[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.
[00:00:28]
Mike Ogle: Visit SCM Talent Group at scmtalent. com. In this episode of the Supply Chain Careers podcast, we talk with Tarek Taha of J. B. Hunt Transportation Services, where he serves as Senior Director of Engineering and Technology. Tarek is also a Maxwell Leadership Certified Coach, Speaker, and Trainer. Helping individuals and teams achieve their full potential.
[00:00:52]
Mike Ogle: Tarrant talks about his start and development in his supply chain career, including some of his most challenging work. He shares some of the lessons he learned early on about working with and leading people through big projects and big changes, plus making those changes sustainable. On that people side, he dives deeper into what it means to be a mentor and rotational engineering program for new engineers.
[00:01:16]
Mike Ogle: Coaching them forward in their career paths. He talks about how that coaching expertise led to becoming a Maxwell Leadership certified coach, and the value in applying the principles Tarek closes with some of the trends he is seeing and his advice to others pursuing supply chain careers. I’m your podcast co-host Mike Obel, and I’m your podcast co-host Rodney Apple.
[00:01:41]
Mike Ogle: Tarek, welcome to the Supply Chain Careers podcast.
[00:01:44]
Tarek Taha: Thanks very much, Mike. It’s great to be here with you and Rodney.
[00:01:48]
Mike Ogle: So how did you get started in supply chain? What were some of the biggest influences that got you into a career in supply chain?
[00:01:57]
Tarek Taha: Well, Mike is it’s great to be on here. I know you and I share the same background in terms of schooling, getting industrial engineering degrees from University of Arkansas.
[00:02:07]
Tarek Taha: And, you know, so coming out of industrial engineering, the best definition I heard of it was from the man who, you know, well, Dr. Emhoff, who founded the department at Arkansas, and he said, industrial engineers improve organized efforts. And I love that. And so with IE, you have many options. You could go into traditional manufacturing, healthcare, or any area.
[00:02:30]
Tarek Taha: And during a summer internship, while I was pursuing my master’s in IE from Arkansas, I had a chance to intern at J. B. Hunt Transport. And that’s really what turned the corner for me. And that ended up being a fantastic experience. The company was generous enough to fund part of my master’s thesis work because I did some work that was, uh, hopefully helpful to the company at that time.
[00:02:54]
Tarek Taha: And so that’s really how I got into supply chain. My background is such that my father has written a very well-known textbook and operations research. He’s also an industrial engineer. And he’s, he wrote a textbook actually that came out. The first edition came out the year I was born, which we won’t talk about what year that was, but it was a long time ago.
[00:03:15]
Tarek Taha: I suppose one could, could look it up if they want to do, but so I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I, when I got into school, but industrial engineering. Really was a good fit for me. And so that’s a roundabout way of saying that I got into industrial engineering. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it.
[00:03:36]
Tarek Taha: I got this internship and really enjoyed my work at J. B. Hunt. And my goodness, it’s just been, it’s been a fun ride for, for many years. So Tariq,
[00:03:46]
Rodney Apple: in addition to J. B. Hunt, I see you have. Spent some time as a adjunct professor and now you’re, you know, we’ll talk about this later, but moved into leadership coaching and speaking and training and would love to hear about some of those key pivotal moves throughout your career that really made a difference in terms of your advancement.
[00:04:07]
Tarek Taha: Absolutely. Yeah, I’ve only Rodney worked for two companies in my career. One was ABF Freight System and now called ARCBEST in the Fort Smith, Arkansas area and got a great start there at that company. And I did a couple of jobs there but really cut my teeth in the in the warehouse, working in our bright bulks, optimizing.
[00:04:28]
Tarek Taha: Routes and doing all kinds of engineering improvements that are related to that LTL network. And I really learned a lot and got a great base of experience there and I have nothing but good things to say at that place. And then I got the chance to come back home, so I’m from the Northwest Arkansas area.
[00:04:46]
Tarek Taha: And my wife Susanna and I had a chance to come back home and I took a job with J. B. Hunt. The thing I love about J. B. Hunt, and it really goes back to our founder, is the entrepreneurial spirit that Mr. Hunt had. I’ve gotten to do all kinds of fun projects since I’ve been here. Actually, it’s my 20 year anniversary is coming up next, next year.
[00:05:09]
Tarek Taha: I’ve done things from lead process improvements to working closely with our railroad partners and leading various engineering and technology teams. What was your most. Fun and challenging role to date. Wow, that’s a, that’s a hard question. I think you learn something about yourself in every role, whether it’s a good fit for you or not.
[00:05:34]
Tarek Taha: And as I think about that, you know, I would say I’m going to go back to the very first job I was hired to do when I came to J. B. Hunt in 2004. It was to lead a back office improvement project, if you will, across 20 different teams. And so, this is where we were looking to add some improvements to our back office processes and make it basically improve our quality of revenue.
[00:06:02]
Tarek Taha: We had a lot of hands touching in the process and touching those systems. And so, when you’re talking about Getting groups of people in a room from different teams and coming up with new and better ways of getting our quote to cash, so to speak, that was a three year project that involves many ups and downs.
[00:06:21]
Tarek Taha: I got to present in front of leadership multiple times. It was kind of a crash course and J. B. Hunt and then and then learning to work with people, which it I feel like I have an aptitude for that, but really that had me firing on all really relying on others to get things done. So it was a role where I wasn’t leading all those people.
[00:06:44]
Tarek Taha: But one thing I would tell young engineers and even more seasoned people is is a real key is learning to get work done. Through other people, and, you know, that’s just something that I’ve always gone back and leveraged that early experience here at Hunt and other jobs that I’ve had. Excellent.
[00:07:05]
Mike Ogle: Hey, by the way, on LinkedIn, notice that your profile after your name shows People Leader.
[00:07:11]
Mike Ogle: Coach and mentor. So what do those mean to you? And can you tell our audience how you got there?
[00:07:20]
Tarek Taha: Yeah, Mike, I appreciate you asking that question. I’ll actually go about it in reverse. And normally people on LinkedIn may put their exact titles. And certainly if you want to delve into my profile, you would see those, but I’ll start with mentor.
[00:07:37]
Tarek Taha: So I have the joy of leading a rotational engineering program for our company. And I, I helped start it in 2016. And so this is a program where brand new engineers come into our company and they do three six month rotations in different areas of engineering and technology and in the business. And so since that time of inception, we’ve seen more than a hundred engineers come through the program from probably 15 plus schools.
[00:08:06]
Tarek Taha: So, we get to recruit from, we’ve had engineers from Northwestern, from Arkansas, Kansas state, Oklahoma state, bunch of different schools. So I was a new engineer once, so I know what they were, I know what they’re feeling. And so. Mentoring young talent and watching them light up as they gain confidence is a real joy for me.
[00:08:30]
Tarek Taha: And so I definitely get to play that mentor role day to day and week to week. So that’s the mentor part. On the coach side, if you think about coaching, so somebody might go to a counselor to get some help with some things that happened in the past. The thing about being a coach is that’s really helping somebody catch a vision for where they want to go or it’s more forward-looking.
[00:08:53]
Tarek Taha: It’s not where they currently are, but it’s where they want to be. And so I just love helping engineers see the potential of where they could be instead of currently are helping them create that vision. And, you know, it was just really, I was telling some engineers the other day. Often in my day, it would be called cliff notes.
[00:09:15]
Tarek Taha: You know, today they might call it cheat codes. There’s no, no cheat code or shortcut to success. It really takes building that base of experience as you go along to do that. So that’s the mentor and the coach and then people leader. So let’s talk about this a little bit. Patrick Lencioni, who you would probably be familiar with, many in the audience would be familiar with.
[00:09:35]
Tarek Taha: He wrote, he’s written many great books, but he talks about two motives for why people want to be a leader. The first would be more reward centered, so it comes with attention, control, influence on others. The second is that you want to serve, and so that’s more responsibility centered. It’s a burden you, you must give far more than you receive.
[00:09:56]
Tarek Taha: So Pat makes the point that a person, when we say somebody is a good servant leader, we’re acting like there’s another legitimate type. And so I would, I would agree with that and say that I think servant leadership, helping others. Be better, fly higher than you ever did is a real privilege and a burden.
[00:10:18]
Tarek Taha: And, and so I see myself as that kind of leader. I, and, and here’s the thing, I don’t always hit the mark, but I aspire to be that kind of leader that would make things about them and not about me.
[00:10:30]
Mike Ogle: Yeah. I think especially when you end up. Facing so many different personality types and ambitions. That’s always a challenge.
[00:10:40]
Tarek Taha: Indeed. Indeed, it sure is. Yeah, and that’s a thing. I mean, I would also tell young engineers coming into the workplace as this is a careers podcast, is that you’re going to get to work with people who are very different from you. Not only would they be maybe from a different background, different school.
[00:10:58]
Tarek Taha: But, but you’re also going to get to work with the different generations as well. And so learning those skills, I don’t know that we’re taught that very well in school or set a different way, Mike, I don’t know how one might teach that in school. It’s almost something that you have to experience and skin your knee and get some bumps and bruises along the way.
[00:11:19]
Tarek Taha: But I would definitely agree with you on that.
[00:11:22]
Mike Ogle: Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to ask one small follow up. When you talk about the rotational program. It seems like these days there tends to be a little bit more resistance to moving around a lot in a company. People get there into an area, start having kids, married, friends, and, and they tend to want to stay put.
[00:11:45]
Mike Ogle: You know, have you seen Whether there’s that kind of resistance, or do you see a lot of eagerness to dive into those kinds of rotational programs?
[00:11:54]
Tarek Taha: Yeah, I certainly get that. And I think the, what you described is, is, is true of my generation. I think, I think there’s definitely a, we see an eagerness in these kids to want to try new things.
[00:12:06]
Tarek Taha: And so one of the draws of this program is that, Hey, I don’t have to decide what I want to be right off the bat. I can actually try some different jobs. And we’ve had, for instance, we had a very, uh, intelligent young engineer come in and I could have told you that that person is going to go into an optimization role because he’s so technical and so smart.
[00:12:29]
Tarek Taha: Well, he did end up going to that role, but then along the way in the rotation program, he did some more business facing roles that caused him to have to learn how to interact with stakeholders and gain some of those skills. And he leveraged many of those relationships and building his network that really served him well when he landed in his final role, but, or his post graduation role.
[00:12:53]
Tarek Taha: But, but I would tell you that, uh, yeah, I think there’s probably a little bit of both, but it’s what we’re told by the people who come into the program is, is it’s really a draw that, that I can try different experiences and don’t have to figure out who I want to be right off the bat.
[00:13:10]
Rodney Apple: You’ve got over two decades at J.B. Hunt, and I know your role kind of spans, you know, both engineering and technology, so I’m sure you’ve had a pretty broad portfolio of projects to manage or be part of over these years. Any, any, any one that comes to mind that was a big challenge that required a lot of change that you might want to highlight, and then any advice for how You know, folks can approach these types of big projects that require a lot of change throughout the organization.
[00:13:39]
Tarek Taha: Yeah, sure, Rodney. I’ll, I mentioned the project earlier that was a multi departmental effort to streamline our back office systems. And, you know, I would just make an add on to what I said earlier. It’s important to leverage what you know, and you never know how prior experience will serve you well when you’re meeting new challenges.
[00:14:01]
Tarek Taha: And I’ll, I’ll give you an example of that. And for me, it was leading Sunday school groups, adult Sunday school classes in my church for, for many years. Well, I was working at ArtVest and I had a, you know, basically it’s facilitating a large group of people and helping everyone participate and essentially helping the team win together.
[00:14:21]
Tarek Taha: And it’s amazing how I never thought at the time I enjoyed that, but I never thought at the time how that would serve me later when I was leading this cross-departmental project and some of those skills really served me well there. I’ll give another example and that was really the team I lead now is involved with our final mile or last mile delivery services.
[00:14:45]
Tarek Taha: And so part of our responsibility is to design automated warehouses for some of our customer partners. And so there’s a lot. Going on, so you’ve got a complex technology. You’ve got working with vendors. You’re working with operations personnel, maintenance personnel, and that’s certainly not without its, its bumps, but I think that’s been one of our more challenging processes or projects that we’ve worked on recently.
[00:15:14]
Tarek Taha: First thing you got to do, Rodney, is just hire great talent and people who are up to the job, but then as a leader, I need to go first. And I need to smooth the way and, and, and be able to, to talk to stakeholders and, and, and really help communicate the intent of the team and of the project. And they’re just going to be things that, that come up that are, that are a challenge.
[00:15:38]
Tarek Taha: And so, as a leader, I really want to set my team up for success. And so I’ll drop this in now, but as you think about it. When we’re young in our career, and we’re young engineers, we get notoriety by what we do. And so we are doers. And then, later in our careers, as you grow in leadership, and I know you have many leaders on the show, you, you’re, you’re really known for You need to focus the team’s effort on getting things done.
[00:16:08]
Tarek Taha: So you’re less of a doer and more of a coordinator and communicator with people across the companies. So that’s all of that came into play on, on some of the more recent projects I’ve worked on. And I was going to, so Rodney, did you have a question on approaching change? Did I, did I get that right?
[00:16:26]
Rodney Apple: Yes. With all the projects you’ve had to lead across, you know, different departments and functions, including, you know, external with your customers and other partners, you know, change is usually the most. Difficult aspect to get things to be, you know, the change to be sustainable, right? So any, any advice for how people and employees and even folks leading these projects, how they should may think about this and approach it.
[00:16:50]
Tarek Taha: Yeah, I love that. So I think I have a few thoughts here. The first is to be authentic, to be you, you know, know that that’s something that happens over time, but, but really the world is best served when we’re authentically ourselves. And and so I think that’s important. And then, you know, realizing that things won’t always turn out how you’ve designed them and and engineers can tend to be rigid and more bent towards structure.
[00:17:15]
Tarek Taha: I know that’s something I’ve had to fight. But but as you. As you grow in your career, you need to learn to be more comfortable in the gray, if you will, and I would say also focusing on building great relationships and so that people stakeholders, for instance, and in a complex project, they know you’re for them.
[00:17:32]
Tarek Taha: They know you’ll go the extra mile and you’re coming together to help the team win and then really communication is so important. And and I see this so many times that sometimes people will mistake a 20 page email with hundreds of forwards in it for as communication when nobody’s reading most of that email.
[00:17:53]
Tarek Taha: So really getting being having clear communication. Making sure you’re summarizing the key points for stakeholders and getting agreement and then really going back and and not surprising stakeholders in a meeting. Make sure you pre communicate with those stakeholders ahead of time. So when they’re going into the meeting, you’re seeing more head nods than shaking of heads and folded arms.
[00:18:17]
Tarek Taha: So those are a few thoughts I have on approaching change stuff.
[00:18:22]
Mike Ogle: That’s very good because we’ve had a few guests in the past where Okay, This whole aspect of change and getting people prepared and not surprised is, as you mentioned, has been. Really key for them.
[00:18:38]
Tarek Taha: Yeah, it’s it’s so it’s so important. And we often can overlook the change piece when we’re focused on achieving a plan, Mike, and so I think we need to make a plan for change.
[00:18:53]
Tarek Taha: And if you expect things to go wrong, you hope for the best, but, you know, things won’t go as planned, but then you get out in front of them as quickly as you can. And then and then here’s another thought that just came to my guys, which is. It’s really just own the outcome, own it, be quick to take responsibility when things don’t go as planned, and then communicate what you’re doing to mitigate, uh, those changes that are coming into the project.
[00:19:20]
Rodney Apple: And don’t make excuses, right?
[00:19:23]
Tarek Taha: That’s right. Excuses are not welcome. It’s really, what are you going to do to get us back on the right path?
[00:19:30]
Mike Ogle: And connected to The projects and changes and such, anytime that you end up having disruptive types of change or even incremental things where people have gotten used to a particular system, you know, whether it’s software or your process or the kind of people that you’ve worked with, but there’s going to be some, some changes to things.
[00:19:52]
Mike Ogle: I think one of those that gets to be disruptive certainly is the pace of technology change and trends that are hitting us. So what trends are you seeing in the industry that. Are really providing a lot of impact on how people build and manage their supply chains. How do you think they need to prepare themselves to be successful?
[00:20:14]
Tarek Taha: Yeah, well, I’m sure many of your guests talk about AI and we’re all just learning what that means. And I was, you know, I’m learning it myself. And I think it’s, it’s, it’s an understatement to say it’s going to, it’ll change, change the way we, we run our business. But. I think it’s important to, to not be scared of the new technology and really to, to try to understand it the best you can.
[00:20:38]
Tarek Taha: I mean, look, I think we will always need great people to run our supply chains. And so when I think about our company. We are now hiring students who believe that, you know, they can know everything because of the device that’s in their, in their pocket, and there’s nothing you can’t look up. It seems like every time I’m at a dinner or a lunch with somebody and a question is asked, somebody pulls their phone out and you can find out the answer instantly.
[00:21:10]
Tarek Taha: But I am going to go back to people, gentlemen. I mean, we are so focused on hiring people who are humble. Hungry and people smart. And I think that you’re going to always need great people to make sure we’re successful. There, there’s a, there’s a great book by Arthur Brooks that talks about the most create our brains are most set up for creativity between, you know, until we’re like, I don’t know, between 20 and 35 years old.
[00:21:41]
Tarek Taha: And beyond that, it’s what we call second curve. So folks of my generation, we’re, We’re better at kind of making sense of systems and leveraging our knowledge and experience to, to help bring that to the table. But, um, I’ve started by talking about people and I think people will need to learn, younger generations need to learn to work with people who are different than they are, and we’ll need to learn to see diversity as a strength.
[00:22:08]
Tarek Taha: You know, I would tell you that Gen X, my generation, we have much to learn from Gen Z and vice versa. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone into a coaching session and I feel like I’m the one being coached. So I think people will always be important to making smart supply chain decisions. And you’re going to need people.
[00:22:26]
Tarek Taha: And you’re going to need people with the skills to think for themselves instead of just relying on the phone that’s in their pocket. And the most successful people in our industry, really in any industry, are going to be those that can anticipate their customers needs before they happen and then develop solutions that will actually go above and beyond just meeting the needs but then actually delight the customers.
[00:22:53]
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]. So how do you, how do you keep up with the trends that are out there and determine what to try to bring in to others and, and say, maybe this is something we need to pursue?
[00:23:20]
Tarek Taha: Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, I read the Wall Street Journal and I, and I keep up, I keep up with, and, and that does actually a pretty good job of, of, of summarizing a lot of the new tech that’s out there. And so that may spark ideas. And then I really put a premium on asking our team to bring new ideas to the table that we may be able to leverage in the future.
[00:23:42]
Tarek Taha: For instance, in our warehouse space, one engineer in particular, he gets very excited about the tech. So we, so in that space, we attend ProMat. Every year in the big material handling show, I believe next year, it’s in Chicago again, if somebody is in that space and you haven’t been, you absolutely should go.
[00:24:00]
Tarek Taha: It’s amazing. But, you know, so we’re going around talking to all the vendors and seeing what’s maybe 2, 3, 4 steps ahead of where we are so we can start to build those relationships. And I’m really going to value the people on my team that can bring that type, those types of advancements to the table.
[00:24:19]
Rodney Apple: I have a follow up on that.
[00:24:22]
Rodney Apple: With the advancements in technology, you mentioned ProMAT, you got MODX, it’s like, sometimes like a kid walking in a candy store when you see all the robots and things, you know, walking around. So, as you implement new technologies, and then next thing you know, there’s something that comes out that’s got shinier bells and louder whistles.
[00:24:43]
Rodney Apple: How do you evaluate, you know, the technology, just as you’re putting something in, there’s something that’s coming out that’s the latest and greatest? What goes into the decision making of when do you consider maybe, uh, making a change or do you have any concerns that a competitor could have something better that’s out on the market because, you know, how do you keep up with it is probably the best way to say it.
[00:25:05]
Tarek Taha: Yeah, well, some of those decisions, Rodney, are made for us because really, the way our company’s been so successful is we don’t go out on the bleeding edge of technology. I mean, it has to pay for itself, so as opposed to perhaps more tech startups that can take more risks in that area, we’re going to go, it’s not that we’re not going to try certain things, but we’re not going to make big bets on stuff like that.
[00:25:28]
Tarek Taha: I mean, as I think about. Some of the, we looked at, you know, I’ve definitely seen all the robots and automated pallet systems and things like that, that our engineering team is quite interested and excited about. But then we have to go back to our stakeholders and our customers and say, well, you know, is this going to make cost sense?
[00:25:47]
Tarek Taha: And we’ll be able to, we’ll be able to, to still deliver value to the customer. And then make what we consider a good margin on it. So I think for us, it starts with being a cost decision, but that does not stop us from being innovative and looking for new opportunities. Now the engineer in me wants to go out and Hey, let’s try it.
[00:26:07]
Tarek Taha: But, but I’m also proud to work for a company like I do that, that is so fiscally responsible and really channel, I would say, like I mentioned earlier, channeling the, channeling the roots of our, our founder, Mr. Hunt, but then being fiscally responsible. That’s
[00:26:24]
Rodney Apple: a great answer. Segway back into leadership it.
[00:26:29]
Rodney Apple: I see you’ve been involved with the Maxwell leadership program and gotten certified there as a coach. Would love to hear more about what led you down that path and how you’re leveraging that to benefit your career and especially to benefit others.
[00:26:43]
Tarek Taha: I, I, I was excited about this question, Rodney. So I, you know, so really my journey into Maxwell leadership, uh, began in, in 2018.
[00:26:54]
Tarek Taha: And so I’ll tell a little bit of a, a personal story around this. So, I was, in 2018, I was feeling great. I was really climbing. I was climbing the ladder, had I have a wonderful family, had a great job. I was really in the best physical shape of my life. Until that ladder I was climbing really crashed to the ground.
[00:27:13]
Tarek Taha: And so I found myself lying in hospital bed, texting my bank account passwords to my best friend in the middle of the night. And so there’s a story behind that. And so for two weeks earlier, I had woken up with full body chills from a high fever. I had fevers that raged as high as 105 degrees. And I had a cough that got progressively worse, and my wife, Susanna, said, Tarek, we’ve got to get some answers.
[00:27:41]
Tarek Taha: You can’t go on like this. And so in the hospital, they found an infection on my lungs, but worse yet, on my brain. And so we consulted the only neurosurgeon in northwest Arkansas, Dr. Shepard. And I asked him at the time, Dr. Shepard, how serious is this? And he said, Tarek, this is very serious. And so as you all might imagine, I wasn’t too excited about having brain surgery at Northwest Arkansas, and I wanted to go to the Mayo Clinic, but Dr.
[00:28:12]
Tarek Taha: Shepard said if we move you, this infection would rupture and you would die instantly, so. I had no choice but to have surgery at a small hospital in Arkansas, and with it came the risks of not walking, talking, or having a normal life. And I was so fearful about what I could lose that I never stopped to think about what I might gain.
[00:28:34]
Tarek Taha: And so I’m waking up from that surgery thinking, am I okay? And so Dr. Shepard came by to tell me the surgery had gone very well and in fact he called it textbook. And when he left, I started thinking about his purpose and how all those years of medical training had led him to that day in 2018 when he saved my life.
[00:28:55]
Tarek Taha: And so I started wondering, what’s my purpose? What’s my life about? I always strive for success and money and status and those type things. I really thought the key to my self esteem was being esteemed by others. But something changed in me after that surgery. I actually didn’t lose from it. Instead, I gained a passion to use my God given gifts to impact others.
[00:29:19]
Tarek Taha: And this is what I’ve realized, guys, is that I haven’t arrived yet. But that doesn’t matter because climbing the ladder as it might traditionally be defined was never my goal. Really, for me, And the goal is the person I’m becoming by pursuing a legacy of significance. And so when my ladder came crashing down, I really thought my life was over.
[00:29:44]
Tarek Taha: I really should have died from that, but, but really it had just begun. So that’s a roundabout way of telling you, how did I get to Maxwell leadership? I’ll, I’ll boil it down to this. I just really started getting into personal growth. And in looking for other ways to, to, to grow as a person, and I found John Maxwell’s podcast, I started reading different books.
[00:30:07]
Tarek Taha: And the reason I love Maxwell leadership is John always talks about each of us are people of value. And if we believe everybody else on the earth has value, I should make it my goal to add value to them. And so I love coaching. I get to do it as part of my job here. I have my own coach, Tom Telesco. He’s impacted my life by helping me see my possibilities instead of limitations.
[00:30:34]
Tarek Taha: And, you know, so I hope I’ve made an impact on the people I get the privilege of coaching one on one. And then actually just before this meeting, I did a mastermind group on one of John’s books, his newest book called High Road Leadership. Oh,
[00:30:50]
Rodney Apple: I appreciate you sharing that story with our audience. That’s very heartfelt and glad you made it through, okay.
[00:30:56]
Rodney Apple: And, uh, you know, there’s that silver lining that you described that really, you know, seems to enhance purpose for you and, uh, and helping others and giving back. So that’s, that’s tremendous.
[00:31:07]
Tarek Taha: Yeah. And I was going to say, so, so about it as part of this journey, and it’s like I said, it started in 2018, but about a year, year and a half ago, I started a blog on a platform called substack that some of your listeners may be familiar with.
[00:31:20]
Tarek Taha: And basically what I’m doing is I’m reading lots of books. I don’t know about you all, but I, I see Rodney, you’ve got lots of books there in the back. I’ve got more books than I’ve read that I can read, but I read a lot of books. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I filter through things through my experience.
[00:31:36]
Tarek Taha: And so I write a short weekly blog comes out on Sundays. It takes about two minutes to read. I also am trying to test my podcasting voice. So I do audio voiceover on it. But if anybody is interested in it, the address to it is www. tareks. blog. So T A R E K S dot B L O G. We’d love to have you as a subscriber
[00:32:01]
Rodney Apple: if
[00:32:01]
Tarek Taha: you’re interested.
[00:32:02]
Rodney Apple: We’ll be sure to highlight that when we publish the podcast and have it on our website as well. And I’m going to sign up right now myself.
[00:32:12]
Mike Ogle: Hey, I am signed up and, uh, getting the emails.
[00:32:16]
Tarek Taha: Awesome. Appreciate that, Mike. Glad to have you as a subscriber.
[00:32:21]
Mike Ogle: So one of the things we like to do typically towards the, the end of a, of a podcast recording is to close with some of the best advice that you’ve received over the years.
[00:32:31]
Mike Ogle: Things that have had an impact on you and you’ve kind of taken them to heart, but also a few that you kind of learned. As well along the way and that you’re passing on to others.
[00:32:43]
Tarek Taha: Oh, I love this question. This is fantastic and i’ll start mike with one You will be familiar with because we both had the same professor back in the day, but dr.
[00:32:51]
Tarek Taha: John emhoff Would always say with all that getting good understanding And i’ve used that so many times he’s quoting proverbs 4 7 But here’s where I always use this with people. So don’t assume, you know the whole story Because our brains will do what they do and fill in the gaps. We really need to get great at asking questions.
[00:33:15]
Tarek Taha: And so I always tell young engineers that don’t assume you know the whole story. Ask the second and the third question. And then once you get understanding, not only will you be better informed, but you’ll also help that other person feel listened to. The second thing, I’ve got four here, is I used to think failure was fatal, and I can remember times in my early career where I thought, man, I really messed that up.
[00:33:41]
Tarek Taha: I guess that’s it. That’s all of my career, but that’s not true at all. The greatest teacher you can ever have is failure, and this is a hard one for technical people or for engineers. Perfection won’t serve you. You’re gonna make mistakes and you just have to adjust along the way. And you know, the way John Maverick, John Maxwell describe it is you’ve got to get in the car and start driving in order to steer it.
[00:34:09]
Tarek Taha: You cannot drive a parked car. So I love that one. Thirdly, is you’ve got to own your career. If you’re new in your career or maybe mid career, your boss isn’t laying awake at night thinking about you. They may be thinking about you every now and then, but they’re thinking about their own issues and their challenges.
[00:34:30]
Tarek Taha: So you’ve got to be proactive and own. Own your career and, and take responsibility for it. If you’re in a situation that is not working out for you, then, then you need to, to make that known and, and, and own that situation. And, and the last one I would share with you all is just to be authentically you.
[00:34:51]
Tarek Taha: You will never feel truly like yourself if you’re just playing a role and trying to be someone you’re not. And it may take some time as it did for me, but learn to be comfortable in your own skin. And I would tell you that coaching helps. It’s
[00:35:08]
Rodney Apple: great advice. Be yourself, have a mentor and a coach. I mean, those are solid pieces of advice.
[00:35:17]
Tarek Taha: Absolutely. I think, I think that I know the value of, of coaching early on in my career. I would have hired one sooner. And in many cases, and I’ve got an advanced degree, but. But in many cases, I think coaching could be, uh, an accelerator for your life and your career that might be more impactful than that, than that, uh, advanced degree you’re looking at, or maybe at minimum, maybe you do both.
[00:35:44]
Mike Ogle: And I think there’s been a little bit of a tendency over the years, especially on the engineering side of things that having to. Ask for help and advice and such is felt to be a little bit more of a weakness rather than, well, of course I’ve been learning how to learn. And so I will go learn everything and, and apply it, you know, without having to utilize others advice and collaboration.
[00:36:12]
Mike Ogle: So it’s an easy trap to get into.
[00:36:15]
Tarek Taha: Yeah, Mike, I would, I would just add to that, that I always tell young engineers that asking questions is your superpower, and they often don’t think of it that way. So you’re going to be in meetings where you don’t understand what’s being talked about. There are acronyms mentioned that you have no idea what is being said.
[00:36:33]
Tarek Taha: And it’s okay to raise your hand and say, Hey, it may just be me, but could you go back and talk about this, this concept that you mentioned earlier? And what in doing that and using your superpower, you’re probably going to be bringing up points that others in the room aren’t, aren’t going to admit they don’t know either.
[00:36:55]
Tarek Taha: So, asking questions and admitting you don’t know where, where things are, here’s the thing. Nobody, no reasonable person would expect a new person to come into a role and know everything about the company. So, ask questions. It is your superpower.
[00:37:14]
Rodney Apple: Alright. That’s good. It is a superpower. I agree. And, and it’s not a sign of weakness to ask for help.
[00:37:20]
Rodney Apple: I think some people think that if, if they ask for help, then you’re going to look down on them like you should know this. And I’ve always said there’s, there’s no such thing as a dumb question.
[00:37:31]
Tarek Taha: That’s right. It’s just the one you don’t ask.
[00:37:34]
Mike Ogle: Amen. Hey, so I’m going to toss in one last thing here, I think before we end up moving our way into the, into the close, you know, it goes back to the question that I had asked about the people leader coach mentor, and you mentioned mentor was the first aspect of that.
[00:37:52]
Mike Ogle: What are you doing yourself these days in mentoring others?
[00:37:55]
Tarek Taha: I love to mentor engineers. So actually, after this call, I have a mentoring call with a fellow leader in our organization, and he’s younger in his career, but I’m really excited about talking through some challenges. He’s facing listening to what he’s going through.
[00:38:14]
Tarek Taha: And then. Hopefully listening and reflecting back and, and here’s the key with mentoring or coaching like in that situation, I believe the answers are already inside us and we just need somebody to help pull it out of us. And so that’s the magic of a coach. And somebody who can ask the right questions and ask the second and the third and the fourth question.
[00:38:38]
Tarek Taha: And then at the end of that session, they’re like, wow, that, that was really impactful, but really what you’re doing is helping them draw out the answers that were already inside of them. So I’m definitely looking forward to that session and have many of those that I do
[00:38:52]
Rodney Apple: week to week. So Tarek, we really appreciate your time and sharing these nuggets of wisdom.
[00:38:59]
Rodney Apple: And career advice on our Supply Chain Careers podcast. Thank you again for joining the show.
[00:39:05]
Tarek Taha: Thank you very much. Mike and Rodney, I enjoyed my time with you.
[00:39:12]
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.
[00:39:35]
Mike Ogle: Visit SCM Talent Group at scmtalent. com.
