it. If you understood what my problems are and then see if we have the basis for a conversation. So I. Understanding the problems that we have to solve gives us a much more narrow path towards a solution set. And it allows us to ask really good questions on the front end that tell us whether we want to do more with that particular technology provider or founder.
And that’s helped us pretty that’s helped us hone in on some good [00:36:00] solutions.
Rodney Apple: So rick A lot of folks that I speak with on the recruitment side, executive search side of supply chain, they aspire to get to that seat that you’ve been in. The chief supply chain officer, head of supply chain you’ve covered a lot of ground already. But we’d love to hear your perspectives and any advice you’d want to give.
And I think. Throwing in one thing that Chris and I have observed and is, you’ve covered a lot of ground in the operation side of the supply chain growing up. We’re seeing now we have 100 plus 125 plus universities teaching supply chain. We know the things you just mentioned the machine learning technology, the automation, robotics, all that stuff is the sexy part of supply chain.
So we’re seeing folks gravitate. In that direction, but they’re maybe ignoring or skipping out on those opportunities on the operation side of the business. We’d love to hear your perspective. Is that going to. Impede or slow down folks from reaching that pinnacle. Had a supply chain level if they’re not broadening their [00:37:00] experience to include operations, multi site leadership, things like that.
Rick McDonald: Yeah, that is such a great comment, Rodney, and it should not. I’m glad we’re going to attend to it right here because I’ve got a very strong point of view on this. And part of it, I think, is because I grew up as a an output of that sort of approach. On this one, the very first thing I’d say about the Chief Supply Chain Officer operator, Chief Supply Chain Officer role is.
You’ve got to be a great operator. You’ve got to be a great operator. And that is not just a technology comment. That is not a digital comment. That is not a factory floor comment. That is a leader of people in a manufacturing and or logistics environment. And I find that many people are not willing to spend enough time on the bricks of the floors of their manufacturing plants to get those experiences.
And by not doing so, I think it is going to undermine their interest to get to the pinnacle chair in the supply [00:38:00] chain. And the reason I say this is, I’ll just give you, the Clorox example. There are 9000 people in the company, 6000 of them. work in some sort of an operational role, 5, 000 of those people work somewhere in a plant.
And so I don’t know how you can be tuned into the issues, the challenges, the concerns, the levers, the value creation opportunities that exist in such a large swath of the company if you haven’t personally experienced it and spent the time grinding in those operations, learning how things work, learning what, where does innovation show up?
Innovation shows up in one of our plants someplace. How can you enable Faster innovation, better innovation. By your knowledge of the manufacturing environment, the logistics environment. So I just I think it’s a huge mess for people who are somehow trying to avoid working in a manufacturing plant.
And I get it. There are all kinds of reasons. Not [00:39:00] everybody wants to work on shifts. Not everybody relishes weekend work, that sort of thing when it comes up. But the reality is the experience is so essential. As a foundational building block. I just I think people who don’t do that will have a hard time competing when it gets time to select a chief supply chain officer.
So that’s the 1st thing I think about. You’ve got to be a great operator. I think also, you’ve got to be a really good communicator. 1 of the things that I learned early on was. As I got into multi site management, multi organizational level management, the quality of my communication, the two by four nature of it, had to be sharp.
It had to be on point because I wasn’t going to be the one in many cases sharing that message. Somebody else was. And so if I wasn’t clear, the chances of it being communicated with the intent I had were greatly diminished. And Learning how to hone your communication so it stands the test of time and it stands the test of being repeated by people who didn’t originally say the things [00:40:00] that I said.
That is an absolute skill that’s got to be honed over time as you think about multi site leadership and multi site or multi level organizational leadership. The idea of creating value. I don’t know of any chief supply chain officer or anybody else in the C suite that hasn’t demonstrated their ability to create some extraordinary value and gone out and initiated the activity that led to the creation of that value.
It is a massive capability and by the way, not everybody has it. And so if it’s something that a person has and they can use it to differentiate themselves, that is a great advantage for them. I do think this idea of being externally connected is important. It’s always a balance between time and energy and priorities, but external connections really help you understand what else is going on in the world and Maybe get a tip or trick from somebody who’s trying to solve the same problem you’re trying to solve or has already solved it at a different [00:41:00] company.
And I think, along with externally connected being followed internally and this is not how many followers do I have on social media? This is, people listen to you. They ask you questions that they’re not asking others. They come to you with questions and concerns and They’re willing to challenge you both privately and publicly.
It’s one of the best things I love about my team is we’ve developed this relationship of trust where I get challenged as much as anybody else. And that’s the way it should be. I don’t necessarily have the best ideas. I don’t necessarily have the thoughts that are going to get us to where we need to get to.
But collectively, if we’re if we’re respectful of each other, but we’re also challenging each other, we’re going to end up with a better solution. That generates that kind of internal followership. And then the last thing I’d say is I’ve said it before, this idea of being digitally fluent.
I don’t see how you can possibly get to achieve supply chain officer chair anytime in the future without having digital fluency. It is the way that we’re going to run our, it is the way we are running [00:42:00] our businesses. There are some that are different stages of adoption and transformation, but It is absolutely essential to the future health of businesses and being consumer obsessed and being able to meet that consumer how and where he or she is shopping.
And that, that is a, that is just an absolutely essential skill. That’s gotta be further developed.
Rodney Apple: That was that was quite the advice for how to get to your level. And out of curiosity, Rick, now that you’ve winded down your career there with Clorox what’s next for you? I do see that you’ve joined some boards anything you want to speak to there and even maybe some advice as you’re navigating that new territory, with these board of director seats that you’re pursuing.
Rick McDonald: Yeah, this thanks for that, Rodney. This, this, in this chapter, I am really interested in serving companies and finding a way to their boards. I know I have more to learn, but I also think I have quite a bit to contribute and this is this board service.
Type activity is something that really resonates for me, and I’m I’ve got a [00:43:00] lot of passion and interest in investing my time and doing that. It’s one of those things where I just feel so blessed to be advising the companies that I’m advising right now. And in every case, it came up where we just started a conversation and then we, it grew and developed and and there was an interest in me participating on their executive advisory board.
I really enjoy the founders and CEOs that I’m working with the other executive advisory board members. And I, I think as people are interested in that sort of work. Certainly your your technical knowledge, your leadership skills, your influence, your external connections, all that matters.
But I, I just think there’s gotta be some sort of a human connection with the individuals that you’re going to be advising. And, my, my objective with my manager for as long as I can remember, it’s the same with the founders and the CEOs I’m working with right now is I want to be their trusted advisor.
I want to be the person that they turn [00:44:00] to, and it might be about something in the supply chain. It might not. If there’s a marketing challenge, if there’s a sales issue, if there’s a communication they want to put out on some sort of a change that’s coming up, I’d like to be that person they come to and say, Hey, Rick, what do you think?
And you do that by generating trust. You do that by being authentic, by being transparent. Sometimes that means calling out. the tough thing that’s in the room right now. Everybody refers to it as the elephant calling that out, but doing it in a way that encourages people to want to gather around the table and solve it versus being repelled by it.
And I, I find that if you can develop into that trusted advisor type role and you’re seen that way, these roles can really be fantastic experiences.
Rodney Apple: We wish you the best as you pursue that next chapter, Rick. And as, as we close we’d love to hear as you go back through your career. Is there any 1 piece of advice that really stuck out? That made a big [00:45:00] impact on your career. And then, secondly, is there anything that you’d like to offer to our audience as we wrap up the call today?
Rick McDonald: Yeah, thank you, Rodney. And let me just say again, Rodney and Chris, how much I’ve enjoyed being with you all today. This has been really fantastic. Thank you for inviting me. Early in my career, and this is really carried through. I got some advice from a fellow supervisor who is Who got promoted a little bit before I did.
And he said, the thing that I’m learning is I really need to be expert at my craft. I really need to learn this. I really need to understand how this works. Because once I learn it, then I have a chance of contributing back and creating some value for the company. And that will become. Visible to the company that I know how to do that.
And at the end of the day, that’s one of the things that we’re all charged with as leaders is creating extraordinary value for our enterprise. So I think no matter where you are in the organization, challenge yourself. Do you [00:46:00] really know your craft? Do you understand how things work?
Do you understand depending on where you are, how the company makes money? How does it innovate? What does it look like to compete with various customers and in various channels? What really makes a difference? And those are the types of things that if you can learn those, you can put them in your pocket, you apply them as necessary as you move through your career.
I believe that will help those that are aspiring to do more in their career. Get to those places maybe a little bit sooner. So I, I understand the interest everyone has in getting promoted. Me too. All of us share that same type of interest, but learn your craft, become an expert in it. Resist sometimes the urge to chase the next role at the next level.
In service of the investment you’re making in yourself in, in learning more about what it is you’re doing and your expertise in a certain area. So that’d be my one one piece of advice.
Rodney Apple: We appreciate that Rick. That’s incredible advice and you’ve given a lot of it throughout the the hour that we spent [00:47:00] together. Rick, thanks again for joining this podcast today.
This has been an incredible episode and we appreciate you sharing your perspectives and career advice and journey.
