A Royal Wedding

I don't know how it is in your neck of the woods, but we're deep into Anglophile Week here in our neighbourhood.  What with the premiers of the stunning new edition of Upstairs, Downstairs, the opening hoopla surrounding the perfectly dreadful Game of Thrones, and periodic check-ins with BBC America for the latest inside scoop, we are feeling veddy, veddy British indeed.

An old suspicion has resurfaced. though.  My initial premise is that there are only somewhere between three and four dozen actors in the whole of the United Kingdom.  And. all of them are in everything.  Every viewing of Cranford, Downton Abbey, Inspector Lewis, Jane Eyre, Harry Potter, or anything else remotely British is like a family reunion.  We just never know whether we're going to get Arthur Weasley or a mass murderer, the timorous Peter Pettigrew or a resolutely villainous "uncle" to the imperiled Beaudelaire kids.

Does this help to explain the rise of film stars from Australia?  Has Hollywood run out of Brits?

What all this twaddle has to do with the challenges of supply chain management and business realtionships is that we are continually faced with the need for choosing among product and service providers who appear to be capable of being and doing anything.  How can we get beyond the pose, behind the role, to discover the real person (or entity, as the case may be)?

It's about intimate, open, honest, and authentic communications.  About getting to know and understand - in both directions - motivations and objectives.  About leaving the tedium of transactions behind, in favor of the excitement - and payoff - of outcomes.  It's the real world of hard work, mutual sweat and tears, and results, not the fantasy world of pictures and promises.  And, it does involve a wedding, of sorts.

Until we can reach that level of understanding in our working supply chain relationships, we'll still need to warn some among us that throwing their knickers at Sir Ian McKellan's feet might not lead to the results they'd hoped for.