The Thrust Of Trust

Please enjoy the thoughts and musings of our friend, supporter, and long-time contributor Art van Bodegraven Jr., who passed away on June 18, 2017. Art was a prolific writer and had amassed a collection of unpublished blog posts he had planned to run well into the future. To honor his memory, we will continue to post these remaining blogs as he had intended. If you’ve been a fan of The Art of Art blog, check out our tribute.

 

A few months ago, Industry Week published a piece by two academics, a somewhat abstract looking-down-the nose discussion that claimed gigundous benefits from trust as a foundation of sustainability.  

Here's a dose of reality.  Trust is at the core of any and every relationship-based supply chain interaction.  The outmoded and discredited transactional models of the past simply don't work - or work out - in today's trust models.  Today?  Grow up!  We've been promoting collaboration, with a foundation of trust, for decades, now.

It's not complicated - perhaps not easy, but certainly not all that difficult.  Say what you mean, and mean what you say, in all supply activities, with customers, suppliers, partners, associates, and outside resources.  There!  Feel better now?

Make good on your promises; go to the wall to make the impossible both happen, and do so without perspiring.  This is not hard.  Awkward, maybe, but not hard once it becomes culturally ingrained.

Where does trust come in to play?  Whenever you have a joint commitment to performance and achievement.  Whenever you have mutual problems to solve.  When you've got to reduce costs, at no sacrifice in quality.  When continuity of supply is mission-critical.   Whenever contingency plans  for proactive risk management are vital safeguards and back-ups.  When you need to collaborate on customer acquisition and retention, especially as a competitive wake-up call in the marketplace.  When you need to pool creativity and resources to innovate in product and process.

That trust abets the creation of sustainable supply chains seems to me to be just another fall-out from building the right kind of relationship.  Reputation, mutual benefit, asset leverage, joint innovation, environmental plusses, competitive advantage and thought/concept leadership.

But, what do I know?  I'm just another working stiff, bereft of time to research, write, and persuade.  

And, unable to flit from job to job, dispensing faux wisdom at each.