Rethinking the Process of Transformation With Yemi Adefulu

A global supply chain manager at Shell shares the factors that drive a successful transformation.

In this episode of Masters of Digital Transformation, Tony hosts Yemi Adefulu, General Manager Global Supply Chain at Shell. Yemi's 14 year career journey at Shell allowed him to not only acquire a broad experience across new business development, acquisitions, divestitures, and supply chain management, but also develop a love of driving change and generating solutions to complex problems. In this episode, Yemi shares the factors that drive successful change and insights about creating a more intelligent inbound supply chain.

Key Takeaways

Accept Change: Companies need to embrace the challenges involved in driving transformational change within their organizations. Yemi says that in order for change to gain momentum, those responsible for driving change need to have the tenacity to sustain the process through all phases and accept the successes and failures along a company’s transformation journey. 

Find The Secret Sauce: Understand how top supply chain companies are operating and find ways to incorporate this “secret sauce” into a company’s processes and culture. Yemi says to think beyond your organization’s operations and pull inspiration from successful supply chain examples across industries including CPG, automotive, energy, or airlines to determine what might work within your company. 

Create Transparency: A key element of effectively driving change within an organization is creating a transparent process that allows employees to contribute to the process, share experience, and to provide a feedback loop to show employees what contributions were incorporated or not, and why. This allows a good cross-section of employees to have a voice in change, feel that they are valued stakeholders and embrace the efficient co-creation. 

Efficient co-creation is necessary: The employees involved in and impacted by a transformation journey matter. They need the space and time to fully contribute, but within a timeframe that allows for agile execution.

Advice on the role of the leader: When embarking on a transformation journey, set the bar high for benchmarks, include stretch goals, and stay curious about what factors lead to effective change. 

Understand your customers, the reasons behind change, and ask the kinds of questions that will bring out the essence of needs to be achieved. 

Empower your employees with a change process framework that they are able to successfully execute.

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