Lessons from leading brands: building responsible supply chains at scale

37 minutes

In this podcast episode, EiQ Chief Customer Officer Andy Gibbard and Former Senior Vice President of Global Supply Chain at PepsiCo Paul Campbell, go in-depth about how to navigate the complex responsible sourcing landscape and build resilience.

We explore the evolution of global supply chain risk management, lessons from industry expertise at a global leading brand and ways to optimise your responsible sourcing journey to achieve total supply chain confidence.

Full transcript:

Andy Gibbard, Chief Customer Officer, EiQ: Hello and welcome to this session on building responsible supply chains at scale. So when we're looking to enhance operations and achieve best practice, there's no substitute for learnings from the field. And sometimes we get those by looking at competitors or at direct peers. But really to get to best practice we also have to look at the top. What do the leaders do? And what can we learn from that?

So I'm here today with Paul Campbell, former SVP of global supply chain at PepsiCo and also a member of the EiQ advisory board, to explore how to build responsible supply chains at scale. So, Paul, welcome and thank you very much for joining me today.

Paul Campbell, Former Senior Vice President, Global Supply Chain, PepsiCo: It's great to be here. Thank you.

AG: All right. So just to start us off then, from your experience, leading on supply chain at a globally recognised brands, what's your view of the responsible sourcing landscape and how has that evolved throughout your time in the industry?

PC: It's a fascinating question because, you know, when you're working with businesses, where, you know, the brand plays such a significant role. The brand is a shortcut for consumers to say, well, if this is the brand, I know what I'm going to get. And therefore, being able to protect that is critical. And one of the key variables is your supply chain. And anything associated with the brand can be a challenge. But how that's changed, I think, over the landscape is two or three things, I'd say, that have impacted it over my career.

One is just the speed of information. Now, the pace at which things change and your ability to both anticipate and manage that is a big factor that's adjusted. And the second is somewhat linked to that is the globalisation of communication. So, when you think something is only happening in a specific market, so it might impact this product in this market alone. But everybody has access to that information now through the web. And it's very, very visible. I mean, it's that old phrase about today's news is tomorrow's chip papers. But when everything was in printed press now, it's not it's there forever because it's on the web.

And you can go back and look at it. So actually, you know, the risk of issues that may be 20 years ago were flashes in the pan. Now, that retained knowledge and information is still, so managing the risk whether it be real or, you know, perceived risk is even more important, I think. And then as, as supply chains have globalised themselves over the last 20, 30 years, then that risk is exacerbated as well.

So, it's a much more complex environment, I think, where complexity, speed and information are the things that have changed dramatically. I think.

AG: So, Paul, during your time, what was the prevalence of things like geopolitical disruptions, commodity volatility and regulatory shifts and how did this impact your approach and whether any times when you had to pivot or make dramatic changes around factors like this?

PC: Yeah, I mean, the most recent and sort of visible, impact of something like that would have been the consequence of the war that broke out in Ukraine. Because that also, I think, compounded, a whole host of economic challenges with the impact it had on the price of fuel. And then that drove up a whole host of other costs in the supply chain. And that actually was coming on the back end, really, of Covid. And if you think about, you know, people were running supply chains, probably for 20 years leading up to Covid around how do I optimise, how do I take cost out, how do I manage, the supply chain in a way that's driving for a much more efficient system, I think then Covid arrived and people didn't really understand the implications.

The only action that most people could take in running their supply chain was, I'm just going to build inventory because that's going to make it safe. It's going to stop the disruption in the supply side, and I'll build inventory. The downside of that was suddenly, there was an uptick in demand. And that drove pricing. So you had a pricing impact of that disruption. And then the war came, its impact on the price of fuel. And then the rest of commodity started to get hit as well.

So that was a really turbulent time for businesses and managing supply chains through. That actually meant that the pivot shifted from efficiency and productivity into security. How do I guarantee supply? How do I make sure that the raw materials I need in my supply chain are available when I need them, and that not only was a key operational shift where, you know, shortage of supply became more critical if it starts to impact strategy as well, where you move from, I have to have multi source supply and maybe I'm going to move to, you know, a much more nodal supply chain than this integrated single straight line supply chain into one that was much more de-risk almost by the way that you managed it.

That's a massive pivot. And what's fascinating, I think, is the, the inbuilt memory of that is already fading. And you can see the pressure because of the economic impact, because of the prices that have flowed through, because of commodities. The supply chain has had to say, well, I need to be efficient again. And very quickly people are moving into that efficiency cycle and how they keep hold of the shortage of supply and making sure that what they get is the right stuff, managed end to end in the right way, I think is still a challenge because the pressure on productivity is critical still.

So is that rebound effect, is that inevitable, or should supply chain leaders be deliberately trying to soften that and hold back from that? I think it's imperative that the leaders hold back from it. I think they have to start to take control, which is that when it's pivoted from being an operational issue into a much more strategic one about how am I going to manage the supply chain over the next 10 to 15 years? And what does that mean for where I source, how I source versus just simply what I'm going to source?

And I think that's where supply chain leaders have to step in, is to be much more intentional, recognising it's not one thing, and it bleeds very much into, you know, the role that sustainability plays, as well as the role of availability as well as the role of, you know, are you growing? There's a much, much bigger suite of things that the supply chain leaders need to think about than what was historically the case maybe 5 or 6 years ago.

AG: So on the topic of visibility, to what extent was being part of such a well-known brand a factor here? And what are the pressures of avoiding becoming a headline for all the wrong reasons, a headline for sourcing issues or something like that?

PC: Yeah. It's a difficult question to answer without sounding glib. And I don't mean to be, but fundamentally, you know, in the business I operated in for a long time, the consumer is at the heart of what we were doing and protecting the consumer, making sure that what they were putting in the mouth, whether it be a snack or a drink, was safe and secure from a food safety standpoint, but also that the brand story was consistent because people, when they commit to buy a brand, the buying into that brand story and the brand story includes, well, what are my sources from what does this mean?

You know, were these potatoes grown in the country? How have you got provenance of that What does that mean? So it's absolutely fundamental to the whole brand equity and being able to run the supply chain that is supportive of that. And in fact, you know, we spent a lot of time actually uncovering those stories and providing them to the to the commercial teams as ways of engaging with consumers about, you know, that, as I say, the provenance and what that means and the role that actually the broader value chain plays in society.

And that's a significant fillip to the brand equity, because it provides people with a much clearer reason to purchase your products. So I think it's fundamental. Now obviously the downside of that is it's fraught with risk. If you don't do that well, you can't whitewash this stuff. You can't pretend to run a supply chain that is, giving the impression that it's being run in the most ethical way. But actually, you're taking, shortcuts along the way. It has. You have to live up to the story that you present as well.

But it starts with, well, what's your promise? And the promise is there's always got to be particularly in food and beverage area, that you're going to keep people safe. You then going to give them a fantastic product. It's going to taste magnificent. It's going to be all. But if you can't keep them safe, then you know you've got nowhere to go. And I've been fortunate throughout my career that I was never, ever in a position where I was asked to put that at risk. Never. And that's one of the key reasons why I stayed with the organisation. I did for so long because the pressure was always to do what's right for the consumer. And if that's at the heart of what you do, then you're going to look right through the supply chain as well. So how do you give the consumer what they want from the brand? I think it's a fundamental part of the role that supply chain plays. 

AG: So you've talked a little bit there about some of the specifics that affect food and beverage. But to go further into that, there's all sorts of topics which are at least probably most acute for food and beverage brands and many food and beverage brands use. Okay. So I'm sure we have lots of, people watching today from that sector. So things like climate change, water scarcity, crop failures, what kind of impact were they having on your supply chain and on your responsible sourcing in particular?

PC: Massive, because, you know, at the heart of particularly the snacks business that I was part of, it's an agricultural business. I mean, it's about taking potatoes literally from the ground, washing them, slicing them, and frying them as you would in your kitchen and then putting them in a bag. Then this is not in the truest sense of the word, processed food. They are simply potato. You could do everything that you do in a factory, you could do in your kitchen. So it's a very much a product that is linked to agriculture.

It's the same for the corn. It's actually the same for where the oil comes from. The majority of, the oil is a high-oleic sunflower oil. It's sunflower oil. It's not rapeseed oil. And that shift was made over the last ten years, plus. And responsible sourcing is at the heart of that for two reasons, actually.

One, the discussion, we had a little bit earlier around the role it plays in the brand story that people can feel good about where this has come from. But the second is, if you're not responsibly looking after your supply chain, it may not be there in 2 or 3 years time. So what are you doing to make sure that farming practices are at the best possible level? How can you inform farmers about how they reduce the amount of water they use?

If I take potatoes, you know, three quarters of a potato is water. And when it gets taken into a factory, what you're doing is driving all of that water off. So if you think about it in that context, that's a real problem for water scarce areas. So how do you manage that? How do you find a closed loop?

Can you recover that water and reintroduce it into the system in a beverage business? Some very similar challenges. If you know fundamentally when you're in the beverage business, unless it's, you know, direct from fruit, you're normally adding water in. So water into water scarce areas is one of your ingredients. So how do you manage the supply chain
so that you are, you know, less of a drain on the society that you're operating in.

And I think it's fundamental for businesses because only through doing that can they be sustainable. They can't pull the resources from the environment and expect them to still be there in 10 or 15 years time. They have to find ways of closing that loop to being a, you know, a net zero contributor to drain the resources in the environment.

And that is difficult. And it can't be done overnight. And it has to be done by playing the long game, being really clear about what your objectives are, and then putting your money where your mouth is, you then have to invest in that. You have to make decisions that may be ten years ago you wouldn't have done because they're going to add cost in.

But it's your duty then to decide how are you going to do that? And I think what it makes a, you know, one of the fundamental differences in how you run your business is it forces you to collaborate much more, because it's in everybody's interest to make sure that we don't run out of water.

So why would I see it as a competitive advantage that I use less water than my competitor Because if they use more water, then there's less available for me. So how do you collaborate with them in a meaningful way so that you can, you know, address the problems that the planet faces rather than just use it as an individual company?

AG: Yeah, it's really interesting, that broader perspective on that issue and thinking outside of, the walls of your own company. So as well as these, these really are key issues. This will so particular commodities and food and beverage, which are really high risk as well, and which essentially receive even more scrutiny than elsewhere in your supply chain. Palm oil, obvious one that comes to mind. Also things like cocoa and sugar. What were some of the strategies that you use to manage risk and manage perception as well in some of these, really high risk and high visibility commodities?

PC: Yes, some of it was about making very conscious and intentional decisions. So if you take the, the palm oil, discussion, the business I was part of a maybe close to 20 years ago in certain parts of the world, and they've pretty much done it everywhere now. But it started in Western Europe, started in the UK in fact, is they took the oil that the products are fried in and stopped using palm and used a sunflower oil.

Now that sunflower oil is less hardy, it's not able to sustain the same level of, you know, heat as maybe palm oil. And it has a different flavor. So it changed the product and made it much more difficult to process. But it was seen as being the right decision both for the consumer, because actually, the oil is a much healthier oil. But also, it was the right decision for the long term for the environment, because it was it was removing, you know, a very, very risky material from the supply chain and moved it both physically closer to home as well, because you can then, you know, manage it in a geography. That's a European geography versus palm oil being shipped from much further location. So some of it's about very intentional decisions are very much about the long term. 

Yeah. You know when you're dealing with you know the family silver changing that is quite difficult. And you know the business was making fundamental changes to the taste of a product that differentiates itself based on taste. So there was a risk associated with it, but it was seen as being the right thing. And as you roll that clock forward, we talked about the impact of sort of geopolitical, events and, and the, you know, the, the cost impact that they had on, on commodities as, as the war broke out in Ukraine, you suddenly find out that, I think the number is well over a third, maybe even close to half of the sunflower oil in Europe was coming from that region.

So how do you access it now? Because suddenly, you know, it's not available from that location, which is still relatively close versus palm oil. So the business then had to redefine its supply chain again and look at, well, how do I now actually bring that back into the UK or the other, much more local, sourcing. And again, that's a big, big change, not to change the type of oil and adjust to it based on it, you know, the changing geopolitical environment.

So it has a big impact. And in terms of, you know, decisions that you make. So I said that's about being intentional. And some of it comes from, you know, the business starting to put much more scrutiny on itself and asking questions about, well, what do we want to be? What do we want to be in five years time, ten years time, 15 years time as a business and are we going to lead or are we going to follow?

And if we're going to lead, which areas are we going to lead? Because you can't lead in everything. And where are you happy to follow and how far behind you follow. And they're all decisions that have to get wrapped up in fundamentally how you run your business. And, you know, some of the moral dilemmas I faced as an individual is I feel very passionate about the role of business plays, in minimising its impact on society, whether that be the environment or the broader society.

And I made a decision 20 plus years ago that I'd rather be part of the problem because I can make an impact. I can change some things that are going to have a positive impact, and the leverage you can create by being within the system, rather than lobbying from the outside.

And you need both, by the way, you absolutely do, because the lobbyists really make you think much more. It's a deep about the problems you face, because within a corporation, you can get that diluted. So it's very helpful. But being within the system gives you the opportunity to change from within. And I feel very proud about some of the changes that, that the businesses I've been part of have made over the last 10 or 15 years in this area. 

AG: So let's dig into the operational aspects a little bit more and starting with supplier collaboration. So with such an, huge supply chain. So diverse as well. What were the some of the strategies that you used to align such a broad supply base on responsible sourcing issues. And how did that go?

PC: I'm smiling because it's actually a really challenging thing to do because, you know, in the heat of the moment, I totally like you want your supplier to make it available and you want it to be cheap. And then offline, you have conversations about the long term and the strategy and then the pressure comes and you have to get dragged back into, well, how much am I going to have to pay for this? And will you provide me with, you know, a guarantee of its availability? And I think what it required us to do was to, as I say, step back and say, what do we want to be? What do we want our supply chain to be like?

And then how do we collaborate with the people who can make a big difference in that? And picking you know the scale suppliers who you knew either had a very similar mindset about your objectives or were willing to buy into that. So you have to invest time with them, understand where they sit in their thinking and their strategy, not only understand it, but then tell them that it’s a fundamental part of your strategy. And if it's a fundamental part of your strategy and they want to still be a supplier of yours, then they have to buy into that. And that's a that takes time. It's not a one off.

It's not a by the way. Yeah I know you need a 5% increase, but it's much more around how you bring people along. And over the last probably, you know, the final 2 or 3 years of my career, we ran a number of events with, basically the core key suppliers, with senior leaders outside of supply chain. So the chief executive of the organisation or the chief executive, the sector that you were in. So we ran one, with with my boss who ran the Europe business at the time, we had 70 suppliers there, and we spent, I would believe, 95% of the time talking to them about how you run a sustainable supply chain, why that's important to PepsiCo.

What does that mean for them? What do we want and how do we learn from each other and how do we collaborate? And what was fascinating was the one ask that they had of us, besides make your decision quicker? PepsiCo, because you're quite slow. But besides that, no one ask of them was how can you facilitate getting us together as suppliers and collaborating with each other?

How can you help us do that better? Information share. So actually most of the suppliers are looking for it, you know, and what the businesses have to do, I think, is leverage that find a way to bring people together, find a way of managing, you know, that uncertainty in a very different way, potentially taking some risk with suppliers and doing things very differently. And I think that's part of it, is what you have to experiment. So there's all of that.

But fundamentally, it's about a mindset that needs to shift away from simply what's the cheapest and what's the quickest. Even those things, those pressures are real and have to be managed. You sometimes have to think, well, what's the best and how do I do that?

So I think it's very complicated. But it's essential. And I think it's about how you frame the challenges you've got in a way that can create value. And then you've got to figure out, I can't just pass this down the chain. I can't just push the responsibility to other people.

You know, I can't just say, well, I've written a contract to a supplier and they have to fulfill it. You need to be figuring out, well, how do you help them fulfill it? Because if it's simply a binary discussion about what you've asked for it you need to deliver, then it doesn't really work. It's not sustainable because the next time someone comes along and offers them slightly more, they'll go down that route because you would not help them build that business over time.

So I think it's a number of things that you have to play, but it's very much about, you know, creating this win-win rather than a win-lose And then there must be some, some quite significant trade offs to think about from a business prioritisation perspective, you know, working with suppliers and also just more broadly, what you focus on as a buyer essentially.

AG: So, you know, a lot of the people that we're talking to from EiQ are focused on responsible sourcing. But at your level, I imagine that the trade offs against, other factors like pricing and efficiency and resilience and contingency, I mean, how did you begin to even, manage those trade offs? And where did responsible sourcing land in that hierarchy of demands?

PC: Yeah, I mean it's the classic dilemma of leadership. If you move away from managing people and how you set people up for success, but it's about how you manage trade offs. I mean, fundamentally, you know, businesses are successful because they've made the right choices when they've had trade offs to make normally. And I think if you take responsible sourcing, if you pull it all the way back, as we talked earlier to the brand, the role it plays in the story of the brand, it has to create, you know, red lines.

Now we're not going to compromise here. You know, we might have a target that is to get from, you know, where you are today to 20% better in three years time. You may revisit that because the pricing in a particular period of time makes that difficult for you, because, you know, there's been a commodity hike and, you know, to get about 20% improvement involves you investing, and you can't afford to invest. You can't walk away from those choices.

You have to say, well, how fundamental was that to our brand? And if it's critical, we have to find ways of offsetting that somewhere else or okay, it's okay to rephrase that journey. I don't mean kick it into the long grass and say, oh, well, we said, we'll get there in three years. We're not going to get there in 23 years.

It's how do you do things in a way that's very different. And it might be you rephrase it over a, you know, 10% more time or whatever. But I think those trade offs are informed by what are your business imperatives and are you really behind your objectives, or are they just, you know, posters on the wall for people to follow? And if you're eally behind them, you'll find solutions because you will as an organisation, you'll make a trade off somewhere else because this is so fundamental to you. And I think understanding that framework, I think is critical, but also being prepared to direct it.

So, you know, if I'm running a supply chain and I'm sat with the finance, you know, leader and I'm saying, yeah, but if we do this, it's going to compromise our principles on what we're trying to drive in terms of a sustainable. Do we want to do that? No, we don't want to compromise those principles okay. This is going to cost me more. Right? How do we offset that cost?

I'm going to have to deliver productivity somewhere else. Or I'm going to have to find a different solution some. So it's being able to do that in an adult way and have the meaningful conversations around the functions and then make some choices. And sometimes they're going to be difficult choices. They're going to be, well, we're going to have to price differently, or that we're going to have to take a trade off in the quality of our product.

It doesn't affect the consumer, maybe, but we've took a quite a trade off because it maintains, you know, our sustainable sourcing. So I think it's about how you manage that in a, in a collaborative way. And setting some non-negotiables up as well, especially when it comes to its sourcing. It's those red lines, is it? We're not crossing that one that once you know that we're not going to change that. It's like health and safety.

You know, certain things you are just not going to accept. And it has to be the same. And in lots of ways, deciding what they are is difficult. Once you've decided them, it's actually quite easy because you just hold them, you know, the mirror to yourself and say, but we've decided this already. We're not going to cross that line. So now we have to figure out what we do as a consequence of not crossing our line. And it becomes quite easy. Then it forces you to face into the real problem rather than just find an excuse. 

AG: So it sounds like what's really important is getting that buy in to start with, aligning the stakeholders, around these non-negotiables, these red lines, its principles, and really getting your whole organisation to act in a really purpose-driven way. And that must be a challenge when that, alignment needs to go right up beyond CEO and right the way to, to the boards. How do you do that and what would your advice be to, to those who are maybe finding this challenging in their environments? 

PC: So I think, you know, if you're in a position where you're needing to discuss with your stakeholders, you have to have a very clear rationale why is this important to this business? And sometimes it could be important because of a perceived risk. You know, you're playing in an area where, you know, there's a there's a high profile in the media around, you know, the raw materials you're dealing with. And you may be managing that in the most ethical way possible, but you get caught in the crossfire of the problem because that's an area that you play in.

So you have to you have to figure out not just what you do, but how is it perceived as well. So it's no point convincing yourself that you're doing a wonderful job. You have to be able to convince other people. So deciding that with the key stakeholders is critical is what role does this play in the business.

And if you can't persuade people, it's very difficult then to still hang your hat on it because, you know, when push comes to shove, they're not going to expect you to follow that route. So you've got to find your way through it. And that often, you know, is a combination of different approaches. In some areas. 

It's about, you know, we talked about this already about getting the business to think about the long term. So if your business is fundamentally using the planet's resources in a way that the in a majority of cases, they're not renewable, then your business is not going to be here in ten, 15, 20 years time because those raw materials are going to be there for you.

So are you doing anything that's going to change that dynamic and being able to talk to your stakeholders about, well, if we don't do anything, you know, these facilities we've got in water scarce areas, there's going to be no water. So we have to we have to invest.

It's about business continuity. Now, it's not about a nice to do because in ten years time there's facility that cost us $250 million or whatever. It won't have its key raw material. So what do we need to do? So being able to make it a real, real time problem for people rather than just, a nice thing to do is the way to cut through, I think. And then when you start to talk about that, then you have to then make the decisions in a way that informs that. Now the challenge becomes when you think long term, and then the next decision you have to make next week is, am I going to spend, you know, 1 million pounds on this water recovery system?

It's like, well, no, I need to spend a million over here. Now. You have to make the decisions today, even if they're not going to impact you for 5 or 10 years. And that becomes much more challenging. But if you've had the discussion up front and you've had people align that this is your strategy, then it's much easier then to push those decision through.

AG: Excellent. Thank you. I'd like to shift the topic on now to talk about technology. As you might expect, I think we believe that tech has a has a big part to play, in supply chain and in responsible sourcing in particular. And as we're lucky enough to have, you know, on our advisory board, I'm kind of hoping that you agree with that. But digging into that then so digging into, technology, automation, digital tools, what is the Vo and what's the what's the real lever that they offer?

PC: I think it's it's multifaceted. I think you just touched on something there that's really important. If you if you look at automation as an example, You can you can address automation in a couple of ways. You can either automate the waste, take your existing systems and remove the people and automate all the processes. And it's it's using way too much energy. But hey, it doesn't matter because it's a it's not a big deal for us.

But if you actually optimise your processes first, whatever they are, and then automate what you're doing is driving a much more efficient system. So I think you have to take a system
view of this. And then when you're looking at automation, it drives massive benefits provided you can step back and use the data it provides you with, and then use the data to link together and make decisions that drive a much better outcome.

Because part of the challenges you face, particularly in fast moving businesses, is what feel like disconnected decisions because they're happening. So, you know, rapidly and remotely actually, once you start to automate, you're able to look real time at what's happening and make some judgments about what that means.

So it can drive a much more efficient supply chain, which benefits massively in terms of waste, energy, water, you name it, it's going to drive you significant benefits. So it plays a key role. The other area that that technology plays a role is, is it's much better able to analyse the data that you've got and give you maybe not the answer every time, but give you the opportunity
to ask some very different questions. And I think in a broader sense, I think what technology is driving, if it's used appropriately and, you know, you know, the whole emergence over the last 18 months, two years of AI and the role it plays, I think is fascinating.

But what it's doing is changing the roles of leaders. And I think it moves the leader from being, candidly old school, the smartest person in the room who has all the answers. Wrong model of leadership. But, you know, a well versed one in many organisations, but it changes it to being the person who knows the right questions to ask.

And it's not because I know the answer, it's because I know the questions that are important. And I think what data does and having that in a, in a very, very, you know, integrated ways, it means the questions that are really on your mind, you can get much, much better answers to.

And I think exploiting that to benefit your whole supply chain is a real opportunity. And it's an opportunity that really wasn't available to us in the past because everything was in little buckets. What, what, what we're seeing much more now is how you connect that into the ecosystem, and you can start to look much more holistically.

And the processing power then of the scenarios or the questions you want to ask becomes immeasurably better and gives you a much better view of what might be the outcome based on these variables. So I think you can progress things much more rapidly as a consequence. But if you simply just rely on it and see what's going to manage it all for you, I think there's going to be a, you know, a big wake up call for people. I think it's much more integrated than that.

AG: Thanks, Paul. Before we close, I just like to ask about the outlook and the future. So you must have seen so much change in your more than 20 years of experience in this area. And that must give you a pretty good directional feel for where things are headed and what's going to come next.

So what is your view on the future and in particular, what will set the leaders apart on in terms of responsibility and in terms of resilience?

PC: Yeah, I mean, this this question to me plays to the very heart of the role of a leader and how it informs you as a leader. And I think for me, it's less of a change. At a personal level, my desire would be it was much more prevalent throughout my career than it has been.

As I look forward, I think it becomes more essential in the way the leadership and it's about leaders have to. I think they have to be very clear on the values that drives the organisation or themselves. And, you know, being unrelenting on understanding, you know, what their values are and how they inform you and your team or your organisation. That's number one.

The second, then, is they have to have the maturity to recognise that it's not all about them. Now, that's a there's a conventional view of leadership. You have to be much more collaborative. But I think it's even more important when we look into the future. 

When you look at, you know, as I said, a little bit earlier, the leader will no longer be the smartest person in the computer's going to be much smarter and much more accessible. So they have to be much more, you know, humble in how they look at the challenges they face and much more open to input rather than just be focused on their own output.

I think that's a that's a second area. And then the third area is about empathy. I think in organisations, I think there's a very, very different view from employees. I think the employee of the future will be a different beast than they were when I was growing up.The needs, their personal desires, their aspirations will be very, very different as they were, you know, 30 years before I grew up. It evolves and I think, you know, a leader has to have empathy
with what is going on with the people in their organisation and the consumers, and understand what that means to the decisions that people make and how they operate and how they interact with the technology, with their colleagues, with the organisation.

And be really acutely aware of the impact and the role that a leader plays. I mean, I think this is a fantastic phrase. I get it gets used a lot, which is the shadow you cast as a leader. And I think most leaders are not unaware, but that they're aware they cast a shadow. But I don't think they're aware of how deep it flows. And it's often the case that it has a much bigger impact than they think. One of the things that that resonated with me, somebody talked to me about it many, many years ago. You know, as I move through my career, I spent a lot of time in factories and warehouses and distribution centers.

When you interact with people who are really doing the work, people on the front line, they're probably going to get 10s with you pull, you're going to walk up, shake hands, tell them who you are and ask them some questions. You better really make it count, Paul. You bet on you better really make it count for them because they're never going to see you again. Probably. And if they are, it might be in a year's time. So you need to have a really clear sense of what's important to them, what's important to you, and how you bring that together. And that requires you as a leader to be empathetic. You have to be very sensitive to that, aware of it, and be able to then do something with that information as well.

And that's a very soft skill in the general in the conventional sense. I think it's a hard skill. It's a hard skill to master so hard skills. But I think it's fundamental for leaders because that's how you bring people with you. And I think it's always been important. I think it gets even more important in the future because the world is going to be more and more uncertain.

I think that's the thing that the last ten years have taught me. It's a much more uncertain world than I ever expected it to be. And I don't think that's going to get any better. So therefore you need to understand that, help people deal with that in a very different way.

AG: Paul, thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom and insights with us today. Fascinating and inspiring as well for me and I'm sure for the rest of our audience as well. Thank you all for taking the time to watch or listen, to this session.

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