00:00:02 [Speaker 1]
This is where I wait ten seconds for the stream to start.
00:00:05 [Speaker 1]
This is why I'm always doing this when you guys are watching.
00:00:07 [Speaker 1]
I'm going She did a year ago.
00:00:11 [Speaker 1]
And welcome to the Industry four Community Podcast.
00:00:14 [Speaker 1]
I am your host with the most, Walker d Reynolds.
00:00:18 [Speaker 1]
My title today actually wasn't gonna be four point o solutions architect.
00:00:21 [Speaker 1]
It was gonna be something about, you know, I hate ERP or, you know, maybe I was gonna dump on SAP or something, but I decided not to do it.
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The the topic today, we've got a great guest.
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This is actually I think this conversation is long overdue.
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We have a great guest.
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The the tagline here is the model's broken, and we're gonna get into the details about why digital transformation initiatives on either the IT or OT side or the way it should go is IT, OT at the same time.
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Why is it those initiatives have such a fail rate at scale?
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So, POCs are e it is very easy in the industry for world to do a successful proof of concept.
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It is very hard to scale.
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Okay?
00:01:20 [Speaker 1]
And you fail in the scale for a million different reasons.
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K?
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80% of digital transformation initiatives fail in the first iteration.
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80% of the proof of concepts are successful, 90%.
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80% failed to scale.
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Why?
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The answer is the model is broken.
00:01:38 [Speaker 1]
We've talked about this in many different from many different angles.
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Today, we're gonna talk about it from a very specific angle, and that's why John Robinson, who is the founder and CEO of the Quorum principle, is here with us today.
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But, the question we're gonna try to answer is why does a company who has spent twenty years investing in operational excellence, twenty years industry four, They've spent twenty years investing in operational excellence, digital transformation, automation, the conversion of data into faster decisions.
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Why is that company who has spent millions and millions of dollars, why is it they still can't tell you what to answer the question of which assets are running and which work orders what's the status of every work order you've got in plant?
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Why?
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Why is it they can't answer that question?
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And the answer is it's kinda complicated, but it can be distilled down into actually a single sentence.
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But before we bring John in, let me get into the announcements.
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Otherwise, I'm gonna start getting text messages from the team.
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Do the damn announcements.
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Alright.
00:02:42 [Speaker 1]
So August 13, which is next Thursday, we are slated to do a, problem solvers with litmus.
00:02:54 [Speaker 1]
The we may end up moving it.
00:02:56 [Speaker 1]
We may move it to Wednesday.
00:02:57 [Speaker 1]
We may move it.
00:02:57 [Speaker 1]
Right now, the way it stands, we're gonna do a problem solvers next Thursday.
00:03:02 [Speaker 1]
I have mastermind next Friday, and I may need Thursday to finish my lesson planning.
00:03:06 [Speaker 1]
But right now, we're planning to do a live stream with Litmus of problem solvers.
00:03:10 [Speaker 1]
I still haven't picked the exact use case.
00:03:14 [Speaker 1]
Their Litmus has, some stuff that they want us to cover, but Litmus has really expanded the capabilities of Litmus Edge and their cloud offering.
00:03:25 [Speaker 1]
And, you know, everyone needs to to be aware of of kinda where Litmus is going.
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In fact, we just closed a huge implementation with Litmus yesterday.
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I don't think they even know.
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In fact, I don't I don't think anyone's let them know.
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It's a 31 plant implementation where the POC is gonna be six plants, and litmus is gonna be on the edge and in the cloud.
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So, next mastermind session is the very next day, next Friday.
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And then mentorship is August 28.
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MES for twenty twenty six workshop, this is the next workshop that we're doing.
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This is October twentieth and twenty first.
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Alright?
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We will be announcing sign ups and all that stuff, will be available here shortly at iot.university.
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It's an evolution of the original MES boot camp, which I think went six or seven sessions.
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We taught you how to build MES from the ground up.
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We are doing that again, but in a different way.
00:04:20 [Speaker 1]
So it's rather than doing six or seven sessions, we're actually gonna do it in two whole sessions, and we're gonna do it from the perspective of the the advent of AgenTic AI.
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Where does artificial intelligence fit in your DevOps pipeline?
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Where does artificial intelligence fit on your analytics side?
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Where does it fit in for insight into current state?
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So that's gonna be the workshop.
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How how should you be leveraging artificial intelligence in MES?
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But you're also gonna learn how to build the MES.
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And then, and then the last one, the quorum principle live.
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So this is the future of UK manufacturing.
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John will be presenting December 8 at MTC Coventry.
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There's a registration link that'll be available.
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We'll actually end up putting it in the description of this YouTube video down below, and I'll bring it I'll bring it up again at the very end.
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If you're interested in learning more about the quorum principle, you should sign up for that.
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Alright.
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With that, let's bring John in.
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Alright.
00:05:19 [Speaker 1]
So John's got a long and circuitous career.
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Why don't I read your intro?
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And then, John, why don't you introduce yourself?
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Because this by the way, this is the longest intro the team has ever given me for a guest.
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John, it looks like John and I have a very similar similar career path.
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If you look at my resume, I basically touched the entire stack.
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I touched OEMs.
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I touched systems integrators.
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I touched end users.
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And it's a very long, you know, 20 page thing if you roll it out.
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But here we go.
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So John Robinson, shop floor to boardroom.
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So that's his experience.
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So manufacturing operations, PLC, SCADA, DCS, manufacturing execution.
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He was at Wonderware.
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I actually worked with BOLATA, and I don't know.
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Did you work with Sam Castro too?
00:06:06 [Speaker 1]
You worked with was it BOLATA and Sam Castro?
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Inventis, Atos, Smart Factory, SAP Manufacturing, Kearny, and now he's a founder and CEO of the quorum principle, which we're gonna get into here in a second.
00:06:21 [Speaker 1]
It's actually a very similar concept to how what I've been doing organically.
00:06:27 [Speaker 1]
He's actually codified and and added some other novel ideas into it, which is the reason we wanna have this conversation.
00:06:33 [Speaker 1]
And I think it's very similar to what a lot of you do, but I think John's done an excellent job of packaging it up.
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Okay?
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He's the managing director at Neotres.
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And the important thing is is that and and the reason I wanted him here as a guest.
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John has seen transform digital transformation fail from many different angles, from many different perspectives.
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So from the OEM, from the system integrator, from the end user, and then also up and down the stack.
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He has a very unique perspective on why digital transformation fails.
00:07:05 [Speaker 1]
And with that, John Robinson, do you wanna add anything else to that?
00:07:10 [Speaker 1]
Welcome to the podcast.
00:07:12 [Speaker 2]
No.
00:07:12 [Speaker 2]
No.
00:07:12 [Speaker 2]
Thank you, for that.
00:07:13 [Speaker 2]
It's great to be here.
00:07:15 [Speaker 2]
Can't think of anything else that you've missed there, in terms of the the experience side of it.
00:07:20 [Speaker 1]
How did we
00:07:21 [Speaker 2]
sorry.
00:07:22 [Speaker 2]
I think the thing the one thing I should have said is, the experience in manufacturing.
00:07:27 [Speaker 2]
And I tell this to everyone when I do the presentation.
00:07:32 [Speaker 2]
As I my career started in manufacturing, but I'm not an engineer.
00:07:37 [Speaker 2]
I'm not an IT guy.
00:07:38 [Speaker 2]
I'm not a consultant.
00:07:39 [Speaker 2]
I'm from a marketing background.
00:07:41 [Speaker 2]
So my ten, fifteen years in manufacturing were in the user side of things rather than the technology side.
00:07:47 [Speaker 2]
But then I moved out into the, like you said, went from a traditional OT system integrator to Wonderware to Atos to then SAP and Kearney.
00:07:59 [Speaker 2]
So, yeah, that shop floor to Top Floor, but I'm not a traditional consultant or IT engineering guy.
00:08:05 [Speaker 2]
And I think that's helped me to look at it differently and come up with what I've come up with.
00:08:08 [Speaker 1]
What did you do what did you do at Wonderware?
00:08:10 [Speaker 1]
What did you do with SAP?
00:08:11 [Speaker 1]
What what was your actual role?
00:08:14 [Speaker 2]
Actual role?
00:08:15 [Speaker 2]
So so so my first job at Wonderware was actually at the Wonderware distributor in The UK.
00:08:23 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:08:25 [Speaker 2]
So I was just an area sales guy selling well, my first sale was InTouch and, in SQL.
00:08:31 [Speaker 2]
But I was at Wonderware or at the distributor when they introduced, industrial application server, which then became system platform eventually.
00:08:40 [Speaker 2]
Then I moved from the distributor to Wonderware corporate, Lake Forest.
00:08:44 [Speaker 1]
Mhmm.
00:08:44 [Speaker 1]
But
00:08:44 [Speaker 2]
I was based in, Europe, and I was the MES business development lead for EMEA.
00:08:50 [Speaker 2]
And I was at Wonderware when they acquired Symnet Factelligence.
00:08:53 [Speaker 2]
K.
00:08:54 [Speaker 2]
So John John Richardson, Jason Dietrich, all the guys that came over.
00:08:58 [Speaker 2]
And then like you mentioned, it was at that same time that I was at Wunderware when Rick Bolota sold Lighthammer to SAP for that to become MII, and then he came back to us for twelve months as CTO and then got bored with that and went off and created ThingWorx.
00:09:12 [Speaker 2]
I took half of, the team that I worked with within.
00:09:16 [Speaker 2]
So then I became when I went to Atos, they were and, do you know when I was preparing for this podcast, it was really quite interesting how weird my career was being.
00:09:26 [Speaker 2]
So all the companies I've worked for that you've mentioned, during the time frame that I was there, something quite interesting happened.
00:09:32 [Speaker 2]
So Atos when I joined Atos, it was Atos origin.
00:09:35 [Speaker 2]
And then in 2011, they did some big commercial deal with Siemens Information Systems.
00:09:40 [Speaker 2]
So they basically chuped over all of the Siemens IT team into Atos, and it became Atos, not Atos Origin.
00:09:47 [Speaker 2]
And Siemens owned 15% of Atos at the time.
00:09:50 [Speaker 2]
So which was around about the same time that Siemens started bringing MindSphere to the marketplace and gpredicts was all the rage.
00:09:57 [Speaker 2]
So I've just happened to be there when, I was sort of half answering to, you know, Atos management and Siemens management at the same time.
00:10:06 [Speaker 2]
But I I eventually ended up at Atos in the global I was basically globally responsible for the MES portfolio.
00:10:12 [Speaker 2]
So all of the MES solutions, visit Visiprise, both SAPME, Appreaser, Wonderware, all of them.
00:10:21 [Speaker 2]
And then, yeah, the the two years at was interesting because they they have a global partnership with P and G.
00:10:27 [Speaker 2]
So we digitize P and G's, IWS integrated work system, you know, the I the whole operational excellence thing, again, to digitize it into a digital coach, type product, which is really interesting.
00:10:39 [Speaker 2]
And then at SAP, again, I was responsible for the manufacturing portfolio in Europe.
00:10:45 [Speaker 2]
And then when industry4.
00:10:46 [Speaker 2]
Now became the go to market, I also inherited, responsibility for that for three years.
00:10:51 [Speaker 1]
So with SAP, with the manufacturing portfolio, were you primarily focused on the digital manufacturing component or were you so the okay.
00:11:01 [Speaker 1]
That so l one, l 2, l three.
00:11:03 [Speaker 2]
Okay.
00:11:03 [Speaker 2]
Yes.
00:11:03 [Speaker 2]
All of it.
00:11:04 [Speaker 2]
Because in the so I was part of the digital supply chain center of excellence in EMEA, and that started with PLM.
00:11:10 [Speaker 2]
Then you had the the whole planning side of things, then the manufacturing piece, which was my bit.
00:11:18 [Speaker 2]
So again, the I'd have to refer back to the architecture diagram, but basically, all the MES products, PECO, everything that, SATPM.
00:11:25 [Speaker 2]
No.
00:11:25 [Speaker 2]
No.
00:11:25 [Speaker 2]
Maintenance was someone else, actually.
00:11:27 [Speaker 1]
So let me let me ask you this question because I was actually gonna the question I really have the one piece you didn't touch on is what you did when you worked on the plant floor.
00:11:34 [Speaker 1]
Like, when you worked for the manufacturer, what was the role?
00:11:37 [Speaker 1]
When you worked on the plant floor, what was the role when you had the plant for exposure?
00:11:42 [Speaker 2]
Well, that was a really that was a bit that I think set me up for everything else moving forward because the the manufacturer so I spent ten years in manufacturing, and the last one that I worked for, was the the only sort of multinational, so they were part of a global supply chain.
00:11:58 [Speaker 2]
So we were shipping out globally.
00:12:00 [Speaker 2]
And the products that we manufactured were glass products.
00:12:02 [Speaker 2]
So it was, and and our clients were GE, so GE lighting, when Jack Welch was in charge.
00:12:08 [Speaker 2]
So everything was black belt, six sigma.
00:12:11 [Speaker 2]
But I in my marketing role there, I I saw everything to do with manufacturing.
00:12:15 [Speaker 2]
I had to do demand planning and forecasting support because I was part of the sales and marketing team.
00:12:21 [Speaker 2]
Then I had to work with the production planner trying to schedule all the production runners, repeaters, strangers.
00:12:26 [Speaker 2]
You know, what are we gonna make?
00:12:27 [Speaker 2]
What stock levels do we need to hold?
00:12:29 [Speaker 2]
Then through the manufacturing piece, but I was also responsible for client satisfaction, so quality issues.
00:12:35 [Speaker 2]
So I got involved in six sigma and standard deviation and, you know, parts per million failures and all that good stuff.
00:12:43 [Speaker 2]
Our managing director was big into TQM and world class manufacturing, Kaizen.
00:12:48 [Speaker 2]
So I just got sheep dipped into everything to do with manufacturing, but not from a technique other than knowing that the glass furnaces produced about 350 tons a day, and they run on Eurotherm controllers.
00:12:58 [Speaker 2]
I didn't really get into the tech side of things.
00:13:00 [Speaker 2]
But then that same manufacturing company also implemented an ERP system, and I know all the s 400, JBA system 21 is probably not around anymore now, but this was '97, ninety eight ish.
00:13:12 [Speaker 2]
So, again, I saw how not to do an ERP system.
00:13:15 [Speaker 1]
Believe it or believe it or not, it they're still around.
00:13:18 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:13:18 [Speaker 2]
I can imagine it's somewhere in somebody's portfolio.
00:13:21 [Speaker 2]
If you're
00:13:21 [Speaker 1]
after after life.
00:13:22 [Speaker 1]
But, alright.
00:13:24 [Speaker 1]
Let me let me ask you this question.
00:13:25 [Speaker 1]
So, you know, you well, you you mentioned a lot of things that made a lot of eyes and a lot of ears.
00:13:33 [Speaker 1]
A lot of people roll their eyes.
00:13:35 [Speaker 1]
I mean, in this industry, everything you touched on, the vast majority of people who are listening to this podcast, members of this community, they roll their eyes at you know?
00:13:48 [Speaker 1]
I mean, you really it's it's almost it reminds me of the the, the scene in the office when Jim fake he messes with Andy.
00:13:58 [Speaker 1]
Andy wants to make a make a move on Pam, and so Jim gives him terrible advice on all the things he should say to Pam.
00:14:05 [Speaker 1]
He basically says she loves mac and noodles, and she loves big Latin.
00:14:08 [Speaker 1]
And he he lists all these things that Pam absolutely hates, and he walks and Andy walks up to the desk, and he and he makes a move on her.
00:14:16 [Speaker 1]
And he basically drops all the thing the bad advice Jim gave him, and it was all the things that just repulsed Pam.
00:14:24 [Speaker 1]
And she's like, wow.
00:14:26 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:14:27 [Speaker 1]
What you just did what you just said is very valuable, but this audience all collectively rolled their eyes at at not you, but the things you talked about.
00:14:39 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:14:40 [Speaker 2]
And All the hype.
00:14:41 [Speaker 2]
Right.
00:14:41 [Speaker 1]
The hype.
00:14:41 [Speaker 1]
And so the question is the real question is why.
00:14:45 [Speaker 1]
You know?
00:14:46 [Speaker 1]
I I, I I wanna let me ask you this question, which I I I wanna I wanna ask you the question, which is, what did you see at the ground level that most executives don't see?
00:14:57 [Speaker 1]
I want I absolutely want you to answer that question.
00:14:59 [Speaker 1]
But let me let me ask you this question here.
00:15:01 [Speaker 2]
Yep.
00:15:03 [Speaker 1]
Everyone agrees that SAP is the largest ERP company in the world.
00:15:07 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:15:07 [Speaker 1]
Everyone agrees that Rockwell Automation and Siemens are two of the largest automation companies in the world.
00:15:14 [Speaker 1]
And there's a debate as to whether Schneider's number one, and, you know, there's always a debate depending on how you look at it.
00:15:19 [Speaker 1]
We'll just settle that we have three massive automation companies in the world.
00:15:23 [Speaker 1]
They are Rockwell, Siemens, and Schneider.
00:15:25 [Speaker 1]
And we have there's really just one massive ERP system ERP vendor.
00:15:31 [Speaker 1]
It's SAP, and then it goes Oracle.
00:15:33 [Speaker 1]
Alright.
00:15:34 [Speaker 1]
Here's the question I have for you.
00:15:38 [Speaker 1]
Why is SAP so hated?
00:15:40 [Speaker 1]
If if every and by the way, I there cannot be a less popular company in our sector.
00:15:49 [Speaker 1]
Like, I mean, Rockwell Automation is hated in North America.
00:15:53 [Speaker 1]
Like, their unfavorable is crazy.
00:15:56 [Speaker 1]
They're way, way underwater.
00:15:59 [Speaker 1]
And the level of hatred for Rockwell Automation pales in comparison for the level of hatred of SAP, the most hated company by far in our industry.
00:16:11 [Speaker 1]
Why do you think that is?
00:16:13 [Speaker 1]
I wasn't gonna ask that question, but I want I wanna know from your perspective why is SAP hated so much?
00:16:21 [Speaker 1]
Because, ostensibly, all the things you pointed out are important.
00:16:25 [Speaker 1]
These are these are things that can provide value to industry and manufacture manufacturers.
00:16:32 [Speaker 1]
You mentioned many things that ostensibly are important and drive value or can drive value.
00:16:39 [Speaker 1]
They don't know which drive value.
00:16:40 [Speaker 1]
And SAP's got a hand.
00:16:42 [Speaker 1]
I don't wanna pick on SAP here.
00:16:43 [Speaker 1]
We could pick a different company.
00:16:44 [Speaker 1]
They just happen to be at the top.
00:16:45 [Speaker 1]
We're gonna talk about SAP.
00:16:48 [Speaker 1]
SAP's got a hand in basically everything you pointed out.
00:16:51 [Speaker 1]
Like, there's essentially not a single word you said that SAP didn't touch.
00:16:56 [Speaker 1]
Why are they so hated?
00:16:57 [Speaker 1]
If, ostensibly, those are so valuable.
00:17:02 [Speaker 2]
So, it's an interesting one because I I've been working with so my first encounter proper with SAP was when I was at Wonderware, because we did, we had a package composite application.
00:17:15 [Speaker 2]
Can you remember the go the SAP go to market, the perfect plant Yes.
00:17:19 [Speaker 2]
In 2006?
00:17:21 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:17:22 [Speaker 2]
So Wonderware developed a PCA, and it was based around MII.
00:17:26 [Speaker 2]
And it was intended to be the integration tool standard between SAP and, Wonderware.
00:17:33 [Speaker 2]
And the the technical guys that worked on it, Tim Saud, the Cozyan, and the guys at SAP, it worked fine.
00:17:39 [Speaker 2]
Technically, it worked.
00:17:40 [Speaker 2]
It did its job.
00:17:42 [Speaker 2]
And that was my first experience of, the answer to your question, which is just arrogance on dealing with some of the SAP people, particularly the sales community people.
00:17:55 [Speaker 2]
And you can hold it against them, but they're again, to to your point, they're no different really to any salesperson in any organization.
00:18:03 [Speaker 2]
They are quota driven.
00:18:04 [Speaker 2]
They've got a hard job.
00:18:05 [Speaker 2]
If they don't hit quota, they're down the road.
00:18:08 [Speaker 2]
They, you know, they get sacked, for underperforming.
00:18:11 [Speaker 2]
So they're very cutthroat and driven.
00:18:14 [Speaker 2]
And the the reason so the if I'm looking at it from an SAP account executive's point of view, I've got this big ERP portfolio that I know how to sell, and I know who to sell it to.
00:18:27 [Speaker 2]
And quota wise, that's gonna hit help me get to Hawaii or not get to Hawaii.
00:18:31 [Speaker 2]
And then there's this strange company over partner company over here with this weird thing that I only get 40%, you know, commission recognition for.
00:18:38 [Speaker 2]
I've got to go and sell it to someone I don't need to sell to, and the ticket value is not very big, not interested.
00:18:43 [Speaker 2]
And that that happens in, like, one minute.
00:18:45 [Speaker 2]
So you can do all of the technical, this is a wonderful thing.
00:18:49 [Speaker 2]
You look at all this great technology.
00:18:50 [Speaker 2]
The client needs it.
00:18:51 [Speaker 2]
They don't care if it's not gonna hit their quota.
00:18:54 [Speaker 2]
And when when SAP approached me to ask me to go and work for them, it was the last thing I wanted to do.
00:19:00 [Speaker 2]
I didn't want to go and work for SAP.
00:19:02 [Speaker 2]
And I often joke when I'm presenting, you know, the oh, and then I went to joined the dark side and went to SAP for three years.
00:19:08 [Speaker 2]
But it was an invaluable experience because when you get on the inside, you see how it really works and what what makes them tick and why and how they behave.
00:19:16 [Speaker 2]
And the second part of the question that I I would answer in in that in terms of why they're they are so hated.
00:19:24 [Speaker 2]
Well, I don't hate them.
00:19:26 [Speaker 2]
I but I know from the marketplace But
00:19:27 [Speaker 1]
in the market the market perspective is is
00:19:31 [Speaker 2]
It's like a necessary evil.
00:19:32 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:19:32 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:19:33 [Speaker 2]
It's like it's almost a case of we've somebody made that decision twenty years years ago, and now we can't get out of it.
00:19:39 [Speaker 2]
It.
00:19:39 [Speaker 2]
They've got us over a barrel.
00:19:40 [Speaker 2]
The cost of change is so huge.
00:19:43 [Speaker 2]
Yep.
00:19:43 [Speaker 2]
And they're just gonna beat us over the head with it now and and make it so difficult to get away from them, which is which is probably why they're hated.
00:19:51 [Speaker 2]
And then the other thing that everybody knows and the the this statistic now that's been around since the mid nineteen eighties, that 70% of these big transformation programs fail.
00:20:01 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:20:01 [Speaker 2]
And you can include in that all the big ERP transformation programs that were supposed to, you know, transform the company, save the world, and make them into this shiny new incredible enterprise.
00:20:11 [Speaker 2]
And they haven't.
00:20:11 [Speaker 2]
You know, most, you know, most people when you say, oh, an SAP project, they they roll their eyes.
00:20:16 [Speaker 2]
Oh, no SAP.
00:20:18 [Speaker 2]
You know?
00:20:18 [Speaker 2]
That was a nightmare of an ERP implementation.
00:20:20 [Speaker 2]
It takes years.
00:20:21 [Speaker 2]
It costs money.
00:20:22 [Speaker 2]
It goes over budget.
00:20:23 [Speaker 2]
So, so I think the the the really hard no sales aspect of it combined with the arrogance, combined with the you can't get away from them, is probably just a combination of factors that just give you a really, like, dislike for them in in that respect.
00:20:39 [Speaker 2]
But I haven't said that.
00:20:40 [Speaker 2]
They most of the people I work with were great.
00:20:42 [Speaker 2]
I really like and I'm still connected to most of them on LinkedIn.
00:20:46 [Speaker 2]
Again, it's a it's something I I I do wanna say.
00:20:49 [Speaker 2]
Any enterprise, Wonderware, SAP, they don't think like the Borg.
00:20:55 [Speaker 2]
They're they're not all the same.
00:20:56 [Speaker 2]
You know, there are lots of great people in there doing, you know, really good jobs, and I know you've had Sam Castro on your podcast before.
00:21:04 [Speaker 2]
So Sam yeah.
00:21:06 [Speaker 2]
It is is it Sam Castro or the
00:21:08 [Speaker 1]
Sam Castro.
00:21:09 [Speaker 1]
Sal his name is Sal, but he goes by Sam.
00:21:11 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:21:11 [Speaker 1]
Salvatore is his name, but he goes by Sam.
00:21:13 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
00:21:14 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:21:14 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:21:15 [Speaker 2]
So there's lots of great people doing good stuff, but it's just there's this mysterious thing that pervades in the company that creates this slight obnoxious So I external.
00:21:24 [Speaker 1]
I the reason I asked that question because I I kinda want this to be the framework for the next for the rest of the conversations or at least the underpinning.
00:21:31 [Speaker 1]
I get this question all the time.
00:21:33 [Speaker 1]
I was on-site last week consulting for a a multinational.
00:21:37 [Speaker 1]
They're getting ready to do a big ERP rollout.
00:21:39 [Speaker 1]
At the same time, they're doing a, MES rollout.
00:21:44 [Speaker 1]
And my job was to come there and essentially write the specification document that was the boundary between MES and ERP.
00:21:53 [Speaker 1]
And the reason it and there was a question, why is this important?
00:21:57 [Speaker 1]
Why is it we need a document that clearly defines this boundary?
00:22:03 [Speaker 1]
And depending upon who the person was who was asking the question, my answer was, well, you have to understand, are are the people at SAP evil?
00:22:13 [Speaker 1]
Like, are they horrible?
00:22:14 [Speaker 1]
Of course not.
00:22:15 [Speaker 1]
There are wonderful people that and if I'm gonna be honest with you, nearly every person I've ever met from SAP, I thought, was wonderful.
00:22:22 [Speaker 1]
I rarely do I come across somewhere where I'm like, ugh.
00:22:25 [Speaker 1]
I don't wanna be around that person ever again.
00:22:27 [Speaker 1]
The but the but I think it it's beyond dispute that SAP doesn't prioritize the needs of the customer.
00:22:34 [Speaker 1]
The priority is selling licenses, and now it's gonna be essentially selling the the potential of artificial intelligence from manufacturing data.
00:22:45 [Speaker 1]
That's their future.
00:22:46 [Speaker 1]
They're no longer gonna be a software company based on Christian speech here a couple months ago, but they're in the business of selling licenses.
00:22:53 [Speaker 1]
And and I and I'm always recur I always I I always go back to this thing my dad said to me earlier that we talked about in preproduction.
00:23:00 [Speaker 1]
You know, my dad said that, you know, at the end of the day, Walker, if you really wanna understand outcomes in the world, you only have to ask two questions in every situation.
00:23:11 [Speaker 1]
One is the incentive and who is incentivized.
00:23:13 [Speaker 1]
And the reason that you need an MES ERP boundary is because the whoever the ERP vendor is, Oracle, Epicor, SAP, they're gonna they're gonna you're gonna be working with one of their partners to do your implementation.
00:23:30 [Speaker 1]
You think you're working with an agnostic engineering firm who does this for all ERP vendors.
00:23:36 [Speaker 1]
No.
00:23:36 [Speaker 1]
That is not how those relationships work.
00:23:39 [Speaker 1]
Those vendors, they work for SAP.
00:23:41 [Speaker 1]
They may not work for estimate.
00:23:43 [Speaker 1]
They answered SAP.
00:23:45 [Speaker 1]
They do not answer to the end user.
00:23:47 [Speaker 1]
They answer to SAP.
00:23:48 [Speaker 1]
That's how those relationships work.
00:23:50 [Speaker 1]
So the incentive is to sell more SAP licenses.
00:23:54 [Speaker 1]
So if you don't have a clear boundary, then even your vendor who's implementing your ERP system is going to want everything to be in the ERP because SAP will benefit through user licenses user license sales.
00:24:10 [Speaker 1]
Again, we're I'm highlighting SAP, but this applies to all the big players.
00:24:16 [Speaker 1]
It's not SAP is not unique here.
00:24:18 [Speaker 1]
So the it is incumbent upon us as the users to understand that incentive structure and just put you you put countermeasures in to swing the incentive in the other direction.
00:24:30 [Speaker 1]
That's all you have to do.
00:24:31 [Speaker 1]
It's not overly complicated.
00:24:35 [Speaker 1]
Let me ask you this question here.
00:24:37 [Speaker 1]
I wanna get to the model is broken.
00:24:39 [Speaker 1]
We agree that the model is broken, and I just touched on one on one piece of it.
00:24:45 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:24:46 [Speaker 1]
The the proof that the model is broken is at 70%.
00:24:49 [Speaker 1]
It's act it's 80% is in some studies.
00:24:52 [Speaker 1]
Eighty percent of digital transformation initiatives fail in the first iteration.
00:24:57 [Speaker 1]
The first eighteen months are defined as failures by eighty percent of manufacturers.
00:25:03 [Speaker 1]
What did you see at the ground level that most executives didn't see that would help explain why they fail in the first eighteen months?
00:25:14 [Speaker 1]
What is it when you were working for the man when you spent ten years in manufacturing, what is the thing you had ice you know, you had insight into on the ground level that the executives don't have insight into?
00:25:24 [Speaker 1]
And I'll answer this as well because this guy get this question a lot.
00:25:30 [Speaker 2]
So my understanding for that one is that I saw some of it when I was in manufacturing, but I didn't see the full picture until the epiphany in 2020, 2021.
00:25:39 [Speaker 2]
I had to work in manufacturing then do the shop floor stuff, the MES Wonderware, ATAR, CY, SAP, and it was only then that I could see the systemic problem that I think is the thing I'm trying to get to the CEO.
00:25:53 [Speaker 2]
And it is very specifically the CEO of manufacturers to to say that there there is a so basically, my answer is there is a systemic problem in global manufacturing, and there are four key components to it, which answer your question, I think.
00:26:06 [Speaker 2]
So the first part of it is that the manufacturer themselves are siloed into different parts of the organization.
00:26:13 [Speaker 2]
Now there are four key parts of the the simplified.
00:26:18 [Speaker 2]
One is the c suite.
00:26:20 [Speaker 2]
The ones who are making the decision over which factories to close, where to build new ones, where to put production lines, how to organize the global supply chain, which products to bring to market, mergers, acquisitions, divestments, that that's the c level stuff.
00:26:32 [Speaker 1]
The five quarter they're looking five quarters down the road.
00:26:35 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:26:35 [Speaker 2]
And and that what what they are deciding to do from a strategic point of view is then the becomes the the business plan, the five year plan, let's say.
00:26:44 [Speaker 2]
The second part of the the the next silo down are operations.
00:26:47 [Speaker 2]
The people have to deliver the plan.
00:26:49 [Speaker 2]
So plant directors had, you know, divisional heads, operations, manufacturing, logistics, all the people who have to do that.
00:26:57 [Speaker 2]
But for those people to deliver what they need, they need information, analytics applications that help them make better decisions.
00:27:02 [Speaker 2]
And then and then they and then you start to get to the real problem.
00:27:06 [Speaker 2]
Because the third silo is IT, the CIO, and the IT department who are the SAP champions and the people who run the supply chain.
00:27:12 [Speaker 2]
The basically, the white collar office space decision making is all the IT spend is about two and a half percent, I think, of a company's revenue is spent on IT systems with the CIO.
00:27:22 [Speaker 2]
But the CIO doesn't build factories.
00:27:24 [Speaker 2]
Engineers build factories, process chemical, mechanical, electrical engineers, and IT engineering.
00:27:28 [Speaker 1]
And the CIO's mandate is different than the engineers.
00:27:32 [Speaker 1]
CIO is prioritizing security, compliance, infrastructure, total cost of ownership of infrastructure.
00:27:39 [Speaker 1]
Yep.
00:27:39 [Speaker 2]
Yep.
00:27:40 [Speaker 2]
And so engineers are the ones who buy OEM equipment from Tetra Pak, Crohn's, Siemens, Rockwell.
00:27:46 [Speaker 2]
Rockwell Siemens don't sell to the CIO.
00:27:48 [Speaker 2]
They sell to engineers from CapEx, OpEx budgets to build and maintain factories.
00:27:52 [Speaker 1]
Because they're responsible they're responsible for solving the problem.
00:27:55 [Speaker 2]
Yes.
00:27:56 [Speaker 2]
So you've got four four departments inside the manufacturing.
00:27:59 [Speaker 2]
And the op the whole operational excellence, Toyota production system, theory constraint, all all that good stuff, that's in operations.
00:28:05 [Speaker 2]
They they use that to drive out root cause analysis, you know, whether bottlenecks constraints, waste, etcetera.
00:28:11 [Speaker 2]
So to so you've got those four groups, four silos inside the manufacturer, and they don't really align very well.
00:28:17 [Speaker 2]
Then the second part of the problem is that the ecosystem is a mirror image exactly of that same group.
00:28:23 [Speaker 2]
At the consulting level, talking to the boardroom, you've got MB, you know, McKinsey, BCG, Bain.
00:28:28 [Speaker 2]
Then the tier two is like Kearney and and and others, PA consulting.
00:28:33 [Speaker 2]
The consulting arms are the big four, Deloitte KPMG, where I worked.
00:28:37 [Speaker 2]
And then the consulting arms of Accenture, Deloitte, Accenture and Capgemini and others.
00:28:41 [Speaker 2]
So there's a global ecosystem of con very highly paid consultants, and they're only interested to c suite.
00:28:46 [Speaker 2]
They're not selling technology to anybody.
00:28:48 [Speaker 2]
Yep.
00:28:49 [Speaker 2]
They're selling messaging
00:28:50 [Speaker 1]
they're selling messaging and and a strategic promise.
00:28:54 [Speaker 2]
Yes.
00:28:55 [Speaker 2]
And I've seen that in operation.
00:28:57 [Speaker 2]
And then those same company but this is where part of the problem comes in.
00:29:00 [Speaker 2]
Those same logos will also appear in the IT ecosystem selling to the CIO.
00:29:05 [Speaker 2]
So Accenture delivering ERP implementations, it looks like the same company, totally different group of people with different skill set selling to the CIO.
00:29:13 [Speaker 2]
But then over in the OT side of things, you have a different ecosystem of, the Wonderware integrators, the Siemens, you know, you guy, everybody else who sells and implements in SCADA, PLC, MES systems.
00:29:25 [Speaker 2]
And then operational excellence Toyota production system is back to boutique consultants who spent their life studying shingo, and they can go nth level deep on it.
00:29:34 [Speaker 2]
But that that then brings you to the third problem with the the way things are at the moment, just the status quo.
00:29:40 [Speaker 2]
Manufacturing is a very complex system, system complexity.
00:29:43 [Speaker 2]
And if you It's the most audit a manufacturer
00:29:45 [Speaker 1]
argument is the most complex in the world.
00:29:48 [Speaker 1]
In my argument, my position is it's the most complex in the world.
00:29:52 [Speaker 2]
Well, I I completely agree because if you look at the stack of things you external suppliers who have an impact on performance and value delivery, starting at the top with, you know, consultants, the ERP system, the hyperscaler, the MES, you know, the pumps, valves, motors, OEM equipment, whose supplies my PLCs, my SCADA system, my DCS system that, you know, you list the stack is enormous.
00:30:15 [Speaker 2]
And then if you just ask the client who the biggest primary supplier in each one was, you'd find a list of just take the biggest market leaders.
00:30:23 [Speaker 2]
McKinsey, SAP, Accenture, Microsoft, Siemens, you know, all the way down the list.
00:30:28 [Speaker 2]
And and the takeaway from that slide is there is no one logo that can do it all.
00:30:33 [Speaker 2]
SAP can't do it all.
00:30:34 [Speaker 2]
Accenture can't do it at McKinsey, Siemens.
00:30:36 [Speaker 2]
Because the last time I checked, Siemens didn't sell any LP system.
00:30:39 [Speaker 2]
So straight away, they're not running you.
00:30:41 [Speaker 2]
They don't have your financials.
00:30:42 [Speaker 2]
But equally SAP don't make PLCs or OEM equipment, so they they can't do it all.
00:30:48 [Speaker 2]
And then the the fourth part of the systemic problem, the way, you know, things just are and and why the model is broken is how manufacturers engage with that ecosystem because it's linear and it's sequential.
00:31:00 [Speaker 2]
So the first people through the door are the big consulting firm, the MBBs, who spend six months developing the five year plan.
00:31:06 [Speaker 2]
And, invariably, that plan does not tell you how to do it.
00:31:09 [Speaker 1]
It's not worth the direction it is.
00:31:11 [Speaker 1]
It's not worth the paper it's written on because it's based on it the the not that you shouldn't go through that process.
00:31:17 [Speaker 1]
It's a very important thought experiment for your organization.
00:31:20 [Speaker 1]
But to assume that that document is authoritative and that it is actually a map is preposterous because it is based on what we know now.
00:31:29 [Speaker 1]
Like, what a fundamental flaw in the thinking in digital transformation is that you can predetermine what it is you're going to do over the next eighteen to twenty four months when the the and the and that's built on a flawed premise that the the the ultimate promise of digital transformation is becoming a digital company in service of driving digital data to faster decisions.
00:31:54 [Speaker 1]
So as as a byproduct of that, what you are going to do is collectively become smarter as an organization.
00:32:01 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:32:02 [Speaker 1]
If what you want is a function of what you know and digital transformation is gonna make you know more, then it naturally follows that what you want will change by knowledge squared across the process, which means natural just natural deduction.
00:32:19 [Speaker 1]
You cannot predefine the road map at the b.
00:32:22 [Speaker 1]
So the while that process is important as a thought experiment, as a as a if we were to build the perfect organization today based on what we know today, what would it look like?
00:32:35 [Speaker 1]
That's actually what you're doing with McKinsey.
00:32:37 [Speaker 1]
That's what you're doing with Deloitte.
00:32:39 [Speaker 1]
That isn't what they're selling.
00:32:40 [Speaker 1]
What they're selling is a five year plan.
00:32:42 [Speaker 1]
It's not a five year plan.
00:32:43 [Speaker 1]
It is a thought experiment, and that's the way it should actually be framed.
00:32:48 [Speaker 1]
It should be the starting point of all the decisions we make going forward within but not a map for all the decisions we're gonna make going forward.
00:32:56 [Speaker 1]
It's a fundamental flaw in the process.
00:32:59 [Speaker 2]
Well, there there was an America I forget which one.
00:33:02 [Speaker 2]
I I've got it on one of my slides somewhere.
00:33:04 [Speaker 2]
The, second World War American general.
00:33:07 [Speaker 2]
I think he said, planning is essential.
00:33:09 [Speaker 2]
Plans are worthless.
00:33:11 [Speaker 2]
Yes.
00:33:11 [Speaker 2]
And I think that's that's the whole point.
00:33:13 [Speaker 2]
It's like from the but, again, it goes back to the the life lesson that your dad told you.
00:33:18 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:33:19 [Speaker 2]
You have to understand what's making them tick and why, and they're not there for the long term.
00:33:22 [Speaker 2]
They're not there for the five years.
00:33:24 [Speaker 2]
They're they're gonna get paid to produce this document, and then they're off onto the next one because they probably don't have the capability to see it to the cradle to grave.
00:33:34 [Speaker 2]
But in in my, simplified example, once they have they've delivered the five year plan and and the consultants have gone, because it isn't detailed enough that you can execute against, that plan is then given to internal departments like IT, engineering, and operations.
00:33:48 [Speaker 2]
And what they do is they, break it into pieces of things that they need to sort out.
00:33:53 [Speaker 2]
So IT will be looking for software and listening to SAP and other vendors around what they need to buy and implementation partners.
00:33:59 [Speaker 2]
The OT team are doing the same looking at OEM equipment and MES systems and a whole different bunch of people down there.
00:34:06 [Speaker 2]
And the commercial relationship between the manufacturer and those suppliers like Siemens and SAP is peer to peer one to one.
00:34:12 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:34:12 [Speaker 2]
They will negotiate and buy from Siemens and then in parallel, negotiate and buy from SAP and and Microsoft and various others.
00:34:18 [Speaker 2]
And and what they actually do is they buy a bunch of jigsaw pieces that don't fit together because nobody's actually looking at how it all fits together holistically, not just the technology, but the the operational And they don't
00:34:28 [Speaker 1]
know that.
00:34:29 [Speaker 1]
They don't know it doesn't all fit together.
00:34:31 [Speaker 1]
That's the one of my biggest complaints, one of my biggest criticisms of the system integrator.
00:34:36 [Speaker 1]
The reason I'm so sorry.
00:34:39 [Speaker 2]
You're getting passionate about this now, aren't you?
00:34:42 [Speaker 1]
No.
00:34:43 [Speaker 1]
My my dog is moving my camera.
00:34:45 [Speaker 1]
He really loves me.
00:34:46 [Speaker 1]
Alright.
00:34:47 [Speaker 1]
One of the things that I I I preach all the time is the importance of the agnostic integrator, the agnostic consultant in this process, the one who doesn't have the incentive to pick one solution over the other.
00:35:04 [Speaker 1]
You want you want the voice that will speak to two things.
00:35:08 [Speaker 1]
Of all the options that you have out here, what is best in class for what domain for your use case?
00:35:14 [Speaker 1]
And number two, how do they work together, and how do they not work together?
00:35:23 [Speaker 1]
The the the end user the the the end user is blind to that.
00:35:28 [Speaker 1]
They they're the end user is cutting 8 figure checks thinking all of this stuff plays together well and finding out twelve to eighteen months down the road that it doesn't.
00:35:39 [Speaker 2]
And But you but you know why?
00:35:41 [Speaker 2]
It's because their list the the person telling them that is a salesperson.
00:35:45 [Speaker 1]
Correct.
00:35:46 [Speaker 2]
And again, in my experience, oversimplified again, My advice would be get the salespeople out of the room as soon as possible before you buy anything.
00:35:55 [Speaker 2]
If you if you think directionally, well, we think we're gonna go with SAP and we think we're gonna go with Siemens.
00:36:00 [Speaker 2]
It's like, right.
00:36:01 [Speaker 2]
Okay.
00:36:01 [Speaker 2]
But don't buy anything.
00:36:02 [Speaker 2]
Get the salespeople out of the room and then bring the solution architects in.
00:36:05 [Speaker 2]
Because in my experience, again, solution architects think completely differently to the point where I've been in meetings with solution architects, and the salesperson is like elbowing them in the ribs to shut up.
00:36:15 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:36:16 [Speaker 2]
Stop saying that.
00:36:16 [Speaker 2]
Don't tell them that no.
00:36:17 [Speaker 2]
It's it's not vaporware.
00:36:19 [Speaker 2]
It's it's in the data.
00:36:20 [Speaker 2]
It's coming next.
00:36:21 [Speaker 2]
You know, shut up.
00:36:22 [Speaker 2]
I'm gonna sell this.
00:36:24 [Speaker 2]
And and so again, it comes back to the the life lesson from your your father.
00:36:28 [Speaker 2]
You know, it's like who's selling you know, what's the commercial incentive here and why are they making this decision?
00:36:33 [Speaker 2]
And it's in very and and if the person on the receiving end doesn't have the knowledge or the where, the wherewithal to to know that they're being BS ed, they will buy it.
00:36:45 [Speaker 2]
And then what you end up with is they buy things from the ERP vendor that are then overlapping with the MES vendor, and you're into this.
00:36:51 [Speaker 2]
Well, you know, mine I I want mine to do it because I bought no.
00:36:55 [Speaker 2]
No.
00:36:55 [Speaker 2]
This is a better way of and they you're into conflict inside the client with the things they've actually bought with it even without even having an SI in the room.
00:37:02 [Speaker 2]
The client's arguing between IT and engineering.
00:37:04 [Speaker 1]
I'm gonna I'm gonna, ask two questions here in a second.
00:37:08 [Speaker 1]
The and the I'll I'll I'll prep you for the question beforehand, which is when did you you obviously know that the model is broken, and you've known it for some time.
00:37:18 [Speaker 1]
So the next question for you, I'm gonna tell a story while you think about the answer.
00:37:22 [Speaker 1]
When did you realize it was broken?
00:37:24 [Speaker 1]
Like, when at what point in your journey did you go, what the fuck?
00:37:30 [Speaker 1]
No no wonder the outcomes are so bad.
00:37:32 [Speaker 1]
Alright.
00:37:33 [Speaker 1]
And and number two, that's gonna lead us into the quorum principle because I I wanna make sure we talk specifically about the quorum principle.
00:37:41 [Speaker 1]
What is it?
00:37:42 [Speaker 1]
How can we use it?
00:37:43 [Speaker 1]
I a lot I I've had a chance to take a look at this.
00:37:48 [Speaker 1]
I don't wanna call it a philosophy, but that's what I'm gonna describe it as.
00:37:51 [Speaker 1]
It it isn't a it's really a, like, a playbook, but, we're I'm gonna call it a it's it's a philosophical playbook with that's actionable.
00:38:00 [Speaker 1]
I I want us I want us to have a conversation about that, but I wanna tell two quick stories.
00:38:07 [Speaker 1]
So Yasir is on here who is the founder of a company called Maestrohub.
00:38:11 [Speaker 1]
And I and I see lots of people commenting in here.
00:38:14 [Speaker 1]
You know, I see Zach Edier and, you know, these are all people who've been members of the community forever.
00:38:19 [Speaker 1]
And if there is one thing that the core of the industry for community has in common, If there was one if people ask me, what is the one thing that you all have in common?
00:38:29 [Speaker 1]
It's that all of us see our roles as technologists more like brain surgeons than consultants.
00:38:37 [Speaker 1]
That it's our responsibility to tell the customer they're they're broken, and it's our responsibility to tell them what we would do if it was our mom.
00:38:48 [Speaker 1]
What we would do if it was our grandfather.
00:38:51 [Speaker 1]
It's our job because we have an insight through our education and our experience that the customer doesn't have.
00:39:00 [Speaker 1]
And so it's our job to say, in spite of the fact that I sell product x that's on my line card, but I'm the solutions engineer.
00:39:11 [Speaker 1]
My job is to tell you that for your use case, I know my competitors as well as I know my own products.
00:39:18 [Speaker 1]
For your use case, you should probably use my competitor's product here and use our product there.
00:39:24 [Speaker 1]
Right?
00:39:25 [Speaker 1]
We all agree that's our responsibility.
00:39:27 [Speaker 1]
There is there is no one here that's part of the core of industry four of the of this community that does not agree that we have a responsibility to tell our customers what we would advise our own grandmother to do.
00:39:40 [Speaker 1]
Not Yeah.
00:39:41 [Speaker 1]
Based on what it is I'm tasked with selling.
00:39:44 [Speaker 1]
And we believe that that's a good business move because it earns goodwill.
00:39:49 [Speaker 1]
It builds your reputation, and it it makes you a trusted adviser for and and if I got a product that's really worth worth its grain and salt, then that's gonna establish a relationship with my customer of trust where they may come back to me for that product later.
00:40:04 [Speaker 1]
We all agree on that one piece.
00:40:06 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:40:07 [Speaker 2]
Yep.
00:40:07 [Speaker 1]
For across the board.
00:40:09 [Speaker 1]
Number two not number two.
00:40:12 [Speaker 1]
Yasir, who's on here.
00:40:13 [Speaker 1]
Here's an example.
00:40:15 [Speaker 1]
I have been insistent on remaining agnostic as a as a a vendor.
00:40:20 [Speaker 1]
So that is as an integrator, we never signed strategic partnerships with any vendor.
00:40:27 [Speaker 1]
So, you know, inductive automation wanted us to be premier integrators forever.
00:40:30 [Speaker 1]
You know, they would constantly be coming back, wanting us to to become a premier integrator.
00:40:35 [Speaker 1]
And and and it's not just in.
00:40:37 [Speaker 1]
Many companies wanted us to be, you know, the the top level integrator.
00:40:42 [Speaker 1]
But those top level integrators always have sales targets.
00:40:48 [Speaker 1]
They there is always a car a conversation.
00:40:51 [Speaker 1]
What are we gonna sell this quarter?
00:40:52 [Speaker 1]
What are we you know, what are we committing to you that we're gonna sell of your product?
00:40:57 [Speaker 1]
And that and in my opinion, that created an incentive for us to make suboptimal decisions for our customers in service of that relationship.
00:41:06 [Speaker 1]
And so the answer under my watch was always no.
00:41:11 [Speaker 1]
Now I'm not disparaging any premier integrator.
00:41:13 [Speaker 1]
There are certainly scenarios where you're becoming a premier integrator or becoming one of those types of partners for Kepware or, you know, Aviva or whoever is a good thing.
00:41:23 [Speaker 1]
But in general, in my opinion, if you are the consultant, you are the brain surgeon, You should not be putting those incentives in your business.
00:41:32 [Speaker 1]
I want yesterday, we closed a, me and two other integrators.
00:41:39 [Speaker 1]
So 4.0 and two other integrators.
00:41:42 [Speaker 1]
There's an integrator who's kinda leading this venture.
00:41:46 [Speaker 1]
It's a big, massive digital transformation initiative across the world.
00:41:48 [Speaker 1]
And, they're gonna start with a handful of plants doing their their proof of concept.
00:41:54 [Speaker 1]
And the original architecture that was proposed by the consultant who has the incestuous relationship had a list of products in their stack that was not in the customer's best interest.
00:42:10 [Speaker 1]
And our group said, no.
00:42:13 [Speaker 1]
You should have CoreFlux here, and you should use Litmus there, and you should Maestro Hub might use Maestro Hub here.
00:42:20 [Speaker 1]
And we basically said, if you want best in class based on what you're doing right now for your specific use case, You should have litmus on the edge.
00:42:28 [Speaker 1]
You should have litmus in the cloud.
00:42:29 [Speaker 1]
You should have core flux here in the DMZ as your broker.
00:42:32 [Speaker 1]
You should have core flux in layer three at the top of the plant.
00:42:35 [Speaker 1]
You should have Maestrohub here.
00:42:37 [Speaker 1]
You should have Maestrohub there.
00:42:38 [Speaker 1]
We and we basically made a business case against what the big what the big consultancy advised against.
00:42:47 [Speaker 1]
And in that presentation, they signed off on it.
00:42:49 [Speaker 1]
They said no.
00:42:49 [Speaker 1]
That and they asked a whole bunch of questions.
00:42:52 [Speaker 1]
Why are you recommending this?
00:42:53 [Speaker 1]
But this other consultant, he's recommending the other thing.
00:42:57 [Speaker 1]
And the answer was, well, because number one, this is what you like, you're you're in no amount of research is gonna have you conclude that your architecture shouldn't look this way.
00:43:08 [Speaker 1]
If you use an agnostic technologist, they're gonna tell you this right now.
00:43:12 [Speaker 1]
This is what your best in class is, and you need these at all these layers.
00:43:16 [Speaker 1]
It is stunning to me how rare that is, how rare that outcome for that manufacturer happens.
00:43:25 [Speaker 1]
It is by the way, Yasir, I don't even know if I Yasir, I'm not even sure you've even been told yet.
00:43:30 [Speaker 1]
But, anyway, Maestrohub is part of you know, I I haven't talked to Maestro Maestrohub or CoreFlux or anyone, but, you know, hopefully, Von reached out and let you guys know because they didn't even know what was going on that we were proposing it.
00:43:41 [Speaker 1]
Yes.
00:43:41 [Speaker 1]
He told okay.
00:43:42 [Speaker 1]
So my point is is that my point is is that the the the optimal for the end user hasn't been the priority.
00:43:53 [Speaker 1]
The op the end user has been a means to an end for a very long time, and I think you and I agree on that piece.
00:43:59 [Speaker 1]
And I think when I read the quorum principle, it's like, this guy fucking gets it.
00:44:05 [Speaker 1]
I mean, where where has he been?
00:44:07 [Speaker 1]
Where, you know, where has he been the whole time?
00:44:08 [Speaker 1]
You know what I mean?
00:44:09 [Speaker 1]
I've been
00:44:09 [Speaker 2]
in Europe hiding.
00:44:11 [Speaker 1]
Alright.
00:44:11 [Speaker 1]
So let me just so, John, let's bring it back to that question I'd asked you.
00:44:14 [Speaker 1]
If you get it, when is it you realized that the actual problem with failed digital transformation wasn't it was a bad project or a bad partner or whatever.
00:44:24 [Speaker 1]
It was the model.
00:44:25 [Speaker 1]
When did you realize that it was the model that was broken?
00:44:28 [Speaker 1]
What what triggered that?
00:44:30 [Speaker 2]
Oh, I know exactly when it was.
00:44:31 [Speaker 2]
It was during the pandemic in 2020.
00:44:34 [Speaker 2]
K.
00:44:35 [Speaker 2]
And, again, very specifically, a few things happened.
00:44:39 [Speaker 2]
Obviously, I wasn't traveling as much like all of us.
00:44:42 [Speaker 2]
We were at home locked down and, having to work remotely.
00:44:44 [Speaker 2]
So you had a lot more time to think and without traveling and rushing around doing things.
00:44:49 [Speaker 2]
But the other thing that happened is the, obviously, there there were a lot of urgent things that we needed to sort out, vac develop vaccines very quickly.
00:45:00 [Speaker 2]
And in The UK, I don't know if it was the same in The US, but, we had this thing called the ventilator challenge where we had to build a ton of ventilators very quickly.
00:45:09 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:45:09 [Speaker 2]
And the UK government set up two initiatives, two different groups, basically.
00:45:14 [Speaker 2]
And those groups, one was led by Siemens, I think, with Airbus and a whole bunch of others, and the other one was Rolls Royce and another bunch.
00:45:22 [Speaker 2]
And people who were out and out competitors, or pseudo comp you know, the Venn diagram overlapped a little bit.
00:45:29 [Speaker 2]
But because there was a compelling event and an urgent need to protect grandpa literally grandparents and parents and elderly and very you know, the vulnerable, they did it.
00:45:39 [Speaker 2]
It could be done.
00:45:40 [Speaker 2]
They they had a a reason to come together and put those commercial considerations to one side and figure out what do we do to get this done.
00:45:47 [Speaker 2]
And we we banged out ventilators in huge numbers very quickly.
00:45:51 [Speaker 2]
Literally, Airbus converted one of their factories within weeks, and they were manufacturing thousands, literally thousands of, ventilators.
00:45:59 [Speaker 2]
So from an empty warehouse to a production facility in weeks.
00:46:03 [Speaker 2]
And that that wasn't the only thing, but it gave me a lot of time to think about it.
00:46:07 [Speaker 2]
But I I I knew then that, alright.
00:46:09 [Speaker 2]
This I'd seen enough.
00:46:10 [Speaker 2]
I I hadn't worked for Kearny at that point, but I when I was at SAP, I was working with, McKinsey, BCG, and Bain.
00:46:18 [Speaker 2]
And I'd been in meetings and teams calls with those three consulting firms that gave me the last piece of the jigsaw in terms of being able to see how they operate and, and to see the dynamic relationship between again, I'll give you two examples of the misguided nature of something that looks logical for a manufacturer on paper, but fails miserably from a commercial standpoint.
00:46:42 [Speaker 2]
And there are loads of these in my career.
00:46:44 [Speaker 2]
In 2021, SAP and Siemens announced a joint go to market around Teamcenter, PLM to ERP, EBOM, MBOM, the whole thing.
00:46:52 [Speaker 2]
And the big aerospace companies I was working with were like, oh, hallelujah.
00:46:56 [Speaker 2]
We've been trying to figure out this three legged stool of what should we do in the ERP, the PLM, and the MES for twenty years, and we can't get SAP and Teamcenter to talk to each other.
00:47:06 [Speaker 2]
You sometimes can't even get Siemens Automation to sort the Siemens PLM because they're two different PNLs, and, you know, there's internal silos there as well.
00:47:14 [Speaker 2]
And on for the Christian Klein, Roland Busch level, the, you know, the fireside chat, this is a great initiative.
00:47:21 [Speaker 2]
Roland Busch, Christian did one with Satya Nadella about how wonderful Microsoft and SAP.
00:47:25 [Speaker 2]
At the CEO level, it makes perfect sense.
00:47:28 [Speaker 2]
Four levels down at the individual account level, it's open warfare.
00:47:31 [Speaker 2]
They don't wanna go in and sit together and talk.
00:47:33 [Speaker 2]
It's they're worried each of those gonna steal their quota, and it's just it forced to they're by out to kill it, not make it work.
00:47:39 [Speaker 2]
They're they're out to sort of kill it down.
00:47:41 [Speaker 1]
Because the incentive is the incentive is not structured.
00:47:44 [Speaker 1]
But to to to Yasir's point here, the most broken thing is those consultants that steal the trust from the end user, which makes it worse for those brain surgeons.
00:47:53 [Speaker 1]
I mean, here here's the the the incentive the what the model is broken in my opinion because the incentive structure has been wrong from day one, and the relationships have been incestuous to the point where the customer the customer isn't the authority for the outcome, the vendor is.
00:48:12 [Speaker 1]
And the the the incentive structure has what you ended up with are are people who are operating on values other than the bottom line are the ones who are fighting to for optimal because they're seeing a they're looking longer.
00:48:28 [Speaker 1]
They're they're they're they're looking at a much longer arc.
00:48:30 [Speaker 1]
They're looking at their moral contribution to humanity.
00:48:33 [Speaker 1]
They're looking at you know, people ask me all the you know, I I constantly say this all the time.
00:48:38 [Speaker 1]
Why is it I didn't do x?
00:48:40 [Speaker 1]
And the answer is because I need to be able to sleep at night.
00:48:44 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:48:44 [Speaker 1]
Like, not everyone not not everyone is like that.
00:48:49 [Speaker 1]
There are a lot of people who are like that, but they're not everyone is like that.
00:48:52 [Speaker 1]
And if we you talked about the pandemic.
00:48:55 [Speaker 1]
Do you wanna know the why did we get the the the the vaccine in four months instead of five years?
00:49:03 [Speaker 1]
We stripped away the regulation, and we incentivized organ companies to do it.
00:49:07 [Speaker 1]
And that's it.
00:49:08 [Speaker 1]
That's, we nothing what I was work we were working with you know, there were basically three big, vaccine providers.
00:49:16 [Speaker 1]
We were working with all three of them.
00:49:18 [Speaker 1]
And what was amazing to me was all the rules that we had lived under in life sciences up till 2020 went out the fucking window in May 2000 and they just went out the window, and all those rules no longer apply.
00:49:34 [Speaker 1]
And magically, a vaccine is done in, like, eight weeks.
00:49:37 [Speaker 1]
And they're doing trials in twelve weeks, and and I it showed the rest of the world just how fast the speed of business actually is when you put the correct incentives in place.
00:49:48 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:49:49 [Speaker 2]
And and to to build on Yasir's point and the point that you've just made as well is that the the problem is going back to the the SAP, MBB relationship.
00:50:00 [Speaker 2]
Although it made so so the reason SAP wanted to do that is and I don't I think this is a fairly open thing.
00:50:06 [Speaker 2]
I'm not saying anything that is confidential in that respect.
00:50:09 [Speaker 2]
But broadly speaking, we all know that SAP can't get to the c suite.
00:50:13 [Speaker 2]
Beyond the CIO, maybe the CFO because of the FICO side of it, but the c suite of manufacturing do not bring in SAP for strategic advice.
00:50:22 [Speaker 1]
Never.
00:50:23 [Speaker 2]
They talk to McKinsey, BCG, and and, you know, Bain and and others for consulting advice.
00:50:28 [Speaker 2]
And again, therein is part of the problem because those people are not the brain surgeons.
00:50:33 [Speaker 2]
They are the ones who are coming in and provide in the high level directional stuff.
00:50:37 [Speaker 2]
But by the time they leave, the damage is done for because they've already set expectations at c suite level about what can be done and when and for what amount of money.
00:50:47 [Speaker 2]
And then and then with the technology let's say Accenture come in next or another big implantation partner.
00:50:53 [Speaker 2]
The first thing they do is pull to pieces the consulting strategy five year plan.
00:50:57 [Speaker 2]
So why have they told you that you can't do that?
00:50:58 [Speaker 2]
You can't do that in that city.
00:51:00 [Speaker 2]
You shouldn't be doing that.
00:51:01 [Speaker 2]
Let me change it for you.
00:51:02 [Speaker 2]
And then there's a a delay and a chain while they translate the five year plan into something more practical.
00:51:07 [Speaker 2]
And then the vendors come in like SAP, and I go back to something you made about thirty, forty minutes ago and and put a slight nuance onto it.
00:51:15 [Speaker 2]
The big the accentures and the, the big implementation partners, so the GSSPs, I think they were called the SSP SAP.
00:51:24 [Speaker 2]
They're not completely in bed with SAP because again to SAP's frustration, they know SAP will be looking at a client opportunity and think, oh, we can sell everything into this client.
00:51:37 [Speaker 2]
But some of those big implantation partners will go best of breed much to the annoyance of SAP because SAP can't stop them recommending Salesforce to CRM or, you know, something else in in that stack.
00:51:49 [Speaker 2]
Or even worse, the, the implementation the big implementation partner will say, well, none of the products off the shelf do what you want.
00:51:56 [Speaker 2]
Let me build you one, which then gets them professional service hours.
00:51:59 [Speaker 2]
So there's a slight nuance in there.
00:52:01 [Speaker 2]
But then so if you imagine consultants first, then a big implementation partner that pulls the consulting thing to piece, and then the vendor technology vendors actually come in and then pull the Accenture document to pieces and say, why have they told you to that's not the right way to do the ERP.
00:52:14 [Speaker 2]
You should be doing this.
00:52:15 [Speaker 2]
So I could put any names in the frame.
00:52:18 [Speaker 2]
It it's different.
00:52:19 [Speaker 2]
And then the big automation vendors, SIs, come in after that and say, why have they told you to do it?
00:52:24 [Speaker 2]
It's just a constant change request delay of reworking the previous people's work.
00:52:29 [Speaker 2]
And and by the time you guys and Yasir and the the people who are really knowledgeable at that level come in, invariably, the clients already bought all the software and the solutions, and you've got a bill of materials to try and unpick.
00:52:42 [Speaker 2]
And so to your point ten minutes ago, it absolutely is the exception.
00:52:47 [Speaker 2]
It's not the rule that, you know, for you to get in and say, no.
00:52:50 [Speaker 2]
Don't do that.
00:52:51 [Speaker 2]
The damages you usually have done, and you gotta try and make the best of it.
00:52:54 [Speaker 1]
I I'll I'll say this.
00:52:55 [Speaker 1]
Last week, I wasn't gonna bring this up, but I'll bring it up.
00:52:57 [Speaker 1]
I wanna touch on this piece and then go right into the quorum principle.
00:53:00 [Speaker 1]
Because I think it so I I was brought into this manufacturer.
00:53:05 [Speaker 1]
I I do this a lot.
00:53:07 [Speaker 1]
And I was brought into this manufacturer last week.
00:53:10 [Speaker 1]
I spent three days on-site with in two of their facilities.
00:53:13 [Speaker 1]
They have you know, they're a multinational billion dollar publicly traded, you know, and they are getting ready to do a big SAP rollout.
00:53:24 [Speaker 1]
The their reaction their reaction is they they grew even though they're a publicly traded company, they grew like a mom and pop.
00:53:33 [Speaker 1]
So all the plants were pretty autonomous, and they they could basically innovate however they wanted.
00:53:38 [Speaker 1]
They bought all their own systems.
00:53:39 [Speaker 1]
They did lots and lots of home brew.
00:53:42 [Speaker 1]
And as they're growing, they're becoming more vertically integrated.
00:53:45 [Speaker 1]
So they're they're developing subassemblies in Europe, and they're shipping them to The United States for manufacturing, and then they ship them to Mexico for testing, and then they bring them back to The United States.
00:53:54 [Speaker 1]
And, you know, they're they're becoming way more vertically integrated.
00:53:58 [Speaker 1]
And so the disjointedness of their plants makes tracing the material through the value stream really, really difficult.
00:54:06 [Speaker 1]
Like, that's the problem they're trying to solve.
00:54:08 [Speaker 1]
That is a very that's a story that has is old as a tale of time.
00:54:13 [Speaker 1]
It that's a common story so many manufacturers are faced with it.
00:54:17 [Speaker 1]
What was unique about this engagement is that they hired us before they implemented the ERP.
00:54:24 [Speaker 1]
So they made the decision on ERP, but before they've met with the integrator to start deploying globally this is rare.
00:54:31 [Speaker 1]
Normally, we're coming in after that just the all that design stuff.
00:54:35 [Speaker 1]
So they asked me to write the MES ERP boundary.
00:54:39 [Speaker 1]
What they wanted to define clearly was what is what lives in the manufacturing execution system, what lives in the ERP system.
00:54:46 [Speaker 1]
And here what I'm about to stay here is something you are never ever ever going to hear from an SAP consultant.
00:54:55 [Speaker 1]
The e integrator is never gonna have this conversation, and this is a conversation that must be had.
00:55:01 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:55:02 [Speaker 1]
So for example, most manufacturers don't know the distant difference between system of record and system of ownership.
00:55:10 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:55:10 [Speaker 1]
You must know the difference between system of record and ownership.
00:55:14 [Speaker 1]
In general, ERP is the system of record for basically all data.
00:55:19 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:55:20 [Speaker 1]
It is the system of ownership for most financials, master data bottle, bill of materials, but it is not the system of ownership for operational data.
00:55:30 [Speaker 1]
And how do you decide what ERP is the system of ownership for, and what is it just just the system of record for?
00:55:38 [Speaker 1]
And the answer is, in general, there are some rules.
00:55:41 [Speaker 1]
If it touches machines or people, that is manufacturing execution.
00:55:46 [Speaker 1]
That's not ERP.
00:55:48 [Speaker 1]
If if a decision has to be made on that data in sixty seconds or less, that is owned by manufacturing execution, not by ERP.
00:55:57 [Speaker 1]
ERP systems are not designed to make decisions in a sixty second or less window.
00:56:02 [Speaker 1]
Many organizations say if the decision's gonna be made in an hour or less, it's owned by MES.
00:56:08 [Speaker 1]
But my general rule is that the one minute rule.
00:56:12 [Speaker 1]
And then system of record versus system of ownership.
00:56:14 [Speaker 1]
And I wanna drive home a point why what I just said here is important.
00:56:17 [Speaker 1]
The the model was broken.
00:56:20 [Speaker 1]
Ten years ago, you know there were very few manufacturers who were being told this before the ERP implementation.
00:56:31 [Speaker 1]
So the the the they were trusting.
00:56:33 [Speaker 1]
They were signing an 8 figure check.
00:56:36 [Speaker 1]
They were bringing in the integrator who's gonna do the ERP and never being told the difference between system of records, system of ownership, one minute rule.
00:56:45 [Speaker 1]
If it touches a machine, touches an operation, that's MES.
00:56:49 [Speaker 1]
Here's the implication.
00:56:51 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:56:53 [Speaker 1]
You know, Christian Klein gave a speech at SAFIRE a few months ago.
00:56:56 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:56:56 [Speaker 1]
Sapphire is their big annual thing.
00:56:59 [Speaker 1]
And and you you have to understand this.
00:57:01 [Speaker 1]
And, again, I'm gonna pick on SAP here.
00:57:02 [Speaker 1]
I don't mean to put you on the spot here, John, but I'm gonna pick on SAP.
00:57:06 [Speaker 1]
But, again, this applies to all the big players.
00:57:08 [Speaker 1]
What we're gonna call SAP out.
00:57:10 [Speaker 1]
Why?
00:57:10 [Speaker 1]
Because Christian Klein made this speech.
00:57:13 [Speaker 1]
SAP is the one who sued their manufacturers.
00:57:15 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:57:16 [Speaker 1]
In 2017, SAP won a lawsuit in The United Kingdom.
00:57:20 [Speaker 1]
And, basically, in a as a general rule, as a part of that lawsuit, it basically said, if if the ERP system owns the data, if they are the system of ownership, then the then based on the licensing terms, the vendor decides what licenses you have to pay for.
00:57:39 [Speaker 1]
Not the cuss the customer cannot just decide who gets to access that data.
00:57:43 [Speaker 1]
So if SAP owns the data, SAP owns the terms of access to that data, and they can decide whether or not you need a license to send that to Salesforce or not.
00:57:54 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:57:56 [Speaker 1]
They then after that lawsuit, after they won, five days later five days later, they went and sued AB InBev for $600,000,000.
00:58:06 [Speaker 1]
They won £55,000,000 from the but can't remember the name of the company.
00:58:11 [Speaker 1]
But five days later, they went and they sued AB InBev for $600,000,000 for indirect access of their ERP data through Salesforce.
00:58:22 [Speaker 1]
Now that was settled out of court.
00:58:25 [Speaker 1]
SAP faced huge backlash for that.
00:58:27 [Speaker 1]
Huge backlash.
00:58:28 [Speaker 1]
And then the the CEO at the time, because Christian wasn't the CEO at the time, he gave a speech at Sapphire, and he said he basically said, we're not gonna charge licenses for this type of access or this type of access.
00:58:39 [Speaker 1]
He was trying to quell the concerns, but he never explicitly said, we do not believe that we own access to the data.
00:58:49 [Speaker 1]
Christian Klein, on the other hand, in his speech earlier this year, intimated very clearly that SAP's position is if SAP is the system of ownership, then we say how much it costs to access that data.
00:59:02 [Speaker 1]
That is his that is SAP's official position.
00:59:06 [Speaker 1]
Why is that important?
00:59:07 [Speaker 1]
Does that make SAP evil?
00:59:08 [Speaker 1]
No.
00:59:08 [Speaker 1]
Not at all.
00:59:09 [Speaker 1]
That's business.
00:59:10 [Speaker 1]
The problem where the model is broken is that the manufacturer is finding that out after their pot committed.
00:59:18 [Speaker 1]
That's why the model's broken.
00:59:20 [Speaker 1]
If the if the manufacturer knows all those facts upfront and they still decide to opt in, that is fair and and even handed and good faith business.
00:59:31 [Speaker 1]
But if they're finding out eighteen months, twenty four months after the fact, that that is their actual scenario and that and that, Juul is basically gonna be the only platform I'm essentially gonna be able to access my business data using AI with, and I don't know how much it's gonna cost me, it means it's gonna cost me 20 times more than I think it's gonna cost me.
00:59:55 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
00:59:55 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:59:56 [Speaker 1]
That though those are examples of why the system is broke and why things like the quorum principle are so important, which wants me which is why I wanna bring I wanna take it to the quorum principle.
01:00:05 [Speaker 1]
I wanna take it home.
01:00:07 [Speaker 1]
What is the core quorum principle?
01:00:10 [Speaker 1]
What are its core concepts?
01:00:12 [Speaker 1]
Why does it matter?
01:00:14 [Speaker 2]
Okay.
01:00:15 [Speaker 2]
Just one point though on the, on the the the point that you've just been making there.
01:00:20 [Speaker 2]
The the issue is not entirely down to the ecosystem squabbling and arguing, you know, between Salesforce, SAP, and various others over where data should sit and, you know, this data ownership and the client not understanding that.
01:00:35 [Speaker 2]
Going back to what I said earlier, part of the problem is, a lack of understanding and ignorance inside the client as well between IT believing what they're told and, oh, this is the right way to go.
01:00:45 [Speaker 2]
But and just on that point, again, because it is really important.
01:00:49 [Speaker 2]
We've been trying to bridge this ITOT gap for forever.
01:00:52 [Speaker 2]
And one of the frustrations that I had when I was at SAP prior to being at SAP and since I've left SAP and again, I'm oversimplifying.
01:01:00 [Speaker 2]
I'm probably losing LinkedIn connections from SAP at a phenomenal rate after this podcast.
01:01:04 [Speaker 2]
But,
01:01:06 [Speaker 1]
for for anybody at SAP, I don't speak for John, obviously.
01:01:10 [Speaker 1]
Okay.
01:01:11 [Speaker 1]
These are these are my opinions and my opinions only.
01:01:14 [Speaker 2]
But, one of the things I was frustrated with, and and it's a frustration with people inside manufacturing companies is that broader sort of, let's just call them the IT community, don't actually understand what happens in their own business and what they actually do.
01:01:31 [Speaker 2]
And I used to say to people, you know, the raison d'etre of Rolls Royce, AB InBev, Heineken, Carlsberg, Nestle, P and G.
01:01:39 [Speaker 2]
The raison d'etre of these companies to exist is to make things.
01:01:42 [Speaker 2]
It's not to run a fancy supply chain or an ERP system and a financial accounting system.
01:01:47 [Speaker 2]
It's to make stuff.
01:01:48 [Speaker 2]
If they don't make stuff, and if I I used to draw a triangle pyramid on the on the screen and basically say, the tip of the iceberg, the stuff you see above, that's the ERP system.
01:01:59 [Speaker 2]
Underneath, ABM Bev have got 174 breweries around the world manufacturing Budweiser and other products like that.
01:02:05 [Speaker 2]
So you're the tip of the iceberg.
01:02:06 [Speaker 2]
You're not everything.
01:02:08 [Speaker 2]
This is everything.
01:02:09 [Speaker 2]
This is what they do.
01:02:10 [Speaker 2]
And and there was a lack of understanding.
01:02:12 [Speaker 2]
And and you could say to them, what what's that called there?
01:02:14 [Speaker 2]
Show them a PLC.
01:02:15 [Speaker 2]
What's that?
01:02:16 [Speaker 2]
Do you know what a tag is?
01:02:17 [Speaker 2]
And a bit I don't know.
01:02:18 [Speaker 2]
I had an incident with a client, a couple of weeks back where the IT person somebody was in a meeting.
01:02:24 [Speaker 2]
I did I wasn't there.
01:02:25 [Speaker 2]
I heard it secondhand.
01:02:27 [Speaker 2]
And the comment was, what's a tag?
01:02:29 [Speaker 2]
You're thinking how the hell can this person be, you know, in at this level of decision making and not know what a tag is.
01:02:35 [Speaker 2]
But, anyway, by the way.
01:02:37 [Speaker 2]
So the core and principle.
01:02:38 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:02:38 [Speaker 1]
Quick thing to your point, the ITOT divide.
01:02:42 [Speaker 1]
Here here's the thing that stands out to me.
01:02:45 [Speaker 1]
To your point, you literally what you just said, you it's it's as if we're in each other's heads.
01:02:51 [Speaker 1]
I you know, when I'm on-site in a manufacturer and I'm talking to the carpeted side of the business, I literally say, none of us in here matter.
01:03:00 [Speaker 1]
Like, don't you understand that your business happens on the concrete side of the business, and the rest of us are irrelevant?
01:03:08 [Speaker 1]
Like, we are here to support them.
01:03:10 [Speaker 1]
They are not here to make your job easier.
01:03:13 [Speaker 1]
Our we are here to make their job easier.
01:03:17 [Speaker 1]
The people who operate the equipment, the supervisors who make the operational decisions, The material handlers have to move material from point a to point b.
01:03:24 [Speaker 1]
The QA the the QA engineers who are their job is to make sure that the product can go to the customer.
01:03:30 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
01:03:31 [Speaker 1]
Our job is to support them.
01:03:33 [Speaker 1]
Everything that you're saying here that, like, your job is harder because of x, y, and z, I don't care.
01:03:39 [Speaker 1]
I literally say that.
01:03:40 [Speaker 1]
I go, we're not important.
01:03:42 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
01:03:43 [Speaker 1]
We kinda we could literally we could get rid of this whole room, and the plant's still gonna run.
01:03:48 [Speaker 1]
If you take everyone off the plant floor, you produce nothing.
01:03:52 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:03:53 [Speaker 2]
And that's one of the things I loved about P and G's IWS.
01:03:56 [Speaker 2]
There there's a concept that's absolutely central to everything P and G do.
01:03:59 [Speaker 2]
It's called servant leadership.
01:04:01 [Speaker 2]
And that servant leadership concept is exactly what you just described.
01:04:04 [Speaker 2]
It's like, I'm not here to be your boss.
01:04:06 [Speaker 2]
My job is is to enable you to do your job.
01:04:09 [Speaker 2]
Correct.
01:04:10 [Speaker 2]
And and I love I love that idea within, and another point again, I know we're we're, bouncing off each other in this one.
01:04:16 [Speaker 2]
Even the terminology means different things to different people.
01:04:19 [Speaker 2]
In SAP, real time is a transaction.
01:04:22 [Speaker 2]
Some things move from there to there.
01:04:23 [Speaker 2]
Now it has a different value.
01:04:25 [Speaker 2]
Real time to, you know, millisecond scan on a chemical plant is that's real time to a PLC engineer.
01:04:31 [Speaker 2]
Not real time is like, you know, you said minutes, hours.
01:04:34 [Speaker 2]
But the the other thing that you
01:04:35 [Speaker 1]
One second on the plant floor is worth millions of dollars.
01:04:41 [Speaker 1]
But on the IT side of the business, one second is a justifiable expense.
01:04:46 [Speaker 1]
An hour is a justifiable expense.
01:04:49 [Speaker 1]
On the plant floor, one second is worth millions of dollars.
01:04:53 [Speaker 1]
If I can reduce my cycle time by one second, if I can increase my first pass yield by one percent, these are millions of the impact is millions and millions and millions of dollars.
01:05:07 [Speaker 1]
And you and we to talk about the tag piece, you wanna know why no one on IT side understands what a tag is?
01:05:13 [Speaker 1]
It's because an a tag operates in the control window of the of the one hundred millisecond control window, and that's a space they never ever touch.
01:05:22 [Speaker 1]
It's not their it's not their fault.
01:05:24 [Speaker 1]
It's just a reality that just like just like works on the plant floor doesn't know all of the variables that an executive has to take into account when making a final decision.
01:05:35 [Speaker 1]
Everyone on the platform know the the executive doesn't know what it's really like to run the piece of equipment, and the member of IT doesn't understand that either.
01:05:44 [Speaker 1]
They don't even the IT knows less about how the business operates than anyone else in the organization.
01:05:51 [Speaker 1]
Anyone else.
01:05:52 [Speaker 1]
But
01:05:53 [Speaker 2]
and, again, I I agree with you completely.
01:05:55 [Speaker 2]
And and, again, just to be fair to SAP and the the other people so we're not beating them up.
01:06:00 [Speaker 2]
The one of the areas where SAP is absolutely critical, you absolutely need it to the point you've just made is that the millions that you cost on the shop floor, you don't know that they're millions from the data you get from a plant floor system because it doesn't have any financials in it.
01:06:15 [Speaker 2]
All the financials of how much is a kilowatt hour, how much is my labor costing me, how much is this raw material, The cost of everything is in the ERP system.
01:06:23 [Speaker 2]
SAP is the gold
01:06:24 [Speaker 1]
standard in General Ledger.
01:06:26 [Speaker 1]
They are gold stand is no Oracle doesn't hold a candle to them.
01:06:31 [Speaker 1]
No one SAP is absolutely best in class in General Ledger.
01:06:36 [Speaker 1]
They are best in class.
01:06:37 [Speaker 1]
There is no comparison.
01:06:39 [Speaker 1]
So to your point, I wanna
01:06:41 [Speaker 2]
be frank in kind of But equally, you you couldn't take a hardened automation engineer and sit them down at an SAP development environment and say, go and code ABAP or whatever the latest version.
01:06:50 [Speaker 2]
I don't know.
01:06:51 [Speaker 2]
Just just they they wouldn't know.
01:06:52 [Speaker 2]
And so it's not and equally, you take either of the technical guys and sit them down with a Toyota production system person and and have them to explain why bulk curves and what's a why bulk curve and how does this work.
01:07:03 [Speaker 2]
They wouldn't know.
01:07:04 [Speaker 2]
So every this is what I'm saying.
01:07:05 [Speaker 2]
Every and then take all three of them and sit them in front of the CEO or the CFO.
01:07:09 [Speaker 2]
And it'd be like, don't talk talk tech to me.
01:07:11 [Speaker 2]
Get out the room.
01:07:12 [Speaker 2]
I'm not interested in tech.
01:07:13 [Speaker 2]
I need to know I wanna talk a different language.
01:07:16 [Speaker 2]
So it's essentially everybody speaks their own language.
01:07:19 [Speaker 2]
They're all perfectly valid, and valuable languages, but nobody can translate between all of them in terms of what it means.
01:07:26 [Speaker 2]
And that's where the Quorum principle comes in in terms of that segue to to what is it.
01:07:31 [Speaker 2]
So, there there's a very simple slide that I use to explain the core and principle to people, and I'll I'll have to verbally explain it to you.
01:07:41 [Speaker 2]
But if you said to a big multinational like ABM bev or Rolls Royce or General Dynamics, any of them, Of all your suppliers, all of them, the principle, the eight to 20 rule, which which five have the biggest impact on what you're gonna achieve financially and your business transformation goals in the next next year's time frame.
01:08:00 [Speaker 2]
Most of them would pick their strategic consultants because they are the ones that they will listen to for advice and strategy and diversification of various other things.
01:08:09 [Speaker 2]
You you'd have to go with your ERP because that's where all your financial data is.
01:08:13 [Speaker 2]
You need the data wherever it sits, whether it's on premise, cloud, so probably a hyperscaler or someone who's basically who's got the data.
01:08:22 [Speaker 2]
You need the plant data because the financials are useless without the quantities of kilowatt hours and, you know, consumption and various other things.
01:08:30 [Speaker 2]
And then you need somebody who can integrate it and make it work.
01:08:33 [Speaker 2]
So if you said to a big multinational, so or anybody, and we'll just pick the five biggest and said, so who is that exactly?
01:08:39 [Speaker 2]
They probably say, well, McKinsey consultants, SAP is our ERP, Microsoft Azure hyperscaler type, data owner, Siemens in the factories, and Accenture can make it all work.
01:08:52 [Speaker 2]
They can implement it and and make it a delivery.
01:08:54 [Speaker 2]
Now that in a combination lock.
01:08:56 [Speaker 2]
So you know the combination lock where you dial in five and the lock pops open.
01:09:00 [Speaker 2]
So if you took those five, but then the next slide in my presentation has the CEO at the head of the boardroom, and those five companies sat together in the boardroom.
01:09:10 [Speaker 2]
And the CEO is basically saying to them, look, here's what I need to try and achieve.
01:09:14 [Speaker 2]
Now figure out how to do it.
01:09:15 [Speaker 2]
Play nicely together, collaborate.
01:09:17 [Speaker 2]
You're not coming in sequentially one after the other.
01:09:21 [Speaker 2]
You're we're gonna debate this.
01:09:22 [Speaker 2]
We're gonna discuss how I achieve what I achieve.
01:09:24 [Speaker 2]
And going back to everything we've been talking about for the last forty five minutes, that's where you get the value that each company can bring to the table, at the table.
01:09:34 [Speaker 2]
But you also get the people in the room who can call bullshit on the other people.
01:09:38 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
01:09:38 [Speaker 2]
So if the consultants are saying, oh, we can achieve this in next month for this amount of money, and SAP has sat in the room, basically saying, no.
01:09:44 [Speaker 2]
You can't.
01:09:45 [Speaker 2]
You can't migrate that ERP to this one for that amount.
01:09:48 [Speaker 2]
And it's gonna cost you twice as much, and it's gonna take a bit longer than that, by the way.
01:09:52 [Speaker 2]
And then if SAP is saying, oh, you should do all this functionality in the ERP system and Siemens has sat there, they're gonna say, no.
01:09:58 [Speaker 2]
That's not.
01:09:58 [Speaker 2]
That's PLM and that's MES.
01:10:00 [Speaker 2]
We'll debate that one with you.
01:10:01 [Speaker 2]
Thank you.
01:10:02 [Speaker 2]
And Accenture can have their input, and then you've got Microsoft in the frame.
01:10:05 [Speaker 2]
So all this debate about the who, the what, the why, how should things should fit and fit together, and who does what, you you'd flush it all out on day one because they they before before you buy anything.
01:10:16 [Speaker 2]
But that that you know and I know, those five logos sat in a room together never happens.
01:10:23 [Speaker 2]
Doesn't matter how it's not their modus operandi.
01:10:25 [Speaker 2]
I'm sitting here thinking do it.
01:10:26 [Speaker 1]
I'm sitting here thinking, why is it you and I have never spoken before?
01:10:30 [Speaker 1]
Like, I I we believe the in the exact same solution that it that if if you wanna flesh it out, put everyone in the same room and and is and and make sure none of them have a strategic relationship with each other and and tell them, I want you to test their ideas.
01:10:47 [Speaker 1]
I want you to test everyone's ideas.
01:10:49 [Speaker 1]
That's all I'm asking you to do, and that will get us to the best outcome.
01:10:52 [Speaker 1]
I mean And and that's where the happens.
01:10:55 [Speaker 1]
You're right.
01:10:56 [Speaker 1]
It never happens.
01:10:56 [Speaker 2]
It doesn't.
01:10:57 [Speaker 2]
And and that's where the part of the playbook, the codification of this, is if you as a client, if you are the CEO and you're a big multinational, you said, look, SAP, you're you're already RP.
01:11:06 [Speaker 2]
We're probably not gonna rip you out, but I'm not buying anything.
01:11:10 [Speaker 2]
There's no bill of materials.
01:11:11 [Speaker 2]
I'm not buy we're gonna do this first, and we're gonna decide what should and that will define my bill of materials.
01:11:16 [Speaker 2]
But my the the bill of materials I then buy from you will actually be aligned to the bill of materials I'm buying from s from Siemens and from Microsoft.
01:11:23 [Speaker 2]
They'll fit together correctly.
01:11:24 [Speaker 2]
It's not too much of one and that or finding out that I've missed things that I need to buy, and then it becomes a a nasty change request later down the road.
01:11:32 [Speaker 2]
But the other thing about the Quorum principle and that combination lock, those five logos I've just mentioned might be the right combination for manufacturer a, but it's infinitely interchangeable.
01:11:41 [Speaker 2]
I don't care who the logo is.
01:11:42 [Speaker 2]
You go that from Rolls Royce and you go and ask a, General Dynamics.
01:11:47 [Speaker 2]
The same question might be BCG, Oracle, Rockwell, AWS, Capgemini.
01:11:54 [Speaker 2]
And you just keep keep dialing it forever.
01:11:57 [Speaker 1]
How do you pitch this to companies?
01:11:58 [Speaker 1]
So for first off, how does the the quorum principle sounds like, a, something you need to teach people.
01:12:04 [Speaker 1]
Right?
01:12:05 [Speaker 1]
People need to be taught the quorum principle, and then then they have to apply it in order to get the outcomes.
01:12:12 [Speaker 1]
Right?
01:12:12 [Speaker 1]
What does that value stream look like?
01:12:14 [Speaker 1]
I mean, if if if the end at the end of the day, if the if the, quote, unquote, people who benefit from this the most are the end users, the those in industry, those in manufacturing, and the people who work for those companies.
01:12:26 [Speaker 1]
How do you ultimately get the quorum principle being applied in those digital transformation initiatives?
01:12:33 [Speaker 1]
What is what does that what what are those that value stream look like?
01:12:37 [Speaker 1]
How do you do that?
01:12:38 [Speaker 2]
Well, how
01:12:39 [Speaker 1]
are you current how are you currently doing that?
01:12:41 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:12:41 [Speaker 2]
So this is where my current this brings us to today in this phone call and this podcast, by the way.
01:12:49 [Speaker 2]
So the in the playbook itself, there are four m's, the letter m for mother, mandate, mindset, method, and mission.
01:12:57 [Speaker 2]
K.
01:12:57 [Speaker 2]
And the first one's the most important, mandate.
01:13:00 [Speaker 2]
I need to get everything I've told you and what I present in the core and principle slide deck presentation that I do at events and smart industry events.
01:13:08 [Speaker 2]
It will never happen unless I get in front of the CEO of manufacturers because they need to see, this presentation and have a mirror held up to them in terms of, do you know how this is how the real world operates?
01:13:19 [Speaker 2]
The world the status quo is not to your advantage.
01:13:23 [Speaker 2]
And the reason you need to see very specifically, the CEO's mandate is beneath the CEO, you're straight into the silo territory because the CIO is in a silo with vested interest and gonna go back to your father's, find out what drives why yeah.
01:13:37 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
01:13:37 [Speaker 1]
The CEO is not competing.
01:13:39 [Speaker 1]
The CEO is not competing.
01:13:40 [Speaker 1]
They're driving the
01:13:41 [Speaker 2]
And it's also it's also not all CEOs.
01:13:43 [Speaker 2]
The right ones, again, product life cycle adoption, the innovators, early adopters.
01:13:47 [Speaker 2]
I'm looking for a very specific set of CEOs, and it might even be the CEO in waiting.
01:13:51 [Speaker 2]
They're not the CEO yet, but they're sort of planning for succession.
01:13:55 [Speaker 2]
And they're the ones who might be thinking, I'll I'll adopt this Quorum thing, this different way of work, because it's a paradigm shift.
01:14:01 [Speaker 2]
I it's a massively overused term.
01:14:04 [Speaker 2]
People describe a paradigm shift for a new set of shoelaces.
01:14:06 [Speaker 2]
It's ridiculous.
01:14:07 [Speaker 2]
But what I'm talking about is a paradigm shift because if to work in the way that I've suggested in that simple diagram where those five logos are sat at the boardroom and are then gonna work and collaborate together, that is not the way any of them work.
01:14:19 [Speaker 2]
And I can say that absolutely confidently because I've worked with them for all of them.
01:14:23 [Speaker 2]
So Aviva, Wonderware, very rarely sat in a room with more than one or that might be with an SI partner, possibly a technology partner.
01:14:31 [Speaker 2]
But, again, they were partners, so they were they had a vested interest.
01:14:34 [Speaker 2]
But to sit in a room with someone who's not theoretically in your ecosystem, but you've gotta work with them, that doesn't happen very often at all.
01:14:41 [Speaker 1]
I can tell you that I was brought I was brought in.
01:14:44 [Speaker 1]
This is the I've told this story in mastermind.
01:14:46 [Speaker 1]
I don't think I've ever told it publicly.
01:14:49 [Speaker 1]
I mean, what you're saying resonates, Like, I mean, it it's literally how we operate.
01:14:54 [Speaker 1]
It's a you've codified it.
01:14:55 [Speaker 1]
I mean, not only that, you've codified it in a in a in a, in a format easily digestible by chief executives.
01:15:05 [Speaker 1]
That is you know, you you never go to the chief executive for a discussion.
01:15:08 [Speaker 1]
You go to the chief executive for a pitch and a decision.
01:15:11 [Speaker 1]
You know, you always wanna the CEO to decide between multiple options point at the option.
01:15:16 [Speaker 1]
You've packaged it in a way where it can be distilled to the CEO like that, and they point, and I want that, which is right now, this community has been doing this organically.
01:15:28 [Speaker 1]
And, man, I mean, the we have playbooks.
01:15:30 [Speaker 1]
Right?
01:15:30 [Speaker 1]
But the community knows that I have my own playbook, you know, but we do it as as organically.
01:15:35 [Speaker 1]
I I two quick story.
01:15:38 [Speaker 1]
Last week when I was consulting for the very first time in my career, I was there to write the the MES ERP boundary.
01:15:48 [Speaker 1]
So all the players involved are SAP for the ERP, then you have the integrator who's gonna do the ERP, and then you have the integrator who's gonna do the MES.
01:15:57 [Speaker 1]
You have me who's specking the manufacturing execution system, but I'm not gonna do it.
01:16:02 [Speaker 1]
I'm the independent architect who's designing MES.
01:16:07 [Speaker 1]
And then you had internally, this was unique.
01:16:10 [Speaker 1]
The the end user had an SAP subject matter expert who had come they had just hired from another company who had done rollouts his entire career.
01:16:20 [Speaker 1]
And he and I were walking on the plant floor together, and we were having conversations about where confirmations would happen in the value stream.
01:16:29 [Speaker 1]
We were literally saying what format it would The the manufacturing order is gonna come down here, and MES is gonna handle scheduling of these shop orders.
01:16:38 [Speaker 1]
The manufacturing order is is the is the primary key in the ERP.
01:16:43 [Speaker 1]
We're gonna pull it here.
01:16:44 [Speaker 1]
We're gonna do confirmations for new part number here.
01:16:46 [Speaker 1]
I'll send it there.
01:16:47 [Speaker 1]
I'll send it.
01:16:48 [Speaker 1]
Literally, we were walking the floor and going right now in the existing ERP, they don't do a confirmation at this step.
01:16:54 [Speaker 1]
They need to.
01:16:55 [Speaker 1]
We and we agree that this is your domain.
01:16:57 [Speaker 1]
This is the MES's domain.
01:16:59 [Speaker 1]
And it was the first time where both voices were in the room at the same time and on the plant floor at the exact same time, and we were making the decision together that we were advising the end user on.
01:17:11 [Speaker 1]
Right?
01:17:11 [Speaker 1]
Yep.
01:17:12 [Speaker 1]
To to your other point, there were I was hired.
01:17:15 [Speaker 1]
I think I think I was hired by the company you work for, the the glass company.
01:17:20 [Speaker 1]
I think I was hired by that company.
01:17:21 [Speaker 1]
I'm pretty sure I know who you're which company you work for.
01:17:25 [Speaker 1]
I was hired by them to basically be the independent adviser to stuff Accenture was pitching them.
01:17:32 [Speaker 1]
So Accenture was there to pitch them as your digital twin.
01:17:37 [Speaker 1]
And my job, I was only in the room to challenge what it is whatever it is Azure said.
01:17:43 [Speaker 1]
My job was to just basically be the technical subject matter expert to challenge what they were putting in their slides and ask them the qualifying questions.
01:17:53 [Speaker 1]
And I will tell you this.
01:17:54 [Speaker 1]
All my questions were fair.
01:17:56 [Speaker 1]
Azure was they are Accenture was not happy.
01:18:00 [Speaker 1]
They did not know that they had hired someone to come in and ask them questions.
01:18:04 [Speaker 1]
They thought they were talking to the customer, and they were not happy.
01:18:06 [Speaker 1]
By the way, all the Accenture engineers were amazing.
01:18:09 [Speaker 1]
I'd I'd love them to death.
01:18:11 [Speaker 1]
But the the account manager who was there was not happy, and he was speaking for Accenture.
01:18:16 [Speaker 1]
So to to drive home your point, it is it is so anathema to how we do things.
01:18:23 [Speaker 1]
Right?
01:18:23 [Speaker 1]
That it it it it's such common sense, but it's so anathema to how it is we actually do things.
01:18:29 [Speaker 1]
Let me ask you the let me ask you this question.
01:18:31 [Speaker 1]
How how when when a organization decides that the quorum principle is gonna become a a a foundational element of how they make their how they do their decision making Mhmm.
01:18:48 [Speaker 1]
What does that journey look like for them?
01:18:51 [Speaker 2]
So that the c suite mandate is binary to your point.
01:18:54 [Speaker 2]
Do it or don't do it.
01:18:56 [Speaker 2]
Right.
01:18:56 [Speaker 2]
Now all I'm doing is showing them, look, this this in my view, this is how things the system doesn't work.
01:19:01 [Speaker 2]
There's a different model.
01:19:02 [Speaker 2]
There's an alternative, but it's it's disruptive, and it's gonna it's disruptive in many respects in that it's, gonna break down some of their own internal silos and and problems that they have internally.
01:19:13 [Speaker 2]
So again, you and I both know that, and and this goes actually to something we'll talk about later, so I'll I'll stop there.
01:19:19 [Speaker 2]
But, so assuming you get the c level mandate, the next step in the process is scope and scale.
01:19:27 [Speaker 2]
Where are you gonna deploy the core and principle?
01:19:29 [Speaker 2]
And the scope scale access can be anywhere in the bottom left hand corner in terms of debottlenecking a critical machine.
01:19:35 [Speaker 2]
Because even at that level, you would have an OEM machine, the the machine builder who has it's their machine, it's their data coming out of the machine.
01:19:42 [Speaker 2]
You'd need to get the data out of the machine.
01:19:43 [Speaker 2]
You need to know what to do with the data.
01:19:45 [Speaker 2]
You need some analytics.
01:19:46 [Speaker 2]
You might need data scientists or some.
01:19:48 [Speaker 2]
So you straight into, like, four, five, six stakeholders that would, you know, work in that bottom left hand corner.
01:19:53 [Speaker 2]
It could be an MES rollout, an ERP, all the way up to the digital transformation of an enterprise.
01:19:58 [Speaker 2]
Now what I would say to the c suite is, I don't expect you to adopt this enterprise wide tomorrow, but test it.
01:20:05 [Speaker 2]
If you're building one new packaging line in a Coca Cola plant, then then try it or one greenfield factory or there's a brownfield that you need to it's failing.
01:20:12 [Speaker 2]
You need to, you know, improve performance.
01:20:15 [Speaker 1]
Is the quorum principle something an organization adopts like lean or Kaizen?
01:20:20 [Speaker 1]
Or or is it or is
01:20:22 [Speaker 2]
it No.
01:20:23 [Speaker 2]
No.
01:20:23 [Speaker 2]
I'm I'm not replacing it.
01:20:26 [Speaker 2]
It's it's a strategic, a different strategy.
01:20:30 [Speaker 2]
Okay.
01:20:30 [Speaker 2]
The playbook itself is the is the step by step.
01:20:34 [Speaker 2]
It literally walk the client through.
01:20:35 [Speaker 2]
Right.
01:20:36 [Speaker 2]
We've got a mandate.
01:20:37 [Speaker 2]
Next, what's the scope scale?
01:20:38 [Speaker 2]
So let's say again, pick someone else for a change.
01:20:41 [Speaker 2]
Coca Cola said, we're putting a new bottling line into the Indianapolis plant.
01:20:46 [Speaker 2]
So right.
01:20:47 [Speaker 2]
Okay.
01:20:47 [Speaker 2]
There's my scope scale.
01:20:48 [Speaker 2]
It's a new line going in Indianapolis.
01:20:50 [Speaker 2]
My next question is, who are this who are we working with?
01:20:55 [Speaker 2]
And, well, it's it's a side elbow and it's the Kron's labeling machine and we're it's a Window Wear MES and we got to integrate to SAP.
01:21:03 [Speaker 2]
You they basically again, a periodic table.
01:21:07 [Speaker 2]
If you imagine, the periodic table split up into strategy, IT, OT, operational excellence, and industry four, and think of everything you could put in those four columns, MES, connected workers, IoT platforms.
01:21:19 [Speaker 2]
All I'm interested in is what's the corporate standard?
01:21:21 [Speaker 2]
Who have you already picked that I've got to work with?
01:21:23 [Speaker 2]
And then you're left with white spaces by default.
01:21:26 [Speaker 2]
Well, we don't have a core connected worker platform.
01:21:29 [Speaker 2]
So going through the scope scale, then defining who the solution providers are.
01:21:33 [Speaker 2]
The next thing is that the c suite bring in those solution providers at senior level to basically say, look, you are our preferred vendor.
01:21:41 [Speaker 2]
We do want we are intending to invest with you, but there's a caveat.
01:21:44 [Speaker 2]
We're we're gonna do this a different way.
01:21:46 [Speaker 2]
And doing it a different way has implications for you, both in terms of the way you're gonna work is is different.
01:21:51 [Speaker 2]
And by the way, you're gonna have to pay to go on the core and principal training for five days with the other vendors and my people.
01:21:58 [Speaker 2]
And that requires an investment.
01:22:00 [Speaker 1]
You're gonna bring competing vendors in.
01:22:02 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
01:22:02 [Speaker 1]
So you're gonna bring competing vendors into the same room.
01:22:04 [Speaker 1]
Right?
01:22:05 [Speaker 1]
That's part that's that's foundational.
01:22:08 [Speaker 2]
Well, not necessarily competing vendors.
01:22:10 [Speaker 2]
So if a client has chosen a client's state They
01:22:12 [Speaker 1]
may not be direct competitors, but they view each other as That's the point.
01:22:17 [Speaker 1]
Competitors, not collaborators.
01:22:18 [Speaker 1]
Right?
01:22:19 [Speaker 1]
I mean Yeah.
01:22:19 [Speaker 2]
So yeah.
01:22:20 [Speaker 2]
So on the Venn diagram of Wunderware and SAP, 80% of both or SAP and Siemens, 80% of both of their product sets do not compete at all.
01:22:29 [Speaker 2]
It's 20% that maybe does.
01:22:31 [Speaker 1]
Right.
01:22:31 [Speaker 1]
They just view each other as competitors.
01:22:33 [Speaker 1]
They not collaborators.
01:22:34 [Speaker 1]
So you you're gonna bring them in the same room, and they are vendors who are financially rewarded for protecting their own scope.
01:22:42 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
01:22:43 [Speaker 1]
How do you actually get them to collaborate?
01:22:46 [Speaker 1]
I I understand the mandate piece and the mindset.
01:22:50 [Speaker 1]
You're gonna teach the mindset and the method and the mission.
01:22:55 [Speaker 1]
But how do you get them to collaborate?
01:22:57 [Speaker 1]
Is it is it the idea because the CEO said so they're gonna do it, or is there a a component of the quorum principle that is is trying to get them to buy into it?
01:23:10 [Speaker 2]
Well, it it's really interesting that you say this because, actually, the because I've worked for all of them.
01:23:16 [Speaker 2]
It's actually hugely beneficial to the vendors.
01:23:19 [Speaker 2]
Okay.
01:23:20 [Speaker 2]
It affects their bottom line far more than they think it does in a positive way.
01:23:25 [Speaker 2]
Because think of the the current status quo, the the model that's currently broken.
01:23:30 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:23:30 [Speaker 2]
They go in and they oversell, miss sell, inadvertently sell whatever they want to do.
01:23:37 [Speaker 2]
The project comes in late.
01:23:38 [Speaker 2]
It's over budget.
01:23:39 [Speaker 2]
There's multiple change requests.
01:23:40 [Speaker 2]
They're falling out with the client over, well, you should have realized we needed that.
01:23:44 [Speaker 2]
No.
01:23:44 [Speaker 2]
You didn't include it in this, but you you know the game as well as I do.
01:23:47 [Speaker 2]
And then at the end of the day, the the client is left with that negative feeling about that vendor in terms of, well, we got stiff.
01:23:54 [Speaker 2]
They didn't do it.
01:23:54 [Speaker 2]
That was difficult.
01:23:55 [Speaker 2]
There there's an overall difficult it's not good for the brand.
01:23:59 [Speaker 2]
And the high it carries a very high cost of sale because you're back and forward.
01:24:03 [Speaker 2]
You have to drop margin.
01:24:04 [Speaker 2]
You're complete.
01:24:05 [Speaker 2]
And when there is a change request, procurement get involved in terms of, well, I'm not paying for that.
01:24:09 [Speaker 2]
You should have known, oh, well, meet in the middle somewhere.
01:24:11 [Speaker 2]
It's the current system is wholly inefficient for the vendors as well.
01:24:14 [Speaker 2]
So if you bring in, in in this country, the, the most senior person at Siemens, Brian Holliday, if you brought, Brian Holliday from Siemens into the room, and I'm Rolls Royce or one of the other big, you know, client manufacturers here in The UK and said, look, Brian, but, you know, we went we we wanna invest in Siemens.
01:24:34 [Speaker 2]
We're gonna buy all these things, but we're gonna do this a different way.
01:24:40 [Speaker 2]
The the upside that I can explain to them is all the all the things I've just explained to you now, but backed up by real numbers and real statistics.
01:24:46 [Speaker 2]
So and then at that point, you, that's where you need to get the salespeople out of the room.
01:24:51 [Speaker 2]
So you agree the commercial terms, volume discounts, whatever you need to do with the commercial people, but don't buy anything.
01:24:56 [Speaker 2]
Then you do the solution design side of it, which defines the bill of material, and then you bring the salesperson back in to execute.
01:25:03 [Speaker 2]
But once you've defined a bill of material that, is the correct one.
01:25:07 [Speaker 2]
So they still get the order, but they get the order quicker
01:25:10 [Speaker 1]
So your goal
01:25:10 [Speaker 2]
with a lower cost of sale.
01:25:12 [Speaker 1]
Your goal right now is to basically educate the market on the core principle and get as many stakeholders educated on the value proposition as possible.
01:25:23 [Speaker 1]
Right?
01:25:24 [Speaker 1]
That's that's your goal.
01:25:25 [Speaker 2]
Right?
01:25:26 [Speaker 2]
Well so two two goals.
01:25:29 [Speaker 2]
So going back to something you asked me a few minutes ago, I've I've been talking about the core principle for six years now in in in America and globally.
01:25:39 [Speaker 2]
And, invariably, everyone, like Yasser and yourself, everyone I presented it to in manufacturers and solution providers gets it and is in almost unanimous agreement.
01:25:50 [Speaker 2]
I've never had anybody in six years say, that won't work and let me tell you why.
01:25:53 [Speaker 2]
Everybody's like, well, that's just common sense.
01:25:55 [Speaker 2]
Why are we not doing that?
01:25:58 [Speaker 2]
But doing it this way is is bottom up.
01:26:00 [Speaker 2]
Because for it to work, it needs to be the CEO.
01:26:03 [Speaker 2]
You need that CEO mandate.
01:26:04 [Speaker 2]
And I, you know, my brand as John Robinson is not a McKinsey BCG.
01:26:09 [Speaker 2]
I can't get to the CEO.
01:26:10 [Speaker 2]
So my dilemma now is to get to the CEO.
01:26:12 [Speaker 2]
And the one client in The UK that has adopted the core and principle for a huge project, it's public domain, 1,300,000,000 ELD.
01:26:20 [Speaker 1]
Oh, you you're gonna get to the CEO after this podcast.
01:26:22 [Speaker 1]
I'll tell you that.
01:26:23 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:26:24 [Speaker 2]
But, when when you get and does it when I get in front of the CEO and just show them back to everything but with slides and experience and anecdotes, I usually finish with the Henry Ford quote.
01:26:36 [Speaker 2]
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got.
01:26:40 [Speaker 2]
And all I'm basically saying is there is an alternative, but test it.
01:26:43 [Speaker 2]
Try it somewhere and and pilot it and see if we can get this thing to work.
01:26:46 [Speaker 2]
And I guarantee you, it will outperform in a parallel project where people do it the status quo way.
01:26:51 [Speaker 2]
They'll come in late.
01:26:52 [Speaker 2]
There's only three three success criteria on a on a project.
01:26:56 [Speaker 2]
On time, on budget, does what we want it to do.
01:26:59 [Speaker 2]
And invariably, those 70% failures are either late, over budget, doesn't do what they wanted, or all three.
01:27:04 [Speaker 1]
There's a four there's a fourth one.
01:27:06 [Speaker 1]
I agree with you.
01:27:06 [Speaker 1]
There's a fourth one.
01:27:07 [Speaker 1]
I those three are definitely success criteria.
01:27:09 [Speaker 1]
There's a fourth one that I always try to impress upon people.
01:27:12 [Speaker 1]
Success can also be measured by the things you benefited from that you never expected.
01:27:17 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:27:18 [Speaker 2]
True.
01:27:20 [Speaker 1]
Let me let me try to throw a monkey wrench in here.
01:27:22 [Speaker 1]
Let me challenge you real quick.
01:27:23 [Speaker 1]
Alright?
01:27:23 [Speaker 1]
So we've got Jeff Schrader on here, and we have Yasir on here if they're still on.
01:27:28 [Speaker 1]
So, yeah, they are Jeff Schrader is the product owner of Highbyte.
01:27:32 [Speaker 1]
Highbyte is a data ops platform and one of the most gifted technologists I've ever met in my entire career, by the way.
01:27:42 [Speaker 1]
I've been saying that for, like, six years now.
01:27:44 [Speaker 1]
And then Yasir is the CEO and founder at Maestrohub.
01:27:47 [Speaker 1]
Maestrohub and and and which is also a data ops platform.
01:27:50 [Speaker 1]
If you were to place them over each other, they are 90% intersecting in in a Venn diagram.
01:27:58 [Speaker 1]
Maybe 80%.
01:27:58 [Speaker 1]
80% of their functions intersect with one another.
01:28:03 [Speaker 1]
They are the two best in class in data ops.
01:28:06 [Speaker 1]
There are scenarios where high byte your choice in data operations should go high byte one, Maestro hub two, and there are scenarios where it's Maestro hub one, high byte two.
01:28:17 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
01:28:19 [Speaker 1]
And and so and and so neither of them wins every time in every situation in from a agnostic perspective.
01:28:29 [Speaker 1]
If I'm just picking optimal for a customer, I'm not picking Highbyte 100% of the time, and I'm not picking MaestroHub 100% of the time.
01:28:38 [Speaker 1]
It's really on a use case by use case.
01:28:40 [Speaker 1]
How does the quorum principle so right now, the quorum principle doesn't apply to direct competitors in this conversation, but how would it?
01:28:52 [Speaker 1]
So if if if what I wanted to do was use the quorum principle to to to decide between Highbyte and Maestrohub or to decide between SAP and Oracle, to decide between Rockwell for my automation or Siemens, or to decide between Siemens and Mitsubishi for my motion control, okay, or to decide between Snowflake or Databricks.
01:29:18 [Speaker 1]
Right?
01:29:20 [Speaker 1]
How would the quorum prince and, again, I'm throwing a monkey wrench in here.
01:29:23 [Speaker 1]
Be okay.
01:29:24 [Speaker 1]
How would the quorum of principle apply in those scenarios?
01:29:28 [Speaker 2]
It it doesn't at all.
01:29:29 [Speaker 2]
It's not its job.
01:29:31 [Speaker 2]
Because the the
01:29:32 [Speaker 1]
does come in after vendor selection.
01:29:35 [Speaker 2]
Yes.
01:29:35 [Speaker 2]
So if if so in that, yeah.
01:29:38 [Speaker 2]
And I've just gone through this with the client that I'm working with here in The UK.
01:29:41 [Speaker 2]
So in that periodic table of elements, there are some things that are a given.
01:29:46 [Speaker 2]
They're just not gonna change, like the SAP type answer.
01:29:49 [Speaker 2]
Or the again, if they've invested so heavily for years with Siemens like Rolls Royce have, it's they're just not gonna rip it out and change it for anything else.
01:29:57 [Speaker 2]
Dassault, PTC.
01:29:58 [Speaker 2]
It's just a given.
01:29:58 [Speaker 2]
So there's there are certain things that are corporate standards and it's a given.
01:30:03 [Speaker 2]
In the areas where there is a white space, like I said, it could be data ops.
01:30:06 [Speaker 2]
It could be a connected worker platform where where there is no corporate standard.
01:30:10 [Speaker 2]
People have maybe done a pilot somewhere within the AB InBev empire, but they've not bought corporately and standardized on that.
01:30:18 [Speaker 2]
So for those particular technology solutions, that's where you just run a traditional vendor selection process, you know, features, functions, commercials, and various other things.
01:30:27 [Speaker 2]
And then, because I don't need to reinvent the wheel on that.
01:30:31 [Speaker 2]
There are plenty of people who know how to do the feature function shoot out and choose the right technology platform.
01:30:35 [Speaker 2]
But then once those technology platforms are selected, then, yes, they would be fed into the core and principle methodology in terms of, alright, you're on board now.
01:30:45 [Speaker 2]
Let's let's get you indoctrinated into the, the methodology fully through the training course and then embed you into the team.
01:30:53 [Speaker 1]
But, John, doesn't it follow again, I'm I'm challenging you here.
01:30:57 [Speaker 1]
Doesn't it follow isn't the decision of the vendor, the vendor choice?
01:31:02 [Speaker 1]
Isn't that doesn't that play a huge role?
01:31:05 [Speaker 1]
Like, doesn't that play a huge role in whether or not the assessment of whether or not the quorum principle worked for us down the road, is yes or no?
01:31:16 [Speaker 1]
I mean, isn't it doesn't it naturally follow that if before they applied the quorum principle to Mhmm.
01:31:24 [Speaker 1]
To do, to to do all the application decision making, okay, and the implementation decision making.
01:31:31 [Speaker 1]
That doesn't it naturally follow that they need to pick the right partners before they get to you?
01:31:37 [Speaker 1]
And and and where it doesn't don't you run the risk that the quorum principle would be blamed for the bad outcome, not the choice of the wrong partner?
01:31:47 [Speaker 2]
No.
01:31:47 [Speaker 2]
Not necessarily because they, so, again, in this particular scenario, it would be someone like yourself or someone knowledgeable enough to understand what the right technology selection was for that.
01:31:59 [Speaker 2]
So so, again, whether whether the vendor is a a given standard like SAP Siemens or it's a new technology selection like MaestroHub or one of the other guys, Don't forget that the the at this point in time where the manufacturer is pointing me in the direction of the technology or solution providers, the consultants, whoever it is I need to work with, absolutely nothing is designed and nothing is bought.
01:32:27 [Speaker 2]
But once you once they've chosen SAP and Siemens and Maestro Hub and Accenture to do the implementation, that's, then you do the training.
01:32:36 [Speaker 2]
All those vendors go through the training course with the manufacturer's own people, their their engineers, their IT people, their operations people.
01:32:43 [Speaker 2]
Everybody goes through the five days together to start and build the relationship, change the mindset.
01:32:48 [Speaker 1]
It's kinda like teaching an organization agile for the very first time.
01:32:52 [Speaker 1]
You know, if they've never used agile as their project management philosophy, the entire team, all the vendors, everyone together collectively goes through training on vanilla scrum, for example, or it's it's it's in that vein, except it's something that carries over into all of your technology investments.
01:33:17 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
01:33:18 [Speaker 1]
Alright.
01:33:18 [Speaker 1]
Let me let me go ahead.
01:33:20 [Speaker 1]
Sorry.
01:33:21 [Speaker 1]
No.
01:33:21 [Speaker 2]
I was just gonna say in terms of the the comp so assuming just in terms of finishing the the the the headline parts of the playbook, assuming you've you've chosen your vendors, the next thing is to identify the very specific people working on that client project.
01:33:35 [Speaker 2]
So I don't need to train everybody at Siemens or SAIC.
01:33:38 [Speaker 2]
I need the solution architect, the enterprise arc the account lead.
01:33:41 [Speaker 2]
Not only the people that are working on the project as part of the project team.
01:33:46 [Speaker 2]
Once those people are identified, they're they're the ones who go through the five day training course in the classroom environment, and that's where the the three m's of the approach come in.
01:33:54 [Speaker 2]
Day one is is mindset.
01:33:56 [Speaker 2]
There's a there's a concept, here in The UK, about chimp management.
01:34:00 [Speaker 2]
It basically explains the neuroscience of how the brain works and the fact that mo most people don't know how their brain works.
01:34:07 [Speaker 2]
And there are three key parts to your brain.
01:34:09 [Speaker 2]
There's the chimp the the bit that keeps us alive, fight, flight, fear, paranoia, distrust.
01:34:15 [Speaker 2]
That's where most decision making is made, because it gets the information first.
01:34:20 [Speaker 2]
The human part of our brain is the common sense one, the the one that has empathy, sympathy, reason, logic, but usually the chimps already made decisions before the human gets involved.
01:34:28 [Speaker 2]
And the computer part of your brain just runs programs, autopilot.
01:34:32 [Speaker 2]
It just, you know, habits, good habits, bad habits.
01:34:35 [Speaker 2]
So the first day of the training is to expose people to how their brain works, nothing to do with technology at all.
01:34:40 [Speaker 2]
And the reason that's so important is since I learned about the Chimp, paradox and and Chimp management, every meeting I've ever been in sense is just a room full of chimps because you can see the alphas and the jockeying for position, the paranoia, the distrust, the it's just we're we're just a bunch of animals at the end of the day.
01:34:57 [Speaker 2]
So we've got to try and change that one.
01:34:59 [Speaker 2]
So you get the mindset right.
01:35:00 [Speaker 2]
The second day is about system design and system thinking.
01:35:04 [Speaker 2]
Because again, fundamentally, the reason we fail, the reason the system is broken is we can't cope with a big complex system like manufacturing.
01:35:11 [Speaker 2]
So it's called reductionism.
01:35:12 [Speaker 2]
We reduce everything down to something we can get ahead around.
01:35:15 [Speaker 2]
Oh, an MES, a process control system, an ERP, a PLM, or this or that.
01:35:19 [Speaker 2]
And when you break them down, reduce them down into individual components, then they don't fit together very well because you you need to look at it systemically.
01:35:26 [Speaker 2]
There's a whole system.
01:35:27 [Speaker 2]
How does this whole fit together, including the operational excellence bit?
01:35:30 [Speaker 2]
So the next day is about teaching them about system design and system thinking.
01:35:34 [Speaker 2]
And then the next three days are basically where my knowledge and experience comes in through the use of case case studies, scenarios, examples that I've built over thirty years.
01:35:41 [Speaker 2]
And what I'm essentially trying to do in the five day training course is take people through the same thirty year experience that I went through to have that epiphany in 2020 of realizing, oh, now I get it.
01:35:55 [Speaker 2]
Now this now I know why my Chimp makes decision.
01:35:57 [Speaker 2]
Now I know I'm not designing a complex system.
01:35:59 [Speaker 2]
And and the the days I'm training also have something you mentioned earlier as well about, and this comes again back to your father's education lesson, game theory.
01:36:09 [Speaker 2]
You know, net net you know?
01:36:12 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:36:13 [Speaker 2]
The whole stuff around game theory and Nash's equilibrium, and we're all going for the blonde.
01:36:17 [Speaker 2]
And, well, if we all go for the blonde, we're all gonna knock each other out, you know, beautiful mind.
01:36:21 [Speaker 2]
There's so much stuff in there.
01:36:22 [Speaker 2]
Like, not remotely interested in technology.
01:36:24 [Speaker 2]
There's people like you and everybody on this call can do the technology stuff far better than I can.
01:36:29 [Speaker 2]
And and this is what I'm trying to say to John, Daikin, Sesame, and the government here in The UK.
01:36:35 [Speaker 2]
Manufacturing x, all these big initiatives, they're all looking at technical interoperability.
01:36:39 [Speaker 2]
You're still left with the problem I'm talking about of organizational interoperability.
01:36:43 [Speaker 2]
Interoperability.
01:36:43 [Speaker 2]
You've got to break down the silos in the man you've got to change the way that SAP and the others work.
01:36:48 [Speaker 2]
You know, nobody's looking at organizational interoperability, and nobody's certainly got a a coherent playbook that is based on having worked for the mind.
01:36:56 [Speaker 2]
Basically, there's a phrase here in The UK, poacher turn gamekeeper.
01:37:00 [Speaker 2]
I don't know if you're familiar with that one, but that's essentially what I've I can reverse engineer a solution because I I know what makes them tick and how they work, and I've seen on the other side of the curtain.
01:37:09 [Speaker 1]
It it it the way that I like to say it is genius only genius can identify genius.
01:37:14 [Speaker 1]
And, you know, you it's, it's why we hire it's why we hire, the best thieves in the world to catch other thieves.
01:37:22 [Speaker 1]
It's it's, you know, the the that I wanna go to your you talked about game theory.
01:37:29 [Speaker 1]
I'm a huge believer in conflict theory, and, I believe that you can use emotion, the evocation of emotion to teach.
01:37:40 [Speaker 1]
That's what I believe.
01:37:42 [Speaker 1]
And when I start nearly in every consulting engagement, I I my goal is to try and piss off half the room in the first ninety minutes.
01:37:52 [Speaker 1]
My goal is to try and get if I have I have failed if I don't get one person to leave.
01:38:00 [Speaker 1]
If I don't get one person to drop off the call, if I don't get if I don't get them and I'll end the first ninety minutes.
01:38:06 [Speaker 1]
So anybody here whoever hires me, I end the first ninety minutes by asking everyone in the room, how much have you guys been messaging each other behind the scenes?
01:38:16 [Speaker 1]
So as I'm pushing buttons and, you know, trying to get it basically, the goal is to get everyone's attention, identify the people who are on the board, identify the people who are definitely not on board, and and and identify the people who can be convinced.
01:38:28 [Speaker 1]
That's essentially what I'm trying to do.
01:38:30 [Speaker 1]
And the, I'll ask at the end of the ninety minutes, how may how much have you been messaging behind the scenes?
01:38:37 [Speaker 1]
How many messages have gone back and forth in Teams and Slack?
01:38:41 [Speaker 1]
And they always look shocked that I'm asking the question.
01:38:43 [Speaker 1]
Like, listen.
01:38:44 [Speaker 1]
I didn't fall off a truck.
01:38:45 [Speaker 1]
I mean, I've been doing this very long time.
01:38:47 [Speaker 1]
Is it more than 20?
01:38:50 [Speaker 1]
And if they say and if they don't say more than 20, I failed.
01:38:54 [Speaker 1]
Like, I'll say 20 is about you know, if it's more than 20, then it means I've gotten everyone's attention.
01:38:59 [Speaker 1]
And I promise you over the next three days, we're gonna walk out of here hugging each other.
01:39:04 [Speaker 1]
You know?
01:39:06 [Speaker 1]
The game theory component is that, to me, some argue that conflict theory is a subset of game theory.
01:39:11 [Speaker 1]
I actually think game theory is a subset of conflict theory.
01:39:14 [Speaker 1]
But, let me let me ask you this question.
01:39:17 [Speaker 1]
One other again, this wasn't on my list here.
01:39:20 [Speaker 1]
Well, who else can teach this other than you, John?
01:39:23 [Speaker 1]
Like, I aren't isn't isn't the isn't the limiting factor the number of Johns there are in the world?
01:39:31 [Speaker 1]
No.
01:39:32 [Speaker 1]
And what happens when demand outstrips your capability to teach
01:39:37 [Speaker 2]
more than
01:39:38 [Speaker 1]
52 times?
01:39:39 [Speaker 2]
So yeah.
01:39:40 [Speaker 2]
Well, so what I'm doing at the moment is that training course, the five day training course, that is being codified into a way.
01:39:48 [Speaker 2]
So here in The UK, our equivalent to your Sesame is, the high volume manufacturing kettle, and there are seven centers up and down the country.
01:39:56 [Speaker 2]
Yep.
01:39:57 [Speaker 2]
And so the idea is that we, the UK government, I'm just talking to them at the moment about giving me the investment to accelerate the codification of the playbook from a minimum viable product into a full blown training course that a another person can deliver.
01:40:10 [Speaker 2]
Okay.
01:40:11 [Speaker 2]
And the, there's oh, sorry.
01:40:13 [Speaker 2]
There's one thing I forgot to mention about the core and principle playbook.
01:40:17 [Speaker 2]
At the end of the five day training course, everybody's trained, but it's a little bit like any sporting game, game of football.
01:40:24 [Speaker 2]
Both teams going on the pitch know the rules of the game.
01:40:26 [Speaker 2]
It doesn't mean they're not gonna try and cheat as soon as they're on the pitch.
01:40:29 [Speaker 2]
So you need a Quorum coach embedded into the project.
01:40:31 [Speaker 2]
And the coaches their job is, again, to keep the piece to referee and and coach and and stop people reverting back to type.
01:40:38 [Speaker 2]
So I'm also building a global franchise of Quorum coaches, and I've got some guys in America who are already lined up to do that.
01:40:45 [Speaker 2]
And I'm not I I need people who have got the wherewithal, the knowledge, and they're not intimidated by being in front of SAP or McKinsey.
01:40:52 [Speaker 2]
They'll call BS if they need to on on those people.
01:40:54 [Speaker 2]
So they're they're usually x manufacturing people, very senior, been there, seen it, done it, don't care about anybody.
01:41:00 [Speaker 2]
They've got enough money to not worry.
01:41:02 [Speaker 2]
Right.
01:41:03 [Speaker 1]
They need the fucking money.
01:41:04 [Speaker 1]
That's the biggest Yeah.
01:41:05 [Speaker 2]
Exactly.
01:41:05 [Speaker 2]
Important.
01:41:07 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:41:07 [Speaker 2]
So sorry.
01:41:08 [Speaker 2]
What question did you ask me before that?
01:41:09 [Speaker 2]
I think I No.
01:41:10 [Speaker 2]
What what
01:41:10 [Speaker 1]
I what I wanna ask you
01:41:11 [Speaker 2]
about that.
01:41:12 [Speaker 2]
The scaling.
01:41:13 [Speaker 2]
Sorry.
01:41:13 [Speaker 2]
So so I was out in Florida at the MLC event in December last year.
01:41:20 [Speaker 2]
So I've been talking to John Dyke, and I'm trying to introduce John Dyke to his equivalent here in The UK.
01:41:25 [Speaker 2]
But the idea is to, basically replicate the model I built here in The UK.
01:41:30 [Speaker 2]
So the training is delivered.
01:41:32 [Speaker 2]
I have a franchise network of coaches.
01:41:34 [Speaker 2]
If you're familiar with the Shingo Institute and the Shingo model Yeah.
01:41:37 [Speaker 2]
They have a global franchise network of people who can come in and teach you the Toyota production system.
01:41:43 [Speaker 2]
So I'm trying to build that model of, so I'm not the constraint.
01:41:46 [Speaker 2]
My focus really is to do the selling to the CEO.
01:41:50 [Speaker 2]
I think that's the bit is dependent on me too, because I've got the anecdotes expert.
01:41:53 [Speaker 2]
That's gonna be hard.
01:41:54 [Speaker 2]
And I don't really wanna codify that, to be honest, because if I codify that bit, then it could theoretically be copied by the McKinsey's or others, and I don't want that happening.
01:42:04 [Speaker 1]
So, Yasir's comment here, I think vendors can adapt to this faster than the counterparts on the end user side.
01:42:11 [Speaker 1]
The change management is the business.
01:42:13 [Speaker 1]
And I'm about to say something here that'll piss off a lot of end users.
01:42:18 [Speaker 1]
And I just let me just say this.
01:42:19 [Speaker 1]
I am an end user advocate, but I would be doing a disservice, so I didn't point this out.
01:42:24 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
01:42:25 [Speaker 1]
And I've and I've pointed it out before.
01:42:27 [Speaker 1]
The reality is is that for a very long time, best in the best in our industry were not working for the end user for very long.
01:42:36 [Speaker 1]
So the the the the truism was was that the end user, to Yasser's point here, the truism was was that in the end user, the top 30% are gonna leave.
01:42:48 [Speaker 1]
Your rock stars are all gonna leave within a five year window.
01:42:51 [Speaker 1]
You're gonna fire the bottom 30%, and you're gonna be left with the middle 40.
01:42:56 [Speaker 1]
And and so what you're gonna have, the the end user is generally gonna be the middle 40 with a handful of superstars who are in their first five year window before they leave.
01:43:08 [Speaker 1]
That's the reality of state.
01:43:11 [Speaker 1]
Something like this requires a two things.
01:43:15 [Speaker 1]
Number one, you have to be able to see how you will personally benefit.
01:43:19 [Speaker 1]
All of us do have to see how you will personally benefit from this.
01:43:23 [Speaker 1]
And if you can't see that or you feel threatened by it, then you will push back by it under any circumstance.
01:43:30 [Speaker 1]
People who are high performers are not are are never going to be threatened by something like this.
01:43:37 [Speaker 1]
In fact, they're gonna be clamoring where I've been waiting for this to put this all together.
01:43:44 [Speaker 1]
Something like this to put it all together for all the stakeholders.
01:43:48 [Speaker 1]
But the person who has again, I'm being reductive here.
01:43:55 [Speaker 1]
So this is not an absolute statement, but I'm trying
01:43:58 [Speaker 2]
to, you
01:43:59 [Speaker 1]
know, I'm trying to illustrate somehow.
01:44:03 [Speaker 1]
The person who has a propensity to the person who has a propensity to feel imposter syndrome.
01:44:16 [Speaker 1]
That is that, you know, is is the person who's gonna react negatively to this.
01:44:21 [Speaker 1]
Not if you react negatively, that doesn't mean you have impostor syndrome.
01:44:25 [Speaker 1]
But it's the person who general who doesn't generally understand their own value in the organization, who is going to feel threatened by this.
01:44:33 [Speaker 1]
The person who is very confident in their value in the organization is not in general.
01:44:38 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
01:44:39 [Speaker 2]
Yep.
01:44:39 [Speaker 1]
And to so to Yasir's point.
01:44:42 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
01:44:44 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
01:44:45 [Speaker 1]
I mean, it's let me let let let's take this home.
01:44:48 [Speaker 1]
I have a question for you that I I've kinda reserved for the end, which is if someone in the audience, and there are a lot here, who are staring down the barrel of their digital transformation initiative right now.
01:45:03 [Speaker 1]
So they're they're get they're either just kicked off or they're getting started.
01:45:10 [Speaker 1]
What's the one decision they need to get right before they do anything else?
01:45:17 [Speaker 1]
So right now, they're staring down that barrel.
01:45:20 [Speaker 1]
What is the one decision they gotta get right?
01:45:22 [Speaker 1]
I'll answer it too, but I wanna I wanna hear it from the quorum principle perspective.
01:45:28 [Speaker 2]
Well, it sounds a little bit defeatist, but I I think the the next thing that they would need to do is to try and get this core and principle in front of the c suite.
01:45:42 [Speaker 2]
Because without if if they execute the project with the current dynamic, they've got a 70% chance of failing no matter what they do.
01:45:51 [Speaker 2]
Correct.
01:45:52 [Speaker 2]
Literally, no matter what they do, they're they've got a 70% chance of failing.
01:45:56 [Speaker 2]
And and, funnily enough, when I presented this to the c suite here in The UK, the CEO's answer at the end was, well, why wouldn't we do it?
01:46:04 [Speaker 2]
You know, try this.
01:46:05 [Speaker 2]
Because they're they're on the hook for a £1,300,000,000 project, and they've got a 70% chance of failing because of the current the model.
01:46:14 [Speaker 2]
The and and, again, some of the points, the going back to something you said earlier, if you or I or Yasser or anyone else, takes this from the bottom up into an organization, you can do it, but it's slow and painful and difficult and highly likely to fail because I had a client in Switzerland, a pharmaceutical client, and IT thought it was a genius idea and took it to the business.
01:46:39 [Speaker 2]
Engineering operations hated it.
01:46:41 [Speaker 2]
And the client in The UK operations thought it was a genius idea and took it to the business.
01:46:45 [Speaker 2]
IT hate it.
01:46:47 [Speaker 2]
So by the very nature of it coming into the organization via a silo, the other silos are almost predisposed to dislike it before they've even understood it or try to understand it.
01:46:57 [Speaker 2]
And that's why that c level mandate is so important to to to to the people who are staring down the barrel.
01:47:06 [Speaker 2]
I would try and get the sea level mandate to try and approach or give them the air cover to try and do it a different way.
01:47:13 [Speaker 2]
Because if they go down the traditional route, everything you and I have discussed for the last ninety minutes is probably gonna have their life's gonna pan out, for the and if it doesn't work, no problem.
01:47:22 [Speaker 2]
Carry on.
01:47:23 [Speaker 2]
Give it your best shot.
01:47:26 [Speaker 1]
And my my position is strategy.
01:47:28 [Speaker 1]
Did if you cannot if if the next thing you have to get right before anything else is articulating why it is you're trying to digitally transform at all.
01:47:40 [Speaker 1]
Like, if you cannot clearly articulate your digital strategy, then all of this is all for not.
01:47:46 [Speaker 1]
It is it to me, it's always been I love asking organizations what their digital strategy is.
01:47:51 [Speaker 1]
They're about to spend billions of dollars, 10 or tens of millions or hundreds of millions.
01:47:56 [Speaker 1]
And you ask them what their digital strategy is, What is their strategy for making data the primary commodity in the business?
01:48:02 [Speaker 1]
And there isn't one.
01:48:03 [Speaker 1]
And I'm and, like, next question I ask is, well, why are you even doing this?
01:48:07 [Speaker 1]
You know?
01:48:08 [Speaker 1]
What if that's the case, why are you doing it?
01:48:10 [Speaker 1]
And I know the answer.
01:48:11 [Speaker 1]
It's because McKinsey told you you needed to.
01:48:13 [Speaker 1]
But the I wanna hear them say it.
01:48:16 [Speaker 1]
And to your point and to your point, when the when the CEO said to you says, why wouldn't I?
01:48:23 [Speaker 1]
Why wouldn't we do this?
01:48:25 [Speaker 1]
The the answer would be because it would piss off our vendors.
01:48:30 [Speaker 1]
And you just want and you just want them to hear that.
01:48:32 [Speaker 1]
You just wanna hear that.
01:48:34 [Speaker 2]
But do you know what the really weird thing is, Walker?
01:48:36 [Speaker 2]
No.
01:48:36 [Speaker 2]
No.
01:48:36 [Speaker 2]
No.
01:48:36 [Speaker 1]
Hearing the I I I think I think the vendors will love it, but I think the CEO's answer would be because it would piss off our vendors.
01:48:43 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:48:44 [Speaker 2]
But the funny that hurdle's already dealt with here in The UK.
01:48:48 [Speaker 2]
People like Yasia, Dell, British, BT, Ericsson, Epicor, In for, Tulip.
01:48:56 [Speaker 2]
There's over a 100 who get it.
01:48:59 [Speaker 2]
They're they're on board already as advocates, to say we think this is a good act.
01:49:02 [Speaker 2]
We're open to a conversation.
01:49:03 [Speaker 2]
They're not committing to anything.
01:49:04 [Speaker 2]
They don't pay me any money.
01:49:06 [Speaker 1]
Right.
01:49:06 [Speaker 2]
But they are openly saying, we think this is a good idea.
01:49:10 [Speaker 2]
And if a manufacturer asks those to sit in a room and and get involved with the core and principle and work this way, we're open to it.
01:49:16 [Speaker 2]
We'll do it.
01:49:17 [Speaker 2]
And so there's some pretty big vendor.
01:49:18 [Speaker 2]
They've been the easy sell.
01:49:19 [Speaker 2]
The reason it's difficult at the moment is I need to get to the C Suite, and the C Suite is the monopoly of the big consulting firms.
01:49:28 [Speaker 2]
And just one other point I wanted to make with you as well about specifically the impact potentially for things like UNS and Sesame Smith, the I three x, manufacturing x, or the World Economic Forum launched the lighthouse operating system last year.
01:49:42 [Speaker 2]
The UK government launched a new industrial strategy last year.
01:49:46 [Speaker 2]
All these things are at risk from the same systemic problem because ultimately, they can't mandate it.
01:49:52 [Speaker 2]
They're only counting the rolled up number of what manufacturers actually do.
01:49:56 [Speaker 2]
So they can put out as many standards and theories and, you know, again, unified name space.
01:50:00 [Speaker 2]
If if there's a half of the, you know, three quarters of the community thinks it's a great idea, but IT and manufacturing hate it and don't wanna do it, you you're into my territory straight away in terms of they will automatically dislike it because engineering have taken it to them.
01:50:15 [Speaker 1]
Well, you've you've you've you've created the playbook.
01:50:18 [Speaker 1]
I I preach all the time.
01:50:19 [Speaker 1]
Win the results war, don't fight theoretical battles.
01:50:21 [Speaker 1]
You've created the playbook that, gets all people in the room so that you can win the results war.
01:50:29 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
01:50:30 [Speaker 1]
I mean,
01:50:30 [Speaker 2]
that's And this is the Yeah.
01:50:34 [Speaker 2]
Sorry.
01:50:34 [Speaker 2]
This is the other point I wanted to make that we've not covered yet in terms of, well, how did this systemic problem come around?
01:50:39 [Speaker 2]
And this is, I think,
01:50:40 [Speaker 1]
like I skipped over it because you you touched on it.
01:50:43 [Speaker 1]
You you touched on it slightly in in, you know, in the beginning.
01:50:46 [Speaker 1]
But
01:50:46 [Speaker 2]
But but it is a c it's a c level issue, this.
01:50:50 [Speaker 2]
If you look at big multinational manufacturers and some of the big solution providers like Siemens, Schneider Electric, they've they've been around since the eighteen seventies ish.
01:51:00 [Speaker 2]
You know, GE, Procter and Gamble, Unilever, they've all been around well over a hundred years or so.
01:51:05 [Speaker 2]
From 1970 onwards, the world has changed completely because of technology.
01:51:10 [Speaker 2]
The third industrial, you know, computers, mobility, phones, Internet.
01:51:13 [Speaker 2]
You know?
01:51:14 [Speaker 2]
So there has been an exponential change on the technology level.
01:51:20 [Speaker 2]
Corporate strategy has not basically changed in a hundred years.
01:51:23 [Speaker 2]
Manufacturers are still organized in the same, you know, basically the same hierarchical structure by departments like your procurement, your planning, your manufacturing.
01:51:33 [Speaker 2]
They all have their own new k KPIs.
01:51:35 [Speaker 2]
Even when IT, the CIO, became a new job function in the early nineteen eighties, guess what they did?
01:51:40 [Speaker 2]
They created a new silo, IT.
01:51:42 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
01:51:43 [Speaker 2]
And and a head of a chief information officer.
01:51:45 [Speaker 2]
And then when industry four came, oh, we'll have a chief digital or an industry four.
01:51:49 [Speaker 2]
Manufacturing strategy is to still keep building silos, give each silo a set of KPIs, and then that's the internal competition because they're they again, to your father's point, they all have a reason to objectives to hit, to keep in a job stay in a job.
01:52:04 [Speaker 2]
And sometimes those, meeting those objectives is to the detriment of another part of the business.
01:52:11 [Speaker 2]
We all know about stories where procurement have been tasked with getting costs down, so they've gone and bought cheaper cheaper components that then cost the company twice as much as they saved by Right.
01:52:20 [Speaker 1]
Costing manufacturers.
01:52:21 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
01:52:22 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
01:52:23 [Speaker 1]
Cut 70% across the board, but it costs us 50% more.
01:52:26 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:52:27 [Speaker 2]
Exactly.
01:52:27 [Speaker 2]
And and this is it's that sort of departmental silos.
01:52:30 [Speaker 2]
The internal competition is is that's not in any solution provider's control.
01:52:35 [Speaker 2]
That and and I think that's why it's been so easy to get the solution providers here in The UK on board.
01:52:41 [Speaker 2]
Because when I describe it to them, they are also suffering the daily pain of dealing with those internal champions and this guy IT are blocking me because they want to go down a different route with these guys or it's just the chaos impacts everybody.
01:52:54 [Speaker 2]
So if vendors can get if if the the vendors will benefit if the manufacturers get their ducks in a row and and get their own internal departmental silos and KPIs aligned internally and then engage with the vendors in a more collaborative way, the whole thing is gonna speed up, better for and to the benefit of the solution vendors as well.
01:53:15 [Speaker 2]
Fascinating.
01:53:15 [Speaker 1]
Let me ask you.
01:53:16 [Speaker 1]
How do how do people get ahold of you?
01:53:18 [Speaker 1]
How do if if, if people wanna learn more, where do they go?
01:53:24 [Speaker 2]
Well, you just contact me directly.
01:53:26 [Speaker 2]
I'm out in Chicago actually in October.
01:53:29 [Speaker 2]
There's a, industry event that I'm doing a keynote at.
01:53:32 [Speaker 2]
I think it's the October 26.
01:53:36 [Speaker 2]
So I'll stay the full week if people wanna make meetings and arrange to see me.
01:53:40 [Speaker 2]
I am actually planning to so on on that point, you mentioned right at the beginning the core and principle live that's at one of the high value manufacturing catapult centers in December.
01:53:50 [Speaker 2]
The plan next year is to, do that in North America, the first one in North America and one in Europe as well.
01:53:57 [Speaker 2]
So normally, I just do, like, a thirty minute keynote and an event and then go away, but this entire day is all about the core and principle and things.
01:54:05 [Speaker 2]
So the plan is to bring it to North America and into Mainland Europe next year.
01:54:10 [Speaker 1]
So, John, I appreciate the fact that you're willing to stay on an additional hour.
01:54:14 [Speaker 1]
It was actually, I think, a really, really important conversation.
01:54:18 [Speaker 1]
I'm gonna I do wanna I wanna plug the core and principle live again.
01:54:21 [Speaker 1]
So for those of you who are interested, you guys can reach out to John on LinkedIn.
01:54:25 [Speaker 1]
Right?
01:54:26 [Speaker 1]
To reach out to John directly.
01:54:27 [Speaker 1]
But the core principle live, if you guys are interested, it's the future of UK manufacturing December 8 at MTC Coventry.
01:54:35 [Speaker 1]
Registration link will be in the description below once we have it.
01:54:39 [Speaker 1]
Okay?
01:54:42 [Speaker 1]
The quorum principle.
01:54:43 [Speaker 1]
John, I I really I super appreciate your time.
01:54:46 [Speaker 1]
I I wanna do this again.
01:54:47 [Speaker 1]
In fact, I'd I'd love to come to Chicago and shoot it live with you.
01:54:51 [Speaker 1]
Maybe do a live live podcast in person.
01:54:55 [Speaker 1]
You and I should definitely work together a lot more for sure.
01:54:59 [Speaker 2]
Well, again, just if if you're interested, we could do a master class two two days for people that are interested and just prepare before time and just go deep on this because I I could've I didn't realize I'd stayed on an hour.
01:55:11 [Speaker 2]
I could've stayed on another hour and carried on about it.
01:55:13 [Speaker 2]
I'm really passionate about it.
01:55:14 [Speaker 2]
So if No.
01:55:15 [Speaker 2]
I I I love something.
01:55:16 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
01:55:16 [Speaker 1]
I'd love to do I'd love to do it.
01:55:18 [Speaker 1]
In fact, maybe we have you come in and do it in mastermind or maybe we do it in the integrated growth program that we you know, we have 23 integrators in that program.
01:55:26 [Speaker 1]
We've got four or 500 students at mastermind that we could do it through.
01:55:30 [Speaker 1]
So I I'd love to do it.
01:55:31 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
01:55:32 [Speaker 1]
Yeah.
01:55:32 [Speaker 1]
Everybody else, thank you for staying on.
01:55:34 [Speaker 1]
John, thank you for joining us.
01:55:36 [Speaker 1]
For those of you who are watching on YouTube, like, subscribe, comment down below, check out the quorum principle, and we'll see you in the next one.
