Taking The Supply Chain Pulse
St. Onge’s Healthcare Hall of Famer and industry icon, Fred Crans, chats with leaders from all areas of healthcare to discuss the issues of today's- threats, challenges and emerging trends and technologies in a lighthearted and engaging manner.
ENGINEERING A BETTER HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
We provide comprehensive planning and design services to develop world-class facilities and highly effective support services operations. Our capabilities in hospital supply chain consulting include applied industrial engineering, lean methodologies, systems thinking, and operations research to enable improved patient care and staff satisfaction. We are proud to have worked with over 100 hospitals, including 18 of the top 22 in the US, utilizing diverse design strategies, post-construction implementation, and change management.
Taking The Supply Chain Pulse
Revisiting the past to Frame the Future Through the Eyes of Industry Veteran Dennis Orthman
Join me and my longtime friend, Dennis Orthman as we learn from his experiences, beginning his journey in the basement of Boston City Hospital. Dennis shares insightful stories of managing Central Supply through manual systems, the significance of public bidding, and the evolution of inventory management in a busy urban trauma center. He emphasizes the importance of mentorship and interpersonal skills, detailing how these foundational lessons have shaped his impressive career in the field.
In the second part of our episode, we focus on the impact of Tom Hughes, who became Dennis’ mentor, through his experience with the Strategic Marketplace Initiative. Tune in to better understand the growing professionalism and future prospects within the healthcare supply chain industry.
Hello again everybody. This is Fred Kranz from St Onge, coming to you today with another episode of Taking the Supply Chain Pulse. Today I have one of my best friends in life, somebody I've known for 30 years now, dennis. I don't know if you realize that, but we've known each other for that long Dennis Orthman. Dennis's career started out in the basement of a hospital in Boston and ended up acting as an interim supply chain leader at another hospital, but before that helping to build strategic marketplace initiative into the strong group and industry think tank that it is today. So, dennis, we're happy to have you here.
Speaker 1:I'm going to read what someone wrote about you. It says when you start in the basement, there is nowhere to go but up. Join supply chain consultant Dennis Orthman and I as we navigate his career path from SPD manager in an urban trauma center through successful career moves that required great flexibility, constant knowledge, growth and innovative actions. I didn't. You know we both started out in SPD. My first director position was directors of CPD. We called it at Baptist in Miami and you know you talk about starting in the basement. I would have started in the basement too, but there are no basements in Miami, so you have to start on the first floor, otherwise you know that SPD would have been in the basement.
Speaker 1:So, Dennis, thanks for joining us. Glad to see you. Why don't you tell us about your early career, how you got started and what got you into healthcare in the first place?
Speaker 2:Sure, fred, first of all let me just say thanks to you and to St Onge for having me here to share with the profession what little I know perhaps. I'm a semi-retired, long-term healthcare supply chain professional and I thought there could be some value to others to learn about my 40 plus years in this business and the twists and turns that it has taken. And there's a lot of new people involved in our business today and many may be experiencing ups and downs and I think it's good for them to learn that perhaps their story is not so unique. It's been going on for quite some time. I began my career at Boston City Hospital in the basement in charge of central supply and stores. It's an inner city trauma center, an extremely emergency, extremely busy emergency room with the typical urban issues of gunshot wounds and things like that. We were constantly preparing for plane crashes and disasters and so forth as a trauma center and it was just a very, very busy, busy place.
Speaker 2:Our systems at that time were they were totally manual. Um, maybe folks today can't relate to it, but there were three-part forms, uh, and we mailed things to suppliers. Um, resources were scarce, the staff was few and certainly no technology, but I had an opportunity to work with some really great people who taught me how to properly conduct competitive public bidding, how to create purchase transactions that actually worked, how to maintain audit trails and certainly how to work with internal customers and how to manage a staff of people. Most importantly, though, I learned how hospitals ran, and this was back before health systems. This was at a hospital where the chief method of communication was chatting someone up in the line at the cafeteria. You know certainly had meetings and so forth, but there was a very informal communication structure and we didn't have all the texting and Instagram and emails and so forth that there are today. I learned about the power structures that existed and how some non-clinical support departments work.
Speaker 2:There was really nothing strategic about doing this job, but I learned a lot, and then, years later, opportunity arose to do more things in my business in the business, and I jumped at those opportunities. I wanted to be more strategic. I went to night school while I was at Boston City Hospital and got my MBA. You should have seen the looks on the faces of the night shift when I was coming back from night school and I would stop in to see how things were at the department. No one ever done that before. As a director of CS, I also became certified as a central sterilization tech. We had distribution responsibilities as well as processing responsibilities and I learned about inventory management, operated a seven-day-a-week department with staff and I learned about the OR and the other material-intensive departments. And you know, I was fortunate. I started to make a little bit of money and, most importantly, I started my lifelong journey in supply chain with by developing a great foundation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know that. That's it how. How old were you when you became? When you became the manager of SPD? I was 26. Of SPD, I was 26. See, you got me by two years, I know, by one year. I was 27 when I became a director and and I I'll speak for me and you tell me if I'm wrong I was too stupid to know that I wasn't very smart.
Speaker 1:I I thought I knew. There I got very upset at the people who thought they knew everything, because I knew that I did, and it took me a long time to learn what Yogi Berra said about baseball, and that was he said baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical. And the healthcare supply chain and CPD whatever healthcare management is 90% interpersonal and political interactions and the other half is operational knowledge. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2:Oh, I would certainly agree with that. I learned a lot as a young manager my staff. They taught me how to be a proper manager. They were not going to let me fool around with them and they made it clear you know how I should operate and how I should lead the place. I learned from people not only in supply chain. You know inventory control is math and you know those kinds of some of that. Stuff is pretty basic and it's, but you got to stick to it.
Speaker 2:But I learned other things. I had folks from epidemiology that took me under their wing and I learned more about infection control than I thought I needed to know. I was taken under the wing by the director of the operating room who explained and taught me how all ours work and everything from technique to how to give a doctor a sharp pair of scissors and in those types of things that I learned along the way. Most importantly, I learned that you know you have to work with people and you've got to communicate. Sometimes they didn't like it when I over communicated, but nonetheless I made sure that everybody that needed to know and everybody that should know knew the things they were supposed to know. I wasn't that kind of boss who didn't tell anybody I was taking the day off. You know, I still see there are some people like that. They don't want their staff to know they're going to have the day off, type of thing. I learned to build trust with people.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm going to take tomorrow off. Everybody knows that means I'm not going to be here, but that doesn't mean that they can goof off. They've got their job to do and I had ways to make sure that that was happening. So you know, I learned a lot of people skills there and I was happy for it.
Speaker 1:Great. So when did you discover Tom Hughes, or when did Tom Hughes discover you?
Speaker 2:Well, you know that was a couple of a couple of stops. Later in my life I left city hospital. It was a great place but you know, I was making a little bit of money but my family was was growing and, you know, bought a house, had bills to pay that type of stuff and I went looking for some more money and I spent a couple of years at the Harvard Teaching Hospital in Cambridge and there I was directly responsible for operating room supply as well as inventory, distribution, equipment, distribution, laundry, et cetera for this hospital and they had much higher standards in the boston city hospital. You know city hospital was a public place and when they needed more money they went down to city hall and they got it at where I was over in cambridge. You know profit and loss was very important and so I learned to manage with limited resources and how to squeeze the most that I could get out of it. Um, I really enjoyed growing professionally there. I learned about the local and national associations along the way and after a couple of years there I got recruited over to the Catholic Health System as the Assistant Director of Materials Management, where I had a great career for seven years management, where I had a great career for seven years, did so many many things there implemented preference card systems and OR information systems, implemented linen utilization systems. One of the things you may notice is I talked about at the beginning of my career. We're doing three-part forms, but over, you know, within 10, 11, 12 years, information systems. Within 10, 11, 12 years, information systems began to become common. We learned how to use them and we used them for things focused on inventory, utilization, et cetera. That was quite a challenge. Off-hours operation management was something that I learned at the Catholic Health System.
Speaker 2:You know everybody goes home at 5 o'clock but the hospital still goes on. And you know, initially, like many people, I learned I don't want to get the call. I don't want to get the call at 930 at night. And I remember, with my wife on New Year's Eve, we were all dressed up, she had a fancy gown on and we were in line at Walgreens to buy some formula because the hospital had run out of a specialized formula. And you know my wife is looking at me. It's 11 o'clock on New Year's Eve, like she's looking at me. Like what are we doing? The formula. We brought it to the hospital and then we went to the New Year's party. So you do the things that you have to do to get the job done.
Speaker 2:Over my seven years with that system I led some operational efforts to close a sister facility and simultaneously open up a new women's hospital, facilitated a merger between two competing hospitals. It was a wild and stress-filled time because there was consolidation going on, system formation and all that A lot of stress. But it was a career-defining time for me and I'm still friends with many of those folks there and I enjoyed it immensely. I went. Then I was recruited. I've been fortunate to have been recruited to most of the places I went to. Consulting company recruited me based on the work that I did on the building planning process that we went through for that women's hospital and so I became an equipment planner.
Speaker 2:I was a fish out of water. I didn't know where I was, I didn't know what billable hours was. I didn't know how to bring value. I was used to being on the inside and now I was an outsider coming in. So I was a bit lost, if you will.
Speaker 2:Over the course of time, as I mentioned earlier, I'd been involved with local and national supply chain organizations doing New England chapter of health care materials management and the American Hospital Association's ARAM chapter, and through that I had met Tom Hughes and I admired him from afar and I befriended him a little bit and I knew a few folks that went to work with him. And my phone rang while I was facilitating that merger. It was also facilitating a merger where I knew I probably wasn't going to survive the merger um, and they asked me if I wanted to, uh, do some consulting and I said, sure, let's try that again. And so, uh, that was how I met tom hughes. He was pivotal in my career.
Speaker 2:I learned an immense number of things. Of course, I walked into the consulting operation of Concepts in Healthcare, thinking that I knew a lot about supply chain, and while I was there, certainly I knew some things, but I learned. I learned so much from Tom. I got a chance to work with Marv Feldman, chris Troiano, john Strong some of the great people in our business and Chris Troiano, john strong some of the great people in our business and I was very fortunate. And I learned to consulting business, I learned the relationship business, I learned how to deliver a value for my clients and I learned how to flex. You know, one thing else I learned is the consultants never say no when you're. When you're asked, can you do this, the answer is sure, we can do that. It's going to cost you, but we can do it. So you know, I learned a whole other side of the business after being on the buying side of the desk, if you will for a long time. Suddenly I was a supplier, in this case supplying service.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, you learned from the best. I think the first time I met you was on a project that we worked together at a really large and very influential system in the country, and it may have been I know it was the first week I don't think it was the first day, but we had several experiences that were amazing that week and one of them was we walked into the CFO's office and he asked you point blank should I fire my director of purchasing? Do you recall that conversation and the way you handled that?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, and my response was you know, we met the individual and we talked with him but I can't comment on that at this time and I remember that you and I were in that meeting and we left and headed to the airport and by the time I got home that poor individual had been let go. And you know, I learned right then and there that when someone asks you for an answer, um, you need to give one. Uh, because they've hired you to give that answer and you've got to give one, even with limited experience and knowledge. Um, that was an. You know, that was sometimes the unfortunate part of supply chain consulting, but, uh, I learned how to deal with that as well.
Speaker 2:You know, tom Hughes was a big influence in my professional life and the journey with him that started at Concepts in Healthcare. You know, in addition to that little story that you mentioned, the first project I worked with Tom was on a redesigning a transportation system for a large network up in the Seattle area and I'd made a number of trips in, talked with people, collected the data, facilitated groups of folks trying to, you know, figure out what the customers needed and going back for the final presentation, the final deliverable, and on a plane ride over there and was I was pretty nervous. It was my first project and my first closing of a project with the client and and Tom very simply just looked at me and said will you stop being so nervous? These people put their pants on one leg at a time, like everybody else. You know they're nice people, they're gonna listen to what you have to say and and they're gonna consider it because you've done good work and you know he was right.
Speaker 2:Um, and my confidence really picked up after that, working with clients and so forth and the variety of clients that we worked with. Fred, you and I worked on a few different projects. Um, we worked on a receiving doc project. I remember uh, trying to determine if a new facility was going to have enough uh, receiving and we went through the whole queuing theory and we did simulation and so forth. It was a pretty exciting time With Tom Hughes.
Speaker 2:That was when I began to get some exposure to some of the giants in the business, if you will.
Speaker 2:I worked with John Guida at Texas Health Resources, worked with Bill Donato at Johnson and Johnson Again, got to work with John Strong, who is in the Bellwether Hall of Fame and renowned across the industry for his professionalism and his knowledge. I learned from Tom Hughes what many in the industry those industry greats they already knew, and it was something that I didn't know at that point, and that was that suppliers and manufacturers are part of the solution. They're not necessarily the problem. They have much to offer the industry if trust can be established, and I began to work with my clients on helping them to find better ways to work with their suppliers. When I started in this business, suppliers were held at arm's length by most folks, but as I got to experience and learn from some of the greats, I learned that one of the things that makes those people so great is that they understood the power of collaboration, and that was really good SMI and if you want to talk about SMI, I'd love to talk about SMI.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me jump in here with one thing. You're talking about working with suppliers. The one thing that I realized after years was that, as a supply chain leader, I never worked with a supplier supply chain. I always worked with a supplier sales force. I never learned anything. I never learned. I ran several supply chains and didn't know a damn thing about how supply chains were supposed to work. And I don't think I was unusual. I was able. You know, you can be a major league baseball manager without ever having played in the major leagues, and I think the same thing can be said for a supply chain leader. And so when we get to SMI, which was the brainchild of Tom, among others, the whole concept, as I understand it now and you can clear me up if I'm wrong was this was a collaboration to bring the suppliers and the I would call it the elite healthcare systems because that's really who's there together to work to form solutions that everyone in the industry could use. Is that fair?
Speaker 2:I think that that's very fair to say. You know, I got a call from Tom Hughes after he and Carl Manley and John Guida had founded SMI Completely unique in the business. Suppliers and providers were not working together really in any venues. There was a lot of antitrust concern about these types of things and so we created Tom and Carl and John created and then I came in to help out. They created an organization that was not about sales and that was interesting. We had to teach our supplier members to shut off their selling buttons, if you will, when they came into an SMI collaborative atmosphere. It's not about selling, it's about talking about industry problems. It's about talking about industry problems.
Speaker 2:Smi was not yet one year old as an organization. It was struggling because its members all executives, vice president level and above both on the supplier and the provider side they were struggling to foster collaboration in this innovative model. You know, because they hadn't done it before and Tom Hughes was the executive director and he tasked me with organizing various committees that they had put together during that first year to try and address some industry challenges. The problem was that these were all executive folks and they really didn't know how to work together. They weren't used to doing grunt work either. Together they didn't. They weren't used to doing grunt work either, and so I I came in and started to organize these folks. Um, we focused first on in every one of the teams, on let's make sure we understand what problem we're trying to solve. It's amazing, uh, you can go into hospital or health system committee meetings, people, people are talking, and if you can get people to stop for a minute and ask them what problem are we trying to solve, you may find in some cases, everyone's trying to solve a different problem. You've got to have everyone agree on what is the problem, what problem are we trying to solve? Then you can move from there up to what solutions can we bring to help address that.
Speaker 2:Remember, suppliers have a different perspective than providers. Providers want the inventory to magically appear and suppliers are managing a push system and they can't predict the volumes and the demand levels, especially in our business, where we still don't have demand signals in most places. You know, one of the things that we pointed out at SMI in one of our projects was that if you stop into a local 7-Eleven store, when the register scans that pack of gum, the signal goes to not only the inventory module to the distributor and to the manufacturer that says one was consumed there. In that environment the manufacturer understands the demand and is able to manufacture to meet that demand. We don't necessarily have that signal in health care. So distributors hold inventory, build it up large and then try to supply in a push system versus retail, which is a pull system.
Speaker 2:Also, with SMI, you know I'll never forget this great piece of advice I got from John Guida, john's a good friend, one of the SMI founders, and John had been working with some teams during that first year when I was not part of SMI and he learned something. And he said to me never start one of these meetings with a blank piece of paper. You've got to give people something to react to, otherwise in this environment people will talk and talk and talk but they'll never get to the solution. So you've got to give them something concrete to start working on right away, otherwise it's blue sky discussions forever. I adopted that advice and and and successful, and I was very thankful to Joan about that, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, blue sky guys are quite common, you know. The one thing I I failed to do here is we. We have this tendency to talk in abbreviations. For those who do not know, smi stands for strategic marketplace initiative actually, from their brand perspective, they just go by SMI now.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, I spent 14 years there and I got a chance to work with really great people. The whole bellwether hall of fame is filled with folks that were involved at smi when I was there. Um, you know, I I after 14 years though they were the happiest of my life, but, but time took its toll and I was dealing with burnout and I had family matters that required my attention. So so when I slowly transitioned out of smi, it was was a heavy heart because I was leaving my best friend, tom hughes, my mentor, a man who taught me so much and someone I deeply admired. I spent about a year in retirement and took care of some personal matters and then had the opportunity to go out and uh, work with other folks to start a new company to assist emerging innovative small manufacturers innovative small manufacturers entering the US medical device business.
Speaker 2:You know our industry is driven by innovation. On the medical device side it's not all conducted out of R&D research labs by large manufacturers. Many times, small companies, startups, are formed with a great product and a great idea and they think they're going to go around and start knocking on hospital doors and start selling, and we know that our business is not like that. There are GPOs, there are systems, there are contracts, there are requirements, et cetera, so we tried to help people who did that. I was fortunate to be able to work with some really great people at. The company we formed was Access Strategy Partners, jim Walker from Boston Scientific, armin Klein from Covidian and, as I mentioned before, the great John Strong. The company got up and running and is helping people even today. I'm not actively involved, but I brought my expertise to the table to help them get off the ground and I eventually went back into a kind of semi-retirement thing.
Speaker 1:Let me jump in here with that Two things. First off, when you talk about Tom Hughes and you talk about concepts in health care, for my money, the type of consulting that conceptss in Healthcare did, which many times was large non-salary expense reduction projects, things that got into helping folks with documented monetary savings- but, that's.
Speaker 1:I don't think there was any other company or consulting firm that did those things and anywhere near as well as concepts in healthcare did. And for Tom's legacy, I think Tom has put more of us in the Bellwether League National Healthcare Supply Chain Hall of Fame than anybody else that has been associated with it that has been associated with it.
Speaker 2:Oh, I agree with you there. You know Tom was a great consultant, a trusted advisor to so many in the business, the founder of Concepts in Healthcare, the founder, one of the founders of SMI. He was one of the early supporters of the Bellwether League. Tom was involved in a great many things. A great friend of Aram helped to facilitate the merger many years ago between the Materials Management Society and the AHA's personal membership group, aram. So you know I had the benefit to be with Tom. Tom knew how to take care of people, both clients and the people that he worked with. The expertise that we brought together was something that I had not ever seen really before. We had pharmacists, we had technologists, we had nurses, we had supply chain people. We helped many organizations mature quickly from purchasing to materials management and then we help them mature from materials management to supply chain. Um and uh you help folks if you will get out of the basement. Um.
Speaker 2:I did have an interesting experience after uh. I did uh go back into retirement, though, and I've been asked to perform some specialty type consulting with some old friends and acquaintances. And uh I performed in uh interim chief supply chain officer duties for a four-month period in the middle of the pandemic. Um, there was a part of me that said, geez, uh, why should I leave the safety of my home to go to a hospital during the COVID pandemic? But they needed me and when I got there it was a small health system in the Massachusetts area. I was amazed. I was amazed as soon as I was able to get in the front door. I was amazed that I could feel the tension in the air. I was amazed at the quietness and the lack of activity in most of the hospital, except for the ICU areas in the emergency room which were going great guns helping people to get in and many people didn't make it. I promised my family that I wouldn't go anywhere near sick people. But the second day there I was up in the ccu um seeing how covert patients were taken care of and it was, quite frankly, as many people experienced, one of the saddest things in my life um that I saw. But I was really fortunate that I was helped, able to help this organization during a time when they needed leadership.
Speaker 2:Um little story. My first day nobody knew me. They thought I was there to fire everybody. Um, I called everyone together and I thanked them collectively and then individually for for their bravery, for what they were doing, and I offered them all the support that I could give. Not rocket science, but after two weeks of hearing people screaming they didn't have enough supplies. Quite frankly, I doubled the power levels in every location in the inpatient, in outpatient areas. It didn't take a genius to figure that out, but I found out that they had not done that. We increased the supply upstairs and all of a sudden everyone felt that they were being taken care of by supply chain. We didn't consume any more. It was just an inventory level that went up and people felt there was more availability of product. They felt safer. I was really happy to bring that.
Speaker 2:I was really happy to get into a situation where we would develop the process for changing products.
Speaker 2:You know how it was during the pandemic. It was difficult to get gloves, masks, everything like that. Many times the caregivers would go to the shop and all of a sudden there'd be a new product. They didn't know how to use it, they didn't know if it was approved. They didn't know anything about that. They were forced to use it and we put in place a process with nursing and epidemiology to smooth out the transition from the product everyone was used to using to the one that is available today. And while it didn't make the problems go away, the communication improved and the panic level went down and I was really happy to be a part of that and I brought a certain level of professionalism, I thought, to that organization. They're doing quite well since then, helped them to get a new leader and they're doing well. So you know I was happy with that. But boy was it an eye-opener for me, something I had not seen in the 40-plus years I'd spent my career in hospitals previously.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you'd been away from the day-to-day for a long time. You've been away from the day-to-day for a long time, and that must have been a lot, and then you come back at the worst time you know you didn't just come back at a regular time.
Speaker 1:You came in at the worst time, so let me get to two questions, one real quick, and then the secret question that you're not going to have any ability to answer. Okay Is, given your experience and seeing how supply chains are becoming more and more professional, we have fewer and fewer systems. They're bigger and bigger. They're hiring people that are well-trained and professionally trained, professionally educated for what they do. Just very quickly, are you optimistic about the future of supply chain and its leaders?
Speaker 2:Oh, very, very. I'd still stay actively involved with ARAM. I'll be there at this year's conference and the folks that I have met I would call them new people within the last 10 years Brilliant. The talent level is off the charts. People get it. They understand um, they understand supply chain and its role and what it can do and what is possible. Uh, and I? I think that's amazing. The technology that we have today is great.
Speaker 2:I don't think everyone is working collaboratively suppliers, distributors, manufacturers, all together as much as they could and as much as they do in other businesses. You know, I used to tell this little story when I would give presentations for SMI and I said do you think that General Motors, who's been working with their brake manufacturer for the last five years to develop a new brake system for the model that's going to come out four years from now? Do you think then, after that collaborative effort, they bid it out and pick somebody else? No, they don't. They develop their relationships. They develop their contractual relationships well in advance of that. Suppliers in many cases in that industry are funded by the people that they sell to. General Motors is one great example. They help to go out and create brake companies and muffler companies in in body work companies and people like that over the many years they've been in business.
Speaker 2:Health care is maturing rapidly on its supply chain. We're beginning to see that that we as an industry have holes to fill. And how do we fill those holes? How do we develop? You know, when you, when you're in charge of a health system, it's much different than a leader that was in charge of a hospital way back, say, at the beginning of my career the leader of materials management, I think it was what they would call them back then. When that person walked into a room, they might have represented, you know, maybe a hundred million dollars worth of business. When the supply chain leader from a large health system walks into a room today, they represent, in many cases, over a billion dollars worth of business. There's much more at stake. There's a lot more to think about, and they're doing it. More to think about, um, and they're doing it.
Speaker 2:People are are understanding, uh and working with their manufacturers and suppliers better. The development of consolidated service centers is one example, uh. The insourcing of gpo, of the gpo function, is another example. The gpo function is another example. Uh, people are being innovative, uh, in in, uh, you know, yeah, I'm just really encouraged by what I see today, uh, the. You know that old uh, I think it was brent johnson from intermountain that said the, the old knuckle dragging supply chain person in the basement, has grown up a little bit and, yeah, and in, our reputation in in this industry is improving and I'm real happy about it. Um, you know, I'd like to pass on, but before you ask me this magic question that you have, um, I just wanted to pass on to to those that are listening, uh, to this. Uh, today's supply chain professionals, one you know I would ask folks to recognize.
Speaker 2:My career is just one career, but it's a great example. I started at hospitals, went to health systems, went into consulting, then went to a think tank, then went out and started a company and then one of my final acts I'm still doing a little consulting Then went out and started a company and then one of my final acts I'm still doing a little consulting was back hospital-based again. My career path has taken twists and turns. Sometimes they didn't seem to make a lot of sense at that time, but I'm real happy about how my career has gone to this point and I think that today's supply chain professionals.
Speaker 2:Many of them may be saying, oh my goodness, the pressure is so high, the stakes are so high, you know, and they may not be sure of where they are. But understand, you know, my journey is not really much different than anybody else's. I started in the basement and I ended up in an executive suite. I'm happy about it. I took the foundational knowledge that I absorbed early in my career and utilized it for the benefit of others, and I was really happy about that.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I want to pass on to folks is you know, continue to develop the relationships with your trading partners is continue to develop the relationships with your trading partners. Don't rely solely on texts and Instagram and emails to communicate with people. Don't be afraid to be face-to-face with people. Don't be afraid to have those difficult discussions that need to be had. You know, focus on improving care more than measuring transactional volume. I've learned that by working together, great things can happen, and I encourage all of those that are out there to let their career follow the path that they want to take. And you know, to continue to understand that, although we're getting very technology driven, relationships do matter.
Speaker 1:That's true, and one thing I'd have to say is that, even though we're getting more and more technically qualified, the world still owes a debt of gratitude to us knuckle draggers out there.
Speaker 2:Us knuckle draggers.
Speaker 1:Okay, Fred. So here's the question. For folks that don't know it, I'm a little bit taller than Dennis and I have my Bill Russell mustache here or beard now, but, Dennis, I've always been a Wilt Chamberlain fan, therefore, and he's, from Boston, of course, a Billsell fan, and we fought this for years. But I want to talk about a white basketball player from indiana who had not succeeded really at a at in college the way it was expected, had managed to take the players' team to the NCAA championship, was really hyped all over the place and lost in a championship and then turned pro, and when the player turned pro, had to face the rookie treatment. This person ain't great enough. This white player for Indiana just hasn't got it. Not good enough to play with folks and there was even racial stuff in there, basically and had to come in and make his way through. So my question is what's your opinion of Caitlin Clark?
Speaker 2:Well, the example you mentioned. You kept on saying he. I knew you were talking about Larry Bird, but I do. But I do know that I'm in, I read the sports page and I watch TV.
Speaker 2:There are some similarities between Caitlin Clark's first year as a pro and her last years in college in Larry Bird. What I can tell you is what I see of her, just like Larry Bird good person, highly competitive, not going to get down into the mud with other people. Caitlin Clark keeps her head held high, continues to play her game. Caitlin Clark keeps her head held high, continues to play her game and does not get involved in the back and forth that seems to take place today in social media. If Larry Bird had been around when they had social media, things might have been a little bit different.
Speaker 2:But you know, of course Bird was one of the greatest of all time, but not the greatest because we all know Bill Russell was the greatest. We don't need to have that Bill Russell versus Will Chamberlain debate right now. But perhaps Caitlin Clark will be the greatest in the female basketball world over time. She certainly is a great role model to folks, you know and here we are back talking about role models. Again, you know today's professionals. If you don't have one, find yourself a role model. Find yourself a mentor. If you, if you're already a seasoned veteran, then be a mentor to someone else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, let me, let me interrupt you right there I, I, I, what you just said is very important and this we're almost at the end here, but, um, I have, I, I have been fortunate to have mentored a lot of folks, and I also know, when I meet folks, uh, that need someone else as a mentor not me, if you know what I mean no, not pass them on, but I, I talked to somebody, uh, just a few months ago that's very sort of flying high in our business and asked this person to be a mentor to another person, and it was like I was bothering that person.
Speaker 1:My feeling is that's our responsibility. Our responsibility is to pass our knowledge on to others and to help others make their way. We didn't make it to the top on our own. Let's be clear here. We had help and we had support and we had mentors and we had people that cared for us every step of the way, someplace along the line, and I think mentorship is something that probably deserves an episode of this podcast all by itself, and I appreciate that from you, dennis. Dennis, thanks so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me in. Thanks for having me in and thanks for St Onge for doing this. It's a real help to the industry. It's been great talking to you.
Speaker 1:Great talking to you, dennis. Have a good one, we'll talk to you later.
Speaker 2:All right, you too, and I'll talk to you again soon.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye.
