Manufacturing Leaders
Currently the Number 1 Manufacturing Podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts!
Mark Bracknall, Founder of Theo James Recruitment is the host of Manufacturing Leaders.The UK is still a powerhouse in Manufacturing & Engineering. We speak to those who are helping to make those firms a success. By motivating, inspiring and managing teams.Are you new to management? Are you keen to hear from those who are dealing with the same day-to-day challenges you are facing?In this podcast we get inside the minds of the Managers in Manufacturing & Engineering, and understand how they get the best our of their teams and make Manufacturing & Engineering great.
Manufacturing Leaders
Building Strong Supplier Relationships & Empowering Leadership
Unlock the secrets to exemplary leadership and ethical procurement in our latest episode featuring Tony Watson. Tony, the Director of Procurement at Accord Healthcare, shares his deeply personal philosophy on leadership, emphasising the honor and responsibility that comes with guiding a team. He opens up about the pivotal moments in his early career that shaped his approach to creating a safe and empowering work environment, fostering innovation, and building rock-solid supplier relationships. You’ll walk away with actionable insights and a fresh appreciation for the role of leadership in a thriving business.
Next, we journey into the world of ethical trading practices, who offers a compelling narrative on social audits within supply chains. From his unique transition from engineering to procurement, Tony provides an eye-opening perspective on managing diverse teams and the intricate balance between personal connections and professional boundaries. His story underscores the importance of aligning personal values with company culture and effectively navigating multicultural team dynamics, making it a must-listen for anyone in a leadership position or aspiring to be.
Lastly, we explore the future of procurement, touching on the critical need for resilience and collaboration in an ever-changing global landscape. Despite the rise of AI and digital tools, we stress the irreplaceable value of face-to-face interactions in building trust and meaningful business relationships. With practical tips on values-based procurement and strategies to maintain a positive mindset amidst increasing job demands, this episode equips you with the knowledge to tackle upcoming challenges head-on. Tune in to be inspired and to gain a comprehensive understanding of the evolving world of procurement.
Please subscribe to the channel for more content! Theo James are a Manufacturing & Engineering Recruiter based in the North East, helping Manufacturing and Engineering firms grow across the UK. Please call us on 0191 5111 298
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Manufacturers Leaders Podcast with me Mark Bracknell, marketing Director of Thiel Change Recruitment. Today we are invited on Tony Watson, the Director of Procurement at Accord Healthcare. Tony is a breath of fresh air, an eternal optimist, and we talked in detail both about procurements and management and we delved into both and it was a real fascinating, enlightened conversation. You're going to feel a bit lighter at this episode because of his positivity, because of his tips. He talks about how you build relationships with suppliers, the importance of that. We talk about that secret sauce and some really good advice regarding that, and we just have a really good conversation around management culture how to get the best out of your staff. You're going to feel just more positive from this episode. I know I certainly did. I'm going to leave that room feeling and remembering my job is an absolute privilege and I believe you will too.
Speaker 1:So please sit back, listen, watch whatever you want to do, grab a coffee and please, please, please, just like and subscribe to the channel. It really helps drive more guests as well. So thank you very much. Hope you enjoy the episode. Excellent. So a massive warm welcome today to Tony Watson. Tony, how are we, how are you doing? Very good. Thank you, sir. Very good, good, very, very pleased to have you on and looking forward to this one. I think it's going to be good fun. So first question is the same question as everybody who comes on the show, tony what does it mean to you to be a leader, would you say?
Speaker 2:I kind of take it as one of the biggest privileges and honors I get to have with. What I do is to be a leader, and whenever I come across new team members whether it's interviewing, whether people make it through and join the teams, whether it's within my workplace or outside the workplace I always think the people I meet along the way are the ones that are going to really define the future. I might kind of have cataloged myself as a bit of a dinosaur already. I'm 49 and I'm like you know. Am I going to do something that's going to change the world? Somebody younger is more likely to be in that position than me.
Speaker 2:So I always think to myself when I meet people you know what are you going to become? You know where are you going to take your life? What are you going to do? That's going to be the one thing that people will always remember you for, and I always ask that question when I meet people don't forget me when I'm, when I'm a bit older and I need a job from you and I'm trying to infer to them that I see all of them as leaders.
Speaker 2:You know, everybody has got the potential to lead, whether it is themselves, whether it's a team or whether it's an organization. Yeah, everybody has that inbuilt, I think, desire to to lead, and it's just different how you want to take it and what you want to do with it. But, as I said, it's an absolute honor to be able to work with so many like brilliant people over my life and and one of the little parts past times that I'd have is like I like to see what people who've worked for me in the past, what they're doing today, what they're often doing and it's great fun having a little bit of LinkedIn stalk and say, okay, where are you now? Are brilliant, they're doing this, they're doing that and see how they've grown, how they've diversified what they're doing. And yeah, it's, it's an absolute delight sometimes yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1:I think there's different types of leaders and there's different types of motivations, but I agree, I think leaders who are driven by wanting other people to do well, not just keep step on the ladder themselves there's no right or wrong. But I think ultimately, from my opinion, is that the best leaders are those that are a little bit more selfless and do it because they want to help other people, not necessarily just themselves, I would say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you do, if you can empower your team and you can allow others that safe space to be able to try stuff, to be able to develop, to be able to grow and safe in that knowledge, they're not going to get reprimanded or get in trouble for it, because the idea is that we do try stuff, we do push the envelope. You know we work in, I work in procurement, and you can follow the abc or you can try the d, e and f and see okay, do I get a different result? And I want people to be able to feel safe and secure that they can drop, they can try that and they can innovate in how they work. There's no point following a totally prescriptive process when there's a often a more innovative way to deliver on a great project.
Speaker 1:So I think making people feel safe is key to this and I think that that word safe has come up a few times, I would say, over the last couple years, been doing this, which I think is intriguing, because I don't think it's typically necessarily or didn't used to be taught in management and I I don't think I was really, I don't think people had that priority to create a safe environment. It was how do you teach, how do you train? Do you think that's developed over the last five or so years or not so much?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I'd say I've learned so much. I mean, I was incredibly lucky, unlucky, in the early career. So I kind of started out in aero engineering, in plastics engineering, and one day the company I was working for went bust. I turned up and you walk through, you put the key and you're like well, the key don't work, what's going on here? And then slowly, that kind of realization I was 24, 25, 24 years old, I was. And that realization, oh no, um, somebody's changed the locks. And then the administrators turn up and you're like this is it? So I hopped in my car, drove home this was in Portsmouth, I was working.
Speaker 2:And I drove home and I drove past, um, the body shop in Littlehampton, their HQ there, and I thought I need work, mortgage to pay. You know, just got married, I need to, you know, make sure that I can still be earning. So I just drove in here, popped in to see him say look, have you got anything? Said, oh sure, yeah, you know, we, we need forklift drivers. I'm like great, I've got a ticket, I can come and do that, no problem at all. And so that was on a friday.
Speaker 2:I came back on the monday, um, back in year 2000. This was and I don't think I got to even near the forklift. They were like ah, I kind of got the cv, oh, you know a bit about this, you need a bit of that, we need some help in our supply chain department. And sure enough they put me in there and 12 years later I had the most wonderful career in that business. I lived a really exciting, interesting, challenging, developing life, really learning how to work with people, with suppliers, in a really equitable way.
Speaker 2:And I suspect that's where this idea of making sure your team's safe comes from, because I remember this one incident. We had one of our bosses, he was a really tough guy. Sure your team's safe comes from, because one you know, I remember this one incident. We had one of our bosses, he was a really tough guy, he was like a really gnarly guy and I it was the seven, seven bombings in london this day. So we all came into the office. This happened and instantly all we did was making sure everybody's safe. All we could do, just like, you know, nobody rested, so we spoke to everybody. So to make sure we're safe.
Speaker 2:And business, the body shop business. It worked with this mindset because there was a lot of people traveling to a lot of places, especially in our supply chains, that were quite interesting, to say the least, and it was always about how can we make sure we're safe? You know, we've got a really key job to do to make sure that the supply chains for the body shop were really strong and resilient and it all works as it should do. But to do that properly, we were, you know, traveling to some interesting places that meant that we had to keep each other safe, and maybe that's where it's kind of that core piece has grown from. It's hard to tell, but it's just me all over, I think yeah, it's interesting and and do you think you know?
Speaker 1:I've heard some, I've heard some great stuff about Body Shop in terms of, just you know, culturally, some great people have come out of that. We've actually got Louisa Works for me. Funny enough, actually, she's our supply chain consultant. She's ex-Body Shop Speaks very highly of them, was that? Do you think that was embedded culturally, that Because? And have you seen, do you see, the difference between manufacturing to, I guess, more of a retail type environment, would you say.
Speaker 2:I would say so that business in that time period it was more akin to working with your family and I still feel that now. When I meet people and see what people are doing and when you catch up with people, you come back to those times and you remember we were there for each other and it was a high challenge environment. It really was high challenge, but everybody had everybody else's backs and it was it was the most ubiquitous team that I've worked in um and it was challenged from the top to the bottom um. So I was there when anita was still working there, when anita roddick was still working out. I remember she was um interestingly challenging. She'd always come out with a really different way of looking at something, and we were there when we started to implement something called the ethical trading practices. So this is where we work with suppliers and instead of just doing a quality audit or GMP audit, as you might do today, we'd also socially audit them, and that's very much a standard business practice today for most retail, but back then it's very new. And so Anita came along to one of our kind of workshop sessions who wanted to understand how do you? You know, how do you do this and we took her through the process. You know, you, you have a questionnaire before you start and then you go and you meet the leadership team and then you'll go through the documentation and then you start to talk to some of the employees and it's a really safe space, you know. You make sure it's away from the employers so they feel that they can talk.
Speaker 2:And I remember she said she just looked at us and went that's bollocks, isn't it? We're like what do you mean? She's going. They're never going to tell you anything there. You need to go home with them. They're like Anita, this is you, india. We can't just go home with people. Of course, you can't follow them home. That's all you need to do. Next time I'm coming with you and she. She had this really interesting way of just wanting to be with the people who were doing the work, whether it's us doing our jobs or the people within our supply chain. You know, as soon as you got there, you'd lose her. She would be off talking to people, understanding people, wanted to know about their families and their lives, and such passion to do that she was something else to work with.
Speaker 1:Was that a curiosity that she had, or did she see the link between if she understood the people, they would trust her and work harder? What lessons do you think it took from that?
Speaker 2:I think it's about the passion um, just pure passion for the the right thing to do. So if you're going to do something, make sure you're doing it in the best possible way and in her head, that was the right way to do it. And you know, if you had the time and the trust of an employee to be able to do that and go back to the house and have a cup of tea with them and talk about the business they work for in a much more private setting, then, yeah, she's right. However, I think a male in an Indian female's house might become more challenging.
Speaker 1:And that's the debate in terms of are the lines blurred? Do you manage someone? Are you too close to them? Are you more of a friend? And I've struggled that over the years. That sort of the lines can blur sometimes because ultimately if you then need to bring someone into a disciplinary or a difficult meeting and you know you see them socially, you might play golf with them. You know it's a difficult one. What are your thoughts on that? Would you say, given the experience you've got?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really good question and you can see some of those challenges happen when you have um appraisal times and you can see, like you know what, why is that so easy or why is that so hard? Um, I think it's key that, depending on the size of your team, you treat everybody equally. Um, treating people equality and fairness is really key. You soon start to show favouritism. I think it's a really slippery slope and one that can become really difficult to manage.
Speaker 2:My teams are varied from kind of two or three people to eight people in body shop. Currently, I have 11 people within my team, and trying to get the most out of everybody, especially when you're dealing with different nationalities and those different cultures within most out of everybody, especially when you're dealing with different nationalities and those different cultures within those nationalities, automatically make it quite interesting. Then you've got the difference between the introverts and the extroverts, and how are they going to mix together? Then we've got the difference between performance levels. You know we've got our high performers, our people who are really happy just delivering what they do, the people who need some more encouragement to drive them forward and understanding all of the reasons behind the different positions. It's a it's a challenging world to develop your teams correctly and balanced yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And procurement as a profession was that again? Was that something that you thought of at an early age? That links in with your, with your values and your skill set, or was that something you you fell into because I know that is a real passion obviously for you now, not just an occupation well, yeah, great, um, yeah, yeah, really good question.
Speaker 2:I'm not quite sure if, if the kind of 22 year old tony would have seen himself in procurement. Um, he definitely is an engineer. I enjoyed a worldwide, didn't really have to talk to too many people. I'm a natural introvert and an extrovert um, so I'm, I get my energy from being alone. So when doing a job that requires me to talk to a lot of people sometimes hundreds of people at once um it, it can be really challenging. But also, I think you, you take that type of challenge and actually that's how you grow, that's how you make a difference to your own development, in your own self and by putting yourself out there.
Speaker 2:I remember Body Shop was bought by L'Oreal and L'Oreal had a big, big procurement event and you know hundreds of people at this event and they were like okay, tony, you and a couple of other people, you need to do a speech, you need to do a full presentation. You know, on a big, fancy stage, radio mics, the whole shebang how am I going to be able to do this? Um, practice, um, and if I know what I knew today, it would have been much easier. But you know back then, okay, well, it's practice, it's about supporting each other. So the three of us that did it you know we were practicing all night long. We're keeping ourselves as a team. We made sure we had the right couple of jokes. It was to a mainly french audience, so we had to make sure we piped a bit of french and english in there to make sure it crossed over so we could get the the um audience on the side and that.
Speaker 2:That. That that was a real challenge, challenging piece for me to to be able to do that. Uh, but what? What could I have seen myself doing that um 10 years before? Not a chance. So I think I clearly fell into procurement um and then realized how much I love seeing people and suppliers develop, and that's the key to what I love, what I do. Um, I when you, when you find a good supplier and you'll have a supply base, when you come into a new area and then you find a new supplier and they might be somebody who's kind of been overlooked in the past, or they might be a new entrant, or it might be some VC companies decided to enter into a market, whatever it might be, and you say, right, how am I going to identify these people and how am I going to grow them through the businesses and that's the thing that I get really excited about. So you find a great new supplier or a great new person to work with and you can really develop and grow and see it flourish. That's really satisfying.
Speaker 1:So if you were going to a new company let's say someone's listening there who is about to start a new role in that capacity and they're tasked with really sort of analysing the current suppliers and looking to make those improvements what would the first things you would do, or the most important things you would do, to start that process, would you say I think the most important thing for me is always just keep it simple.
Speaker 2:It's really easy to disappear down a bit of a rabbit hole with the different challenges that are taking place, with the noise that goes a lot around you, that that desire, when you started a new role to perform, to make yourself, um, part of the furniture you want to feel secure really quickly, right. So that's for me, cut through that. Keep it really simple, right? You know I've got 30, 60, 90 days. Pick one thing I'm going to get done in 30 days. Get that done. Deliver it more often than not, just start with your data. Yeah, understand what is taking place in front of you, use that. Start to really see, very complete, what is that telling me? Let's not worry too much about the opinionated pieces that are going to come in, because that will all make sense once you understand your data. So for me, somebody coming into a new role, understand the data, then understand your relationships, understand your stakeholders. So spend the next 30 days just embedding, because you don't want to talk to your stakeholders too much until you understand what on earth is your business is doing, where's it spending its money, where's its opportunities, where's the challenges, where's the risk and supply chain, all of that piece, then go out to your um, your stakeholders, and understand where do they have their challenges, where do they want that business to grow, and when you've kind of got that piece of that first of all, that that front level understanding of data, and then your stakeholders understand and overlay that with, okay, what's the company's targets, where's that vision, taking you, um, what do you need to do then to kind of strategically pan or dovetails into the right place? So that's that would be how I see the that, that kind of entrance, always just keeping it as simple as you can. There's no need to make things really complex, and if you come into organization where you're finding it's highly complex.
Speaker 2:Now I currently work in a pharmaceutical organization and I'm not a pharmacist or from a pharmaceutical background. So my desire would be oh, let's understand the detail. No, I don't want to do that. I want to see what do we want to do as a business and then what can we do simply to be able to achieve that? How can we make our suppliers perform better? How can we get stronger relationships? How can we be better prepared for what might happen in the future? We need to build up really resilient supply chains. How can we do that? So that's a piece that's always to keep it as simple as you can.
Speaker 1:Excellent, and I know you mentioned when we first spoke about sort of value based procurements. Is that linking with that, then, or is that something slightly different?
Speaker 2:So I'd say values based procurement is a philosophy that you'd overlay on how you work with people and how you work with suppliers. So I'd use value based procurement as a way to explain how to get more from a relationship. So if you're having a relationship with a supplier and your relationship is based upon five products and you buy them every week and you email them and you send them your purchase orders and then you're receiving them and everything's going OK, that supplier will tick the box as a good supplier. Are you getting everything you want from that relationship? Are there other opportunities for them or for you within that relationship? And these days and I think there's been an evolution towards this these days it's really easy to rely on email or to rely on a phone call or, you know, if something's going wrong you might pick up the phone to them. And I'd argue very much that if you start off with the principle that If you meet in person, if you spend time together, if you shake hands with people, you build a relationship that allows you to get much, much deeper. And time and time again I've seen this happen where one of my team, you know I'll ask them a couple of questions about a supply relationship and they might go out and say, oh yeah, x, y and Z, could you go and see them? Can you, y and z, could you go and see them? Can you see what happens when you go and see them? Can you maybe spend um the morning, run a meeting with them, see what you, what more you find out? And they come back tons of knowledge, loads of information that would never be received if you sat back and just ran it off as a basic transaction relationship.
Speaker 2:So I think the investment in values-based procurement is really key. But it kind of starts with that idea of developing for the good about having a language and a and a relationship is to say right, we want to succeed. So you know, we're with a supplier, we want to be partners, we want growth together. By working together, you can find ways to improve prices, you can find ways to drive better delivery performance, to shorten lead times, to understand what they need, what areas do they want to go into, how can you really evolve? And it sounds so basic and simple, doesn't it? But in day-to-day so often people get really busy and they get caught up and that's like get the email done, get the email done, get the email done, and I guess that's coming back to just keeping it really simple. But have the relationship, have that time of this, spend that you know. Use, use the right set of vocabulary. Talk about trust and honesty, talk about mutual respect. Talk, talk about partnership. Those are really powerful words that actually really mean something for the supplier and for you.
Speaker 1:Apologies, for interrupting this podcast. We have a very quick, 30-second description of my business. Theo James are an engineering and manufacturing recruitment search firm based in Durham. We specialize in contracts and permanent opportunities from blue collar semi-skilled roles right the way up to C-suite level exec positions. If you're looking for any new, additional staff or new opportunity for yourself in the industry, please contact me or the team. There'll be a specialist in your area waiting to help.
Speaker 1:I'm incredibly proud of this business and what we've built since our inception in 2015. Now I'd love to extend that service out to you. So thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the episode and what I'm hearing.
Speaker 1:There is the need just to move away from that transactional-based relationship and you mentioned yourself that sometimes you've got to shake hands and I think that sometimes you've got to shake hands and I think you know what we're for is years post-COVID now and this type of stuff and I think the Zoom team sort of you know that has helped businesses to some extent with some things, but I think we've lost so much as well and I really wonder.
Speaker 1:People who are four or five years into the job let's use procurement as an example they might not know any different because they haven't got the experience to know actually fly over somewhere or driving down somewhere and meeting someone and having you know, just seeing the whites of their eyes, the benefit of that did. Do you think businesses are are still pushing people to meet people face to face or are they seeing the cost? Say there's a short sight of cost savings ago where you can have three meetings a day now and you can save on x, y and z yeah, I think it means that we have to be really much more clever with how.
Speaker 2:You know we have a travel budget or business have budget in which that we can travel. So we have to be really clever how we use that to make the most out of it. Yeah, um, yeah, there's no point having a meeting for meeting's sake. But a relationship and trust in a relationship isn't built by one meeting. It isn't built by one cup of coffee afterwards. It's not built by one handshake and you say goodbye. It's built over time. It's built by going through things together. It's built as all relationships within human beings are.
Speaker 2:My worry is that the development and it's a great development of the artificial intelligence and how that's coming along, people might become more reliant upon that to help them with their um, with their business relationships and how they should do business. And I guess I would advocate something along the lines of you know, let's harness the power of ai to release more time of the day-to-day bits and pieces that we do, the administrational pieces that we have to do, of the trying to make the best travel plans that we do. Use ai for that 100 to free up time to spend building relationships, showing the value to your businesses what a supply relationship can really bring, and the argument for better travel budgets from the back of something that has a real, clear, tangible result of a strong supply relationship is, it's very clear, very clear for businesses yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 1:I've had a not a u-turn on ai at all, obviously, but I think, um, when we first started because essentially what we do is sales when we first started using ai for relationships, in terms of those and those initial conversations, we start in the middle of covid, where people weren't at a desk, so we use email chains and it was brilliant, it was amazing.
Speaker 1:This is like this is, you know, people, we'd set a journey of an email and people replying on the second, third email and it was taken as less time, we have more conversations. I thought this, it, this is the future of it. But over the last, definitely last 18 months, I've completely backtracked now and just taken out all AI on that relationship, that communication piece, because emails just I get emails every day now just stink of AI and actually it has the opposite effect to me. Now there's no personalization. That sent that to 100 people and it and it's, it's, I think it's had a complete opposite effect. So I completely agree to use it to to save up, save time, to make sure you have more time for those conversations has to be the way. But I just think we're kind of stuck in this middle, this middle ground where companies doing different things, aren't they?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, and I think the thing that I guess this has always been the way I've worked procurement and and how I'm generally is is actually okay, like work on relationship. Make sure you get that right. Give people opportunity to find the opportunity. You know, if you don't allow that space and time for it to happen, nothing's going to happen. You need some space in there to let creativity and innovation happen.
Speaker 2:Um, and so this is um kind of been going on the way life does go on a little bit. But last year I met, I met a really interesting guy. His name is dr neil hawks and he's the chief who is responsible for leading the um embedding of values-based education across the UK and advocating for it globally. And this is embedded across loads and loads of our schools. And I see in my daughter's school and when I talk to my friends, I hear them talk about how their kids come home and talk about you know, what does friendship mean to me and what does trust mean to me and what does these really important pieces?
Speaker 2:And so we've got an entire generation coming through an education system that's treating values as one of the most important things, and then they're going to come to the workplace and when they're received into the workplace, what are they going to find? Are they going to find that these values are strong and instilled in a workplace, or they're going to find something else? So I think we should be working hard now to make sure that a lot of what we do in business is values-based, and most business leaders I chat to really, really agree with this. It's, you know, it's not just about getting as much as you can out of your teams. It's about investing in that relationship to build for the long term, to build that trust piece, and it's not a quick process, but it's a really powerful fundamental process.
Speaker 1:Where do you think that starts from? Do you think that starts from the business leaders going what should our values be? And then that trickling down and then hiring against those values or what, because I guess some companies who probably don't feel like they've got a particular set of values. Where do they start?
Speaker 2:do you think? Great question, and I wish I knew the answer to that one. It's I mean, how does a company have its culture? Where does that come from? You know, I've read a million books on this and there's no real answer that I've come across that really determines OK, culture is created by this, this and this, you know, it depends upon as a company is brought together and it grows and has different personalities, and those personalities are really key in how a company develops and evolves. And luckily, and I kind of think, we're attracted to businesses that have got a culture that works for us.
Speaker 2:And when you go through an interview process to change role, you are really aware, I think subliminally, at a level of okay, how's this going to be? And if you're lucky enough to have the opportunity to make decisions based upon a culture and the values of the business you're joining, you spend a lot of time making sure you understand that really well. Because if you, if you join a company that's got similar values and a culture that's going to work for you, you're going to really enjoy that role. You're going to therefore perform really well in that role and hopefully really grow in that role, whereas if you join a business that just isn't right for you. There's nothing wrong with the person and there's nothing wrong with the company. It's just not a fit. So it becomes really hard for them. So I think that's it's a really good question, and I'm afraid I don't know the right answer, but it's one that I think we could debate for a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is because essentially, there isn't a right answer. But I also find it fascinating. I think companies my thoughts are companies go through different stages, don't they? And if I think about my business, we've definitely changed, evolved as we've, we've grown, and I mean now we live in, we live and breathe our values, we hire on them, we talk about them, we everything to them.
Speaker 1:But if you go back four years ago, when I still feel like we're, we're a good business, we had some values on the wall. But if I think I would ask people, what were they, what? What they were behind you, they wouldn't, they wouldn have known. Because I think there's a difference in just setting them and going that looks good. That's what we should do, versus literally every decision you make, being on, being unity, being respect, whatever your values are, and I think that that's, for me, the difference, I guess. But you have to involve the whole team, it has to come from them, because there's no point in one marketing director going this is our values, because you know people are going to go okay, I'm going to change, I'm going to change everything about that. It takes a long time, isn't it?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think you've got your. Your team is going to change as well. That's the thing is. You've got, as your team grows, changes, new people leave, join as people leave and the team's character evolves as that moves. I think the underlying values, once they're kind of bedded in and set, then I think they can be maintained. But it takes work. Yeah, it really takes work. And you know, within, within our my current team, we have a real focus on right. We have to do this together. No single person on their own can do it on their own. It's not going to happen the only way we can. Whatever we're trying to work through whether it's a supply challenge, whether it's a negotiation, whether it is a a big presentation, whatever it might be it's these are teamwork pieces. You know we work in a safe environment to make sure that we get exactly how we want something and then we can release it correctly to, whether it's external or internal, but we make sure we get it right a safe team as a team do you think this is?
Speaker 1:this is really accelerated post-covid in terms of people wanting something more now from their job and almost demanding and asking those questions what your values? What's the progression piece? Do you think people have re-evaluated what they want from the job or not?
Speaker 2:I hope so. Yeah, genuinely I hope so. I don't see it explicitly. I think we'll probably get a few more challenging questions in interview. Okay, I don't think people are challenging enough yet. I'd like to see more of it. I'd like to see more people pushing saying this is the type of world I want to live in job, I want to work in team, I want to be part of that. Would you know? People are more challenging and advocates of what their particular belief mindset will be. Then I think we'd be more successful at finding good fits for people in roles, whether it's within this organization or another organization. You know, make sure we get people in the right place, and if you get people where they're comfortable, as I said earlier, it's. It means people will perform, they will grow, they will develop and they will do an amazing job yeah, you've worked in obviously different nationalities and you know seeing different cultures.
Speaker 1:How, how different, would you say, is it? Are they very similar if you're working in the uk, somewhere else, or or not? Have you seen some, some clear differences?
Speaker 2:it's a great. It's a great challenge trying to marry up the different cultures and trying to get stuff done. So I guess I've worked with Spanish, italian, eastern European, chinese, indian, american and, depending on whether they're working for you or you want them to do something and it's a supplier it depends on how you you work with them. But you know, within my team I manage people very differently based upon where they're from. To understand how might they think about this piece if I'm giving feedback, so just constructive feedback, how I give feedback to somebody based in uk versus somebody based in spain versus somebody based in eastern europe, the directness of that feedback will be based upon where they're from.
Speaker 2:There's a fabulous book called the culture map and that's just one of those books that has really broken down this into a almost a measurable piece so you can say the place where you're going to get need to give the most direct feedback, I think, is israel. So if you're working with an israeli, they you give them the most direct feedback you possibly can, unless if you're working with somebody in japan, the other end of the spectrum. That would be the softest feedback, the most gentle, almost just a nudge type of feedback, and then you could almost map every other country along a line. Say what level of directness do you put in your feedback when you're leading that type of person? And it's a learning, it's a development for all of us, something that I've had to learn as I've gone along, but it really does work. It really really does work. Interesting.
Speaker 1:What would you say? Obviously we've talked about procurement and that is your passion and I'm sure you've seen that change throughout your time within reason. What do you see as the future? Where do you see the sort of changes or the challenges, I guess over the next sort of five to 10 years, would you say?
Speaker 2:I think some of the challenges we're going to see are it feels as though the world's becoming more polarised and everybody's almost invited to a really strong opinion on something. And when we come into a supply challenge, generally the strong opinion it might be valid, but the real resolution point we look for is somewhere in the middle. And this is probably something we're seeing in popular culture a little bit bit, but that desire to say I have to be here or here, and a lot of the time we're spending people bringing a group of stakeholders, a supplier, to meet in the middle to find, okay, like what's the solution? So we have to find solutions. We can't put ourselves on a fence and say, no, I have to get somebody to to me here, I have to get somebody to meet here, I have to come towards and meet people along the way. And I've seen that become more challenging over the past 10 years and we see that day in, day out, as the world becomes more and more a little bit fractious and having to manage to deal with that.
Speaker 2:On top of that, I do see probably a more challenging supply situation on the horizon. I think, with ongoing events globally, I think it does seem to be more challenging, and that's going to be something that we need to understand. How can we become resilient in the face of adversity? I think we can all see something coming, but the question is what and how and how much it's going to impact us and what do we need to do about it. So, yeah, I'm normally very optimistic, so I'm trying to find the optimism out of this and I think there's going to be opportunities for all of us to find some really clever solutions, and the solutions are going to come through that relationship piece. It's going to come through people talking to each other, finding the middle grounds and working out ways to resolve any situations we come across.
Speaker 1:And do you see companies now putting more pressure on, I guess, operations, putting more pressure on supply chain and procurement to look at cost and time over quality? Have you seen that change over time or not so much?
Speaker 2:No, no, not so much. To be fair. Um, of course there's always a challenge to say, right, how can we be the most competitive that we can? Um, but I think we generally get through this through good procurement practice. Um, it's ensuring that you've got good sourcing organizations so we know, right, as we see, what's new to market, who are the challenges, who's going to be that supplier that I really like says oh, they could really become a little bit disruptive and add some some challenge into market. And then, when you do that, how do you bring that piece through so you're doing it effectively without causing disruptions to your operational sites? And that all the way along has to be. Especially, you know, currently working pharma, it has to be a very good compliance and to gmp. So that's absolutely critical to the whole thing. You can't even question that piece. Um, that piece doesn't even come into it. If somebody doesn't tick that box, you wouldn't even start the conversation, right? Yeah, it's, it's really, it's really clear.
Speaker 1:That's, I guess, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, there's a few sectors that are, but you have to get that absolutely perfect um, as it's essentially still a management podcast, I sometimes like to throw in a couple of management questions, so I I shall do, we'll test you, um, I mean, I mean, it's probably more personal is what? What? Because you, you come across someone who's really passionate, passionate about what you do, and obviously you know you answer the first question so unbelievably well what still drives you at this stage of your career, would you say, what gets you out of bed in the morning?
Speaker 2:The opportunity to make a difference. It sounds so cheesy, doesn't it? And when I hear people say something, I'm like, oh, but is that bullshit? And I'm like no, because've got this um belief system in me that says today I'm going to meet somebody, and that person they could change me, they could help develop me, they could challenge me in a way that I haven't thought about how we develop. They could change one of my supplies, one of my team, um, and I think that's the excitement of what's going to happen in the day ahead, because you kind of wake up and you're like right, you know, I've got this.
Speaker 2:I've got a challenge here, I've got this. I need to get over the line. You've got a set of work you need to do. But it's the unknown. That's the exciting piece, because anything can happen in a day, and quite often it does, you know. You know, I didn't see the end of the day. You're sitting down for a cup of tea and you think I didn't see that coming. That was a really unexpected piece. And it happens day in, day out. Something you think, oh, that's something really exciting.
Speaker 1:Do you find sort of managing your own mentality easy or is that something that you've worked on? You've got a set strategy? Because you come across someone who is a breath of fresh air in terms of the optimism, because, I think, sometimes people, because, let's be honest, I think the jobs for most people have just got harder. I would say they probably want more now from people than they have had them. But you are clearly someone who sees the positive and are optimistic about the situation instead of just looking at that challenge. And is that something you have to work on when you strategize? You would do so.
Speaker 2:I'm probably an eternal optimist, but you do have to work on strategies to help you stay resilient mentally. Stuff does get you down. There are days when you're in really, really tough days and things don't go your way and that's probably why I have this passionate outlook, just because the next day I know it's going to be different. You know you might have a really tough day. Look what am I doing this for? You know I'm vlogging a dead horse with this one. What's the point of whatever you're working on, you know. But you know the next day everybody's had a nice sleep, everybody's had a either a better or worse morning or whatever they had that day.
Speaker 2:And it comes down to relationships. So bring back those relationships and you'll find a difference. And so often this happens If you're having a particularly hard negotiation and you got to that point where your red lines are nowhere near, say, you're going to reach effectively no deal. No deal is no good to anybody. Nobody's doing business at no deal. So if you can have a little break, come back to it and the amount of times you just have a break sometimes it's just five minutes, sometimes it's an overnight sleep you come back and you know what everybody moves in because they realize that actually you can do something. Everybody can do a little something more. Everybody needs to be that, that that break to let the brain do its thing, to find a solution and then acclimatise to it and move forward. Okay excellent.
Speaker 1:Who would you say is the best manager you've ever had, and what lessons have you learned from them?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a great question, best manager ever.
Speaker 2:Well, the most valuable to your career, would you say? Um, I worked for lady cordovan, um in body shop, um scottish lady who is in france, I believe, and I think she was the first manager that I had. That allowed me to work without limit. So if I thought someone's good idea, she's like, go for it and allow me to work in a safe space and to get on and really grow and learn as a person, um, and I. There's probably a definite piece that I picked up from that to say you know, when you see somebody, if somebody is enthusiastic, they've got a great idea, they want to take something, they want to develop it, they are going to own that project with so much passion and they're going to want to see it succeed. Whereas if you tell somebody, can you go and do this please? They're like, yeah, okay, we're going to do it and they do it.
Speaker 2:It's no passion, there's no excitement, there's no um engagement yeah, so if it, comes from, if it comes from an inspiration from themselves, they're gonna, they're gonna want to see the success of it yeah, it's their idea, not yours.
Speaker 1:yeah, I completely agree and you're, you're pleased, someone who is, who is driven by the fact that someone probably, hopefully, I interview in x amount of time will say you, because of those reasons, because you've enabled them to have that safe space and be creative and and make those decisions and enjoy what they do, I hope so.
Speaker 2:That'd be nice, wouldn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just final question, tony it'd be a nice one to reflect on If you could go back to 22 year old, tony, and and give yourself advice. Knowing what you know now, what would it be?
Speaker 2:I think, trust yourself more than you know when you, when I was young, and I think a lot of people are saying, but I don't know, is you. You're often questioning your own decisions and and what you're trying to do and are you saying the right thing, and when you look back on it you're like, no, no, that's fine, yeah, that's exactly the right thing to do. So I think we, we we need to have some belief in ourselves. Um, and yeah, I'll say to 22 year old Tony believe in yourself, you can do this, because you know everybody is not judging you. Everybody is wanting everybody else to succeed. There's no people don't want people to fail. They want people to succeed in everything that everybody does. You know everybody wants people to do the best they can. Whether it's your football team, you're watching somebody driving a car, somebody you work with, it doesn't matter. You want that to be good or safe or well done, whatever it is, have some belief.
Speaker 1:Right, love that. Thank you so much because I always like to reflect on what I've learned during this episode and I've learned loads and just one of those episodes where I've left a little bit of a warm buzz about something like you forget when you're in the, when you're mind, you're in and you sort of forget why you do it and you're in the day-to-day and it's very hard to put your head above. You know, often I come on this podcast and I speak to someone like yourself who reminds me this is why we do it is to is to help people and to get that buzz from it. I sort of come away and re-reflect on that and this is definitely one of those I have done. So that that's been, that's been excellent, which I know people will take a lot from. But also, what I really enjoy is very specific to the job you do.
Speaker 1:There'll be people on here who are procurement professionals looking for advice, and sometimes people want these silver bullets. It's sort of this, this magic. That isn't necessarily there, you know, when actually staring right in the face, you know they just need to be. Just do the basics, enjoy the basics and do the basics well, and this situation is is making sure you've got those key relationships and and and doubling down sometimes, and I think they're the best lessons, aren't they the ones, essentially, we already know, but we just need that reminder exactly keeping it simple and the best best all the time you can in a relationship yeah, 100.
Speaker 1:So thank you very much. This has been great. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the manufacturing leads podcast. It absolutely means the world to me. Please let me know if you need any assistance.
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