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Cindy Gallagher joins us and shares that when she joined Discovery she immediately focused on the low hanging fruit. Based on how rapidly the brand had grown, Cindy was able to come in and look at the underlying foundation of the enterprise. She realized that trust needed to be built internally to ensure that end customers were appropriately serviced. She began by asking why. Why did internal customers feel the way that they did about shared services? And from there she could focus on adding technology and ultimately through metrics giving those internal clients a dashboard filled with value for them.  She gained visibility into the organization and the organization gained trust in the shared services enterprise. 

Recorded at Next Generation Customer Delivery Abir Thakurta joins us and shares his dynamic history having lived on four different continents. He explains that at each stop he had to understand the culture. A yes doesn’t necessarily mean yes on all points of the globe. The key, as Abir sees it, is to break down walls by breaking bread with your key constituency and truly immerse yourself in the culture.  Coming from a very competitive environment where success was the only option, Abir got his graduate degree and found himself in supply chain management in the 90’s. Following some management consulting, he’s had a number of positions. And no matter the stop, Abir notes that understanding the customer is the most important thing.

Recorded at SSOW, Manny Korakis joins us and shares that as a CFO, his approach is to have folks that report to him, focus on something he doesn’t know. A self described typical finance guy, Manny’s thought is that with a good team, that’s all that a CFO really should need to know. Manny shares his history including his experience being at Arthur Anderson during Enron. Regarding communication with a CFO, Manny urges EVPs and SVPs on down the line -when proposing the purchase of a new technology (or a change in a strategy), to make a business case with a cost benefit analysis- as opposed to pointing to a proposed improvement in metric X. And it always helps to accelerate the timing of the benefits to the organization.

Recorded at Next Generation Customer Delivery, Peter Paluzzi joins us explaining that the bond between his brand and customer was forged by Hamilton Carhartt supplying the need of the railroad worker. Peter is a self described manufacturing guy who’s had experience on the plant floor all they way through the executive office.  He shares his vantage point going from LLBean to Timberland to Hanes to Jockey, seeing the control of the industry going from Brands in the 70’s and 80’s giving way to the Retailer in the 90’s and finally to the customer today. He explains that his brand is aligned with the consumer first.  Peter discusses living in a silo doesn’t work any more as it’s all about on time delivery, flexibly, variety, choice, the experience, the service and more.

Hadi Irvani joins us and explains whereas his family are cobblers, he deals in peach cobblers. An enigmatic guy, Hadi always enjoyed throwing dinner parties where the guests would be part of the cooking process. Each dinner party featuring a number of courses. Hadi soon realized that he wanted to share what he experienced through his dinner parties with a larger audience. He set out to create something different, first focusing on healthy food and then focusing on innovating within the space- being the first company to ship and egg for instance. He sees food as a way to get people together. He says that the company loves its customers and the mission of the company is to share that love. 

Kristin Kulinowski joins us to take us through the work that she and the US Chemical Safety Board do. She clarifies the two biggest misconceptions of the Board- they in fact do not have a large budget…and that they are not a regulatory agency. The mandate of the CSB is to investigate every chemical incident of significance at a fixed facility that releases a hazardous substance into the ambient air across the united states. Whereas OCEA or the EPA investigate if there’s a compliance issue, the CSB is there to understand the systems and to get an all cause analysis of why the incident occurred. Realizing that she wasn’t meant to be in a lab, she made her way into policy and eventually a presidential appointment to the CSB.

Mihir Shukla joins us from SSOW seeking to demonstrate what is possible with automation. He likens this change to steel being introduced- and the need to see elephants on the Brooklyn Bridge to understand that steel was strong. Or when electricity introduced at the worlds fair in 1893 when 100,000 lightbulbs were lit to show people that night didn’t need to be dark. At the show, Mihir and team processed the entire US volume of 6 Billion ATM reconciliation transactions in the moment- an innovation step jump change in itself. Mihir goes on to explain that what we do for work today will be a hobby eventually- much like gardening. That said, he insists that society not approach automation with either blind optimism or paralyzing fear.