Intro & Outro: 0:00

Welcome to Tennessee on Supply Chain Management, where we unpack the drivers shaping today's global supply chains. From innovative ideas to real-world solutions, each episode brings you insights from the leaders charting the course for our discipline. Now here are your hosts.

Ted Stank: 0:18

Well, hey everybody. My name's Ted Stank, co-executive director of the Global Supply Chain Institute and co-host of the Tennessee on Supply Chain Podcast, here with my longtime co-collaborator, Tom Goldsby. Tom, hey.

Tom Goldsby: 0:32

Good afternoon, all. Yeah, we're coming to you live from the fall supply chain forum here in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. You know, I think for the podcast listeners that'll hear this a little later, you need to understand just the vastness of what's in front of us here, right? I mean, we've got a room full here in the Marriott ballroom. I wanted to get the wave going, maybe right before this session, but I I restrained myself.

Ted Stank: 0:57

Did you all know that this used to be the east wing of the Marriott? And we tore it down and put a bow.

Tom Goldsby: 1:05

Hear the groans. Audible groans from the audience, but no bold.

unknown: 1:10

There's not.

Ted Stank: 1:11

There's not. Hey, who's this seated in between us? So I'd like everybody to welcome my good friend, retired Navy Rear Admiral Kevin Sweeney. I'm going to tell you a little bit about the roles that Kevin has played over the course of his career, and it's incredibly impressive. But more impressive than that is that he and I have been friends for 47 years, met each other when we were 18-year-olds as plebes at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Kevin Sweeney: 1:34

That was 1978, if you can't. I'm doing the math on that. So yeah.

Ted Stank: 1:39

1978. By the way, in this vast room, we have another classmate of ours, class of 1982, Steve Klemensik. Where are you, Steve? Steve. So there's three 1982 U.S. Naval Academy graduates in the room. So Kevin is joining us today. Kevin brings us uh an incredible background. He's led teams in some of the toughest situations imaginable. He was commanding officer of the USS Cole after it was hit by a missile in the Persian Gulf. So he became commanding officer as it was coming back from the Gulf and going through reconstruction. I remember talking to him when he was CO, it was a pretty amazing time. He also has the greatest title that I've ever heard. And I'm going to change it a little bit because I think it makes it even cooler. I remember when he got this, I went to his change of command ceremony. He became commander of Carrier Strike Group 10. So it meant that he was commander of a carrier battle group and all the associated ships that went with it. I want to call it Carrier Strike Force because that kind of sounds like Star Wars to me. It was like, what was that Admiral's name that had the head of a fish? No, I've never seen it. In Star Wars. Anybody remember that guy's name? Anyway, I'm kidding around too much. He went on after that, after his retirement for the Navy, to serve as chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense James Mattis in the first Trump administration. So Kevin spent two years very close to the pulse of what was happening in the White House. I think you told me the other day that you probably went to the briefings in the in the Oval Office daily. Since then, he's advised major private sector organizations on national security and supply chain risk. He's on a number of different boards, including the Airbus U.S. Space and Defense Board of Directors. So, Kev, great to have you with us.

Kevin Sweeney: 3:29

Thanks, Ted. Great to see you. Tom, good to meet you. Thank you so much.

Tom Goldsby: 3:33

I have to say, if you're reading the program, I was going to sit this one out. And last night during the reception, you know, we had some good conversation on that. And then we took it to Trivia, where we continued our winning streak thanks to Kevin's help. This guy knows world geography, as you can imagine, right? But uh you invited me to join. Thank you very much for being part of the conversation. And I'm like, okay, I'm not a military guy. I think I shared with you that I I came within a signature of going to Navy OCS. The recruiter actually completed the application. He's like, all you gotta do is sign. But the idea of sailing under the polar ice caps for six months at a time on a sub just didn't really appeal to me. But I'm wearing my Navy jacket and some Navy shoes uh today, navy belts. I think I'm gonna try to fit in with you guys, try to hang with it. Navy lost in football last weekend, so we're not too old. Okay, we'll try not to dwell on that. But again, just tremendous experience, and boy, we need it right now in the world of supply chain management, just to try to make sense of it. Are we gonna see the other side of this? We are. Okay, that's a good place to start, perhaps. How do we get there, maybe, is where we want to take the conversation.

Kevin Sweeney: 4:41

So, first of all, I'm thrilled to be here and thrilled to be in an environment associated with a university. Great vibe in a room yesterday, last night you kicked off, and then today as well. Uh I sat in a couple of the other presenters, it was excellent. A couple of comments first for me. Uh, I looked around this audience. I suspect we have a number of veterans in the audience, folks associated with veterans. Let's see, show of hands. Yeah, I mean, it's a big deal. And uh next week is Veterans Day, actually. It's not about sales at a furniture store, it's about celebrating veterans and their families. So uh hats off and thank you for your service as well. Um a quick background for me, as Ted said, both Naval Academy grads, I never intended to get around the Navy past my five-year commitment. Back in the 80s, I will be honest, it probably wasn't a lot of fun to be on ships in the Navy. And uh my intent was to get out and uh in '89 and go ahead to uh grad school. I actually started applying MBA programs. UBA. Yeah. UBA. And then I ended up working with some great folks who said, hey, you know, the Navy's got a grad school out in Monterey. You go get a degree in finance and move on. I did. And uh ended up going out to California for a couple years, and I've said, yeah, I'm 10 years in, I'm probably gonna get out again. And then all of a sudden, you know, you just end up working with fabulous people, great opportunities. So I stuck around. And then, you know, for a surfer ship guy like myself, and Ted was early on in his career when he was in the Navy, the peak of your career, you you strive about 18, 20 years, and if you're lucky, you've done okay, you get selected to be a captain of a uh destroyer. And I was I was slated to take command of USS Coal, DDG67, homeported out of uh Norfolk, Virginia. And I was wrapping up October of 2000, 25 years ago. I'll bring that up again in a second. Wrapping up my training, I was supposed to head overseas and take command of the ship on deployment in Bahrain, about halfway through a deployment to the Middle East. 25 years ago, three weeks ago, we had our remembrance ceremony for coal October 12th. They'd been attacked. We lost 17 sailors, another 29 severely injured. Uh, coal came back 18 months later, rebuilt. Uh so I went from having command of coal, supposedly in the middle of the Middle East, kind of a combat environment. Never know what's going to happen operationally. The ship did get attacked. It was in Yemen Harbor, refueling when it was attacked. And my entire experience was not what I expect as a captain of a ship. For the next 22 months, I was a captain of a ship that was being rebuilt in Mississippi where it was originally built. The crew was removed, and the crew was up in Norfolk, Virginia, and then over time we start reassigning the crew over time, over time, over time. And then boom, what happens next? 11 months later, 9-11 happens. And then we sort of accelerated in the Navy to bring a crew, a new crew back together. And we left 18 months later, returned back to Norfolk, Virginia, started the basic cycle of training and readiness for a ship. Back in those days, a DDG cost about a billion dollars, and we rebuilt the ship at about a cost of 245 million in 18 months. Uh it was incredible. So again, I mentioned the remembrance ceremony. 25 years later, seeing the families, uh, former crew members. You know, it's just so moving. And it's amazing the impact that an event like that happens on those families, but the impact it had greater on the Navy at large, and quite frankly, the country, because it wasn't realized until really September 11th that we were under attack in a kind of a terrorist environment that those wars carried on for another 20 years. But again, as a sea over ship where you're prepared for war and being overseas to now interacting every day of a ship being rebuilt in a shipyard. For me personally, as the captain, they don't train you for that. They don't train you for how to sort of try to one put a ship back together, two, interact with your crew that just went through the most horrific and traumatic event of their lives and losing 17 shipmates. And then, as it turns out, for me, I think it was roughly 31 separate family units associated with those 17 sailors. And as you get the note of families, every individual in the family units certainly dealt with the pain of losing their sailor differently. And it was just, you know, for me, again, as a young 41-year-old CEO, there's just no, there was no playbook. And it's tough. I mean, and it was so rewarding, demanding in a sense. A great learning experience, the highest honor of my career, quite frankly, obviously, being the skipper to Cole after the attack and rebuilding and bringing the ship back. And when we did leave, at about a crew of 300, I think we end up having about 29 original crew members on board when we sailed back to Norfolk. By the way, the ship today is at sea. It's operating. It has deployed, I think, four times in those 20-some years, back into the Middle East as well, and doing great. And the ship was in port three weeks ago when we had remembrance ceremony for the crew. So it was it was impressive as heck.

Ted Stank: 9:42

Kev, what leadership lessons did you take away from that? You said there's no playbook, right?

Kevin Sweeney: 9:46

No, that's that's fabulous. You know, military, in business, you know, you hear things called black swan events, you just can't plan or prepare. And actually you can't, except you have to be, I guess, you position yourself where if something does happen that's different, you're not formally schooled on. Okay, how do you deal with it? And for you know, me as a CEO, as I said, one, the ship is down in Mississippi, we're in Norfolk, the crew's in Norfolk. Over time, there's no plan when the ship was going to be completed. 9-11 happens, it's an accelerant for the call itself in a good way. I was never prepared to deal with now, you know, national, international media, again, interacting with the family members over time. Some wanted nothing to do with the calls, some felt very attached to the coal, but every unit really did deal with it differently. And a completely different focus. Um, you're rebuilding a new crew and you're bringing the ship out, you're worried about safety job, number one, and two, long-term, turning the ship over to the next captain who ultimately did deploy after I after I left. It was incredibly also impactful for my family. Nothing is easy, and and it does impact families. That's why I mentioned, you know, for the vets in here, it's not just the veterans, it's the families. But every day was a learning experience. Every day it was something different for me professionally as the CEO. And every day you just had to kind of keep focused and have a vision of where we're getting. The coal was there to come out at a certain date. We're gonna be ready to go back to sea. Uh, we have to operate safely, we have to get back up to Norfolk. It was a big deal for big Navy as well as the families and the crew of coal itself. And today, 25 years later, it's it's the same attitude on a ship was fabulous. I visited a captain on board, and the attitude is there, the history is there, the commitment's there, and it's just a great feeling.

Ted Stank: 11:32

You know, one of the things I've observed, I've certainly never been through adversity like that, right? But one of the things I've observed over time, and I think most of you that live through COVID in your organizations and in society in general, I think adversity like that tends to bring out the best in people. You know, when we all realize that there are really high stakes involved here, everybody just kind of rolls up their sleeves and goes to work and does things. I I've seen your companies do amazing things in the spring of 2020, summer of 2020 that your organization was never prepared to do before. And I bet you saw that in the world. We did.

Kevin Sweeney: 12:08

One, obviously, with the crew and the entire support structure actually had the Navy as well. You know, the Navy was dealing with this as well as you know, Commander Sweeney's the captain of the ship and the crew. I will also say, and it just does tie into supply chain, and the uh the ship was built Ingalls Pascagoul. At the time was part of North O'Grum, and today it's part of Huntington Ingalls. They did a fabulous job. I mean, the commitment out of the organization, the commitment out of the workforce, the dedication of the community around us down there in Pascagoul was fabulous. And really a key to why we came out on time and quite frankly, better shape than when the ship went in, you know, as an operating destroyer.

Ted Stank: 12:46

Yeah. Well, let's shift gears a little bit. Times are different now, right? We've passed 9-11 and COVID's over, and business today is pretty mundane and boring, and there's not a lot of disruption going on. Kev, you you have been at the heartbeat of national security policy, national defense policy. What is your take on the geopolitical landscape today, particularly vis-a-vis how it impacts supply chain? You're still living that.

Kevin Sweeney: 13:13

We are. I am on three corporate boards, an industry association aboard for microelectronics advisor to McKinsey's airspace defense folks. So every day I am involved with certainly aerospace defense companies and a few other things. I would say right now it is a time of change, and you all see that. And it's maybe the catalyst in the U.S., of course, is a new administration. It's uh November now. And how we are, and this administration is taking this country, whether it's tariffs and trade policies, whether it's national security focus, we are no kidding, focusing now on the borders here, if you will. We're focusing on the homeland. Back in 2017, the first Trump administration while we were in the Pentagon, the big shift was leaving essentially the global war on terror and focusing on what we called really major competition of China and Russia, a focus on Asia Pacific from a security perspective, and a transition of shift, huge increase in the budgets for the military, a focus on readiness, a lot of atrophied over time. Now you fast forward, uh new administration with the Biden team in the middle here. There's a refocus on homeland security, uh, the borders, South America, and the challenges are unique. And if you're an industry, and my perspective from being a board member is there's a lot of unknowns right now. Uh the impact of the tariff issue, quite frankly, we've been pretty pleased across the board as far as costing and the impact of what we've been doing to date. We don't know how it's going to carry moving forward. The impact of the budget, the U.S. budget, here we are, day 36. New record, by the way. Yeah. Uh of a budget uh problem and a government shutdown and the impacts it has every day, not just to the military, which the focus in, but it's to everybody in the federal government. Uh, whether you're furloughed, you're worried about being furloughed, you're not being paid, the impact to your family, your impact to planning, but it also impacts industry. Everybody's in, at least what we see strategically, it's a pause. I think Friday, the Secretary of War, Pete Hexelf is going to be meeting with key industry leaders and kind of roll out some massive changes to federal acquisition, you know, for defense and the Department of War. We'll see how that plays out. At the same time, the competition doesn't stop overseas. And the supply chain concerns that we have, particularly, I'll tell you one at Airbus and others, we're all competing. We're building satellites right now, we're competing with many companies for the same limited assets available in the supply chain. And we're also focusing on what we call a shored supply chain because we can't have anything fail when it's up in space or elsewhere long term. Uh I would just say, and concurrently, what's happening in Europe, all right? There's stress on the EU, there's stress on NATO, we have two wars going on, Ukraine, Russia, you got a war down. You know, still, yeah, we may be in a pause right now. We'll see how it plays out. Israel, Hamas. That is all impacting kind of where does the defense industry at least what's going on? You know, munition demand going way up. We know that's happening. Uh, there's a focus on shipbuilding out of the president and the signed back in April. Where is that gonna take us long term? And really, what's gonna happen with the budget in the next two years?

Ted Stank: 16:25

So, where do you see? Do you have a crystal ball you can kind of tell us? I mean, obviously not specifically, but over the next couple of years. That's a great question.

Kevin Sweeney: 16:32

I do see this. We learned a few things at the two current wars, particularly Ukraine-Russia war here. All the modeling we had in the military for years about consumption of weapons has changed. We realize and appreciate that the the usage of weapons in today's uh environment uh is gonna go like this. Uh you see what's happening at sea with the Navy in particular in the Red Sea. We're shooting down drones with multi-million dollar missiles, because that's what we have right now. So the cost equation is out of whack, but also the quantities and an inventory is out of whack. And so there will be a continuous focus on one, building up munitions, two, a focus on new technology, hypersonics, autonomy, you know, really taking it beyond just drones, but obviously at sea, underwater, and the larger drones that we call basically collaborative combat air that will start coordinating, operating with manned jets as well. So I the demands are not going to weigh because the threat is not going away. That's not a good news story, but it's a fact.

Ted Stank: 17:31

Talk about that. Talk about, again, we all live in this global world, we all have suppliers that are all over the globe. What do you see coming down the pipe geopolitically? Is there going to be any stabilization out of Europe?

Kevin Sweeney: 17:42

You know, I think Europe, I do think, is waking up to the fact that they are gonna be much more responsible for their own national security. Uh NATO is still there. NATO has been a blanket, but it really has been a blanket that the the U.S. has kind of paid the bill for for many, many years. And the focus on NATO that the Trump administration has done the first go-around, the second go-around, isn't new, as a matter of fact. I mean, we've been talking about it for many, many, many years, but really had been little action to kind of uh be the catalyst for investment out of the NATO countries, throw in the EU what is happening in Europe now. They realize that they have to step up financially. And that means a big shift in their budgets. And then on the other side, in Asia Pacific, every day that goes by, and and I sat in here this morning to listen to Mitch, I'll make a comment, uh build off of something he commented about. But the Chinese, every day, every day, they are just growing regionally, regionally, and then ultimately their goal, and it's no surprise, this is nothing hidden, is to ultimately be a global power and have a the global system sort of underneath their standards and their rules. And I think a little bit of what we're doing in South America is actually tied to that right now as well. So the stresses are there. The question is, are we committed? Are we positioned one from the supply chain, two from things like rare earth minerals? That's a piece of the supply chain. There is a focus of that right now. But also just the manufacturing capacity here in the US. I look at it from uh you know microelectronics, electronics perspective that I'm involved in, and we just don't have the capacity, nor do we have the ability to turn around very, very quickly and to build out if something goes wrong in Asia Pacific or elsewhere for that matter.

Tom Goldsby: 19:21

And so, what is your thought then in terms of building those capabilities? I was hoping you all might distinguish ships versus boats for me, but let's talk about ships that you all use. Do we absolutely have to have that shipbuilding capacity here? Do we need to be able to build these vital pieces of equipment?

Kevin Sweeney: 19:37

Well, I think it's twofold on shipbuilding. It's both kind of commercial side as well as the military side. It has completely atrophied, as you know. I mean, essentially the shipbuilding commercial side of the U.S. is focused on essentially offshore coastal vessels going out to support, you know, local trade movement, going out to support oil rigs, uh, offshore wind support, things like that, barges up and down the Mississippi, you name it. And we have just over the years commercial large ships built overseas. We do a few here. Jones Act is a piece of that. I don't think we want to get into Jones Act, but but on the military side, we also need to expand capacity, which again, you can't do this overnight. And if you see the thrust is to encourage outside investing, we have South Koreans right now investing in a Philadelphia shipyard. We have commitments uh from other shipbuilding companies around the world. We just, I think, made an agreement with a Finnish company uh to build four new icebreakers for the Coast Guard. Building out that capacity takes years and years and years, and it takes a lot of capex, quite frankly. And so I think the administration also looking for third-party private equity investment, co-investment, if you will, into our needs here in the U.S. is pretty significant. Yeah.

Tom Goldsby: 20:51

So I'm curious, you serve on some boards, advisory capacity. Given your vast experience, given your perspective, I'm curious what do those boards, what do those corporate leaders look to you uh to provide uh consent and advice?

Kevin Sweeney: 21:08

No, I think uh particularly being in the airspace and defense industry, having people I always look at it from a corporate board perspective as well as from the C-suite, you want to have complementary experiences and expertise. And I think what folks like I bring, at least to a corporate board in particular, is the expertise of experience. Kind of you were, I was an end user of many of the products that are being built, if you will, and being consumed, if you will. So that's one piece. Two, you understand how the government works, you understand how the federal government acquisition process works, you understand what we call the interagency, and of course, we all have great relationships, you know, inside the government, outside of government. So I think there's a broad gap that we help fill, quite frankly. And of course, you have the same absolutely fiduciary responsibility as any other board member, but we also bring leadership, we bring just a different set of experiences and background that folks who come up through on the commercial side just don't have. Yeah. At a senior level at least.

Ted Stank: 22:06

Hey Kev, let's talk about China for a while. Tom and I follow this futurist named Peter Zion. Uh, I think you know, we talked about StratFour before, right? Peter Zion came out of that StratFour family. And he's been saying for years that in the not too distant future, China is gonna spin apart mainly because of their demographic situation, population shrinking at a dramatic rate. You don't see that a lot in policy. I mean, I think that most of our policy initiatives look at China continuing to be this power, this global competitor, if you will, strategically. Do you give any credence to the notion that China is gonna have to confront in the very near future this demographic crisis and might spin apart and what would happen if?

Kevin Sweeney: 22:49

Yeah. Uh I give little credence, except maybe from a temporal perspective. Short-term versus long term, in sort of our society, our perspective, I think is a lot different than in certainly the culture of China. Uh they are taking a very, very, very long view. They're patient yet persistent, if you will. I look at what happened uh and is happening today still in Hong Kong. The focus on Taiwan is real. It's only a matter of time. And I don't think it has to be or will be necessarily kinetic. I think the last thing they want to do is destroy the uh, you know, an economy that they want. 26 million plus you know, ethnic Chinese that are in Taiwan. It is a democracy. I think here in this country, unfortunately, there's a lack of knowledge right now. Isn't it democracy? Why would we get involved to the point of military action, say, lose soldiers or ailmen or sailors, have a aircraft shot out of the sky, potential ship speeds. I mean, how do you connect the dots to the American public right now is a concern there as well. But I think uh when you are a communist society and you're controlled by the Communist Party, they have many advantages that we do not have in this country as a democratic society. Everything from the free press to freedom of choice. Their industry is supplemented two ways, right? It's one by the government, two, uh, they're pretty damn good at stealing you know intellectual property from the rest of the world. You know, they don't have to invest uh in technology. You know, Mesh made a comment this morning about the advantage uh that we have in in technology is key if we do end up having some kind of uh conflict with the Chinese. It's that, because we're not going to outbuild them right now, but more importantly, quite frankly, is the fact that they don't have the experiences that we have operationally. Our military, their experience, they can build aircraft carriers today that replicate us. They're building uh the capabilities to operate like we do, but they don't have a hundred years of operating off an aircraft carrier around the world. They don't have those experiences, and you can't steal that. You can't replicate that by stealing intellectual property. But over time they will continue to get better, but they're not word tested. And it's a regime in a sense that subordinates and loan they don't empower anybody to make decisions. Everything is central control, just like the Russian, quite frankly. A different model, but but the same concept. The key to our success and Western militaries in general is we empower everyone in the chain of command, if you will, to make decisions and do what's right. The quality of our training is world class. That's where they still lack. But I think the timeline is we just have a different view, I think, than their culture.

Ted Stank: 25:23

That's a really interesting point. Our perspective is uh think about how our public corporations run, right? Every quarter is what you know, quarterly, quarterly earnings, etc. Yeah, interesting point. Great point here, by the way. Since we are doing this podcast live, we are open to QA. Keeps coming up with the uh with the barcode up there if you want to capture that and put questions. We've got a couple of good questions here. Any chance we could touch on the Belt and Road initiative?

Kevin Sweeney: 25:48

We can. I mean, uh hopefully most people know what it is, broadly speaking. We've been dealing with the Chinese presence around the world for years, and this is the their sort of their trade initiative to build relationships with countries around the world. Essentially, in many areas they they'll bring money, but really what they do is they'll bring a little money, they'll bring a Chinese workforce, and they'll update or rebuild a port or a facility, and then ultimately they take control of it and they'll build out bases and things like this. You know, third world countries mostly who quite frankly need a boost uh economically. In some ways, it's not brilliant, but it makes sense. How do you spread your influence around the world? Well, when you have the sort of the economic keys, it's very, very helpful.

Ted Stank: 26:29

Some countries have pushed back on it pretty much. They have, because at the end of the day, there's no real way.

Kevin Sweeney: 26:34

There's no jobs, there's debt, and basically you're turning over assets to the Chinese government at the end of the day. Correct. Yeah. But they're out there, whether it's in Africa, South America, in Asia, it's there.

Ted Stank: 26:45

I'm gonna paraphrase this next question a little bit. It's about the amount of money we spend on defense, and can we shift that to manufacturing? I'm gonna talk about the potential for a national industrial policy, particularly for industries that are critical to national defense.

Kevin Sweeney: 27:00

There's a huge focus, and it started really, I would say, again, back in 2017 in a good way, only industrial base. It has dithered away, whether it's building ships, aircraft, new technology. The percentage of GDP that, and I I don't have the numbers, I they're easy to find though, that the military you know controls, you know, just going back 20 years, is just we're down to what 3% maybe, whatever the number is, from a peak of 10, 11, 12 percent. Right. Mitch mentioned this morning. There's little money going in RE. There is little money to go into the broader military, was the co-investor with industry back in the 60s in particular, 50s, 60s, and technology spun out of that. Today it's the exact opposite, and we're trying to rectify that.

Ted Stank: 27:43

Well, there's an urgency in the 60s, right? It was Cold War. Yeah. I mean, NASA, right? Why do we put so much money and go to the moon in what, nine years from when President or eight years from when President Kennedy said we were getting there? And I think people who didn't live through it don't realize that that was a military endeavor. It wasn't about putting somebody on the moon, it was a military endeavor.

Kevin Sweeney: 28:02

And most people in this, I mean, I looked at the the list of attendees here, if you will, and whether you're directly involved in uh supporting anything in the federal government, quite frankly, but whether it's the military in general, if you are a part of the supply chain, if you are prime, you're tier one, tier two, or there's a dotted line in the logistics world, everything that we utilize has to be moved somehow, some way, across this country and overseas, whether it's, you know, again, trucks and then planes and ships, food. We don't have another source of uh stuff, if you will, in the military. So everybody in some ways is part of that supply chain, incredibly vital as well.

Tom Goldsby: 28:38

Something we touched on earlier, day 36, and I'm gonna call out Scott DeGroot. He uh co-hosted uh the last uh podcast uh 33 days ago, and we were trying to forecast how long the government shutdown was gonna last. And I think we came down like seven to ten days, way overshot that. Hopefully there will be some break. But you've worked with the people and the personalities that we're talking about here. I'm not gonna ask you for a specific number, but can you maybe talk a little bit about how and why maybe we should care about that? I mean, how are organizations and people affected by the ship?

Kevin Sweeney: 29:13

I I think, again, from your corporate perspective in particular, I mean, pretty soon what's gonna happen, and I say soon, like within a week or so, the impact to not just the military, but it's across the entire federal workforce. Whether they are gonna be paid or not paid, they get furload, more and more organizations are just kind of stopped working, quite frankly. And you know, we have what they always call the critical organizations that no matter what, but you're seeing what happened in air traffic controllers, and now you see the Secretary of Transportation saying by next week the impact isn't going to be just a few folks taking vacation, it's gonna be pretty dramatic. That's one visible piece. But you know, when you're inside sort of the Washington environment and you sort of see how the government functions, it is not functioning right now, and I think until the pressure. Build on either party or both parties to the point where this is a no-win. And ultimately, my guess is and it'll be the president stepping in at some point and moving this along, and we'll figure out you know what went wrong and more importantly, what's going to change moving forward here. We have $1,25 billion coming out of there out of the great big bill for particularly for defense that is now stalled. That money is earmarked, but yet it's stalled out. We're not starting new programs. I mean, the impact across the board when you're one in a continued resolution, but even worse when you're in a shutdown is nothing new is happening. You sort of keep the lights on as best you can and continue to do what you do every day the best you can. But as we move forward, new technology, new programs, new things, nothing's being funded. So that's tough. It's tough. My guess inside people telling me hopefully this will be done by Thanksgiving. That's quite a few more weeks.

Ted Stank: 30:54

We'll see what happens. Yeah. Hopefully, all of you who are flying are able to get home tomorrow or get wherever you're going.

Tom Goldsby: 31:01

Beautiful time to be here on Rocky Top, though. It is. We'll keep the lights on here. Hey, Ted, do you think we ought to take another question from the case?

Ted Stank: 31:10

Yeah, let's let's do let's let's shift back to the leadership side. Uh there's a question here saying, what leadership principles have influenced your success and growth in the Navy and the business world that you would share with with a merchant.

Kevin Sweeney: 31:22

You know, if I knew some of the things I think I know now through experience, I probably would have been a little better when I was younger in a sense. I would say, and this may surprise some folks, but hopefully not, the most important aspect of leadership, and by the way, I for fun last night I went, I don't know if it's Google or AI or whatever, there's like right now 57,000 plus books in the Amazon system that talk about leadership. So you can't get this one wrong, right? But in reality, it's this it's teamwork, and it's building teams that trust each other and work together at any level, any size unit, from a group, a squad of Marines to a DDG ship of 300 to a strike group of 8,000 sailors and Marines to the Department of Defense. It's all about teamwork. I don't care, you can have the smartest supply chain folks, the best engineers, the whatevers. But if you can't build a team, work together for a common goal, and take that organization, whether it's a company or a military organization forward, you're gonna fail. You're gonna fail. And people are not gonna want to be around that kind of organization and they're gonna walk. The military is still an all-volunteer force. And I look at from the industry perspective, and it's funny, you know, people again back to you know having a retired senior military guy on a board, like, oh, people just and when we were in the Pentagon. Well, you know, just give orders and people, it's it's a joke. There there is no order given. There's guidance, hopefully, there is articulation with vision and goals, but you're dealing with people, and you have to have good relationships with all your key stakeholders. And that's the only way an organization in my mind is going to succeed. You know, when we were young JOs, I don't think that was our attitude or our experiences. But now JO is a junior officer when we first got commissioned out that out of school. Uh, but it's without question, that is the number one takeaway I have uh today.

Ted Stank: 33:10

And something else you you mentioned earlier, which is empowerment. I think one of the greatest things I took out of my leadership experience in the Navy is that I was a 24-year-old ensign responsible for super complex fire control computer systems and radars and stuff. And I had no training or basis other than the very highest conceptual level of it. One of my sailors was um master of science in electrical engineering.

Intro & Outro: 33:37

Yeah.

Ted Stank: 33:37

And I said, How come you don't want to be an officer? And he's like, I don't want all that BS that you guys have to deal with. I just want to work on my electric, you know, on my computer system. And I think the lesson for all of us is that we have incredible talent, incredibly talented people coming to work for us. And I think our job as leaders is to empower them and make them the best they can be. I am always shocked at leaders who feel threatened by people on their team succeeding. It's like empower them, do everything you can for their success, and then sit back and bask in the light of their success, right? It's not a competition here.

Kevin Sweeney: 34:15

And when those individuals are 10, 15, 20 years younger than you are as well. You know, age brings a little bit of experience and wisdom, but there are young superstars that, again, back to empowerment, enablement, support, mentorship. If there's one other thing I'll bring back, I think one of the biggest takeaways I've had professionally from day one is the power of mentorship, both to you as a mentoree and you as a mentor to folks, both formally and informally. A lot of organizations, companies, you have a formal HR process, and you have you know strategies and goals for the year, you review a court, whatever. That's a piece of it, important piece. The other piece is, and particularly for the students here who are getting ready to go out into the professional world, you've got to seek out over time folks for guidance perspective that's non-judgmental, but they understand you, your background, the sort of the industry or subsector you're in, so they can give you quality advice. And this hopefully is a lifelong experience. I mean, I still interact with my mentors who who are long, long retired, but are full of wisdom. And one of the most enjoyable things I do professionally, both in the corporate world as well as you know, former military and and folks uh from the civilian side is mentoring, connecting, enabling, uh, giving them another, you know, another ear to listen to when they're making a career decision. And trying to balance, by the way, and one of the toughest balances I think we all can still have is you know career demands and uh family demands. You know, you there's got to be a balance here.

Ted Stank: 35:43

You know, we talk a lot about AI and how is AI impacting our lives. And I would say uh AI has the promise of doing crazy things later on, right? But initially, right now, for 20 bucks a month, you can get Chat GPT. And so many of those mundane, boring administrative jobs that you're doing now that take you away from spending time with your people can be done by that AI tool. Use that AI tool to get all this mundane, boring stuff that you have to do every day, and is keeping you away from your main job, which is building these teams and empowering your people, and get out and spend more time in your space with your people.

unknown: 36:20

Yeah.

Kevin Sweeney: 36:21

One of the most impactful things I ever watched, a couple years back, um, some of you age-wise, remember Jack Welchek, uh, ran GE for how many years and probably the most successful you know business leader at the time. And he was being interviewed up at Fairfield University up in Connecticut, and it was a great discussion, and but it kind of turned negative of a bunch of questions at the time. The GE was being kicked in his shins a little bit about the long-term pollution in Hudson River and what they're doing about it. And he finally turned and just said the impression was the feeling he was getting like somehow business is bad. And and big companies are bad. Big companies are made of everybody sitting in this room. It's about you, your families, it's jobs, it's building and creating wealth and a value system. And he was very frustrated by that. And the second piece, on the leadership piece, he was asked, and he said, you know, if I don't spend 80% of my time with my subordinates and developing my subordinates, I'm a failure. 20% of time doing the mundane, the paperwork, what you have to do sometimes as a leader, but you got to spend your time with people. Back to you know, the importance of relationships and people and developing your subordinates for the future.

Ted Stank: 37:27

And I think a lot of folks here are challenged by the fact that we've had reduction in force over the years, right? So you're now probably doing the job that three other people might have been doing 20 years ago or 15 years ago. And I think that takes us away from spending the time with our people, right? Because you got all this paperwork you got to do, and it's like, geez, it's five o'clock, I gotta get home to Sally's soccer game, but I still have all these reports I have to do.

Kevin Sweeney: 37:51

You know, and there and be careful leadership that through paperwork in a sense. A lot of folks are comfortable doing that instead of being with people, you know, and dealing with issues and conflicts and everything else that happens. And and I guess the second piece is we've done this in different organizations throughout my career, particularly in the military. You know what? You just what happens next month? You don't send that report in. Nobody cares, right? Nobody gets feedback. I guess it wasn't necessary. But it's been done for 20 years and everybody has to do it, right? So anyway, I mean there's ways to do it, but certainly, you know, taking advantage of technology, AI, and other things will make that a little more effective.

Ted Stank: 38:23

I had a captain one time who I absolutely adored, who had a three-drawer system. And everything that would come in, he would decide whether it was an A that this is the alligator that's gonna bite me today, we've got to take care of it. The B was the alligator that might bite me tomorrow, and we'll worry about that tomorrow. And the C is there might be an alligator out there, and he would put stuff in the C drawer, and he said probably 80% of the things he put in the C drawer never came up again. Never came up again.

Tom Goldsby: 38:50

Hey Kevin, do you mind if we jump into another audience question? I'm gonna kind of paraphrase a few of these. Uh just talking about the future of conflict, right? And you alluded to some uh demonstrative change we're seeing, the Ukraine-Russian conflict where low-cost drones are are being employed. And I I guess there's maybe some question is in terms of our you know military system of building, you know, tanks, ships. Yep. You know, we haven't touched on cyber, for instance, here, right? So where are maybe our biggest threats, do you think, into the future and how do we prepare to address those?

Kevin Sweeney: 39:22

Yeah, I think space and cyber are the two areas that we are probably no longer at the competitive advantage we had in prior years, particularly with China. And those are so important and they're so persistent, they are one, they are manpower intensive to a degree, and they're also technology intensive. But you know, the advantage of a of a country like China has is they take what we call a whole government approach to everything. I mean, every company has a responsibility in China to support the military in some way or fashion. Technology, intelligence, uh, et cetera, et cetera. So for us to realize, and particularly in the cyber domain, it's not just protecting your IT systems, it's protecting what's most valuable, your intellectual property. And you know, ultimately not brought down to your knees when something goes wrong. I mean, I've been involved in a company that went through a ransomware attack, and we were brought to our knees for about 10 days. I mean, everything just stopped building, stopped working on the line. We lost proprietary information, we lost data on our on our people. We couldn't send out purchase orders and we couldn't send out billing, and all the things that you do, you take for granted. If you can do that to an aerospace and defense company, think more broadly to critical infrastructure and things like that. And we're talking about that every day now, uh, but it does take investment. It takes investment, private sector investment, and takes obviously investment from the government as well. Big vulnerabilities, though, without question.

Ted Stank: 40:46

Pottery shot, Kev, one piece of advice. Remember, I told them their challenge was they had to come home with one actionable idea. What would your parting shot to this group be about what uh a takeaway?

Kevin Sweeney: 40:57

Two things. I'll go back to my comment about the power of mentorship, honestly, both sides of the coin, mentor, mentoring. And I think the other thing is probably one other thing that I've certainly appreciated over my career now is you gotta listen. You gotta listen to people. Again, whether it's a junior individual in your organization or the old guy in the corner who's seen this 40 years ago, you gotta listen and engage people and not avoid that. I mean, there's uh I just listening to me, and really listening, not just hearing, but listening to me is probably the most impactful tool that we have, and I think certainly early career days in the military, um the perceptions is it's it's a very directive organization. Well, it is, and you'll be a failure if it if it's you maintains that way. So that's my two thoughts today. Perfect. Thank you.

Tom Goldsby: 41:46

Nod is just a great way to kick off season four of the podcast, right here in our supply chain forum. Admiral, thank you so much for your service for your time, your commitment. We really appreciate it.

Intro & Outro: 42:01

Thanks for listening to Tennessee on supply chain management. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform for more conversations with the leaders framing the path for practitioners, scholars, and students. Have a question or idea? We'd love to hear from you at gsci at utk.edu. Until next time, listeners.