Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management podcast. Listen in as co-hosts Ted Stank and Tom Goldsby set sail into the world of end-to-end supply chain management, diving deep into today's most relevant business topics. They'll share insights in pressing industry issues and tackle the challenges keeping supply chain professionals up at night. If you're enjoying the ride, download and subscribe to Tennessee on Supply Chain Management on your favorite podcast platform now.

Speaker 2: 0:28

Hello and welcome to the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management podcast. I'm your co-host, Tom Goldsby, joined by my dear friend and colleague, Dr Ted Stank. Hey, Ted, how you doing?

Speaker 3: 0:38

Hey Thomas, Good, I'm doing well. I'm getting all my steps in. We're here at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville and this place is like bigger than downtown Knoxville, you know what's funny is you go to a conference like this, you get locked in here.

Speaker 2: 0:50

I remember when checking in on Saturday, a few days ago, I kind of took a look at the sun. There was no sun to be found, of course, because we've had torrential rains because of the tropical depression. I'm thinking I won't see the sun again for three, four days. But you're right, that's usually a sedentary lifestyle at a conference, but not when you're at the Gaylord.

Speaker 3: 1:08

No, no, no. And you know what Armageddon could have happened outside of? Us, we wouldn't know until we all left.

Speaker 2: 1:13

It very well could have. But yes, we are at the CSCMP EDGE conference. Ted and I have been on hand here for a few days because the academics converge here usually over the weekend. We have our academic research symposium, and Ted's been in front of the room on a number of occasions espousing big ideas and shaking the world up of academia, which we all need that, ted, you've been doing a great service this weekend. Thank you, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:37

I've done a lot. I went a little bit horse, mainly from the sessions, not entirely. A little social life was thrown in there.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Well, they seem to put us in these tiny rooms with 300 voices in there. And then, of course, what me and some of the other folks did, we headed to Broadway and tried to talk over the honky-tonks on Saturday night. So my voice is a little strained, but hey, talk about strain. There's a lot of strain on our supply chains. How's that for a transition?

Speaker 3: 2:03

So today, for those of you who are listening, today is September 30th 2024. A lot of things happening today. Midnight tonight, east and Gulf Coast port strike is imminent. The existing contract expires tonight at 1159. There have been no talks between the port workers and the port management, and so it's imminent that we're going to head into a strike which will have huge implications across the economy on various things that typically come into East Coast ports. At the same time, tom, you mentioned Hurricane Helene, which blew through Florida and up through Georgia and the Carolinas on Thursday and Friday, leaving massive destruction. Highways I-40 and I-26 through western North Carolina, both major thoroughfares for economic transport, are flooded and closed for who knows how long the foreseeable future. All roads through there, no side roads are open. Really, really terrible personal tragedy, but also big economic challenges. Gas, electricity, water are all lacking in that area, and so there's going to be some ripples through our economy from that as well. So there's a lot of things happening in the supply chain world.

Speaker 2: 3:11

No for sure. And again it's supply chain. We're kind of bearing the brunt of it, as we always do, and we've been fielding a number of media requests around the port work stoppage and I've been saying that's the worst kept secret in logistics. You know, for more than six months we've been looking toward this and I think it's kind of those East and Gulf port workers are saying now it's our turn.

Speaker 3: 3:33

Yeah and oh. By the way, hanging over all of this, over everything, over Opryland Nashville, is something that's going to happen November 5th, the federal presidential election. What's that? I haven't heard anything about that. Well, you've been locked inside of here. It's happening. You know, in other times perhaps the federal government would have gotten involved in this port workers issue. I don't think anybody wants to touch it because of fear of offending either the unions, if you go one way, or management, if you go the other way. So the federal government is staying out of it. There's so much uncertainty based on the results of that election that I don't think we're going to make a lot of progress in many things until after that election, and we know what the direction is of the federal government.

Speaker 2: 4:16

Yeah, no, I think so. I mean we'll see Again this time tomorrow there will probably be a work stoppage in progress.

Speaker 3: 4:27

And with each day there's going to be mounting pressure. I do think for intervention. I saw $5 billion in economic disruption per day with the port strike. Now how they got to that number I don't know, but it's big. It's that way, it's going to be big.

Speaker 3: 4:37

Yeah, and we are approaching the holiday season and ordinarily cargo is making its way to our shores and its way through distribution networks to retail shelves, and I do know that the season got advanced by virtue of again, loggies were aware of the very real propensity of the strike and also because supply chain people are used to pending disruptions and finding ways around it. A lot of product has been flowing through West Coast ports in advance and anticipation of the East and Gulf Coast ports.

Speaker 2: 5:08

Yeah, just as the East Coast ports picked up some market share right out of the West Coast disruptions of two and three years ago.

Speaker 3: 5:15

But that doesn't mean we're going to be immune economically. The oil refineries on the Gulf Coast, automotive on the East Coast, that's all things that are going to be Well and also that the East Coast ports and Gulf Coast to some extent are not just import ports.

Speaker 2: 5:30

We're talking about goods coming in, but the East Coast ports probably are a little more export-driven than what we see out West as well, given the manufacturing capacity. Here I mean the fact that BMW cars produced in Spartanburg, south Carolina, are going up and down the Audubon. So it is not just the goods coming in but also handicap access to those global markets.

Speaker 3: 5:52

Now to paint a little bit of a silver lining the Port of Baltimore. The channels in Baltimore are open as compared to a couple of months ago. Right, the Panama Canal has plenty of water these days.

Speaker 1: 6:02

Good point, so you can transit through the Panama.

Speaker 3: 6:04

Canal. So we're not totally a disaster, but still things are challenged.

Speaker 2: 6:08

And those Canadian ports are saying, hey, we're open for business up here.

Speaker 3: 6:12

Although not Montreal. Montreal is supposed to go on a three-day stretch. Oh, is that right? Okay, it's all about relationships, right it is?

Speaker 2: 6:18

And it occurs to me we've got a resident expert seated here between us that we should probably bring into the conversation. You want to do that, Ted.

Speaker 3: 6:25

Yeah, let's do that. A good friend of mine for many, many years, kate Fatasic, faculty member at University of Tennessee, working in our Graduate and Executive Education Center. I got to know Kate probably 21 years ago when she was really first developing this idea that has evolved into what we know today as vested outsourcing. At the time, working with Kate out of the Executive Education Center, she was doing some research that was really initially based in performance-based logistics and contracting with the military, but she's taken that idea to great heights. I think many, many people in our world are aware of the work that Kate has done, both theoretically, around this notion of win-win-win relationships. Early on, kate was showing pictures of that movie, a Beautiful Mind, and how some of John Nash's, the great economist, nobel Prize winning economist concepts could apply to this notion of relationships. And now Kate does a lot of work with industry across various different verticals, various different applications and contexts in the relationship world. Kate, welcome, so good to have you with us.

Speaker 4: 7:32

Well, thanks for having me. It's exciting to be here at CSCMP because we're up for a couple of innovation awards.

Speaker 2: 7:39

That's right.

Speaker 4: 7:40

And so that's super cool.

Speaker 2: 7:41

That's awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about the work and the awards that you're up for? But then I do, before we get too far away from it. I do want for you to weigh in on the news of the day as well, but let's first hear about those innovation awards that you're up for.

Speaker 4: 7:53

Well, as Ted, you mentioned, we've been researching and studying this concept of vested since 2003. It originally came and was birthed out of work around performance-based logistics contracts and the government said you know, why do some of these relationships work so well? Why is the GE Navy 404 engine maintenance contract in Jacksonville so successful and the other GE contracts in the Air Force don't? And that was a real gift for us as a curious person and academic. We could go in and start to look at why you know and ask those questions. And that birthed a series of research projects and questions that, in 2010, led to the book Vested Outsourcing Five Rules that Will Transform Outsourcing.

Speaker 4: 8:46

Getting a call from a procurement person in Intel and he goes I hear rumors, you're doing some applied game theory work in procurement and I am stuck, I'm losing and I need to change the game. And so today, intel has three vested deals, all very, very successful, and the more people are successful, the more they tell other people. This week, bp and Jones-Ling-Sol are one of our more recent case studies. We submitted an innovation award for their amazing results and we're up for an award on that, as well as a teaching innovation award.

Speaker 2: 9:16

Oh fantastic, that's fantastic. Yeah, well, we'll have to hear how the results turn out in that regard. But speaking of results and, like I said, the news of the day, I'd just be really curious. Ted and I were waxing philosophic about the East and Gulf Coast longshoremen strike, and you've got some experience, in fact, in working with governments and bringing labor and government together. What's your own perspective on what we're looking at and maybe what the longer view solution could be in those circumstances?

Speaker 4: 9:45

what we're looking at and maybe what the longer view solution could be in those circumstances. Yeah, well, I think we get here because everybody wants to win but they're not looking at the bigger picture. And so, as you mentioned, we have done some work with the Canadian government, especially in labor services. So the Canadian government you know, if you're a doctor you have no employer option except for to work for the government because it's government health care. So it really is a monopoly for the labor services to work with the government. But likewise the Canadian government only has one option. You know they're equivalent to a union for their doctors.

Speaker 4: 10:18

So Vancouver Island Health had a very tenuous relationship. Actually, we do a compatibility and trust assessment and they called the relationship toxic, bullying, distrustful, and think about that. That's what we say in the press. The United Auto Workers we're talking about flamethrowing same thing we have now with the port strikes and so they were stuck and they invited us in to see how can we get to a contract. Now, when you're in a government contract like that my husband's a firefighter they're not allowed to go on strike, and so the workers, the doctors, had to continue to work. They didn't have a choice, but they're locked in on both ways and so we put them in a room for three days. We call it an alignment workshop and seriously there was no alignment.

Speaker 4: 11:06

And we start with putting that elephant in the room about trust. What got you here? And it's relationships and this severe lack of trust. And what people realize is that trust, that's not an environment they want to be in and they project that. The reason why this environment is all your fault. It's all your fault Thomas, it's all your fault Ted. Then you start to see that it's everyone's fault. They've created this environment and so we simply go through the vested process. There's five rules, 10 contractual elements, and they collaboratively contract Instead of negotiating. They're using our methodology to collaboratively contract their contract and it takes about six months to go through a contract. But that's in a large strategic relationship. That's about how long it takes anyway, and even worse when you're in a tenuous relationship.

Speaker 4: 12:00

It goes on and we start to have strikes. But it is amazing the results. And so here they went from headlines in the news, like we have with the strike, to headlines in the news after the pandemic. You know, as pandemic persists. Island Health and the Hospitalist are innovating and we do a compatibility and trust assessment of that relationship and to this day, it is a very healthy relationship. So I'm going to give you some statistics, 2015,. We did the very first compatibility and trust assessment before that workshop. 84% of the adjectives people use to describe the relationship were negative In 18 months after going through the vested methodology. 85% were positive. After the pandemic, business happens right. We have disruptions. Eighty-nine percent are positive.

Speaker 2: 12:52

That's unbelievable.

Speaker 3: 12:54

And that's the real, true test of time, isn't it when you have real crisis situation and people still trust each other through it?

Speaker 4: 13:01

Exactly, and they actually got more trust because we teach them how to have these relationships. And that's what's missing is, everybody knows relationships are important, but they don't know how to create them or, when they're stuck, how to get out of it. And so what do we do? We hire negotiators, professional negotiations, and we're trying to double down on negotiation instead of doubling down on collaboration and building the relationship. And when you do that, when you follow the process, you get an amazing win-win contract.

Speaker 2: 13:31

So, Kate, does it just seem like your research and practice are largely psychological therapy?

Speaker 3: 13:38

Yeah, it did, it did sound a bit like couples therapy.

Speaker 4: 13:41

You know people do say that that sounds a bit like couples therapy. You know people do say that, but you're helping people unlearn these dogmas that it's us versus them. Or what's even harder is when people think they have a good relationship, oh, you're a strategic supplier. So I have a joke that a supplier said yeah, I hate to hear the word strategic supplier, it means open your checkbook.

Speaker 2: 14:03

Right Flattery will get you everywhere.

Speaker 3: 14:05

Hey, Kate, can you unpack a little bit for our listeners, just like Vested 101?

Speaker 4: 14:11

Yeah, so Vested is a formal relational contract. So if you're not familiar with that, I encourage people to just go online. It's an open access article from Harvard Business Review that we wrote with Oliver Hart, a Nobel Prize winning economist, and David Friedlinger, an amazing Swedish attorney, and so it is a formal relational contract. So we're bringing that relationship in front and center as we go through the contracting process. But the contract itself is about the relationship. So you're putting the relationship above the deal points, and that's important because business happens.

Speaker 4: 14:47

So when business happens, we have to go back to the relational constructs, which are very formal. The governance structures are very formal. We get out of economic alignment. Therefore we have to come back and make it fair. So instead of a price, you have a pricing model. Right, you do things differently. So it is a formal relational contract, but it's also based on outcome-based economics, outcome-based economics. So instead of I buy and sell, I give you a dollar, you give me a unit of service. Or, in the case of the ports, I give you how many dollars an hour and you give me an hour of time.

Speaker 4: 15:24

We're looking at the business outcomes Now. At the end of the day, you still have to pay for the transactions, but you're looking at total cost of ownership. It's highly transparent. So now we're looking at how do I optimize? And when you start to do work to optimize, it creates value. We're going to share that value. So think about with the ports. Right, we're bickering over how much per hour to pay these guys. And what if we actually worked and collaborated under a vested agreement to improve productivity and to bring in new technology? We create value, we share the value, but buyers don't want to share. Oh, I want you to create value, I want you to work faster and harder, but I get all the benefits and then the worker loses. It's the same thing with a supplier. We say win-win, we know intuitively we're supposed to do it, but then we turn around and write transactional contracts and so it's a system issue.

Speaker 3: 16:24

Yeah, so you've been doing this a long time. I don't know if you can talk about Intel and Jones Lang LaSalle.

Speaker 4: 16:30

Intel has three case studies and, by the way, their supplier, jones Lang LaSalle, actually won a huge award from Intel two years in a row. They've been working together for over 10 years. Flip that to Vested so you can go on the Intel website and just see Jones-Langisaw Supplier Award. We're working on a case study now about that case study.

Speaker 3: 16:53

So tell us some of the outcome economics benefits to both parties in some of your great Vested examples.

Speaker 4: 17:00

Yes. So BP. The results have been absolutely amazing and that case study is public, so it is on our website. We can download it. Anyone can read that. But they do it through innovation. So in the first year after flipping to a vested agreement they documented over 100 innovations. So things that are going to reduce your cost. Remember, in the last few years we're in a time of inflation They've had double digit year over year cost savings. Wow. So cost of the cost of the cost right? So now Jones-Lingasol is a partner with BP to reduce the cost structure. What innovative things can I do to be better, faster, cheaper, safer, more sustainable? What innovative things can I do to be better, faster, cheaper, safer, more sustainable? So they come up with these tiny innovation. You know could be a little worker who says, hey, here's an idea or it could be something big that you're going to invest in, but those innovations then drive performance and results. They create value that is shared between the two. So double digit cost savings, sustainability. So this is a big deal for a company like BP.

Speaker 4: 18:08

I don't know if many people know they're actually transitioning from an oil and gas company to an energy company, so they want to be out of the oil and gas business, so the transitions that they have to make around sustainability of just their own buildings is massive. So sustainability goals are being hit and exceeded Super cool.

Speaker 3: 18:28

So what are the benefits to Jones Langless out?

Speaker 4: 18:31

More money, contract extensions. So you're going to peg value that the supplier wants, usually incentive money. You save me money, you get a share, you get a contract extension. So a long-term contract with very robust incentives so that every time the supplier achieves goals they are rewarded.

Speaker 2: 18:55

Well, I love that dynamic nature and that's something we've talked about in the past. Right, I mean traditional contracts, very static and locked up somewhere, and it's the gospel until it's time for renewal and revisiting it. And then, what do you know? That's when the supplier then brings forward the innovation. They've had these ideas by virtue of observing the business and learning, but there's no benefit to the supplier. Absence some performance basis, as you indicate, to bring those good ideas forward until the buyer comes asking.

Speaker 3: 19:26

There's often a disincentive. Well, that's right, Because the buyer will then say oh, there's this great innovation that you came up with. Let's take this and market it to all your competitors and see who will give it to us cheaper. That's right.

Speaker 4: 19:36

Yeah, one of the tricks that we use for a contractual basis is called an earned evergreen contract. So an evergreen contract means it's going to renew. So if I have a five-year contract, I'm going to automatically renew that. So I'm not going to go out to bid. But then the downside is suppliers get lazy. Oh, I just automatically renew. So what we do is we create at the end of year one, the supplier can earn your six, and at the end of year two they can earn your seven. At the end of year three, they earn your eight. So it's in their best interest to hit it out of the park every year, year over year.

Speaker 2: 20:14

Keep bringing the good stuff.

Speaker 3: 20:15

Exactly Sounds like what innovative sports agents have done with coaching contracts. Right, you keep doing. Well, it's going to extend you a year, but so to that point I mean, I'm kind of half joking about that Are there outlet clauses? If either one of the parties wants to break this contract, what are the outlet clauses.

Speaker 4: 20:34

Yeah. So this is kind of controversial among the legal community. When they first hear about it they freak out because there's no termination for convenience. Because, because you're strategic, why could I just terminate you for convenience? So a typical contract will have, say, a 60, 90 day very generous would be a six month termination for convenience. But the supplier has investments. You want them to innovate, you want them to make investments, but they don't have enough ROI. And so by having that termination for convenience, that threat that we can just pull out, it actually squishes the supplier's willingness to innovate.

Speaker 4: 21:13

So we replace the termination for convenience with what we call termination for justified business reasons. So let's say the costs are no longer competitive. That would be a justified business reason. You know there's always termination for cause, that's, you know, bad supplier need to get out of it. So you replace that convenience clause with justified business reasons and the simple fact that suppliers can earn the right to make more money and earn the right for contract extensions. Earn the right to make more money and earn the right for contract extensions. They hit it out of the park and this is why these are so successful. So it's not real rocket science.

Speaker 4: 21:53

The problem is people don't know how to do it, and I think that's the benefit of our research. It's not just theory. It's teaching people how to do these things intuitively. They know they have a strategic supplier, they know their unions are important, but then they fall back into negotiating.

Speaker 3: 22:10

So there's a lot of cultural things that come into this and it's, you know, your perspective on trust and your perspective on what the timeframe is that you expect in ROI right, you and I've had some of these conversations around short-term perspective versus long-term. Have you noticed that this kind of thinking is more successful with some other cultures and not US and North American cultures? And how do we change that North American culture that if I do well next quarter, I really don't care that it's going to do good for me in two years?

Speaker 4: 22:42

Yeah, actually it's staggering the majority of the students who come through our program are actually not from the United States.

Speaker 3: 22:50

Is that right? So you do see that it is.

Speaker 4: 22:53

It's amazing, and so, if you look at the different countries that they come from, I have the most graduates from the Nordics.

Speaker 4: 22:59

So, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland. You know, when we go over and I've taught our open enrollment class as pre-COVID I would go over every year and teach in Stockholm. I've gone over to Denmark and taught our open enrollment class and people go that's how I was supposed to do that. Ah, thank you, I knew it and I was like stuck. And then you teach to North America, the US in particular, and we go yeah, that's different.

Speaker 2: 23:29

Right right.

Speaker 4: 23:30

Wow, that's a paradigm shift and it's just because we're taught, and you think about, from the time we're little kids, we're taught to go win. We laughed about this, but the Alabama-Georgia football game, you know, their star player had kill everybody on his nose Right, right, right you know, that's the mentality that we're taught.

Speaker 3: 23:51

You drive around any city in the United States on a Saturday morning in the fall and the spring and there's anywhere from four-year-olds up to high schoolers playing soccer. And we always say that at the four-year-old level we don't keep score. All those kids know the score and if they don't, their red-faced screaming parents on the sidelines know the score and are screaming it at their kids. And that's that culture. We have A win, win, win.

Speaker 2: 24:14

And now half of them will have to kill everybody. Face paint on running up and down that field. You know.

Speaker 4: 24:18

But to talk about football, because you know I do love football and I make a joke, you know. I say oh, oh, you're from Tennessee, oh, you know. And I say I love everybody in the SEC, except on one day a year. If it's, we're playing Alabama that one day. But I'm going to respectfully compete with you. You know, not try to kill everybody.

Speaker 3: 24:41

Right yeah, Because you know the cliche of a rising lake floats all boats.

Speaker 4: 24:45

Right yeah, and I want to play on that because people intuitively get you know, win, win. But a great vested relationship is also a lose-lose. So if you only want to share when you're winning and you don't want to share when you go down, and this is what causes people to be like, oh, I don't want to lose, but you have to, and this is where we get the word vested from. I have a vested interest in your success and you have a vested interest in my success. We win together and we lose together. Business happens and we're in it through the thick and the thin.

Speaker 3: 25:20

I'll tell you, during the early days of COVID, I had the opportunity of sitting in on some war rooms, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry, when borders were closed, we couldn't distribute products internationally, and some of the conversations that were going on between the big pharma manufacturers and their third-party providers, some of the stuff that was happening because everybody recognized we were in a crisis. This was a crisis that impacted humankind. What they were doing for each other to help out in this situation so distributors that they didn't have a contract with in a certain country, but that distributor had capacity, they were saying we'll take that load and we'll fly it into this country for you, even though we don't have contract there. The kind of let's break down the formal rules and let's all join together to do what we can to make this happen was really cool to see.

Speaker 4: 26:09

Yeah, hbr actually came back to us during the pandemic as a follow-up and said hey, how have these vested relationships fared during the pandemic? So you know, when it was easy business, easy times, that they do well. And actually they did way better. And it's because, again, we have a vested interest in each other's success and so when you double down with those suppliers, they will double down with you. But you have to craft that deal right. You can't just say strategic supplier and oh, I'm sorry I have a termination for convenience, or you know, hey, you're a strategic supplier. What I'm really saying is what kind of volume rebate can you give me?

Speaker 3: 26:50

I mean, just even think about the word convenience. You're strategic to me, I'm invested in you, tom oh, but it's inconvenient right now, so you're out of here I've been with Kate, by the way, when she's done presentations.

Speaker 3: 27:06

Close your eyes and think of the stereotypical senior procurement manager. This is stereotypical, but I can do this because I am an old white boomer male. This is stereotypical, but I can do this because I am an old white boomer male. This was an old white boomer male challenging you in front of the whole room about oh this is, you know, such Pollyanna. Nobody can do that. We're all about reducing cost and the only way for me to win is to make my supplier pay, and it was great to see how you diffuse that. And you know I mean the proof is in the pudding and the vested opportunities you've been able to bring to success.

Speaker 2: 27:37

Well, kate, I'd be interested because traditionally we've seen that cost containment, cost down expectations, and you say vested can present those opportunities right when you work collaborative and you ask what's in it for we as opposed to what's in it for me. But it does seem to fly in the face a little bit of this notion of redundancies that we need in everything, whether it's facilities, inventory and, yes, suppliers. And vested means doubling down on relationships, achieving maybe greater dependence in relationships, greater dependence in relationships. So how are you countering that discussion or addressing that debate that we're having right now about resilience and the need to have a broader portfolio of options in the market?

Speaker 4: 28:23

Yeah. So that's a fantastic question, and I would put the resiliency elephant straight in the room, and so you can partner with your supplier to have a resilient supply chain. There's lots of ways you can build resiliency without having multiple suppliers. So I used to be a supplier, I used to work for Microsoft and then I worked for Microsoft's largest supplier, and so we would build this resiliency in by having multiple plants within the supplier. So how can I still cover you right? And so, using data technology, doing things together, I would submit that collaboratively you can build a better resilient supply chain versus having a bunch of transactional suppliers.

Speaker 2: 29:08

That sounds like smart resilience as opposed to dumb resilience right, I mean just simply throwing more resource at the problem might be the way to get to that dumb resilience. It's a knee-jerk reaction. You're saying fight that temptation.

Speaker 4: 29:20

Yeah and so remember, in a vested agreement we have outcomes. Put the outcome front and center, so the supplier is rewarded for improving their resiliency.

Speaker 2: 29:29

With accountability toward it.

Speaker 4: 29:30

Exactly. It's in their best interest to be resilient, because if they go down, you go down. So P&G is one of our case studies. They're in the book Vested how P&G, mcdonald's and Microsoft are Redefining Winning in Business Relationships and they have three critical success outcomes that they look for, and one of them is never, ever, ever let the lights go out. Right, and I have seen Jones Langa Saul do a presentation and they have this picture and this is the only building that has lights when the power was out, because it's in their best interest.

Speaker 3: 30:03

So, quite literally, never let the lights go out, never let the lights go out.

Speaker 4: 30:06

So who's going to get the best from Jones Langa Saul? The P&G account right, or the Intel or the BP account? Because the buyer has doubled down and they're going to double down. So if resiliency is important, which I agree, it should be put it as an outcome.

Speaker 2: 30:22

Well, Kate, I always feel one smarter and more resilient when we're together after a conversation, but I also always feel like we're just scratching the surface on these complex issues.

Speaker 3: 30:31

I know we could trap Kate in this corner of Opryland, I think, for the next eight hours and just keep going, because you know there are so many layers to this and you are the expert at every layer and I think you're right. I think most of us can hear this and conceptually say that just makes such sense, but we don't know how to go about it and make it happen. And that's where God is in the details, right?

Speaker 4: 30:53

Well, and with that I want to pitch in back to the news about this strike.

Speaker 2: 30:57

Please.

Speaker 4: 30:58

We have our executive education courses coming up, both our vested and collaborative contracting course. Open enrollment starts the week of October 28th and runs the whole week. I am personally offering a free scholarship for the ports and the management to send a group to our class in Knoxville to start to think differently.

Speaker 3: 31:20

Wow, I hope everybody's hearing that out there.

Speaker 2: 31:23

Fantastic. We'll make the space available to make that happen.

Speaker 3: 31:26

That's absolutely. That's great. I would love to see that, kate. We should get lots of media coverage for that, if you could pull it off.

Speaker 4: 31:33

I definitely hope they take me up on it, because they're stuck and I mean you go back to. Island Health. People just need to find out how a new way, a third way and negotiating harder is not going to get you there.

Speaker 3: 31:47

So I really do think you need a new title organizational marriage counselor, therapist, whatever. All right, tom. By the way, this is a bonus podcast. We finished our second season back in August. This is a bonus podcast that we're bringing to you. We had the chance to be at CSCMP with Kate and we just wanted to be able to get her on here as a guest. We will start with our season three podcast coming in late October.

Speaker 2: 32:15

More to look forward to. But hey, kate, thank you so much for joining us today, carving out a little bit of time in this busy schedule. Best wishes on those innovation awards, and we'll be crossing our fingers, but we know that you put forward a great foot. Thank you so much for all you do for the University of Tennessee. It's amazing. I've been traveling quite a bit. I was in DC a few weeks ago and I had the chief economic advisor say do you know Kate Vitasic?

Speaker 2: 32:39

I said well, she's a member of our faculty. Of course I know Kate and I said she's always going to stand out donning that orange, you know. So thank you so much for all you do for us on Rocky Top and taking us out into the world.

Speaker 4: 32:50

Well, awesome and, as I say, change the world. One deal, one relationship at a time.

Speaker 2: 32:55

There you go. Thanks so much, hey. We'll wrap it up and again look forward for more from us at the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management podcast coming up real soon as we start that third season. We'll close out today, Again, bidding you adieu from the Gaylord Opryland Resort, Nashville, Tennessee. You can reach us anytime at gsci at utkedu.

Speaker 1: 33:16

Thanks for tuning in to Tennessee on Supply Chain Management. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe today on your favorite listening platform to get all of our episodes as soon as they drop, and don't forget to take a moment to leave us a rating. Have any questions, thoughts or feedback? We'd love to hear from our listeners. Email us at gsci at utkedu. Join us next time as we continue pulling back the curtain on the world of supply chain, educating and entertaining you along the way. Until then, listeners.