Bonnie Fetch is currently the Vice President Supply Chain at Cummins Inc.
Cummins Inc. is a corporation of complementary business units that design, engineer, manufacture, distribute, and service engines and related technologies, including fuel systems, controls, air handling, filtration, emission solutions, and electrical power generation systems.
Bonnie is in-charge in leading the Global Supply Chain for Cummins’ distribution business segment and leading company-wide Supply Chain transformation for Cummins with the responsibility to implement Supply Chain Services operations globally and significantly improving the efficiency and effectiveness of supply chain processes.
Discover more details here.
Some of the highlights of the episode:
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Bonnie Fetch is currently the Vice President Supply Chain at Cummins Inc.
Cummins Inc. is a corporation of complementary business units that design, engineer, manufacture, distribute, and service engines and related technologies, including fuel systems, controls, air handling, filtration, emission solutions, and electrical power generation systems.
Bonnie is in-charge in leading the Global Supply Chain for Cummins’ distribution business segment and leading company-wide Supply Chain transformation for Cummins with the responsibility to implement Supply Chain Services operations globally and significantly improving the efficiency and effectiveness of supply chain processes.
Discover more details here.
Some of the highlights of the episode:
Follow us on:
Instagram: http://bit.ly/2Wba8v7
Twitter: http://bit.ly/2WeulzX
Linkedin: http://bit.ly/2w9YSQX
Facebook: http://bit.ly/2HtryLd
0:00
Hello LinkedIn friends and welcome to a new episode of podcast live in a LinkedIn live episode. Today we're having with us Wally fetch, or who's joining us from Florida in a very sunny morning in Florida. He is the vice president come in distribution, business supply chain services. She is also obviously a very accomplished executive, a wife, a mother, a grandmother as well as a published author. A couple of words just for all of you about Cummins, obviously, it's one of the largest global corporation that designs engineers, manufacturers, engines and related technologies, including fuel systems controls air handling information, as well as electrical power generation systems. With the revenue of 24 billion last year, money is been in the business for many, many years, he has just been a career of nearly 30 years, check started in our service industries, industry, running restaurant, and then owning a small family business. Then she joined a fortune 50 industrial company where she has a range of positions, including HR and then responsibilities long logistics manufacturing supply chain, and recently joined amines, which means the global supply chain function, companies distribution solution, goodness. So I love to welcome you. Thanks to look for making the time to join us today. And it's a pleasure to have you.
1:20
Thank you for inviting me. It's great to be here.
1:23
And I wanted to ask you, first and foremost, to tell us a little bit about your career, because it's quite unusual. So you unusual and different. Maybe walk us through a little bit what led you to where you are today in life.
1:37
Yeah, happy to it's certainly non traditional, not a career path that I could have mapped out 30 years ago, as you mentioned, I started my career in hospitality. And mostly that was because my father and grandfather were both in the industrial side of the world. In fact, they worked for caterpillar. And when I was a young girl, there were many times when the business cycles were so severe that my father and grandfather had to find second jobs to make ends meet. And so manufacturing wasn't really something that I was interested in. So I went in a completely different direction, ran restaurants for a number of years, which is a wonderful place to get customer experience, a terrible place to balance work and family life. But I did that for a number of years. And then I owned a small travel agency, which was my first lesson in disruption as a business. So it was a small family owned business. I'm dating myself now. But it was prior to the World Wide Web becoming a real disrupter. And so we ended up closing that business when you could start booking your travel online. And so it was a great lesson that stuck with me about business disruption. So I then started my industrial career nearly 27 years ago, which, you know, is amazing to me that it's been that long in supply chain, although at the time supply chain as a function wasn't really something I was familiar with. I started doing logistics as an inventory control analyst in planning and then I went into warehouse management, then I was asked to move into HR and spent a third of my career in different HR roles as an HR partner as a learning and development, professional, strategic HR and leadership development. Over the course of many years, I then had the opportunity to lead a couple of Indian businesses transmission business located in Europe, and then a component business, which was a global business, again, with end to end responsibilities. And then it came full circle, back to planning logistics and order management for caterpillars aftermarket business. And then two and a half years ago, I made the change to join Cummins, as the global supply chain leader for the distribution business, I now have a couple of corporate groups that report to me as well. And I have strategic leadership responsibility for for growth markets in the sales and service side of the business, which is really a unique opportunity for me to not only have supply chain responsibility, but to also have responsibility for how we sell and service our customers in the aftermarket in Africa, India, China, and Latin America. That's
4:25
Yeah, there's quite a bit of both, and I guess this year has kind of things upside down. So maybe I'll start by asking, you know, COVID-19, and all the disruption that has taken place and is still taking place this year affected you and if there was some, you know, case studies and changes that you've made in your supply chain better.
4:45
Yeah, it's really it's an interesting question. So 2020 has certainly been a year that none of us were prepared for. It actually reminds me of my early days in logistics when I used to say you know, one year of experience in the logistics business gives you 10 years of experience, because there is always some something happening and lots of chaos in the logistics world back then. And I feel like 2020 is the same, you know, we're getting, you know, a decade of learning in one year, what we are recognizing is we're going through a supply chain transformation. So we recognize the opportunity to improve the way we serve customers to improve our inventory performance, and to improve our processes, and improve our technology. And 2020 has just really polarized the need, right? It's really put the spotlight on, you know, it as a global company, we have to be connected, we have to have the ability to work remote, even in our distribution business, which, you know, those are boots on the ground in 190 countries around the world, we had to figure out in a shutdown situation, how to get technicians, to our customer sites, and in some cases, you know, the the use of technology, ar technology, and remote diagnostics, and, you know, kind of remote consultation was the way that we have served our customers. And so I don't know that we've learned a ton, I think we've reinforced the need to go faster on digitizing on connecting on leveraging technologies that, you know, in the pre COVID world, we thought were interesting, but often struggle to figure out how to go faster and make the business case to do so.
6:33
No, absolutely. And I guess we still have a little bit to go, I guess there's some light at the end of the tunnel because the vaccines roll out. But that being said, is probably going to take a good six to 12 months before most of the Western world look about emerging Mark get vaccinated. So yeah, we still have a bit of disruption to handle.
6:54
Yeah, yeah, the challenge is real in supply chain, we tend to lead and lag in terms of impact to the business overall. And we do believe that our challenges will remain for the next number of months, not only from the concerning COVID spread that we're seeing, you know, some period of time before the vaccine actually makes an impact. But also seeing the, you know, fairly significant balance in business. So a really significant drop in volume from q1 to q2, and then a very significant increase in volume from q2 to q3 and our supply base, you know, really taking some time to recover, we see the next three to six months is pretty critical to get back on on track and lots of challenges to do that.
7:41
And I wanted to ask you a little bit about decoupling discussions, the tariffs, the trade wars, the you know, shifting of manufacturing, maybe without going too much, obviously, detail. But how has that affected your your diet? You have you moved some production around? Have you brought it closer to the market? How's the situation without becoming as in general, and how do you see it playing out in the longer term?
8:05
Yeah, I think you know, Cummins has a very global manufacturing network. And so thankfully, so with some we're done in capabilities, so that that's been good, where we see, you know, single source products, particularly in places where, you know, the COVID restrictions, the lockdowns, the foreclosures, you know, have created some challenges, you know, in the end, and Mexico to name a couple. But I think that what the COVID pandemic has reinforced is the shift from, you know, 10 years ago was all about a global network sourcing, you know, products from the lowest cost countries to you know, really, I think the the next decade is going to be how do you regionalize your supply chain, and Cummins has a regional supply chain, so global interconnectivity, obviously, but as a supply chain organization, we're we've been moving to a regional structure. And where we've done that already, we've actually seen the ability to address the COVID crisis in a much more efficient manner. By having a team working across the company in a particular region, I think the implications for manufacturing are going to be you know, looking at the balance of total cost of ownership and where we might procure a low cost entry or lowest cost provider parts and balance that with risk, which, you know, sometimes it's difficult to put a financial measure on the risk, right, but we might be able to buy the piece part cheaper in some other part of the world and transport it and even afford to carry the inventory. But when there's a supply chain disruption, such as the disruptions we've been seeing this year, you know, the cost of figuring out how to find an alternative source or the delay and being able to manufacture is quite a significant cost as well and so on. Do you think, you know, we'll continue to evaluate the footprint and our agility to be able to respond to these kinds of supply chain disruptions moving forward?
10:11
And I guess this kind of comes into my mind because I was talking to a couple of 3pm clients today in the madness, what's happening right now. containers for the US, or Europe? Specifically, I was particularly impacted at the moment. And obviously, it seems like a major problem to every update of time.
10:42
See, yeah, for sure. We're seeing extended logistics times, right. So we're having to adjust for often weeks of extended logistics times. I just had a situation yesterday where I was asked for some help with a booking to get product out of China. Right. And many of the companies are not even taking bookings right now. Because they're so busy. So it is a real challenge. I think for everyone. The question is, you know, how much of this is the significant balance from q3 and settle down? And how much of this is here to stay for some period of time? I don't think we fully know that yet. But definitely the logistics side of the business. Is that a real challenge for us right now?
11:27
Yeah, I mean, it's significant. Other trades that are under utilized today is a complete discrepancy that seems this way works at the moment.
11:39
Yes,
11:39
I also wanted money specifically for industry 4.0, there's a lot of discussions in terms of the world economy forum as a report with the major factories of the world. And they put a lot about IoT, and machine learning and automation, robotics, and so on. I wanted to come in as one more case studies that you are you implemented with the results? Maybe you can give some examples?
12:06
Yeah, of course, first of all, I'm a little bit of a geek in this new technology, innovation space and have been for a number of years, I mean, my previous roles. I mean, we're not necessarily talking about industry, 4.0. But we were certainly talking about and implementing, you know, collaborative robots, 3d printing, not only for prototyping, but also for low volume legacy parts in the aftermarket, even drone technology, right, big data and analytics, and predictive logistics, which all were quite exciting and continue to evolve. At Cummins, we're doing many of the same things, right, we've had some great success with 3d printing, and our ability to serve customers and critical situations, our ability, now that the cost of materials and the cost of printing continues to come down, and the ability to design engineer and then subsequently manage manufacturer using additive manufacturing technologies, which is exciting, it's going to give us flexibility, for sure to not have to rely on inventory as heavily as we have historically had to do. Collaborative robots have been, you know, a great efficiency and quality improvement. You know, I think years ago, when you talk about automation, and robotics, you know, people would get a little scared that this was somehow going to replace jobs and take people out of the business. And well, you know, there certainly are roles that have been modified or eliminated as a result of robotics, it hasn't actually translated into loss of jobs, it's just changed the type of people that we need, right? We need more, you know, programmers, and we need more data analysts and you know, other types of roles. It's not that we don't need people, but the collaborative robots has helped us to gain efficiency, because robots don't take breaks. And they're, you know, they can work 12 hours a day, or 24 hours a day, if we choose to work them, that also you get quality improved, right. And you also get safety improvement, particularly where we have, you know, loading and unloading operations and ergonomic issues, you know, robots are certainly helping with that auto guided vehicles, you know, in logistics space, where I've done this in my pastorals certainly, it's, it's on the roadmap for my current company as well. But you know, auto guided vehicles saying you get efficiency gains, you get safety improvements, you also get data, right, which I think you know, all of the automation also allows us to capture data, which is so very important to be able to advance analytics and gain insights that you know just are simply not as easy to gain when we're doing things in a more manual fashion. The thing of course, I'm most excited about given my supply chain role is the big data and advanced analytics capability using our factory data, leveraging sensor technology, leveraging telematics on our engines and OEMs vehicles up to allow us to ultimately create a predictive logistics. Right, which, you know, in my past, I've worked on the ability to predict when you might need a replacement part in the furthest supply chain away from the US with enough time to be able to move the product sort of just in time. And so that's a game changer. When we think about, you know, serving customers and doing it in a way that we don't have to tie up a lot of capital in having you know, mountains of inventory or expediting freight in order to serve customers. So there's just so many opportunities in this industry 4.0, all of which we're pursuing at different levels of velocity within Cummins, all with the mindset of taking manufacturing to the next level, and allowing us to be digitized in a way that we can utilize that data for insights now, not only insights in terms of efficiency and quality of plans, but also insights for our design engineers, insights for logistics, arm of the business in terms of getting smarter about serving our customer needs. I just did anecdotally over the holidays are Thanksgiving here in the US, you might have heard that there was a lot of talk about a supply chain challenge with small turkeys. So we typically have a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving, but it's normally a large gathering. And so you have 20 pound turkeys and above, well this year as a result COVID. You know, turns out, there weren't a lot of large family gatherings. And so there was a shortage of small turkeys. Now imagine if the industry, you know, had enough data had enough insight that they could have actually predicted in a in a pandemic year, you're probably going to need some smelters, they might have been more equipped to do so. And so you know, I just think about our ability in this industry in the industrial side of the business to keep mining machines running 100% of the time, keep on Highway, you know, trucks running 100% of the time. And the only way that we can do that is to get more predictive today we serve our customers, but we often do so with a pretty heavy cost of carrying inventory. We also do so with a pretty heavy cost of expediting when we have an urgent situation that we didn't necessarily plan for. At disconnectedness industry 4.0 technology capability is going to allow us to be a lot smarter. And I think COVID has just reinforced that, you know, in virtually every business, it's certainly important in the industrial business, but it looked at restaurants, grocery stores, like everybody has had to figure out how to go digital, if they were going to stay in business this year. Right. So I think it just reinforces that we need to probably move faster. And it's not without challenges, right. But the challenges are a complexity, particularly for older industrial companies like ours, where we have old systems, we have old machines, and we certainly have new ones as well. But how do you integrate the two and truly create a connected ecosystem? scalability? Like, how do you scale it up when you've got, you know, 600 plus locations around the world? And then how do you do it in a way that you know, with wireless, connected technology that you secure the network, which, you know, cyber, cyber security is a real concern, particularly given the, you know, it's not all new equipment and all new technology, integrating, you know, a hybrid of different machines. And so how do you do that and not miss a hole in your in your secure network? No,
19:31
I mean, absolutely. I don't think anybody has cracked the code. I mean, in some ways, I guess the longer companies were younger, but let's say the younger will have some level of advantage because yeah, they don't have the legacy. But at the same time, I haven't quite seen anybody that has figured it all. That being said, we actually had Cisco Betty who put together he's the head of investment for the World Economic Forum, and he shared the case study refectory going on with us. Turkey would be similar. They just are both assets, Samsung, I think it was and then they installed applications later it was over 70 bucks IoT device. So his point was that a lot can be done through creativity. But then when you are scaling that location basis, then becomes a hell of a lot trickier to deal with one, and we're getting a lot of questions and I want to go sauce. Daniel is here with us, Daniel Stanton. Hi, Daniel. Thanks for making the connection. I want to ask you on the point of skills, one in coming back to you background services, running your own companies, restaurants when they are in supply chain logistics is a global level skill. Looking back the speeches and the skills that I also feel it today with flexibility, the ability, right, those will enable you to make the move in your career.
21:06
Yeah, it's a great question. I've been asked it a lot. I don't know the answer other than I am by nature, curious. I'm a continual learner, one of my top five strengths from strength finder is learner. And so I'm always curious, and I'm willing to take risks, that probably is the is the key reason why I've been able to maneuver this very strange career path is my willingness to take risks, and my curiosity. So you know, when I think about, you know, some of my, within the industrial world leaders have said to me, You ask great questions. And so, you know, whenever I'm in a role in HR, as an example, I always wanted to learn the business that I was supporting. I was out on the factory floor, talking to employees on the factory floor, I was talking to leaders about, you know, what's working, what's not working, it was partly my own curiosity, and partly, you know, as a support function, like understand how to better serve the business, but then that, you know, that signals to people, you know, oh, she's interested in this, this side of the business, and then it you know, it led to conversations about, you know, what would you like to do in your career, and I had a couple of terrific bosses that were really focused on diversity and inclusion without even realizing they were focused on it, right. So so one of the best bosses I've ever worked for, asked me, you know, what I wanted to do in my career, and I was a strategic HR partner. And I said, I really like to run a business, I ran businesses before I joined the company. And I really like to run a business. And, you know, he had to go talk to some of his peers, all of whom said, you have a really interesting background, but we probably wouldn't put you in a product leader role, because you don't you're not an engineer, you don't you don't have that kind of background. Well, he put me in a role running a $400 million business in Europe, I knew nothing about transmissions when I went to run a business. And in fact, I told him, I don't think I'm the best qualified person for this job. And he said, I didn't think you were capable, I wouldn't ask you to do it. And so so I, what I think helped me to be successful in that role is my willingness to learn and ask the people that are doing the work, you know, how they assemble a transmission, how they design a gear, how they design a shaft, so you know, how it all works, and talking to customers. And, you know, the more you do that, if you're adaptable, you know, leadership, and going into different functions and different roles is really about learning and then applying, you know, cross functional or, you know, transferable skills, we like to call them soft skills, I like to call them harder skills, because they're, in many ways, a harder to find than, than hard skills. But so I think that's what's helping, you know, I worked hard, and I've been curious. And I've taken risks. And I've also had a couple of really terrific bosses that believed in me, and you know, kind of threw me in the deep end, and I figured out how to swim.
24:08
That's always the fastest, sometimes only if you don't drown. It's the fastest. So I'll just put, I just put this one because you might like, seeing the testimony that Daniel is saying about you. So I think you definitely have, but at least one big fan. I think there's one big thing.
24:30
And yeah, you know, to Daniel's comment, I've often answered that question like how did you go from working in restaurants, running restaurants to a travel agency to now you're working in an industrial world and, you know, the bottom line is, we're all in as leaders, we're all in the people business. And it turns out the issues are really similar. Whether you're running a restaurant and travel agency or an industrial business, it's people that you have to attract the right people develop people, retain people by engaging them. And then you know, if you've got a clear vision, people are developed to be able to do their job. And you got to get out of the way, and let's do it. And so, you know, that I think is is another reason why I've been able to navigate different parts of the business because I really don't view myself as a supply chain leader or HR leader or a business leader, I view myself as a people. And if you can figure out the people leadership piece, you can learn the rest
25:34
was it and on the diversity on the diversity aspect, and I know that your wrote a book, right on, bring that up now, on skirting issues, a guide for the well intentioned men in today's workplace, we topic, you know, you said when maybe 15 years ago, when you were given the chance to have some amazing both isn't, it wasn't even that much discussed is in with a lot more discussed. There's been some progress still a long, long way to go. Maybe Tell us about your thoughts around, you know, diversity in the workplace. Also, there's not so many women in like in there's not so many women in manufacturing, still in leadership positions. dokey good?
26:15
Yeah, great. I did write a book that I didn't, I didn't grow up wanting to be an author. So people often ask me like, Did you always want to be an author? I had no idea about writing a book, probably if I knew, before writing the book, how much time and effort it would take, I don't know if I would have started to be honest. But the way it came about, I have had a successful career. And I never wanted to associate myself with the term feminism, like a lot of women don't, right, I would never have introduced myself as a feminist. Because in my mind growing up, you know, growing up in the 70s, feminism was associated with some not so nice connotations, right? It's about male bashing, and bra burning. And that, to me, wasn't what I was about. In fact, I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about being a woman in a very male dominated world, and certainly a male dominated industry. And so I was part of the problem. Like I figured out how to fit in, I figured out how to be tough. I figured out how to hang with the guys and not let their moments, you know, take me off track. And consequently, I got ahead. No, I got ahead and got to a certain level in my career, where the feedback was, she's too aggressive. She's not likable, therefore, she can't get to the next level. I had around the same time started getting requests for interviews, this was around 2013 2014, for books and articles that were being written on this topic of gender. And the questions were typically always saying, like, tell us about your career, you're pretty senior in a very large company, how did you navigate? What do you attribute your success to? And with the follow up question, stumped me in every single interview, and it was, you know, I would say, like, I worked hard, I surround myself with great people, you know, I was a little bit lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Why are there not more women in pipeline? And those two interviews, it did kind of hit me by surprise, I had never really thought about the pipeline. I had never looked behind me to see that I was often the only woman in the room. Despite the fact that my husband had asked on a number of occasions, why are you always the only woman in the picture? Right? We travel around the world to all these exotic places, and I visit suppliers, visit customer and channel partners, and the only one, and even on my bosses, teams, traditionally, I was the only one. And sometimes on my own teams. When I took over a team, I was the only woman. And so but I hadn't thought about it. I had always thought well, you know, I just put my head down and work hard, and it's getting recognized. But what I realized is it was getting recognized so long as I assimilated to the behaviors that were thought to be good leadership behaviors. So when I had my aha moments, I leaned in and started talking to young women started, you know, inside and outside the company trying to figure out like, what have I missed all of these years, and I became compelled to do something to leave the industry better than I found it since I was oblivious to the problem for 20 years. And as I started, you know, on this campaign for change, the resistance was, as you can imagine, somewhat significant, not only from my male peers, but from my female peers. That felt really uncomfortable with what I was, you know, suggesting that women should do like women should talk about their experiences. Women should call out the bad behavior. Women should not You know, be apologetic about asking why they weren't selected for a job that they believe they're fully qualified for. But women felt like I did when I first started speaking out about it uncomfortable that people would think I was trying to advocate for myself or my own benefit. But I, around the same time, first grandchild and choose a girl and, you know, had some things happening in the life that, you know, kind of were turning point, moments for me, and I just decided, I'm going to make a difference. And if it impacts my ability to get to the next level, because people are uncomfortable with it, that's okay, because I'm already successful. And so I really did go on a crusade, talking to every group, I could talk to putting issues on the table and executive discussions, making people feel a little bit uncomfortable that we needed to put more focus on diversity and inclusion. And then at some point, at probably in a moment of frustration, I thought, you know, we're not making progress fast enough. How could we make progress faster, and I started experimenting with my own team, which at the time was fairly large and global, getting men together in a conversation. And what I very quickly learned is, despite the fact that you could look around any room and see that there were very few women, men hadn't spent any time thinking about the fact that we had a problem, just like I hadn't spent any time thinking about the fact that we had a problem. And so I thought, if awareness was the first step, then you know, what could we do as the next step to make progress. And I thought helping men really aren't aware, become aware, and then giving them some practical advice on how they can engage and making it more inclusive wouldn't even right, next natural step. And that's kind of how the idea of the book was born. I wrote it with a co author, who had a, you know, similar experiences to mine, because a lot of women have similar experiences, but also different in the sense that she's younger and was in a completely different career path. But together, we share their stories. And we put advice out there and started, you know, really leaning into conversations with men and women, about how we can make a difference. I personally think we have a long way to go. But I have stopped counting the number of men, I've seen the transformation happen, men that, you know, were oblivious to the, to the fact that they could even be part of the solution, let alone that they needed to be that have become, you know, equally passionate about making the change. And so, you know, our hope is if we can help to accelerate this change with the book in any small way, that we've been successful. And I would say that my career change a two and a half years ago, was in part, you know, wanting to join a company that was doing exciting things, but also it needed to be a company that really understood diversity and inclusion. And so if you know anything about Cummins, Cummins has a long history of focus on diversity and inclusion. You know, one of the first CEOs of the company, who was CEO for 40 years helped to organize the marches on Washington with Martin Luther King is quoted, you know, 40 years ago talking about diversity in the way that you would hear it talked about today. So he in many ways, it's part of the DNA, and the company is better than many industrials, but still recognizes we have a long way to go. So I get my passion for this particular topic, as well as my supply chain capability to bear in the company, which is really exciting, huh?
34:07
No, thanks for the authentic sharing. And yeah, interesting. I mean, I have I can add my two cents. I had a similar aha moment. Like I never thought okay, I'm a guy. I didn't realize that also from from a victim, it can happen that you share that you also realize that it's kind of lonely at some point. And then it dawned on me, I'll bring this question in somewhat related in some other ways, it isn't, but it's very relevant online, to become more experts in the reading and probably made you feel that they know better or in the business itself. And, you know,
34:41
yeah, I had so many experiences of going into lead organizations where I'm clearly not the expert, that I've gotten pretty comfortable with it. You know, I acknowledge that there are in almost every leadership role into people in the organization that know the work better than I do. What I bring to the organization is not necessarily the technical capability, it's the leadership. So I acknowledge that up front. And I really do seek to find people within the organization that do have the technical depth, that do have the, you know, innovative capability, like different different people bring different strengths to a team, and really try to leverage that, because I think my role as a leader is certainly to understand enough about the organization to set the strategy and the vision for where we want to go. And then make sure that we have the right organizational culture, and we have the right skill sets and the right people on the bus, I can say it that way, Jim Collins terminology to actually get us there. And so I think that's what's helped me to navigate now, for sure, there have been, you know, times when, when there's probably been back chatter
35:55
about, you know, why
35:56
did she get the job, she doesn't, you know, when I went into the transmission role, I will tell you, I had imposter syndrome for, you know, at least three months, if not longer, where I thought, you know, they're gonna figure out that if they scratch too deep below the surface, I do not know what I'm talking about, relative to gear ratio, and in, you know, all things transmission. So what I did, when I found out, I was going into that role, leveraging, you know, my, my learning agility, I called my car and told them, number one, I was moving out of the country. And number two that I was coming, visit him that next weekend, and I needed him to teach me everything that I needed to know about transmissions. And so when I went to visit him that weekend, he was very excited, he had all of his service manuals laid out, he was my mom's, and he spent lots of time anticipating, you know, teaching me everything that I need to know about a transmission. I, of course, remember 5% of what he taught me. But it gave me confidence that I knew the terminology, I could ask him questions, I could ask my team questions. And that helped me to have the confidence to move forward. But there were for sure times, and there have been times in every job including this, you know, this, this move to come in, like I come into a company that, you know, most people at my level have been here for 2030 years, and I'm joining new, and I don't know anything about our policies, I don't know anything about our processes. I, you know, probably know less about engines than I know about all other parts of a mining machine or construction equipment, products. And, and I hadn't spent any time in the on highway business, because Caterpillar was, you know, at the time, not enough on eyewitness. And so, you know, there were even times in my, in my current role that I thought, you know, I don't, they're gonna figure out that I don't know what I'm doing. But it's never happened. Like, it's never nobody's ever said like, while you're you're failing at this role, because you aren't protecting the lessor. Because the higher up you get in a leadership role, the less your technical expertise matters, and the more your emotional intelligence and your leadership capability matters, which is not to say that you don't need some technical foundation. Right? You know, I am continually learning about new technologies and, you know, trying to understand how they can help me to ask the right questions, and we've seen, but, you know, my advice to anyone that feels like you shouldn't take a chance on a roll, if you don't feel like you know, the most about it in the organization is, you know, stop thinking that way. My philosophy is, if I'm the smartest person in the room, I need to find another room, where I'm not the smartest person in the room. And that's how we learned.
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Yeah, whoever Well said, the honor, just a couple more questions, coming back a little bit on some examples, right, the way you've seen this kind of pipeline grooming done, right, specifically on the topic of diversity, whether it's, you know, a group, more female leaders, and you know, the diversity that you have raised, you have a couple of other things, age groups, and so on. Can you give us some examples of where you've seen it from your experience from what you've witnessed, and maybe also doing research from the book, where it was done, right, and specifically on the point of engaging men, because another topic, which is quite controversial, in some ways, there's a lot of men that says, Oh, yeah, they always talk to themselves, and you know, they have their feminist group and whatever, right. I mean, they just, you know, I have heard that comment. I haven't made it myself. So I think your point of envy man is such a crucial part of this, making it work like it was getting it done right. And yes, what would be some examples and maybe some
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principles? Yeah, it's a great question, and thanks for asking. The first thing that I would say is, rather than jumping right to grooming, you know, women for leadership roles, I think we have to acknowledge that there are capable women already in the workplace. Right. So so I have been in throughout my career, and many, many times, I've been the first first female leader at an executive level in your first female leader for this, that and the other thing isn't that I was the first capable woman. Right, there were capable women before me that didn't get recognized. And so I think it starts with the recognition that capable women exist, right? Women are graduating with undergraduate and graduate degrees at a much higher rate than men currently, in the US. It's like 1.4, significantly more women graduating with degrees than men. 50% of the population is female, roughly 50% of the workforce is female in many countries around the world, including the US. And so the capability exists. So we first have to recognize that we've been overlooking it. And unconscious bias is largely reason why we've been overlooking it because we tend to look for people who are like us, or who have had a similar career path. And so where I've seen it work well is when we actually start challenging what the requirements are for the jobs. I had these conversations very recently about two particular roles within the comments, organization, sales and service. So the aftermarket distribution channel, which is even more predominantly white male, and the factory side of the business in the way that we recruit sales managers, as an example, if you look at the requirements, you are going to get women that are going to have the requirements, because you want them to have industry experience, you know, yours, you want them to, you know, have all of these things that only people that have come up in the organization, that particular function in that industry, what happened, and women have not been there. And so we've been able to kind of flip the script a little bit to say, what are the competencies that we actually like? What is it that we're trying to accomplish? It turns out, we actually want you know, relationship builders, we want people that have good customer insight, capability. And, and so we have one example that I'm aware of, where we changed, you know, the requirements of the job and put a person in the role,