Wanda Johnson

Mike Ogle: [00:00:00] Wanda, welcome to the Supply Chain Careers podcast.

Wanda Johnson: Thanks, Michael. It’s glad to be here. I’m excited about this pod- podcast on careers.

Mike Ogle: And what is your supply chain origin story? How did you first become aware of supply chain as a career and get started?

Wanda Johnson: Wow. ‘Cause I’m gonna date myself answering this question.

So let me just give you a background of my story, so that way you have a better understanding, because a lot of times when people look at careers, they look at where you are today, and that’s not where you started. I started out when I got out of college as accounts payable clerk. It has nothing to do with supply chain, right?

So I worked in a bookstore at Duke University as a accounts payable clerk, then I went to be a store manager at a store that doesn’t exist anymore, Eckerd drugstore. And that sim- if anybody’s in the world, they, if you’re dated, you’ll know what Eckerd means. So I was assistant store manager. I [00:01:00] unloaded trucks, I did time sheets, I did all of that.

Did people talk about supply chain back then? No, they did not. But it is part of the supply chain ’cause it’s the end, it’s the last step when the customer gets their product, right? But then from there I went to TJ Maxx. Still didn’t talk about supply chain ’cause I was a store manager, I was an internal auditor, so I went back to my audit background and my accounting background, right?

And then I did that. Then I landed at TJ Maxx as a distribution center analyst at their brand-new facility in Charlotte, North Carolina. So that’s when I got into the distribution side, but it’s still as a analyst. I did all the shrink reports for the stores, so I knew about the P&Ls for the stores. I understood all of that piece.

So if you look at my career, you asked me that question about the origin of supply chain, it really didn’t pop up until I got promoted to TJ– to Ralph Lauren. I became the manager of inventory control, and then we really [00:02:00] started bringing up supply chain and, and, hey, how do you actually connect all this together from the point of satisfying your customers to your inventory?

And then boom, when I got to Tompkins Associates as a consultant, that’s really when I was like, “Okay, I’m arriving in the supply chain world,” because I’m taking my industry experience, all the different varieties I had, and now I’m taking into a consultancy, um, role at Tompkins. And then from move, um, from there, I just moved over from Tompkins to CSC to Accenture.

Well, IBM, Accenture, and now I’m at Deloitte. So if you look at now, if you think about the last 20, well, since 20, 2020, well, since 2000, people are talking about supply chain, but if you really think about it, people didn’t know the word supply chain out in industry until when? COVID and the toilet tissue.

And that’s when I could really explain to my mom and my family, it’s like, “Hey, guys, this is [00:03:00] what I really do.”

Rodney Apple: Yeah, I rem- I remember that well, and it really was like the best publicity I think supply chain could get. And I re- I was the career coach for APICS, now ASCM, for about seven years, and they were always talking about how can we get better spotlight on supply chain in terms of careers.

Everybody thinks it’s trucking and logistics, and a lot of it is, but there’s so much more to it than that, and I think COVID did a, a good job for getting, getting that visibility into supply chain through toilet paper stockouts, right?

Wanda Johnson: Yes. And Horton, but anyway, we won’t go into that.

Rodney Apple: Uh-huh You certainly have had a fascinating career, Wanda, and y- a good chunk of your career, as you said, is more on that shipper side, retail, and then with Polo Ralph Lauren, I guess they’re both retail and apparel, right?

I was, uh, curious what led you to get into management consulting. A lot of times I see people on usually one side of the fence or the other. Doesn’t mean people don’t [00:04:00] co-mingle and move back and forth, but I’d love to hear some of those key lessons that you learned as you made that pivotal move, which it looks like that was back at Tompkins Associates.

Wanda Johnson: Yeah. And I’m gonna tell you the reason why. Tompkins, when I worked at Ralph Lauren, Tompkins Associates is the one who designed that facility that added on the factory outlet, ’cause I was factory outlet division, but we were picking by paper, the green bar paper. And so Tompkins came in and Deloitte, matter of factly, did the WMS implementation.

So but I really didn’t think about consulting at that point. The reason how I really got connected, I saw when I started talking to the guys from Tompkins, it was so exciting. They did different things. You learn continuously. You actually got to dive into not only retail, all the industries, so you became cross-industry.

So I just happened to put my resume out on monster.com, and it was picked up by Tompkins Associates. Jim Tompkins, [00:05:00] NC State professor, me, a NC State grad. It was this good transition for me to… And it, and I haven’t looked back, because I went to a small boutique, which now Tompkins is not small at all anymore.

But Jim has really grown that business, and he really grew the people that work there. I learned so much from not only my background with retail, but I really transitioned to life sciences, all that, that piece, technology, TMT, media, transpo- and hospitality. So I br- I got a breadth of expertise and knowledge that if you think about it, as you said, Rodney, “Hey, Wanda, you had the shipper point of view for supply chain.”

But people don’t realize that shipper point of view, no matter where you go, is transferable skills. That’s why I really like to make sure people understand. A lot of times you think supply chain, you’re going to supply chain, you’re gonna be unloading the [00:06:00] truck. No. It’s the whole holistic end-to-end ecosystem that you’re really gonna learn about.

Mike Ogle: Yeah, and one of the things, I’ve known Jim for a while because of the interaction at MHI when I worked there, and when I was running the College Industry Council on Material Handling Education, he was one of the early members of that organization, has been very involved and very outspoken. So had him speak to several of those College Industry Council meetings over the years as well.

Wanda Johnson: He’s a great speaker.

Mike Ogle: And I wanted to then ask about, lead that into, you’ve had some close involvement, especially in recent years with that, with MHI, the trade association, on an annual report that typically comes out around the time that they have the, the trade shows, whether it’s ProMat or MODEX. What have you seen this year as some of the big career impacting issues that are called out in the report?

Wanda Johnson: I think it’s two. It’s more than that, but we’re gonna just to- touch on [00:07:00] number one that’s in everybody’s head is AI. If you really think about in the report from last year, we talked about the digital ecosystem, how AI and the definition of agent to AI. This year we moved into how you keep the human in the loop.

And when you start looking at all that in that report, it’s very important people understand is we never took the human out of anything that we talked about. We actually continued to put in, uh, each one of the reports and defined as a report as you have to keep– you have to look at the requirements.

It’s not just about you taking on an AI engine, developing a model without understanding what are you trying to solve for, right? And then once you start looking at what you’re trying to solve for, how do you actually use the individual who’s been there doing this work day in and day out that knows the background to analyze that output?

So if you think about all of that in that report, we– this year, we really focused on the playbook of innovation and rewiring your [00:08:00] supply chain. You rewire your supply chain not just by putting in all this new technology automation, but rewiring the people that’s in there and their involvement in that.

And at the last section of the report, we really focus on going back to what are the tools you need to make sure that you have the right solution in place. And what the tools were, we went back to the basics, defining your requirements, looking at digital twins, looking at simulations, doing all those things to make sure what are you gonna actually map out for your roadmap, that those things are solvable and that you can actually produce something at the end.

Not something big. Let’s talk about smaller terms.

Mike Ogle: So I also wanted to ask a, a follow-up then. As you have all this extra information, it becomes harder and harder for people to process it all, and ways of then visualizing it so that people can do things that they do [00:09:00] well when they’re trying to make decisions, things relative to each other that, that may or may not have connections to each other.

Just trying to think in as you’re trying to enhance the human in the loop, then what are you seeing as far as some of those kinds of tools that help make it something that people can process well in, in collaboration with a, an AI that processes data better?

Wanda Johnson: Some of the tools– And that’s a great question ’cause a lot of times people look at, I have this tool, but what you do is you have an individual who actually may have done…

They may have been your inventory analyst, right? And they did all the controls, they checked all your cycle counts, they know how those reports look. But now the tools that they’re gonna use is they know that, hey, my output from my inventory when I ran my inventory report, it said I have ei-eighty-five percent accuracy, and I ran this report on certain days and I have [00:10:00] this output.

And they looked at that output and they sent it out to Johnny who went out and did the cycle count, right? But now how do I take all that information, input, that’s my inputs into the language, into AI? Hey, this is my use case. Now using the tool, how to get them to learn how to write a use case, you go and you work with a community college, you work with some technical, like, associates supply chain.

They have a lot of different classes. How do you get them involved in those classes to really understand taking the knowledge that they have done for the last five years, kinda manual, even though you may have a WMS, but now how do you take all of that and you have trained them to take that in- that data, create an input statement, create a use case, so now I have a good output?

And they understand what the output should look like, but now they can actually say, “You know what? This is correct, but this is wrong. How do I need to tweak it?” ‘Cause they know the background. So the tool [00:11:00] is training, re-skilling them through universities, community colleges, or you have a lot of s- online courses that you can actually provide to them to understand how to actually analyze data.

And they already have the analytical skills, but how do you enhance those skills they have?

Rodney Apple: It’s fascinating. I, it’s– I’m trying to learn as much as I can as well on these podcasts, so I appreciate you sharing that level of detail So Juan, shifting gears a little bit, uh, in management consulting, we know that the company, you guys get hired quite a bit to, to come up with a new strategy, but I’d love to hear your take on supply chain strategy.

We know a lot of them don’t always come to fruition, right? And what’s just your take overall from a broad high level, like what does it take to, to get the strategy right? And then I think secondly, how do you get it to where it’s sustainable when you think about the change management and get it to stick within the organization?[00:12:00]

Wanda Johnson: Let’s start with what takes to get it right. Number one take is you gotta go back to what do you– what is the pro- business problem? If you don’t understand what the business problem is, you can’t get it right and you can’t write a– Some people can try to write a roadmap, but it’s not gonna get them anywhere, right?

So you really need to understand why now do I need to make this change? So let’s go back and ask about, we just finished talking about AI and the automation and all that piece, right? So what is the business problem they’re trying to solve? It’s not the technology, it’s the process. Or it may be it probably is a process, or is it disconnected systems, whether you have siloed systems.

So how do you actually solve that problem? Now, the other piece to solving that problem is how does that tie into the data that you have in your data lake, right? And the one problem that, [00:13:00] you know, what people go wrong, I’ma just gonna throw that one in there. Where they go wrong is my problem is I wanna implement AI, I wanna put in AMR, I wanna do this.

What is that AR- AMR gonna do for you? Autonomous mobile robot. What is that goods to person gonna do for you if you don’t know what your business problem is? So your business problem would be, “Hey, I’m trying to improve the efficiency of my picking. I’m trying to improve the fact that Susie,” I love Susie, “Susie walks how many steps.

She keeps going back to that same repetitive location, and she pass it how many times.” So how do we actually– People do batch picking, but now what’s the next step? So how do you actually create those use cases, and you prioritize those use cases and say, “Okay, I know I need to solve this problem first, this second problem,” but how all those connect, that’s where you– that’s the strategy and that’s the roadmap you have to build out.

And the [00:14:00] roadmap is a pilot, and then if I get that right or if I go through use case number one, two, three that was high priority, now how do I pile on the other ones? But I want– And then before I in– finish saying this question, answering this question, I wanna make sure we understand that we have to put the people in there, the change management.

So if you bring in that technology, you got the business problem, the CEO, the CSO, and all those people can sit in a room and talk about it all day long, but Michael, if you’re the person that’s out there doing it day in and day out, if you don’t bring them into that journey with them, no matter what business problem you’re trying to solve or what you’re trying to achieve, that individual will not adopt to that change

Rodney Apple: You’ve probably seen this a couple times before, right?

Yes. Too many times to- ‘Cause the people don’t wanna pay for

Wanda Johnson: that. They don’t realize change management’s not just I’m [00:15:00] su- I’m training you, Rodney, on this technology. It’s the change in what you did today to what you’re doing tomorrow. New technology, new words, new everything. How do you close that gap? And if you got Susie’s been out in that warehouse picking or doing whatever for 15 years, how do you feel…

how do you think she feels when you don’t bring her into the room?

Mike Ogle: Oh, yeah. “Hey, here’s your new process sheet. Follow this. See you later.”

Wanda Johnson: Yeah.

Rodney Apple: Mm-hmm. So involving them with the solution is very helpful as s- versus that top-down that, that we just talked about, right?

Wanda Johnson: Yeah.

Rodney Apple: Yeah.

Wanda Johnson: Yeah.

Mike Ogle: Yeah, I love those kinds of situations, and I wish we had better ways of teaching that. There are case studies and such, but being able to do that with the students so that they can really understand those aspects without having to do it the hard way, where they come up with a [00:16:00] recommendation and didn’t come up with any kind of change management plan, and then wondered why it didn’t work.

Wanda Johnson: Yeah. That’s so true. And then when I talk to– I used to go to a lot of the middle schools here in Charlotte, Phillip O. Berry, which is a technical school, and I would actually talk about careers in consulting, but careers in engineering, in that area. Because a lot of times when you go and talk to the student, they wanna see real-life examples.

Of course, they always wanna know how much they’re gonna make, but let’s talk about if you start out with, in mathematics or you’re strong students in engineering, how do you take that skill set and how it’s transferable into a, a job that you wanna do in the future? I just think that we have to, as leaders, if we don’t go back, I know this is not on the topic, but if we don’t go back and reach down to middle school and the high school students to talk about these different careers and how they can pivot [00:17:00] and tell your story, we’re not doing a justice to them.

Because the, you can’t just go by, “Hey, I’m gonna be an IE and this is what I’m gonna do.” It’s a lot of ways, industrial engineer, that you can take that skill set and move it in different directions.

Mike Ogle: Yeah, I like that, particularly on the teaching people how to think. Just going through a process, analyzing things, breaking it down, prioritizing the pieces, figuring out how to go through and set up a process that’ll make it happen, and evaluate the results.

You just… Those kinds of things, y-you can do that with, even with somebody starting a lemonade stand at that age.

Wanda Johnson: Yeah. Start small. Yep.

Mike Ogle: Yeah. So as a supply chain technology fellow at Deloitte, how do you keep up with all of the fast pace of technology development, and what are some of the core strategies that you would recommend [00:18:00] for our listeners to follow, uh, and how should they think about assessing the fit of technology for their own businesses?

Wanda Johnson: Okay. For me, I had to really learn that it changes so quickly. I had to learn that years ago before podcasts came out. And so before the podcasts came out, I still do, I read a lot of books. I use– I read a lot of magazines to trade magazines like Material Handling, Logistics, Supply Chain Review, all those magazines.

And you know what? I’m still old school, I still get those magazines and I still read them. But also, I look at across so many podcasts out there. For me, I really like to listen to different viewpoints from the podcast group. So I do The New Warehouse with Kevin Lawton. I do Supply Chain Now. I do All In, which it talks about a lot of stuff, [00:19:00] but it’s really good to tell you where you are in the, the economy, ’cause it’s not just…

I think people think, “Hey, I’m gonna only listen to a podcast on technology.” The technology c- is a cost, right? So you really need to understand where we’re going in our, in our economy to understand how all that ties in together and how procurement goes out and sources for product. So what I’m saying to you, anybody that’s listening, and that’s listening, don’t just focus on one type of podcast.

Just don’t focus on one type of magazine. You need to look at everything holistically in the supply chain space, ’cause it’s from the point of, I like to listen to when they do the s- upfront sales process. I can’t remember the podcast. They were talking about, “Hey, how do I actually go out and buy in the buying process?”

That’s understanding because it feeds into before you got go and get the product from across the water, right? I like to listen to transportation podcasts to understand that [00:20:00] whole piece. So for me as a technology fellow, before I even became a technology fellow, I always wanted to make sure I had a well-rounded perspective.

I may not remember everything that I listened to, but it actually helps me when I go in front of a client to say to them, “What is industry standards? What’s going on in the industry? How does that is gonna affect you?” For me to be able to sit across from them to say that, “Hey, I understand that you may not have all this investment dollars to get there because of XYZ, but now how do we start small?”

Give them real life examples or things I’ve heard. I may have not do- I know I have 20 plus years of experience, but I have not done everything. But I have made sure that I can stay on top of what’s going on in the industry

Rodney Apple: Speaking of clients, Wanda, and I know you’ve seen your fair share, and as have I in this recruiting world, and you probably separate good clients and maybe not so [00:21:00] good clients, right? But what are those characteric- characteristics that you look for that gives you a high level of confidence that the engagement is gonna be successful?

‘Cause we know a lot of these projects, strategies, transformations, implementations, et cetera, don’t always go the right way, and many of them fail.

Wanda Johnson: One thing I do look for is the engagement of their team. And what I mean by that is when you go on a project, they say they, they understand they’re gonna try and solve for this problem, but the only people there in the room are the people within the four walls of the warehouse.

They don’t… Yes, I worked within the four walls of a warehouse, I understand that, but I like when the client comes back and says, “Hey, I wanna make sure I bring in Jack from finance.” I wanna make sure they bring in a team that can actually look at their problem holistically and not just narrow it down to one area.

That’s one thing I really– the [00:22:00] client– But also when the client says, “Hey, I know I have this problem. I know what these, some of the things I’m trying to solve for, but I’m coming in. Can you show me some type of tool or some type of way that would make it go faster?” And what they mean by go faster, this is what my budget is, this is when I, my deadline is.

I know that you may not be able to give me all of this within the six-month timeframe, but they already have a plan. But they’re looking for us also to give them advice, but not only advice, but to give them a solution that’s gonna work. But when they come to you with the right people in the room, the right knowledge, they already know that they have a data issue, they already know they have this issue, and they lay all those things out to you, and then we can work together as a team and collaborative.

Not that you’re there and I’m here. How do we work together to solve this problem together? I’m part of your team. I’m [00:23:00] augmented to your team

Mike Ogle: One of the interesting aspects, there’s so many different origins for s- supply chain careers, and I’m sure the people that you’ve seen around the table, sometimes with a supply chain title, they’ve come from finance, they’ve come from other places, just because once they get into an engagement like that and they go, “Oh, so that’s the way this supply chain stuff really works.

This is cool.” And once they understand it and they understand the finance side, it’s just as good as having somebody that’s a supply chain grad learn the finance. It either way can work, so I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of different origins of where people have come from to be successful in supply chain.

Wanda Johnson: And think about what I– we talked, your first question to me.

Mike Ogle: Oh,

Wanda Johnson: yeah. What, what my background. I came from finance, I came from accounting and inventory management. It doesn’t matter where you come from. I meet colleagues that came out of a biology degree or physics, but [00:24:00] think about in biology how you’re very detailed.

If you’re actually looking at a problem, it’s very complex. What is supply chain? So it’s transferable skills, so don’t ever think about what your career, what degree you have today or you’re graduating with is not transferable skills. Look at how complex things that you’re doing and take those skillsets and move them over to, if you want to get into supply chain, how do you actually tell that story?

I’m sorry, I maybe would pivot it from, but-

Mike Ogle: No, we love pivots. We, we do. I think in each of those cases, especially when you talk about the one of getting involved early with people about halfway through, then when you talked about middle school and some other ways of getting involved and trying to make sure that people get exposed to the right kinds of things early enough in their life so that they even know what the possibilities are.

Rodney Apple: Yeah.

Mike Ogle: All those things are great advice. And one of the things I wanted to [00:25:00] ask is, you’ve seen a lot of clients, you’ve had experience in the industry, you’ve had things that you’ve seen have, that have helped your own career and have helped with engagements. What are some of the best pieces of career advice that you’ve learned along the way and that you like to share with others?

Wanda Johnson: Don’t be afraid to jump into something that you’ve never done before. And what I mean by that, never done before, is my career advice is I came from retail. I was the inventory control manager, and then when they told me at Ralph Lauren, “Hey, Wanda, you’re gonna be over inventory control and wave planning,” and waving was a new concept.

But you know what? How do I actually understand how that connects together? And then from there, I just took a… I was, “Okay, let me just learn it. If I can learn X, Y, Z, I can learn this,” right? And that’s what I really want people to understand is, for me, I learned [00:26:00] all these different industries, but all of them connected in some type of way.

They all had inventory material flow. The other piece I really learned from advice from an operations manager when I was at TJ Maxx, he actually told me, “Wanda, build your career almost like the food pyramid or a plate of food.” And I was like, “James, what are you talking about?” And it really made sense.

Number one You always need a protein. What’s the strongest protein if you wanna actually relate that to what’s going on in supply chain is technology. It connects you, it makes you stronger, right? You always need– You don’t always need carbohydrates, but you can get those in. Those sugar fixes will help you boost your morale of your people that change in going up and down because carbs can go up and down, right?

And then you really do need what? Your vegetables. That’s gonna fuel you every single day. And what is that? That’s the people that [00:27:00] you’re gonna actually encourage each day, and you’re gonna feed them the things that they need. And when he told me that, I think back on my career when I was at a time that they were back in 2009 or that period, you guys remember the retail market went down and people were not doing a lot of retail implementations of…

And I was always known as the WMS implementation. But what did I have to fall back on? I had my inventory management skills. I had those skills to fall back on. So that technology, that protein, that percentage went down to 20% or 10%, but my inventory and my accounting background went up because then I helped a whole company move over their servers, that process and understanding the process.

So I’m not gonna go through it, but that’s what I had to learn. You have to learn how to take the skills that you have and balance them out because things is gonna change as we go through. We look at 2020 with [00:28:00] COVID, things changed, right? We had to start using Zoom. We had to start going into in the office.

We didn’t go into the office. We couldn’t walk the halls. So how do you build those relationships without walking the halls, right? Those the things that you got to really learn, and that’s the things I had to learn. And I’m gonna tell you, even though I’ve been here for 20-plus years, I’m still learning.

I’m learning from new people that are coming in, telling me things that they know, and you have to continue to learn. Continuous improvement, what we tell our clients every single day, is a continuous improvement within you, too.

Rodney Apple: I love the analogy to the food pyramid. Now, my last name’s Apple, so I feel a little left out with you didn’t mention fruits.

Where do fruits fall in?

Wanda Johnson: But apple don’t fall There

Rodney Apple: we go. There you go. An apple a day, right? Come on.

Wanda Johnson: In my oatmeal this morning.

Rodney Apple: There you go.

Wanda Johnson: It’s high in fiber.

Rodney Apple: There you go. We are definitely keeping that in the podcast. Wanda, you’ve talked a lot about transferable skills, and I think we’re [00:29:00] fairly industry agnostic.

We’re supply chain specialized on the recruiting side, and I… You get a sense after a while which skills are transferable, which are maybe not, right? But what about your take on soft skills? ‘Cause one thing I’ve observed, 25-plus years in recruiting in this space, is when I started, those hard skills were really hard to find.

You talked about data, we talked about analytics. Everybody wanted advanced Excel skills, and just coming out of school, and the soft skills were pretty abundant. If you fast-forward, we’ve seen a little bit of an inversion where folks come out of college, have these advanced analytical and hard skills, but the soft skills, I keep hearing from our clients, are lacking.

Have, have you seen the same thing, and is there anything you might advise our listeners on how they can develop and enhance those soft skills, communication, and influencing stakeholders, and things of that nature?

Wanda Johnson: Yes, you’re right. Soft skills have gone down for some of the generation that’s coming out because they use, [00:30:00] they text, they use their cell phones, they go to meetings or they’re…

So how you enhance your soft skills, let me tell some of them this. When you go to these gatherings, put your phone in your pocket. Put your phone in your purse or wherever it may be. Have a conversation. But I realize, and it may not be, it may be hard for them. When you text and you saying all these acronyms they use nowadays, just stop using those acronyms.

Just actually say, “How are you doing?” And spell it out. “Tell me about yourself.” And it’s not just about what you work, how you, what your job is. So we get hung up on, “Oh, I’m Wanda Johnson. I’m a technology developer,” blah, blah, blah. But you know, “I’m Wanda Johnson, and I love to sew. I like fishing. I like doing things.”

And then those are the things that you connect with other people. Or, “I love to travel.” “Where do you like to travel to?” “I like go to the beach.” Those are the things, that’s how you build relationships. [00:31:00] Building relationships is not through your cellphone, because you’re not gonna be able to… And that’s not only through your cellphone, it’s just, hey, get out and be uncomfortable in a situation where that you’re not comfortable doing.

And I, and to your point, I, some people can’t even carry on a conversation with you. Eye contact, body language, those things are skills that a lot of people are not even taught anymore. Always said, “Hey, when I’m talking to Rodney, let me look at your eyes. Let’s see what you’re talking about.” And then you know what?

You may have on a ap- happy Appy T-shirt, and I know about the Appalachian State, and blah, blah, blah. Or I’ve gone up to the mountains and how beautiful it is during the fall. Those type of conversations you should have. Don’t just stop, drop in and say, “Hey, I’m looking for a…” So this kills me when people wanna start looking for a job “Hey, Wanda, I’m looking for a job.

I set [00:32:00] up a call with you because I saw your background on LinkedIn,” and this has happened before. And, “Hey,” and they call me, “I really wanna get into consulting.” “Why?” “Because I wanna do something different.” “Why?” But they never answer the why question. They just said, “Hey, I see your, you have this career in consulting,” but did you ever really ask me, how did you begin your career?

What did you do? Who are some of the people that you interacted with? They just wanted to say, “Hey, I know I wanna travel a lot.” How did you know we travel that much anymore in consulting? You really haven’t understood everything. But those are the things people don’t do, and they really need to start. And I just encourage a lot of our next generation to really sit down and think about having meaningful conversations with people, even down at the dinner table or at the team event.

Think about all the things you can actually, how much you can learn about that individual in that short period of time, and just use that, icebreakers. [00:33:00]

Rodney Apple: Love it. It, it makes me, I think back to when I started recruiting too, and I, I’m a networker. It’s in the DNA for what we do in recruiting. But when I catch up with people that I might have placed as wield analysts out of college 20-some years ago, a lot of them now are executives in supply chain, and I’ve stayed in touch over the years.

But I would say the common denominator is that we never start out with, “How’s work?” It, it’s, “How, how’s life? Are, are your kids still playing travel ball?” It’s always personal. And then we’ll get into the work stuff later, but sometimes I’ll sit there for 20 minutes catching up with people in my network, and that, that is how it’s supposed to work, right?

Wanda Johnson: Yeah.

Rodney Apple: Yeah. So- A-a-and

Mike Ogle: sorry, that was almost like a, uh, a, a trigger word for me there for, in a good way, that talking about networking. So on the networking side, it’s probably one of those things that led to certainly some career [00:34:00] success for you. Are there some things that are advised, you know, within the company or just personally that you’ve developed over the years to be a better networker?

Wanda Johnson: It’s so funny you asked that question because my friends and everybody else say I’m a social butterfly You probably can tell Michael when I met you, right?

Mike Ogle: That’s perfect.

Wanda Johnson: And people ask me that question, “Wanda, how do you build these relationships with these people?” And some of the people you only meet one time.

I said, “It’s about not talking about your job, not talking about you. ‘Hey, I did this, I did that.’ Talk about what’s going on, how you’re doing, just simple things.” Back to what I said, it’s the soft skills. And I tell you with networking, mines really grew a lot with MHI when I started doing their… Been the moderator for MODEX and ProMat, right?

And somebody says, “How did you get on this podcast?” It’s [00:35:00] really not how I got on the podcast. I ended up meeting Kevin one day, we just started talking, and somebody recommend, “Hey, Wanda has this personality. You may end up liking some of the things she has a background.” It’s about not overbearing other people with all your, “Hey, I wanna move here, I wanna do this, I wanna do that.”

Just being you. Just being who you are, and being transparent, and being respectful to show you- your true value. It’s just not that… It’s gonna be reflected in how you act and how you interact. So networking for me is not hard because I love meeting people and I love talking about… When I said about my garden, I had some seeds I didn’t know where to grow.

I threw out in that garden this year, and they came up, and I started talking to another person about that, and they actually had a garden. And they shared with me a book that they had. Those little things [00:36:00] are connections that you never think about because you only… If you only think about when you go to a networking party, a networking event, how many people can I meet?

But you may be missing the person standing right beside you that had a good connection with you, had something in common with you that lasts longer than you go and checking off the box that you met five CFOs, right?

Mike Ogle: Oh, ab- absolutely. I… And you made me think of the analogy immediately when you started talking about the gardening.

You throw a lot of seed out there, you plant them. Not all of them are gonna grow and be successful, but you never know until you go through the process.

Wanda Johnson: Yeah.

Rodney Apple: Yeah. I’ll, I’m thinking now of a famous quote from Steve Jobs, and I’m gonna butcher it probably, but the gist of it is you have to have faith in networking.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them when you look backwards, where you have the ability to assess, what did meeting [00:37:00] this person do to my career, and that person? That’s how it works. You have to have the faith to keep doing it looking forward, but don’t think about all the people you’ve met in the past and…

It’s just, it’s one of my favorite quotes from his… Of course, even though I didn’t get it right, it’s, you get the gist of that, right?

Wanda Johnson: To what you just said is- Each point in my career, I did monster.jo- com to get a job, but once I got to IBM and Accenture, it was really about people that I knew that said, “Hey, Wanda, we have this opportunity at Accenture.

I think you’ll be a good fit.” They brought me along the journey. They remembered the things that I had said and did. And then from Deloitte, it was somebody I knew, hey, was at Deloitte, “Hey, we’re open. We have a role in, in supply chain.” Those types of connections that you never really think about, but they remember you because not only of the work you did, it’s how do you interact and how do you actually…

It’s your personality. It goes a long ways and goes back to your soft skills. Not [00:38:00] everything is bet on your hard technical skills.

Rodney Apple: No, I don’t think so. This has been great. It’s been a… This has been great. I just, we like getting off the script and just talking about real things that we see, especially people we, things we see that aren’t going as well, and I see a lot of people, like you mentioned, Wanda, that are networking to them is I’m only gonna do it when I need a job or I need something for myself.

And I think the most successful I- people I see that have relationships, have done great in their careers, they have, I would say, relationships, not just a network, and they go into it, how can I help you? It’s a two-way conversation. It’s mutually beneficial versus what can you do for me? How can I help you?

And those that do it well, they do it naturally, and yeah, they will attribute their relationships and their network to their success, not just accumulating hard skills and knocking out projects and things like that.

Wanda Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause you can have good and [00:39:00] bad projects.

Rodney Apple: True.

Mike Ogle: That could be a whole nother episode or two.

I wanna thank you for your time, your career story, and a ton of advice about supply chain careers, and so we thank you very much for being on the Supply Chain Careers podcast.

Wanda Johnson: This was a pleasure talking to both of you guys. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and hope I gave at least one nugget to someone that’s out there listening that may help them move along their career path or just building relationships.

Rodney Apple: I’m sure you did. We appreciate you sharing those insights, Wanda.