[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]. In this episode of the Supply Chain Careers podcast, we speak with Scott Mason, currently at Amazon, where he serves as a senior principal scientist working on models and algorithms for Amazon’s under the roof facility operations. Scott spent 20 years in the academic world teaching and researching about supply chain operations.
Most recently with Clemson University where he held an endowed chair position, and before that at the University of Arkansas. So listen, as Scott [00:01:00] talks about the influence of his first experiences and how products as diverse as semiconductors, chicken products, and diapers make their way through supply chains.
Scott talks about what has happened and is happening with modeling and his joy at the impact he and his team make every day to get packages to your door. He also talks about the soft skills that matter, particularly how to better communicate, listen, lead, and collaborate, but also to constantly work on your self-awareness.
Scott closes with industry trends and his advice to others. I’m your podcast co-host Mike Ogle, and I’m your podcast co-host Rodney Apple. So Scott, we’re happy to have you with us today. Welcome.
[00:01:43] Scott Mason: Thank you very
[00:01:43] Mike Ogle: much. Glad
[00:01:44] Scott Mason: to be here.
[00:01:45] Mike Ogle: And Scott, what were some of the influences that made you aware of supply chain in general and led you toward pursuing a supply chain career?
I.
[00:01:55] Scott Mason: I started off working in the semiconductor industry, worried about what’s now known as the front [00:02:00] end of wafer fabrication. So we’re actually patterning the integrated circuits on silicon wafers, and I was worried about my own process working on these thinner than a human hair devices in terms of the feature size.
And then somebody said, now we need to cut up the silicon wafers and put ’em into packages, so we need to go to the backend. Started learning there was in. That would take our initial product and actually put them in packaging so that they could be plugged into motherboards and other computerized devices.
And I started to understand how, what a supply chain was from the standpoint of while we’re making this little chip in Austin, Texas, we then had to fly it over to the Philippines or to Taiwan, and we had other parts of the process. That would continue to add value and actually make it a usable product.
And as I started to learn in the semiconductor space and was doing some consulting, long story short, it got into academia and I went to the University of Arkansas and one of my first projects was with Tyson Foods. And I was learning [00:03:00] about chickens and trying to figure out how the hot wings and the chicken nuggets that I love actually get on people’s store shelves.
And then my house and I started realizing and connecting some of the dots in my brain. This is another kind of supply chain where these processes have multiple steps, multiple types of inputs, multiple types of outputs, different form factors if you will, and from everything from semiconductors to chicken to working with Walmart and Sam’s Club.
And it really all connected the dots. When I had my first child and I was told by one of my professors, you can be sent to the store for diapers by your wife, a specific brand and a specific type, and you could have a list of seven other grocery items. But as a young father, if those diapers, those specific diapers my wife wanted, were not on the store shelves, I was not gonna buy any of those other seven things.
I was going to another store because darn it. Those diapers that she asked for are more important than the other things. And I started realizing that not all stockouts are created equal. [00:04:00] Meaning I don’t know what business they could have lost from customers by not having the right things at the right place, on the right shelf, at the right price, at the right time.
And that seminal moment of having our oldest child and being sent out for Pampers or Huggies or whatever it was, and realizing. I have to get that and 10 other things. And going from store to find those specific diapers, it really cemented it in my mind the importance of how these supply chains work together to have the goods and services available for the people who want to consume them.
And a sort of a funny anecdote is, after getting into my career as a supply chain person, I was talking to my father and he was a supply corps officer in the Navy for 26 years. And I at age 10. I flew over to Spain and rode back his aircraft carrier across the ocean, called the Tiger Crews. And my dad was telling me how yeah, he was responsible for getting all the food on the ship and all of the supplies and the munitions.
And looking back, I [00:05:00] realized my dad was actually a logistician his whole military career. I just didn’t know what it was. ’cause as a 10-year-old I was worried that there was steak for dinner or whatever we were having to eat. But just that coordination of all of the goods and services even in the military and how those are different kinds of supply chains.
It’s just funny how all of these things connected together throughout my career journey and everything I’ve ever done has been supply chain related from consulting my father’s work, academia, and now at Amazon.
[00:05:29] Rodney Apple: So Scott, I see you started out in, I. Your title with Abby Greg and a MD based on your LinkedIn profile is modeling engineer.
Would, could you maybe share with our audience what that role was? I know in my recruitment days, I remember being at the Home Depot, this is 20 some years ago, and recruiting their very first like modeling engineer, network optimization engineer. That’s back in the nineties. I’d love to hear how you did the modeling.
Knowing the software of today is a lot more [00:06:00] advanced than back in the nineties.
[00:06:02] Scott Mason: Absolutely. I remember vividly as an undergrad, I did multiple co-op work tours where you go to school and alternate school and work, and I was introduced to a spreadsheet called Lotus 1 2 3. I thought, man, this is actually pretty cool ’cause it’s like a calculator, but I have a big sandbox to play with and one of my first bosses who actually hired me.
Seemed to be able to do anything in his spreadsheet. He could do planning. He could do capacity analysis. Cost analysis. And as I was hired into that role, we started looking at things besides capacity modeling and spreadsheets, which I’ll call static modeling. It’s a dynamic modeling, actually discrete event simulation.
So we were able to model the processes in these multi-billion dollar facilities, even back in the nineties. Looking at the factory dynamics, looking at uncertainty. How are these wafers at the time going to flow through this building? Where’s the queue going to [00:07:00] back up? Where’s the line gonna form? Where are the bottleneck resources?
And by doing static analysis to do like capacity planning or equipment planning, how many of these tools do I need using simulation to then simulate if I bought that many tools, how are the cycle time going to come through the process? How are we going to be able to get these wafers to the backend processes of the supply chain?
There was both spreadsheet. Simulation modeling that sort of was the core of that modeling engineer position. That over time grew into some custom programming, some coding, different types of analysis. And as you mentioned today, those are the very entry level techniques that we’re using. Not to mention the craziness of the AI phase and everything else that people are going into now with machine learning.
But yeah, back in the day, the optimization was very localized. It was just that one building that I was worried about. Sort of, I’ll call it operational modeling, was actually the name of group. And as I think more [00:08:00] about how the supply chain field has grown, we look at strategic modeling, tactical modeling, and operational modeling.
Different timeframes, different scopes, different scales, but early it was spreadsheets and some very rudimentally men rudimentary simulation tools. But, uh, those grew into many different tools and techniques over time with more education and more experience.
[00:08:22] Rodney Apple: Yeah, that’s fascinating and I haven’t heard the Lotus 1, 2, 3 in in quite some time.
Thanks for bringing back some old memories
[00:08:30] 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].
[00:08:46] Rodney Apple: And then I’d love to hear how you transitioned. I went from that, those roles into academia.
You bounced back out in with Amazon and just would love to hear what were some of those core pivots that you made and what led you to make those changes, which is. [00:09:00] Fair. Fairly, I wouldn’t say drastic, but going from academia into Amazon, I, I’d love to hear that, that dynamic.
[00:09:08] Scott Mason: Absolutely. Age 14, I just announced to my mother that I was going to teach college for a living.
I didn’t even know what that meant, but I was a soccer coach, I was a tutor, and I loved teaching people. So even as a consultant, early in my career, yes, I like to make the money, but I liked working with people, showing them new tools and techniques. And actually implementing solutions or decision support tools or algorithms in these wafer fabs.
I have algorithms running fabs on four continents even today that I built back then because they control how processes work. And when we started to, I got married and we were having our first child. I was really worried about the travel I was doing and I knew I was gonna teach college. I had the PhD and I wanted to see my family grow up.
My work life harmony is one of my keys factors to success that I’ll talk about later. And so wanted to be my own boss. Still wanted to work my [00:10:00] way through a career of teaching people and learning and helping companies. So the move to academics was just the obvious one, because I went to graduate school to get the PhD so I could be prepared to do that.
I. Our family starting to happen was the impetus for making that change. And in academia, as I mentioned, I was able to work with companies like Tyson, like Walmart, like Sam’s Club, and still getting to be my own boss and teach students and work with companies to answer important questions for them and moving even from Arkansas to Clemson.
And I was offered an endowed chair, which is like winning the faculty lottery. I had more resources to invest in students and in my fellow colleagues and still working with companies to still growing my, my, my own knowledge. I continued learning, but also teaching others and showing new and innovative ways to solve these problems.
Plus, from the family side, my oldest was about to enter middle school. It was the right time for a family transition, and you’ll hear me say that a lot. How my work and [00:11:00] my family are very much equal importance. I’ve said many times, I can always get a new job. I’m not gonna get a new family. So because my wife Andrea, agreed to the move to Clemson, we went for it and we had a great time at Clemson.
And while at Clemson, I was able to do a sabbatical at Amazon where the faculty gets a year off to go work somewhere and come back. And I spent a year in Seattle by myself living out west. Working at Amazon as a full-time employee, and it was just like a playground. The ultimate supply chain sandbox for me to learn new skills, to use my expertise, but also I’ve been ordering from Amazon since 1998.
It was fun to be on the inside or behind the curtain to see how things worked, such that when the pandemic, I was nearing the end, I guess my 10th year at Clemson. And one of my old Amazon friends reached out and said, Hey Scott, you know that so-and-so moved to Idaho. I said, oh, wow. He left Amazon. He said, oh no, we’re letting some people work remote.
And that was just an eyeopening moment. And literally three weeks [00:12:00] later I had an interview, I had a job offer, and uh, with my wife’s blessing, you know, I was able to stay here on the East coast, but worked for Amazon full-time, and that was about four years ago. And those transitions. Have all had the common thread of important to my family, important to me, delivering results, teaching folks along the way, but also continuing my learning such that now the group that I lead at Amazon, literally our software, every package that Amazon ships goes to our software stack, we control under the roof package sortation.
And if you think about 135 million packages a week or during the peak, 135 million packages in a day. Everything that comes to your house goes through our world, and I find different ways that I’m impacting and influencing in terms of how we’re getting people, their packages faster, how we’re optimizing the supply chain dynamics.
And so those transitions have all been connected. They’ve all been necessary in terms of where I was in my life, my career [00:13:00] journey, my family. All along. It’s never felt like a job. No matter what I was doing. I had a passion for it. I loved it. It seemed like I was playing with house money, being able to do things that made a lot of, a lot of matter in the world, a lot of importance, but a lot of fun for me and hopefully benefited some others.
[00:13:19] Mike Ogle: It’s nice to have a lot of temporary pinnacles that you don’t realize aren’t the the top yet.
[00:13:25] Scott Mason: Oh, absolutely. We’re always climbing and falling back down and continuing to climb it. Too many people say it, but they’re right. You learn a lot from your failures more than your successes, and you never know until in hindsight, you look back and you realize, oh, that’s why all that happened.
[00:13:40] Mike Ogle: Hey, and since I’m. Currently teaching operations and supply chain. I’d like to know what you’ve learned during your time in the industry about how you think students should be preparing themselves for careers in supply chain. And I guess we’ll start with some of the hard skills first. Then maybe Rodney follows up with some of the soft skills.
[00:13:59] Scott Mason: [00:14:00] Sure. When I think about supply chains, they’re large systems, they’re processes, and to me, I think about systems level thinking. I worry about, I mentioned before, the operational aspects. All the way up to the strategic aspects. I’m looking at multiple year plans. I’m looking at plans for the next one hour, and when I think of how I was into math and science and programming and logical thinking and coding, these are all part of what I would call systems thinking, trying to understand processes.
How processes relate. They interrelate how things work together at multiple levels of abstraction. I think one of the best things I ever did was I read the Goal and the goal is a novel that I’m a very slow reader, but I read that thing in a day and it just resonated with me when I heard about Herbie, what a bottleneck is and don’t starve the bottleneck resource and how people work together and.
What’s the goal of any company? To make money. [00:15:00] Money and metrics and KPIs for the moving to industry part of my brain, learning about how supply chains really matter. ’cause as an academic, you have a research project and you’re trying to help company X improve what they care about, their bottom line. So I think in terms of the hard skills, yes, it was modeling, it was coding, it was mathematics, logical thinking.
I wouldn’t call the money side a soft skill because the finances and the business matter to companies as well, whether you’re a researcher or you’re working at Amazon. So to me, having that broad toolbox of systems thinking, but understanding what the goal is, the metrics, the money that people care about, what’s the bottom line, and then the different levels of abstraction that we work with.
Were important because I deal with a variety of folks in different fields, different countries, different continents from different backgrounds. It’s a very integrated, interesting puzzle, and you have to bring your own skillset to the table, and you’re gonna leverage other folks who have [00:16:00] different perspectives, whether they’re in procurement or finance or materials.
I’m an engineer. It’s all, we all are needed to make the stew good together. It’s not like just one person can pull this off by themselves. So I guess in my thinking, that systems approach and that logical thought is the key things that have led me to the success that I’ve had.
[00:16:21] Rodney Apple: So Scott, I, an interesting observation from the supply chain recruiters chair that I’ve seen, it’s like a pendulum where.
20 plus years ago, everybody, companies wanted the hard skills. They were having a tough time getting a deep analytics and so forth, and the soft skills were there in abundance. And I have found that’s flipped. Recruit today out of college. They seem to. Have the hard skills and abundance, but the soft skills can be a little bit lacking.
What’s your thought process on that, and do you have anything else to share on the importance of soft skills in supply chain?
[00:16:56] Scott Mason: A hundred percent. It’s amazing how automated and technical [00:17:00] people can be, but if they’re not effective communicators, both written and orally, things can be quite difficult. And I think a lot of my growing has been in my communication skills, but also, I’ll call it being empathetic or understanding the value of different perspectives and being inclusive.
We have a lot of training at Amazon that I’ve really benefited from in the DEI space, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and that understanding of different perspectives, the value of different voices in the room, where they’ve been, where they’re coming from personally and professionally. Has been a huge growth area for myself.
I think another important thing besides communication and that idea of being empathetic and inclusive is being willing to both learn and unlearn. I think a lot of the times I’ve been seeing people soft skills, whether it’s conflict resolution or just being a human being and talking to folks, understanding that you’re not gonna have all the answers.
It’s okay to [00:18:00] not have all the answers and sometimes have change your mind. Learn something new. One of our Amazon leadership principles is actually have backbone, disagree, and commit. And it’s the interesting idea that we’re all gonna talk about something and everybody’s opinions value, but at the end of the discussion, when we make a decision, you’re gonna commit to the direction we’re all going so we can keep moving forward.
And I think a soft skill is understanding what you know. What you don’t know, what you’re willing to learn and really benefiting from other folks regardless of age, seniority, gender, background. It doesn’t matter. I’m learning from people all the time and I’ve been very blessed at Amazon. I’m, I’ve been promoted and I’ll be in meetings when people think, oh, he’s a level such and such.
He must know it all. And I’m very quick to disarm them and say, that’s an interesting point. Could you tell me more about it? ’cause I know nothing about that. And the more I tell people that I don’t know things, it’s almost like I’m earning their trust and they’re more willing to be a willing [00:19:00] team member and a participant.
And I think those are super important soft skills because exactly as you mentioned, Rodney, we have folks coming outta schools really wicked smart. They have all the technical chops. They can do the math, write the code, solve the problem. But if they can’t communicate, if they can’t just be part of a team, if they don’t have those, they’re working on their soft skills more than they’ll ever work on those technical skills again.
That’s been a huge part of our work at Amazon and the eighth job that I’ve had for sure.
[00:19:29] Rodney Apple: That’s a fascinating answer, and I appreciate that perspective. For folks that are coming through school and they’re shy and introverted, do you have any advice because. I, I sometimes don’t see people putting enough attention and focus into their developing their soft skills.
Anything you’d like to share there? Scott?
[00:19:46] Scott Mason: I grew up in schools, going to conferences and giving opportunities to network to present my research. My professors were very good about, even in formal seminars at school, whether it’s a lunch and learn or a brown [00:20:00] bag session, you have to step out and take the opportunities.
Confident to practice. We, we have.
There’s no substitute for just getting up there and saying something, being critical of yourself and learning. When I taught early at Arkansas, I used to videotape students, draft presentations and then watch it with them. And it’s painful to watch yourself say, or I had a student who literally did a box step his whole five minutes, he was walking in a square and until he saw that, he had no idea.
That’s what he did. The point is they practiced it, and the more you do it, the more you get feedback on it. Constructive feedback the better. The more you study and you learn your material, you’ll have more confidence in what you’re talking about until eventually you realize I’m the expert in the room, I’m teaching other folks.
I don’t have to be worried about this. And I think that those [00:21:00] practicing those skills, even with in a mirror or however you need to do it, repetition brings that muscle memory that you can get up and talk about things. We don’t have to be perfect as long as we’re present. We’re insightful and we’re respectful.
We can develop those skills and the more opportunities you take to do it, the more opportunities you take to network or volunteer, I think has always been a way that I’ve seen people help develop their skillset. Even if during our performance reviews at Amazon, I might talk to some of my team members and mention meetings.
You are the expert in the room, but you’re being quiet. I, I need to understand why. Oh, somebody already said it. They don’t need me to repeat it, and I have to do my own gut job to say, I’m going to be quiet. I’m gonna count to three. I’m gonna count to six. I’m gonna give you the space so that you can speak up.
And then I start to see them achieving their, talking through what they know, being the expert in the room, regardless of level or seniority. Then it becomes again, with repetition [00:22:00] becomes more familiar and they get more confidence in doing that. For sure. I.
[00:22:04] Rodney Apple: Love it. Thank you, tr
[00:22:05] Mike Ogle: try, fail, learn, improve, repeat.
[00:22:10] Scott Mason: I like to say we fail forward, we failing, but we’re doing it in a way that’s helping us be more successful in the future. For sure.
[00:22:20] 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 Group.
At SCM talent.com,
I am going to switch over to a little bit of a different tier and ask you about some of the trends that you’re seeing in not just technology, but some of the business practices. And I guess one of the other things that I didn’t put my note here was also just what you end up seeing with consumers and the way that they’re behaving that.
Are having a huge influence on how people will [00:23:00] perform their supply chain work in these next say five to 10 years?
[00:23:03] Scott Mason: Absolutely. I think as a consumer, I’ve told people that Amazon has conditioned me as a consumer to realize I should never pay for shipping. How do they do that? They first it was this, if you can wait extra long time, five to nine days, we’ll give it to you for free, and I do it and I get it in one or two days, and then I bought my Prime membership.
But customers are very particular and companies are very much interested in keeping those comps customers happy. When I think about all of the time as a customer, I don’t pay for shipping now for anything. I’m almost offended when I’m asked to pay for shipping. And as an Amazonian, I realize we pay for shipping on our side.
It’s expensive, right? And I think that. Customer preferences, customer choices, how they want it, when they want it, in the form they want, it is always going to continue going forward because if customers are not happy, they can go find it from somebody else. With all of that comes a huge explosion in the data, [00:24:00] not information, but data that we have to be able to sift through, understand, and make information outta.
And so the practices I’m talking about are cross platforms, cross time zones, cross modes. From an Amazon perspective, cross modes of transportation. We’re looking at electric trucks and autonomous tractor trailers and all kinds of crazy stuff, and robots and people in the loop working together in the name of efficiency and speed and carbon footprint to get our customers what they want.
We’re changing our packaging because boy, I get a lot of cardboard at my house and I know that has to come from somewhere. So these trends of eco-friendly, but customer-centric are not going away. And then you throw in this huge AI explosion where everybody wants to have a large language model or generative ai, and I’m gonna go online and they’re gonna write my term paper.
They’re gonna summarize my reports for me. I think those trends of new technologies, new approaches to [00:25:00] problem, are gonna keep us on our toes in terms of how we’re gonna keep learning and evolving and unlearning. Maybe there’s new approaches to do things, but I think really when I look at. Technology and business practices, the customer’s gonna continue to drive it.
And the ability to make information out of data is a very critical skill that no matter what background you’re coming from, what part of supply chain you work in, there is no shortage, terabytes, petabytes of information that is sitting out there waiting to be harvested and made sense out of. And it’s big Data was a phrase years ago.
Now it’s big data is just. It’s ubiquitous. And so that idea that people are going to continue to drive their behavior is what companies are gonna react to. And being agile enough and nimble enough with the right partnerships and the right mechanisms and the right channels to do that is going to be super important.
[00:25:55] Mike Ogle: So when did the petabyte first enter your lexicon? [00:26:00]
[00:26:00] Scott Mason: I would say when I learned that this was, shoot, seven years ago, when Prime Day happened. The second prime day was go, Amazon was receiving 43,000 orders a second, and if I think about that, seven years ago, 43,000. 86,000. It’s a lot. And I started learning about the cloud and the scale and quantum computing and all this awesome stuff.
Now, as you had a byte, we’re talking about storage and that information just explodes. And so I would say it was about seven years ago and now we don’t even talk about it ’cause it’s just part of our every day.
[00:26:41] Rodney Apple: This, Scott, switching gears, I heard early in our discussion you mentioned you had been, you’ve coached in sports leagues.
You’ve, uh, been a leader on the academia side and a leader at Amazon. What are some of the parallels as it relates to leadership across those areas and then what’s different? [00:27:00]
[00:27:00] Scott Mason: Absolutely. I’ve enjoyed various leadership opportunities, and I think in hindsight, academia and industry are slightly different.
Academia. I lead teams of graduate students, undergraduate students, other faculty. They’ve got strong skills, maybe less experience working with customers and stakeholders, but they’re fearless about taking on new challenges. They want that leadership, they want that direction, especially students because they’re just trying to.
Take new classes and get new information, but they’re always trying to also, I want to get a job and I want to be successful. And you’re not worried about pay raises because they’re grad students. They’re just there for two to four years. They’re sponges. They’re hungry for you to teach and show, and then they can get a job and go do it themselves.
And it’s a different kind of leadership when I’m leading an industry team of accomplished experienced sciences. They have strong backgrounds, a lot of broad perspectives. They don’t require less, they don’t require as much [00:28:00] encouragement, but they also have families and real lives and mortgages that they’re dealing with.
And so they have different levels of background and experience and autonomy, but they also are looking for somebody to help them be successful, to develop them, to help them get promoted. And I’ve always found, whether it’s an academia or an industry, my leadership experience is modeling the behaviors that I value are emulated.
So I don’t send emails on the weekend. For example. My work life harmony is always in check if at all possible, and I make sure to check in with people. Our first one-on-one discussions every week with my team. I’m asking them. How’s your wife’s surgery? That was last week, or where are you going on vacation?
The human side of leadership has, I think, helped me be more well-rounded and successful because. When you’re leading folks, they’re going to follow you or they’re not. They’re gonna believe in you or they’re not. But to me, that trust, that respect [00:29:00] mutually both ways has been super critical to get us all in the same boat with a paddle in hand, rowing in the same direction, if you will.
And I think whether they’re professionals looking for me to help grow a long-term relationship and keep them happy with where they are personally and professionally. Students is a much shorter time window, but those students, when they graduate, they’ll come back to you. I was just talking to one of my former students just last week.
She just got engaged. Another student, my youngest is moving to Houston to start a PhD. She lives in Houston. I was asking her, where do you live in Houston? Could you connect with my daughter? And it’s just amazing the relationships you build over time. When you invest in people, being a leader, being a friend, being a career developer, that value of networking never, never gets old.
It’s always useful. And so leading different folks in different ages and stages of their career maybe requires slightly different approaches or understanding what’s there, why are they doing what they’re doing. But it’s [00:30:00] been very rewarding from that standpoint in terms of pivoting and changing how you lead.
But it all comes back to developing the person and in my mind, their work life harmony that makes them be successful in the long term.
[00:30:13] Mike Ogle: So when you talk about some of those things that people try to get themselves developed and they have, I. Satisfying careers. Can you think of some challenges that are happening in the industry these days that kind of make you the most excited about a career in supply chain, but also what makes a career in the industry potentially frustrating?
[00:30:36] Scott Mason: I. Absolutely. I’ve always enjoyed seeing new processes, new industries. I, I have optimized vehicle routing for chicken eggs, which 166,320 eggs fit on a 53 foot trailer. If you didn’t know airplanes with Boeing supply chains at Walmart. Everything in between. To me, seeing the new processes, how the big picture is connected, [00:31:00] how you can decompose processes down.
Understand their constituent parts and bring them back together. And where you can look for the efficiencies and places to optimize has always been exciting to me. If I can leverage prior knowledge, prior experiences, prior failures, when I come to a new supply chain problem, that’s always been a good thing.
Processes are processes, and if I know how to optimize inventory or worry about transportation costs, maybe there’s different modes of transportation. Maybe I’m looking at electric. 18 wheelers, but the transportation problem is still there. So I like bringing my historical knowledge, my toolbox of skills to new problems and domains, but also learning from these spaces.
And I think that’s exciting to me in that I. I might show somebody at Amazon or at another company. This used to work in semiconductors, for example, 30 years ago, and actually it’s still applicable today, or learning brand new things and sharing in that knowledge transfer has always been [00:32:00] exciting for me.
You mentioned frustrating. Frustrating to me is just around people who are close-minded and unwilling to learn new things or they’re set in their ways. It’s the, we’ve always done it this way, so we’re not going to change. I faced that when I was young in my career. I faced that now when I’m 30 years into my career, there are just people who like things the way they are.
The status quo is fine with them, and that’s frustrating to me because they might have a very good way to do it, and I can have them teach me their way and I can learn from them. Just a frustration is when people are not willing to consider other opinions or it’s their way or the highway. The old child, this is my ball, and if we’re not gonna play the game, I wanna play with my ball.
I’m taking my ball and going home. Those people do exist and I find that incredibly frustrating. Just the close-mindedness of some folks, and there’s not a lot of them. By no means I’m not perfect, but I’m always willing to learn and unlearn, and I think that’s my frustration is when they just don’t wanna listen regardless of your level, your background, or the senior [00:33:00] leader who doesn’t hear what the hire has to say, that’s just closed-mindedness to me, and it’s not smart.
[00:33:06] Rodney Apple: Yeah, I, I could echo that sentiment. And having a growth mindset really could help evolve, like you said. And I love your comment on commentary on not just willingness to learn, but willingness to unlearn, acknowledge that. Your way might be a little better and move in that direction. Right. Speaking of advice, I would love to hear, Scott, if you go back throughout your career, what was some of, what was some of the best advice you’ve received that really made it a difference in your career, and is there anything you’d like to offer up of your own to our audience?
[00:33:39] Scott Mason: Absolutely, and I, I’ll summarize some of the other points I’ve mentioned. Continuous learning. One of my favorite phrases, if your only tool hammer, everything looks like a. I like to bring what I’ll call the Lowe’s toolbox with me to problems. I’ve always tried to add new school skills and techniques so that I can approach every problem with a fresh mind and not thinking there’s only one way [00:34:00] to solve it.
I think one of the best advice I ever received was when I was thinking about, uh, career transition, and one of my mentors said. Make yourself a two by two matrix and the columns make column one things I like to do and column two things I don’t like to do. And then the rows make them things I’m good at and things I’m not good at.
If you picture that little two by two grid, it’s really fun when you work on things that you’re good at that you like to do. And that little two by two grid, he said you need to spend some time and start brainstorming, writing things down. Fill ’em into each of the quadrants. And if you take that time, you’ll understand what you’re good at and what you like to do, or maybe what you’re not good at, but you still like to do.
And if I can take that time and reassess where I’m at. What am I working on? My career choices, my pivots are gonna be informed by that matrix because if I can stay away from things that I’m not good at, that I don’t like to do, that’ll probably keep me fairly happy, and that’s [00:35:00] been a very useful little tip that I’ve used throughout my career.
I think me personally, I very much value people who are on time. They deliver results. If they don’t know something, they’ll tell me that, but they’ll go find it out and they’ll get back to me. They complete their action items. In other words, I tell people, walk the talk. You can tell me all day long that you’re gonna do this, or, oh, that’s a great idea.
If you don’t come back and actually follow through, that is a big miss. So I think that would be some strong advice I would give. And lastly, I think the power of networking will shock you. I have, uh. Had mentors. I’ve been a mentor. I’ve met students. One of the people who recruited me to Clemson, I met her as a PhD student when I was at Arizona State.
We’ve now been friends for 30 years. I mentioned talking to former students because my youngest is moving to Houston, and I’ve stayed in touch with them. The power of networking is amazing because I’ve heard, I think it [00:36:00] was Matthew McConaughey said, life may be about the journey or the destination, but to him it’s about the company.
I couldn’t agree more. My investment in people understanding them, mentoring folks, and being mentored, all of those together have made me into whatever success or who I am today. And I think that’s a very valuable thing, is that when in this digital connected world where everybody’s on their phone and nobody calls on the phone and everybody instant messages.
The power of human relationships and talking to people like this podcast is fantastic having a discussion because email has no tone. You can’t hear my sarcasm. Email is asynchronous as are text messages. And then you’re wondering, why did they respond to me? You know what? Pick up the phone and talk to people.
So I think that’s a long-winded old guy way of saying personal communication is super important. You need to walk your talk.
[00:36:54] Mike Ogle: Yeah, I would say probably about 25 years ago or so, always had a personal [00:37:00] rule that if I end up having, this was before text messaging, before I even had a mobile phone, but you had three emails that went back and forth and the conversation was just getting a little bit more jumbled.
You realize that there’s almost a tone that you may be picking up, and it may be right, it may be wrong. Pick up the phone, have the conversation, and be able to understand whether there really is an issue going on.
[00:37:27] Scott Mason: Absolutely. It’s amazing how many times you’ll get something misconstrued or you can write the same phrase and I may read it as completely benign and somebody else, it might set them off and all of a sudden you’re writing a, I didn’t mean to offend you, email.
No. Pick up the phone, have that conversation ’cause there is tone, there is intonation. I think that’s just been key. We have a lot of meetings now online and that’s fine. I turned my camera on. I want body languages there. We wanna talk to people. I wanna be present, be engaged, and it’s just so easy with [00:38:00] the volume of things that are coming at us with everything we’re being expected to do.
You know, you can take shortcuts, you can blow things off, and in my experience, that’s not a good play long term.
[00:38:11] Mike Ogle: Yeah, a text and an emoji.
[00:38:13] Scott Mason: Copy that.
[00:38:15] Mike Ogle: Ten four. Alright, well Scott, this was a, a great session. We really appreciate everything that you provided for us. It’s great and we want to thank you for a great conversation and your insights about supply chain careers.
[00:38:29] Scott Mason: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me today.
[00:38:37] 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.
[00:39:00] Visit SCM talent [email protected].
