Crisis, AI, and the Future of Supply Chain Leadership with Rick McDonald

What happens when AI collides with real-world operations?

In this episode of The Momentum Flow, I sit down with Rick McDonald, former Chief Supply Chain Officer at The Clorox Company, to explore how supply chains are evolving from execution engines into intelligent decision-making systems.

Rick shares lessons from leading through COVID demand shocks, hyperinflation, and major cyber disruptions while managing one of the world’s most critical consumer supply chains. We also dive into AI, digital transformation, operational resilience, leadership under pressure, and why the future belongs to organizations where talent and technology evolve together. 

• AI and supply chain transformation
• Crisis leadership lessons
• Talent vs. technology
• Digital transformation failures
• The future of intelligent operations

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Today, my guest is someone who has operated at the highest levels of global supply chain leadership. Rick McDonald. He is a former supply chief supply chain officer of the Clorox company, where he led global operations for a 7 billion plus consumer products company through some of the most turbulent operating environments in modern supply chain history. From the COVID demand shock to hyperinflation and even a major cyber disruption, Rick led one of the most critical supply chain networks in the world, delivering essential disinfecting products when the world needed the most. Today, Rick advises founders, CEOs, and boards across supply chain technology ecosystem, helping bridge the gap between operators building real-world systems and innovators building the next generation of supply chain technology. Rick, welcome to the Moment Flow.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Hey Luis, it is great to see you again. And uh thank you so much for inviting me to join you today. I'm looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

I'm humble you join and looking forward to having a good conversation here. So uh to our audience, I've been lucky to spend a good amount of time with Rick in recent times. I now know he's very vocal about something that many companies are just starting to realize, which is talent and technology must evolve together. Today, we'll explore how AI is transforming supply chains from execution engines into decision platforms, requiring leaders to rethink skills, operating models, and leadership structures. However, before we jump into our conversation, Rick, please share your personal story from your early days in Fritolet, your successful career in Clorox, and now your focus in supply chain advisory and board membership.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Yeah, thanks, Luis. Um so you know, grew up in Atlanta originally, went to Georgia Tech, played a little baseball there. When I figured out I couldn't hit that kind of pitching, I had to go get a real job. And so I went to Fritolet and spent 10 great years there. Uh I joined the Clorox company when it was $1.7 billion. And of course, today it's a little bit over $7 billion, not uh not counting the recent acquisition of Gojo Pirel. But um uh, you know, what excites me about what I'm doing right now is I'm getting to work with some really fun people on fun projects, smart people who are really leading the way in this um, you know, in this massive pivot we're all going through with supply chain technology and the elevation of AI and agents and all that that entails with respect to the intersection of talent and technology. So it's a very interesting time for those of us who are in the middle of the supply chain.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Fun times, no doubt about it. So now you let cloud supply chain in one of the most extraordinarily difficult and demanding demand shocks in many consumer goods history. So looking back, what did that moment reveal to you about the role of supply chain and supply chain leadership inside the company?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Yeah, I think we we all um we all began to realize that supply chain deserved a full seat at the table if it didn't have one already. The the importance of a company's supply chain in many cases uh you know it spelled the difference between success and and failure. And uh, and so for for me at Clorox, you know, I had a great team working with me. My uh my leadership team and those below them were exceptional at what they did. And so it allowed us to operate probably about as well as we could. We'd already developed a great culture, kind of a think it, say it, uh, don't hold anything back type culture. And that proved especially valuable as we got into all the uncertainties of COVID and hyperinflation and and then the cyber attack.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Now, you simplified the mission during COVID to two priorities, right? First, protect your people, and second, run plots, and this is full flat out. Now, did that clarity help you focus on lock your organization? Did it? Or was you know it was a difficult time. So, what's your perspective?

SPEAKER_00 4:37

It it absolutely did, and I'll tell you a downside in in just a second here. But the the upside and the immediacy of what we had to do was right in front of us. We were uh designated a central business for obvious reasons, and uh we had to run our plants, uh, and we had to keep our people safe and healthy. And so those two objectives really clarified what we were going to be about. It didn't mean that we weren't interested in productivity or safety or quality or anything else, but um, you know, the the focus on safety and health in our facilities, operating safely with extended hours and making sure people were healthy um when they came to work, that was uh that was job number one. I'm very proud to say we had no transmittable cases of COVID in any of our factories during that time period. And uh that's a tribute to the plant leaders and and all of our folks on our plants. They're the they're the real heroes in this story.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah, absolutely. Now, if it wasn't enough, right? You also navigated hyperinflation during your tenure and uh later major cyber disruption. So so what did those experiences teach you about organizational resiliency that technology alone cannot survive it, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Yeah, well, the the resiliency part of it, um what we learned during COVID was we did not have to have perfect information to make a lot of important decisions quickly. Okay. And in fact, we were almost better off if we didn't overanalyze because we were possibly going to get gridlocked in our own, you know, in our own brains and our own thoughts. And so making decisions quickly, checking back in to see if they were working, and then changing course if we had to was a really important thing. Um, it also taught us more about the value of redundancy in the supply chain. I call them insurance policies. You can't insure everything, but you can make certain some of your critical ingredients and key suppliers have the right amount of capacity because clearly at the start of COVID, we we didn't on a very important item to consumers around the world like Clorox disinfecting wipes. Uh, you know, we changed that very quickly within the year by going out in a worldwide sourcing effort and and came back with really almost double our supply, um, not only through that, but also adding a uh a new packaging line in our existing plant while we were in the middle of COVID. Um, but all those things taught us about the redundancy of supply and the things that we needed to have to be ready for the next disruption.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Now I remember in a recent conversation, you you made a point that it sounded very powerful to me, right? Resilience is not just getting inventory or building inventory. It's inventory really an optionality. So you want to elaborate a little bit on that? How does that optionality look in modern supply chains?

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Yeah, I I think the uh I think the optionality really is um it's a it's a it spans a number of different items. Uh it's all the way from the quality of your demand signal and being able to improve your your forecast. So you've got a supply plan and inventory goes with that, and you're not just creating inventory that's sitting idle and consuming cash. Um, it goes with understanding what your suppliers' capabilities are, what the ecosystem of their tier ones and or tier twos and tier threes, how they're operating, and and really how how it gives you choices that you can make when when disruptions occur. That's the real to me, that's the difference between resiliency and agility. Resilience is what you do before the disruption. Agility is how fast can you respond from the shock of the disruption and whatever it is that's uh that's taking you off track.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Yeah, no, that that's a great distinction, right? Building resiliency to gain agility. So fully fully echo that. Now you now you're also an advisor now, and you're you spend most of the time in advisory. It's a little different, right? So, what talent capabilities or leadership behaviors separate the organization that adapt quickly from those that struggle during crisis?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, I um so first of all, I'm really enjoying this chapter in my career. It's uh it's been very fulfilling, as I said on the uh at the beginning, it's fun things with fun people, but it's also meaningful things where outcomes matter a lot and their ability to transform organizations through their technology is is fantastic. What I find is um in the case of a lot of organizations, the digital literacy, um, I call it digital fluency, but the executives level to really uh uh ability to really understand the the landscape that we're living in, all of the digital capabilities that exist, and and what problems they're best at solving, that is not nearly sufficient. And that might sound like harsh criticism, but I think it is actually based in reality. And part of the reason why so many digital transformations are failing. Uh, either the wrong problem was fixed and they didn't understand the business case behind that problem, or somebody got sold some technology that really didn't attend to the issue that was trying to be addressed, or change management was off. All those are leadership activities. And uh I find as organizations come up the curve relative to digital fluency, the better they do with digital transformations.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah, and that that's a perfect leading to our next section section, right? Because, you know, those crises force supply chains to rethink how they operate. At the same time, you know, we're seeing another massive shift happening with AI and digital transformation. And the conversation is starting to move beyond visibility, right? That used to be the theme for years towards something much more powerful, right? Which is um, you know, and maybe a little bit different. So I've heard you, I heard you say in in recent times as well that AI is shifting us from dashboards to decisions. And when when does that shift look or how how does that shift look inside supply chain operations? When you're shifting from yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Well, I I think it's um I think it's a massive shift. And really, again, kind of it's it's a little bit part of the digital fluency, digital um uh literacy conversation, because instead of just having visibility, which by the way, not all of us have great visibility to all of our our our results, even in the dashboard, rearview mirror dashboard, it is really transitioning from visibility to insight. You know, kind of in the days gone past, we and and and still for a lot of companies, we we had a static group of KPIs. Uh, you know, we put the dipstick in once a month, maybe once a week, if we were lucky daily, and uh calibrate how we did on performance. And now with technology, we don't have to settle for that. We we can actually be much more um orchestrated and much more about the insights instead of just visibility. And then what that leads us to, uh, given quick insights, is quicker decisions. So we can respond quicker to the data that's available and you know, sorted, sifted, curated, and presented to us through technology. But then the human beings involved can also make recommendations on uh what to do with that data. And so the decision uh parts are really important there. And then, you know, last but not least, that leads to better execution or at least faster execution. You know, better is going to be kind of up to the organization involved, but um, better execution because decisions that were made manually, there were a lot of debates about, you know, should we, shouldn't we? Leadership teams didn't align. Some organizations require almost everybody to consent uh to consents before they will move forward. Well, this this changes the game here. Um, the automation, the APIs, the orchestration platforms really allow for uh much faster execution. Once you have the data, you sort it, you sift it, you gain the insight, you make a decision, and then you execute all that can happen in a matter of minutes, where you know, even even today in a lot of organizations, that is a you know, hours long, days-long, weeks long uh type of process.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

I I hear you loud and clear. So you're definitely saying that you know the opportunity now lies in systems that influence operational workflow rather than just reporting on them. And I fully agree. Now, you've also said, on the other hand, that digital transformation without sequencing becomes just digital theater, right? It's just you know digital for the sake of being digital. Yeah, what does that right sequencing look like? You from data, workflows, intelligent automation, elaborate a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Yeah, this is the um this is the go slow to go fast part, Luis. Okay, and uh the the the reason I say that is because, and this is you know, this is my experience, um, you know, kind of fumbling around a little bit with what to do digitally at Clorox back in you know, circa 2018 or so. Um, the the company experienced a I I I'll call it a technology debt for a number of years. And so there were some systems that were either uh broken or not working or in risk of failing, which would have been uh, you know, fairly disastrous for the supply chain and the company. So, you know, sorting through all this, it it occurred to me that, you know, in order to gain funding for these initiatives, because I'm competing with every other function of the organization, uh, you know, not only monetary funding, but resource people funding to do the work. Um, I I've got to have some sort of way to talk about the priorities and why those priorities are important. And, you know, long story short is from a list of problems that we had to solve in the supply chain, which I think every organization ought to have right now, that inventory, um, you know, we were able to prioritize them based on pushing them through four risk filters: a financial filter, reputational filter, a regulatory filter, and a customer filter. Those informed the size of the problem we were trying to solve. And then we built the business case around if we solve this problem, what's the value to the organization? And that it sounds really simple to say, and I think I said that in about 35 seconds. It took us a while to sort that out and figure that out, but more importantly, it was really powerful within the enterprise because now I could speak to my colleagues on the executive team around the investments that we had to make and why we had to make them and what I was promising them in return in terms of an ROI that I would immediately take out of my financial forecast. So those were that that was my learning is the inventory of the problems to solve, pushing them through those risk filters, creating the business case, and the roadmap that will attend to your biggest and most important problems first. Because when you one one last thing, when you when you buy technology, you're not just buying technology, you're buying down the risk of the the problem of the issue that that technology can attend to. And so it it really is a risk mitigation strategy as well as in some cases a cost improvement approach, a margin improvement approach.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

I I definitely love your your four uh risk filters approach, you know, financial, reputational, uh, regulatory, and consumer. I I think that's very sound advice for people. You know, you know, now at the same time, as companies are trying to get more digital, a lot of them are running dozens of disconnected pilots across planning or logistics or procurement. So, what's a price organization that scales digital transformation from those stuck in just pilot mode? Because, as you know, there's a lot that they're just doing pilots left and right.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yeah. Well, one of the uh it's it's a really important question. And I think some of this is borne by sort of the FOMO of digital transformations. You know, people are they fear they're gonna miss out. They hear a lot about AI, they're hearing more about agents, they hear about, well, honestly, a lot, a lot more failures and successes right now for some of the reasons I mentioned before, but they don't want to miss out on something that'd be great for their company, for their people, for their shareholders and investors. Um, and and so I think this uh, you know, this this issue of how do you get into that without piloting yourself to death is a really important one. To me, that starts with something that I thought we did pretty well at Clorox, which is we had a multifunctional governance team that evaluated the top, uh, the top candidates for digital investment at the company. Now, this was early days. This is why we were getting our uh let's say getting our hands dirty in terms of figuring this out because we were all learning together, but learning quickly, and coming up with um the what's and whys of these recommendations that we could stand behind and make investments behind. In some cases, you want to pilot the technology, but you really want to have a um uh a thoughtful rollout plan right after that. I wouldn't recommend just piloting and then saying, well, you know, now what do we do? Uh it's gotta be in service of something more like a, hey, if this works, we're rolling X, Y, Z geographies, these businesses, these functions, versus, you know, we're gonna we're gonna try it and then you know we'll we'll kind of get back together and see what happens here. I don't think that's a really effective strategy. I think why you see so many stalls right now is because it's a pilot without purpose and um uh you know, not not necessarily attending to something that is network-wide, system-wide, or across functions.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Yeah, so paraphrasing your your advice here is you know, is you need to have a um um an end in mind before just running palos, right? And you know, because you're doing palos with the aim that it's gonna be successful, you're gonna scale it. So, how are you gonna scale it? That that that's what I'm learning from you and your advice on how to focus on.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

That's it, Louise. You know, the other thing I'd say here, and you I don't know, you've probably seen this as well. Um, and I I don't mean this with any disrespect to boards or board members or executive committees because I was a part of that. Um, but I think sometimes, you know, we get so wrapped up in what is new and shiny and good, yeah, that we miss out on some of the other parts. And you know, maybe somebody on the board says we got to have AI, you got to have an AI strategy. I I I don't know. I think you gotta have a business strategy, and then you got to determine where artificial intelligence in its various forms could solve the problems you have to solve in your enterprise or in, you know, in our case, in the supply chain function. Um, because if you know the the the board is putting pressure on the CEO, the CEO is putting pressure on the organization, somebody's gotta go try something someplace. And again, kind of back to the going slow to go fast, you really want to organize yourself up front because when you do these pilots well, when you give these transformations life, it it generates trust, it generates confidence. The next time you show up and say, I've got a great idea and I need a little bit of money and a couple people, you're much more likely to get um agreement that that is uh that is a good place for the company to spend its resources.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yeah, that's so true. You know, it's uh a lot of times leadership teams or or boards, you know, um it's a runny, right? Instead of go slow to go fast, they want to go fast to go fast. And they be and that that sometimes creates a little bit of challenge for the operating side. So I fully echo that. So now people think a little bit. So so uh with all this technology pro technological progress, uh one thing uh keeps emerging across the industry, right? So technology is not the biggest constraint anymore, talent is so so let's talk about how the workforce itself is evolving because there's there's major shifts there as well. So as AI capabilities are maturing, many roles are shifting from just executing tasks to really overseeing automatic decision decision making, uh, decision-making systems. So, do you see supply chain organization evolving towards humans supervising intelligent systems?

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Uh yes. Yes, and and in fact, um, you know, as a company I'm advising right now, they do uh short haul transportation. And they basically figured out a way to squeeze out all the losses in um uh in in you know sort of the dedicated freight environment. And um they have made a massive shift from human talent to digital talent, uh agents writing workflows that other agents will um will execute, but then human beings um engaging with the um the technology and the capability to provide context, to provide judgment, to provide uh, you know, in the cases where it's needed ethics or or maybe integrity. Um and so I I I do I do see already an org uh a world where organizations are um leveraging both human skills and the things that we're good at doing, and the technology and the things that it's good at doing.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

So on that same token, so what skills will define the next generation of supply chain leaders? Because the landscape is changing, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Yeah, I I think um when when I think about those skills, you know, I'll go back to something I said before, this this whole bit around um uh digital fluency. So this is not, you know, what I'm not trying to suggest here is that somebody needs to become a coder in order to be effective. Um I I'm not suggesting that uh you've got to be the one who is flying the drone around and you know, do that kind of at the at the ground level to be effective as a as a digital transformation leader. But I do think you have to understand the technology. You have to know which problems, which which elements of technology are good at solving and which ones are they not well equipped to solve. You've got to be able to sort and sift through all of the pitches that we are invariably getting in our inboxes at conferences, um, various webinars and podcasts, right? Where it Is uh everything will solve everything. And there are lots of claims. Some of those are uh in fact valid and true, and others are you know, maybe well intended, but not not quite as quite quite as effective as uh so you gotta be able to sort through all that. You gotta be able to decide what's the right solution for the problem you're trying to solve at your company, and then I think also, you know, um in in the human beings involved, um, back to how the technology is allowing us to arrive at decisions faster. Well, who's the decision orchestrator? Uh who's the architect of the insights? Who is uh, you know, working with um automation, autonomous planning? Um, you know, who are the who are the autonomous planners that are that are in this world? Uh who's who's looking at exceptions? Who's looking at the data and making sure that the data is high quality? Because the thing that I don't think any of us can afford to do now or later is just assume that AI's got it right every single time. Um there's gonna have to be contextual understanding, there's gonna have to be some validation for especially important um, you know, um uh uh decisions that you can't, you know, you can't unwind. So I think those are gonna be really important skills as we go here. As you as it sits on top of that digital fluency, that digital literacy thing, they're gonna be new roles created that'll require some different skills.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

So, so a little paraphrasing what I'm hearing you say is you know, the supply chain leaders and teams will evolve to to more setting the guardrails, setting the tonality, validating the reality check, making making it more um operating proof uh perspective, right? Not just the theoretical system is doing activity A to Z. And I see you nodding, so I I think we agreed there.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

So now Luis, let me add, let me add one more thing. That's that's uh you you said it really well there. There's one more thing that I think we're all gonna have to get better at. And uh, you know, I've talked about this a lot in various forums, but most of us, me included, aren't great at change management. And we're going through a massive pivot here. You know, it's it's got its own name. Um, the Internet of Things 4.0, the the fourth industrial revolution. And this requires some incredible change management skills in terms of eliminating fear within our cohorts, uh, talking about what the changes are going to do and what importantly what they're not going to do, um, helping people through the change curve. And I don't mean just kind of throwing the change curve up and, you know, doing a day in the life of and calling that good. This is some deeper stuff because there's a lot of fear out there about what the technology will and won't do for people's employment, people's livelihoods, their families' livelihoods. And uh, this is a really a critical thing for us as leaders to attend to this whole element of change management and how we get people understanding what uh what the technology is going to do. Because I I I see it as this is going to be talent and technology, not talent or technology. Um, and you know, on the heels of that, I'm keenly aware that some organizations have just announced very large layoffs. I I don't know what their uh you know what their size per uh revenue was to begin with, but um you know you you can envision talent and technology being the best way forward here as we as we move into this digital, more digital landscape.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

So talent plus technology with robust change management. That's what I'm hearing you say. So which I fully agree. So so you advise several supply chain technology founders, right? And and sometimes you know, every supply chain founder and entrepreneur is in their DNA to try to um showcase the the good and the greatest uh solution they're putting in front of you, right? But do you see a disconnect between technology builders and supply chain operators?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Oh, um you know, occasionally that happens, but that's that's where people like you and and me get to drop in and make some suggestions on um how how to frame things, uh how to provide the right context, how to tell the story, in what order to tell the story. You know, I I find in a lot of cases um very smart, very interesting, uh, very good CEOs and supply chain technology founders, they're so excited about what they have developed that they want to tell you the whole story behind that. Meanwhile, you know, you and I and others who are in executive positions, we're sort of wondering what meeting is going to happen in the next half hour that we've got to get to, or what what you know what's going on while we're having this interesting conversation about the story behind the company and so forth. For me, I'm I'm much more of a bottom line up front person. And what I recommend is, you know, talk about talk about your gear. What does it do? Who are you? What are the problems it solves? What's the time to value? How fast can you implement? How easily can you implement? You know, things you can stand in front of and stick by when you get into a commercial relationship with a you know with a new customer. And if you tell that story quickly and well and have a good story to tell, you're likely to get, you know, your attention, my attention about why, you know, if that's a problem I got to solve, then I I'm I'm really kind of keen to listen if you got if you got a great solution that can help me attend to something, because I don't really want to go and evaluate 14 different things or be pitched 14 different times. So I think it's I think it's things like that where we can really help these supply chain technology founders and CEOs kind of hone their story, get it in the right order, and really make it impactful for whomever they're speaking with.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Yeah, basically tell me what you're trying to solve before you even start, right? Yeah, so yeah. So I fully agree, fully agree with you. So now take a step back. You by now you've seen supply chains from you know three different uh perspectives, right? As an operator, as an advisor, and as a board member. How has changed you, Rick? How do you think about risk, transformation, and capital allocation? Has this changed you?

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Oof, that's uh that's quite the question. Well, you know, I uh I've certainly become more aware as a board advisor uh and a strategic advisor on top of my you know my roots as a as an operator about the importance of attending to risk. You know, I I I may have had a little bit of an advantage on that because I had a front row seat to uh you know the the COVID-19 and our work with the White House Supply Chain Task Force and increasing wipe supply and um the numerous interviews and interrogations that I underwent as far as uh you know the Clorox company went. So I uh I kind of had a front row seat to that. But um that that that really informed some things I thought about that helped us during hyperinflation, definitely helped us during the cyber attack, around how to be more resilient and how to really figure out what were your most important risk to attend to. So I think if anything, um all this has served to kind of sharpen my focus on risk mitigation. And, you know, I I tend to be a follow-the-money person. And uh I I'm gonna I'm gonna follow the money, I'm gonna follow the risk. And those that are most material, I think it's easier to say than it is to do, but really evaluating not only financial risk, but reputational risk, regulatory risk, uh consumer risk. And now in the day of, you know, everybody is a is a journalist and everybody is a reporter, that becomes even more important as your products are in the marketplace and and uh and being purchased by consumers.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

No, that that's a fantastic perspective. Thank you for that. So so we're converging towards the end, but before we wrap up, so I I like to do a quick lightning round of questions with my guests. So short answers, a few words on each, and we'll just go through a handful of them just quickly. So so what's the blockchain capability that companies continue to underinvest in from your perspective?

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Um adaptive planning. You know, I don't see nearly enough companies really working on improving their forecast. They've almost they've almost given up and said, well, we'll never get a better forecast, so why try? Let's just do the best we can. And there are tools and capabilities that will allow them to do that. I advise a company called Ketacue that has such a platform, and it's really incredible when you put artificial intelligence against something as hard as a demand forecast.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Absolutely fully agree. So, one emerging technology you're watching closely.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Um, you know, for me, I I'm really interested in the uh in the procurement space. And I'm I'm gonna be kind of general here, but I think there's so much ground to cover there. But with you know, with with primary suppliers, but also uh secondary and tertiary suppliers, there there's a lack of visibility there, a lack of transparency on on purpose in many cases. But I think we could all be better if we had more visibility and more real-time ability to kind of orchestrate what's going on, the supply side.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

That fully agree. So one leadership trait that matters most during crisis, and you leave a few of those. So one leadership skill that you I only get to pick one.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Uh two you want. One leadership trait. Well, let me let me go with this. Um, I I think it's absolutely imperative that you're unflappable. That you're unflappable. Um, the organization, and it can't be phony, it can't be, you know, like um everything is falling apart right outside your window, and you go, hey, don't worry about it, everything's fine. Everything's fine. It's got to be a realistic view of the world, but an unflappable um induction of those details so that you are clear-headed, you're thinking properly, you're thinking quickly, and you can make decisions in the moment. I think I find those are the most important and impactful things. That's just that's a that's a real leadership requirement.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

I love that one. That's different, and uh I really love it. So, so one last one. So, a piece of advice for the next generation of blockchain leaders.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Well, I think the uh you know, the advice that I'm giving to a lot of uh individuals is to really plus up their digital fluency, uh, whatever it takes. And just because I I find, you know, there is a little bit of generational to this, but I also find that just because someone grew up with a mobile phone in their hand doesn't mean they're necessarily digitally fluent as it relates to solving business problems and supply chain problems and marrying the right technology with the right problems. So I'd say if there's one thing to go do, if you don't have it already, is become digitally fluent.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

I love that one. Fully agree. So and so one last question, not truly the last one. So um, and I always like to close our my conversations with a question that I'm asking everybody that comes through through the church you're seeing now. So so throughout your career, from leading supply chains to now advising founders, CEOs, boards, using leadership technology, resiliency, shape organizations. So the question so, what gives your personal momentum going forward today? Is it a belief, a mindset, a principle, or even just a habit that continues to drive you to lead, learn, create impact?

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Yeah, I'm a uh Luis, I'm a I'm a lifetime learner. I I really enjoy learning and I enjoy contributing. And you know what gave me great pleasure during my working career is learning from the people I worked with and then contributing to help us all be successful. And that's true today with what I'm doing. Um, I'm loving learning more about the technologies that I'm supporting uh with the really smart people that I'm that I'm working with, and uh uh then being able to give back in terms of things that I've experienced and things that I know that maybe they haven't come across just yet. So it's a it's a pretty good combination.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

I love it. I love it. So, Rick, you know, this is this was a great conversation, a great way to end it. So, your perspective really from leading through historic disruptions, helping shape the next generation, supply chain innovation, it really captures why I see how I see our industry um um you know evolving today. So I really thank you for joining us and helping keep the momentum flow going. Any final remarks you want to make?

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Well, I would just like to thank you again, Luis, for inviting me. It's been really fun to have this conversation with you. And uh hey, maybe somewhere down the road we can do it again. I look forward to that.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

I love it for sure. So so now to our audience, you know, what stood out today for me is is a really a simple but truly powerful idea, right? The future supply chain will not be defined by technology alone, it will be defined by organizations for talent and technology evolved together with change management. To our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share with fellow operators, innovators, and leaders across the supply chain ecosystem. I'm Luis Olana, and this is the Momentum Flow where clarity, capital, and conviction keep supply chains and leaders moving forward. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep the momentum flow going. Thank you.