Brecham Group Episode
Summary
This is a Warehouse Underground podcast that talks to owner and managing partner of the Brecken group, Chris Hamley about his organization. Chris comes from a variety of operations, and this podcast is all about education, getting operations to the fullest potential possible, and what it means to have precision supply chain operations. Chris talks on the importance of catalysts that happen in operations because it pushes improvement. The performance paradox is a term used by the Brecken Group, a consulting firm, to refer to the phenomenon of organizations facing similar problems despite their unique combination of issues. Oftentimes, the issue arises from leadership shortfalls, such as leaders spending more time on administrative tasks rather than empowering and developing their employees. This can be attributed to a lack of clear expectations and accountability measures. The Brecken Group emphasizes the need for leaders to have a clear understanding of what "good" looks like and Beau Groover with The Distribution Experience show talked to Chris Barnes about the performance paradox. According to Barnes, organizations want to get better but they don't know how, and end up getting stuck in the same routines. This can lead to burnout for employees. To improve, Barnes suggests focusing on the root causes of problems, understanding what "good" performance looks like, and tracking performance using KPIs. When brought in to an organization, it typically takes Barnes and his team about Chris Barnes is a supply chain expert who has been in the industry for 37 years. He currently works for the Breadcrumb Group, providing consulting services, and has also created a course on how to think about KPIs (key performance indicators) and implement them effectively in your operation. Chris believes that the warehouse distribution center industry is an amazing place to work, with a diverse range of skills required for success. He also feels that the industry offers stability and transferable skills that can beIn this episode, host Ben Harris speaks with Chris Hamley of The Brecon Group, an operations consulting company. Hamley talks about optimizing the warehouse processes by looking at productivity measures, focusing on engagement and communication, and leveraging technology. They also discuss how failures can be the best learning opportunities, and how to stay current and competitive in the industry. Additionally, they touch on the benefits of using consultants, and how to effectively manage warehouse teams.
Transcription
Ben Hopkins
[00.00.07]
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to another episode at the Warehouse Underground podcast, Real Talk or Warehouse DC and FC professionals of all levels around the globe. I'm Ben, I'll be your host of the show and joining me on the day on the show today is Chris Hamley. He's a managing partner at the group Precision Supply Chain Operations. Achieve excellence, reject mediocrity. Now, these guys have been on the podcast circuit recently. I do follow some other well-known podcasts in the warehouse and supply chain industry, so I've seen some of their stuff. So I'm really excited to talk with him myself because he's very comfortable in the world of operations like I am. So the Brecken Group has been in hundreds of DCS across the country as consultants, really learning how to improve operations at all different sites of all shapes and sizes. So I'm excited to learn more about Chris and the Brecon Group and talk all about leadership and really managing performance inside facilities at all levels that what they do. So with that, I will bring him on to the stage right now. Chris, sir, thank you very much for joining the Warehouse Underground podcast. How are you today, man?
Chris Hamley
[00.01.24]
I'm living the dream. Thanks for having me and I appreciate
Ben Hopkins
[00.01.27]
it. Yeah, you got it now. I mentioned it in the beginning. I appreciate that you and the Brecon Group are on the podcast circuit right now. I love that because I love when people from the industry and the industry around the industry put it out there, right? Like, the more people that put it out there, what they do, the goodness, the better off the industry is going to be. And you and the Brecon Group are certainly leading the charge on that. I respect that a lot. And so obviously, thank you for coming on my show, but I really appreciate you just doing that in general for the benefit of the industry. So I just want to say that thank you.
Chris Hamley
[00.02.02]
Yeah. No thank you. You know, a ton of what we do is really just focused around education more than anything else, you know? Um, you know, I'm sure we'll get into it, but I grew up in the industry. I started out loading trucks a really long time ago, you know, and and it seemed like at every turn you're having to go out and learn and create on your own kind of thing. And, and we got to this idea that, oh, why does everybody have to reinvent this stuff? Let's just talk about it. Right. Let's let's really turn this into a training conversation or an education kind of format, right? That, hey, let people talk and just share ideas. And here's how we've addressed this in the past. And that's the premise of what we do.
Ben Hopkins
[00.02.40]
Yeah. And it doesn't it doesn't need to be a secret. And I've said this before on other episodes and maybe agree with me sometimes in the warehousing supply chain industry. It can feel like, what am I supposed to do? What do I do? Where do I find this? Where's the book on this? Where's the textbook? It's a little bit like. It feels like hidden knowledge sometimes to people, but it doesn't. It doesn't have to be. I mean, there is proven methods that have worked all around there. So. I mean, do you see it that way? I mean, like, you know, how do you know? How do you learn this stuff? Where do you learn this stuff then? Well, now there's more avenues to get it. I think there are a couple of things, right? I mean, there's a conditional thing. First that starts with, you know, we kind of all grew up in, in operations. Right. And the first thing is, is we we progressed from a supervisor to manager, manager to ops manager something. Right. And so what ends up happening is we become a little bit siloed of inside the organization or the few organizations we've been a part of and don't really have view of the broader world to make sure that or to be able to see that maybe, hey,
Chris Hamley
[00.03.42]
everybody else has had to solve this problem also. So there's a little bit of, you know, we're sheltered in some degree, right? I think the other piece of that, though, is, is that, you know, at the end of the day when we're having to go out and develop and try to learn things, it's a part time job for us because our full time job is running the operation. Right. So it's all ad hoc and it's how much time can you devote to it? So there's not a lot of opportunities to go out and explore either, right? Yeah, well, I like to use a lot of car analogies. And when you want to do an upgrade on your car, you take it into the shop and you leave it there for four days. They do whatever they're going to do, a modification of the engine or tinted windows or whatever. But
Ben Hopkins
[00.04.26]
distribution ops is not that way. It's like you do those things as at the same time that you're driving down the road in your car, and that makes it that makes it way gnarly. Oh,
Chris Hamley
[00.04.37]
yeah. Just a little bit of a
Ben Hopkins
[00.04.39]
lift. So let me ask this to you because I, I follow the Brigham Group on LinkedIn. I've seen a lot of your posts on LinkedIn. I've been to your website, and there's a lot of different things on there, but it looked like one of the common themes or I don't want to say bread and butter, but there was a concept that I saw there that I've heard you talk about, and that is this theme of precision supply chain operations. Can you just tell me, talk to the audience about, you know, kind of what exactly does that mean? What is precision supply chain operations from your seat and how you see it in your experience throughout the. Throughout the industry?
Chris Hamley
[00.05.18]
Yeah, really it comes down to this is how do you get the most out of what you have, right? And if that's a process, if it's a group of people, whatever that is. Right. How do you get the absolute most out of it? You know, you think about what our work is. We do the same task thousands of times every day, right? We pick a unit into a box. We ship a box, something. Right. And what that means is, though, that to get better at this, we have to be good at those, those minor components. So we have to think about that and then be very precise in how we go do things and, and balance, you know, the people side of it and the leadership component that to make people want to go do that, um, have the methods and processes in place so that they can be good at it. And then finally, you know, talk about, okay, what's the what's the end result that we achieve in the KPIs and whatnot, and all those things have to come together to really get precise in what we do and have that level of precision. You need to be really great, regardless of the technology or anything else you have in the operation.
Ben Hopkins
[00.06.17]
Yeah. And, uh, I remember when I was a young manager, I heard of another person in the building that I was working in that that did not get promoted. They went up for some type of promotion board, and they and they didn't get it. And I remember asking around and it came back to me, the reason they didn't get promoted, what they said was they came to work and I, I was like, I don't really understand. I was so young at the time. I didn't understand what they came to work meant. And it basically meant that, like, they were just doing the repetitive act over and over again, kind of going through the motions. But they weren't trying to get better. They weren't looking at things at a different angle. They weren't analyzing their OP. And so I feel like maybe that was the early stage or early way of saying like, no precision supply chain operations is much different than just coming to work.
Chris Hamley
[00.07.11]
Yeah, absolutely. Work is going to move the needle. Yeah. You know, and we all know those folks right there. We see them in the industry at times. People who show in they clock in every day and they do a decent job, but they're not moving the needle necessarily. Right. And what precision is about is, is somebody has to take the charge and start thinking about their operation. And okay, how do I get good at this? How do I think about, you know, a different way to approach this problem? Something is that that catalyst for change to go be better. Right.
Ben Hopkins
[00.07.40]
Yeah. And I and I think too and I would like to know your thoughts on this. It can be a little bit tempting, I think, for managers to sometimes fall into that rut of just being comfortable, kind of doing the bare minimum because it's a stressful career. And so sometimes it takes extra energy to go the extra mile. So if you're like a senior leader out there or you're a general manager or you're a senior director, you just got to know that sometimes you need a little bit of an external push, right? An external stimulant that can kind of come in and spark your team because the tendency is to just kind of kind of settle in if you're not, if you're not careful when you think about that.
Chris Hamley
[00.08.21]
Yeah. There's generally a catalyst when you see large improvements in organizations. Right. There is a person, a group, somebody that's come in and really sparked that, that interest, that desire to go get better. Um, I was actually at a, I was at a facility last week and had the opportunity to talk to the front line leaders, and we spent some time walking around the building and looking at their process. And the comment that stuck with me was, as we were leaving, the facility manager comes to me and says, I'm re-energized about going out after this, right. And that's what this is all about, is somebody has to challenge the status and make us remember that we can get better, right? No matter who we are or where we're at, what we're doing right. There's always opportunity to go do something different. Sometimes somebody just needs to point that out and kind of point in the right direction. Yeah, I would think that that would be pretty exhilarating to sort of feel that difference, feel that change. Because like, I was like, I'm going to use working out as an example and I'm kind of guilty of this now in my mid-forties. So just do the same workout all the time, because I'm just trying to stay fit and stay in shape, but that's not necessarily making me stronger. Right. Like if you do the same workout every time, you're not shocking your body. You're not growth in your body just sort of gets used to doing that and very efficient. And it sounds like that's the kind of scenario you ran into there with that employee is they they got a new workout, right? They got a new a new shock. And all of a sudden they felt new things and they were energized again. And I really love I really love that. So I need I need to work on my work on my fitness after this show is
Ben Hopkins
[00.09.57]
exposing my weaknesses to
Chris Hamley
[00.09.58]
the audience. Change the circuits up a little bit, right? Yeah.
Ben Hopkins
[00.10.02]
You just gotta change the circuit. So I think that's I think that's a good thing. So now let me ask this to you because I anytime I get a chance to talk with people that have been around the country in lots of different sites, I always am curious about this because that gives you a perspective that most people in this industry don't have. I mean, it's a very common, hey, I work inside the four walls of my facility. Maybe I get promoted out, maybe I go in away team. But in general, people see five, six, seven sites kind of in their career, not hundreds. I mean, no one is going into hundreds of sites like you are. So do you think that? I mean, I would think that a lot of times when you get called in, it's because, uh, somebody wants to improve their site, they want to improve their operation, they want to accelerate it, and maybe they have some leadership shortfalls. So do you. Have you seen that leadership shortfalls are sort of the same way throughout the entire network, no matter where you go? I mean, do you see common themes that begin to arise all the time and or is it unique and different according to which site that you go into? And you mentioned earlier like, hey, I'm a high performer. I moved up, I promoted, but now I struggle in a leadership role. That's pretty common in the initiative. What do you think about that in general? Because you you've got a unique seat that other people do not have in a perspective, I think. Yeah, absolutely. You know, you think about the every client we go to and I hate to say this out loud, but everybody we go to seems to think their problem is unique, right? And the reality is every every organization has a unique combination of problems. But they're generally all the same basis of of issues. Right. And there are a handful of things that particularly from a leadership perspective that that we see that are really easy fixes. Right, that. And I'll bucket them into a couple of things. One is, is that it's the attention of the leadership team, right. Oh, we can't forget as leaders that are primary objective is, is to empower our employees to go do more, be better. Right. Hit their own career goals, whatever that is. Too often we we forget that and we spend more time worrying about reports or making sure reviews are done on time. Not saying that's not important, right? But the
Chris Hamley
[00.12.27]
we forget to go to the floor and actually help people be better, right? Another another issue that we often see is, is that people, people who were good or really in good individual contributors, right, as they went through their career, don't necessarily have some of the tools to go lead that group through the through through change. Right. Or just day to day operations. You think about things like we talk about the circle of accountability, and that is how do we hold people accountable for results. And accountable is not a negative connotation. It's not about performance management. It's simply that we we need you to do this. Didn't you do it? And here's what the result of that was, right? Um, we talk about the circle of accountability. You got to define the process or define the expectation. You have to audit it. You have to follow up on it. If you don't do those three steps, you're not ever going to get better. It's amazing to me how many leaders don't understand that. They're really good at saying, hey, go do this, and they walk away from it and half the group does it, the other half doesn't do it, but there's no repercussion. And over time, what happens is fewer and fewer people do it. Right. Yeah, I think accountable. Is not necessarily the same thing as responsible for or to be blamed for results. So I think sometimes people think about that, but that's not necessarily what accountability is. And I think I think you're right about, hey, you were a strong performer. You were you were a contributor, you moved up into a leadership role. And then sometimes the person who is supposed to be training them in that leadership role also had that same path. Yeah. Oh, right. So it's like it just kind of becomes this this circle
Ben Hopkins
[00.14.15]
is like, oh yeah. Where you, you, you know, you you you're not really in a position to really train this person and the things they need to know, because you didn't get the training when you came up, you know, you just kind of learned it the hard way. And I think that's where somebody like the Brecken group is perfect, right. Like fit for that because you're unbiased, you know, you've got a fresh set of eyes, you're an outsider. You're not an outsider in the industry, very well versed in it, but you're an outsider in that particular site. So you're not you don't hold any of those same biases. I mean, is that I mean, is that a fair statement or am I
Chris Hamley
[00.14.47]
really I mean, I started out loading trucks and I got promoted because I loaded trucks really well, right? I was fast, I was reasonably accurate. Um, and, you know, there was nothing about me loading trucks really. Well, that prepared me to be the supervisor of the area, but I got promoted. Right. Um, and when I got promoted to your to your experience, You're a comet. I got trained by another supervisor who had their own view of the world. There wasn't a really formal, you know, do these things had a component, right? So I started just mimicking people who were good. Right? And I was I was sure the story a number of times about we used to have a flip chart. And at the beginning of shift every day, they ranked all the supervisors. And, you know, here are the best ones in the worst every day. All right. I learned early on it's good to be at the top of the list and not the bottom of the list. Right. Good to be a winner. Exactly. So I just started mimicking what the the guys at the top of the list did. Right. I didn't know why I was doing it, but hey, it worked for them, so now I'm gonna try it. Right. Um, and I learned that way that unfortunately, not everybody has that level of visibility to performance and how an organization feels about you. You know, as an industry, we're really you know, you talked about getting into hundreds of DCS. One of the common things we see is we're not great at holding the leadership team accountable or
Ben Hopkins
[00.16.08]
measuring how they're performing
Chris Hamley
[00.16.10]
or helping them. You get an annual review that says, oh, you met expectations or whatever that was, right? But at the end of the day, there's not a scorecard really as to what that supervisor contributed. So without that scorecard, it's hard to say. Am I doing well or not? Um, and ultimately you've got to have some way to, to help them elevate and get better and create the demand to go be better. Right.
Ben Hopkins
[00.16.36]
Yep. And I found and I you you probably agree with me on this and I think it's leading me into the next portion. But in general, most people in the industry. I mean, there are some bad ones every now and then, just like there are in every industry. Okay. But most people in general want to do a good job, right? They want to do a good job. They want to be promoted. They want to like no one just wants to come to work and be crap, you know? So but if they don't know what good looks like and no one in their chain of command or their hierarchy knows what good looks like either, then it just sort of like stuck in this, just like middle ground, you know, and they're never going to really fulfill their, their whole potential. So what what do you think? I mean, you think there's people out there that that just are happy just being crappy or in your experience or the people just need the roadmap and then they can they can they can travel it.
Chris Hamley
[00.17.32]
I use the line all the time that 95% of the population wants to do the right thing, wants to be good at something. You just have to tell them what it is. Everybody likes to win, right? And, you know, you think about like supervisors and hourly employees. We always want everybody wants to be better to some degree. They want to feel like they contributed. Right now there is 5% that are the outliers in that conversation. And everybody I talk to has an example. Somebody comes to mind to see that outlier is right. But at the end of the day, everybody wants to get there. We just have to do a better job of telling people what it is. Now the trick is, is that it's how do you how do you help them understand what to your point, what good looks like, what shouldn't be the the gold standard or the bar that we're trying to measure to? And that's where a lot of people fall down, is they don't even understand what the goal is. And therefore they it's hard to articulate how to get there even right.
Ben Hopkins
[00.18.28]
Yeah. I think it's like the bell curve. Any operation I've ever been in is just the bell curve. You have some people on, on both ends of the spectrum of the bell curve that are absolutely terrible or absolutely amazing, but in general, most people are in the middle and they kind of want to do a good job. And they can they can easily slide to either side of that bell curve. And unless they're given, you know, a push and a guidance to go to the right side, you know, we
Chris Hamley
[00.18.56]
we call that discretionary effort. So one of the things we talk about as leaders is our job in the DC is a leadership team is to solicit or elicit more discretionary effort out of the team. How do we get people to go do more? Not because they have to, but because they want to.
Ben Hopkins
[00.19.15]
Yep. That's right. And that
Chris Hamley
[00.19.17]
makes the difference. Absolutely
Ben Hopkins
[00.19.20]
right. I mean, the, the the operations out there that are really hitting their numbers is not because every single employee is hitting the minimum. You know, I mean, if every central employee is hitting the minimum at your site and you're the ops manager, they're you're not you're
Chris Hamley
[00.19.36]
not you're not going to do well. Absolutely.
Ben Hopkins
[00.19.38]
Yeah. And most people know that. So. All right. So you've got this concept on your website. I'll bring up a
Chris Hamley
[00.19.46]
photo right now. And it is called the performance paradox, which sounds very back to the future, right? Like back to the the paradox they talk about back to the paradox and back to future. But yours is is different. So
Ben Hopkins
[00.20.01]
that's like dating dating myself.
Chris Hamley
[00.20.03]
They're
Ben Hopkins
[00.20.05]
my age. But I love back to the future as everybody does. If you haven't seen Back the Future, just go watch
Chris Hamley
[00.20.09]
back to the future. That's a great movie I haven't seen in a few years, but it is a great movie.
Ben Hopkins
[00.20.13]
But so, you know, you've got this concept on your website at the called Performance Paradox. But can you tell me like, what does that mean? I mean, what is the performance paradox? You know, I assume it is like some type of gaps in operations. But where do those happen? How do you solve them? What's the the the theme of performance paradox. All it
Chris Hamley
[00.20.34]
really it really goes back to what we were just talking about. It is that the performance paradox is really rooted in the idea that organizations talk about getting better, they want to get better, but they don't know how to get between here and there. Yeah, it's that. And what ends up happening is you get stuck in just more of the same every day, right? Um, and a lot of times it's really coming from a handful of things. It's that I'm not thinking about the root cause of my problems. I'm worried just about my world. Not necessarily what things influence me. Right. It is about what do I know? And we talk about skills and competency. But really a lot of it is, is understanding what good is. What could I be doing? Not just what am I doing right? Um, and then finally it's again going back to KPI discussions like what am I measuring against? How do I know if I'm getting better or not? Okay, we all do a pretty good job of tracking employee performance, and we do a pretty good job of tracking building performance. But departments and functions and leaders inside and in the middle ranges of that building. Right. We don't do a great job to help you understand why am I getting better or not? Right.
Ben Hopkins
[00.21.46]
Yeah. And this is the thing that. Causes burnout. I think this can be a cause of burnout. Hey, I. I'm working hard. I am trying my very best, but I'm still not hitting the number. Like, this is more and more stressful for me. And you can come in and look and go, well, that's why you need to take your foot off the break. Like, look at all this friction that you have in front of you that you don't know how to solve or you're not identifying. Like it's great to work hard in everything. But in this industry, you know, like working smarter is a huge part of it, right? Like reducing friction and getting proper alignment will make that hard work go way farther. I mean, you can get by in this career with hard work, but it's going to burn you the heck out. It makes for a long day or a long career. I'll tell you that. Um, I'll tell you a story. I, uh, I took over an organization one time, and the first couple of days, I was the organization. I was, uh, I was just observing. Right? Watching leadership team lead a leadership team of about 130, 135 people or something, and and was really seeing what they spent their day doing. And all of them to a person spent all day, every day getting their asses kicked by people at corporate about failures that the facility was having. Right. And at the end of the day, too, I thought, this is crazy because we spend all day listening to people complain about our performance and no time actually going out and changing. Um, and tomorrow all we're doing is just reacting to the things we failed at today. Right. So what we did was, was I went to him and said, hey, I'll make a deal with you is that I will take all of the, um, these conversations. You don't have to sit on another one of these. Right. But and I use the analogy that it looks like it kind of sucks right now, right? It sucks to work. You work hard, you're working extended hours because you're on calls 5 or 6 hours a day getting your asses kicked, right? And then you get to go out and make the operations happen around that. Right? So so it looks like it sucks. So here's what we're going to do is I need everybody to go out. And in return for not having to sit on these calls anymore. I need each of you to go out and find one thing that's going to make you suck less tomorrow. There you go. And I don't
Chris Hamley
[00.24.03]
care what it is, right? Just go out and do it right. And I want you to come back and tell me what it was and what the result was. Did you do it or not? Right. What was the impact? If it was good, keep doing it. If it was bad. Stop. Move on to something else. And every day I'm going to ask you for one way that we're going to suck less tomorrow, right? And in the meantime, I'll keep taking the meetings. Right.
Ben Hopkins
[00.24.25]
And. Yeah, and it's all connected, right? Like it's all all connected. Like, you know, the the HR engagement surveys in places like that are terrible. And it's like this isn't an HR problem. You know, there's nothing that HR can do to improve the like. This is the problem with just the ops, right. The ops flow like we sucked you bad. Like we got to figure out ways to get it better and then everything will improve. Services
Chris Hamley
[00.24.50]
shrinks. They can only talk about people, service, profit. Right. We have to be good at all three phases of the game. Right? To to have a functioning operation. Right. We've got to make sure people are taken care of that they like coming to work. They have all the things they need to be successful. We've got to deliver service to the business or to our customer base, and we have to do it profitably at the end of the day. And we are missing on any one of those. We're going to fail eventually. Yeah.
Ben Hopkins
[00.25.17]
No, I agree with you on that. I understand the performance paradox. I think that you put a name to something that a lot of people have probably thought about and understood, and it's definitely, definitely spot on. I agree with you on that 100% now. Thank you. Now, Chris, let me ask you, this kind of shifting gears a little bit more towards the the business side of it. I mean, you. You get a call from a site leader or an organization or operation, and they want you to come in and help them. Um, boom timeline, you know? I mean, it seems like a lot of times they may want immediate results. Right. Like, how fast can you turn this around? But what's a realistic timeline? I mean, how long does it normally kind of take you to get in, learn, observe and put in your processes and kind of turn things around with with a team at a site? I well, I'm going to start with this. Is that my here's my joke. And this is actually my sales pitch is we're horrible consultants actually. But we're really good subject matter experts. Right. And that's what it is that we've all grown up in the DC. We all understand. Um, everyone on our team, most everyone on our team, um, has been at least an ops manager in our organization somewhere. So we understand how that operation works, right? So what we do is, is we come in initially and do what we call an evaluation. And an evaluation can range from a week to six weeks, depending on the complexity of the operation. What's going on? Um, and coming out of that, we build a roadmap and our roadmaps are usually 90 days. So how do we go from where we're at to serviceable? That's not perfect, but how do we get better? And at people service and profit in 90 days? Right. And what we see is, is that usually we start seeing those gains happen in the 4 to 6 week mark. Right. And then it becomes repeatable and sustainable by the end of the 90 day period. And all we're doing is really just teaching people about here's how to think
Chris Hamley
[00.27.10]
about doing your job. Here's some tools to use to get better at doing your job. And ultimately, you build that framework around KPIs and accountability and some leadership principles and and get people better by the time you leave at 90 days. We actually built a glide path for service and cost structure and all the all the measurements that we have to take to or make for the project. And ultimately, we can show you that, hey, when we turn this on and enable this and train on that, you can see those jumps in productivity so that by the end of that 90 day period, we can prove the results you got. Yeah.
Ben Hopkins
[00.27.47]
And then I would think. Then you put them on a new path, and then it can take on a life of its own. I think
Chris Hamley
[00.27.54]
after you land, because you're giving tools, right? We're really teaching people about how to think about it. And the tools. And what we see is, is that while you see this initial uplift and that that first 90 day period, you continue to refine it because the tools and processes stay consistent. Right. I just changed the focus. I go, I go work on different problems instead of the the really big rocks. I can start working on medium sized rocks. Then they're my problem.
Ben Hopkins
[00.28.19]
Yep, yep. Yeah, I love that. I mean, you you you give somebody a fish or you can you can teach them out of fish, you know, and you teach them how to fish. They they just go on forever in perpetuity. Absolutely. That's I think that's the way to do it. So now tell me about your downloadable course because I, you know, you have a new course online. I have you gave me access to it, by the way. So I've seen your presentations and that's very
Chris Hamley
[00.28.44]
cool. So let me ask this. What did you think of the course before I talk about because we might edit all this out.
Ben Hopkins
[00.28.50]
Yeah. No, no I think I think anytime that people get a chance to offer their perspective and that perspective is earn and develop through trial and error over the years, like yours has been, that is always worth its weight in gold, right? And so I think, you know, just bringing people into the fold, letting them see, it's like the questions they ask, how you how you relate it to them at their level in a way that they can understand. The concepts are sort of higher level concepts, I think, but they're presented in a way that is very digestible, I think, to the crowd and the audience that is watching that, and they'll walk away being much more versed in warehousing and supply chain. In a way that they cannot get in any other form. I mean, obviously they can come to the warehouse underground. Chris. You know, they can sign up in the warehouse underground. They can get all that stuff there too, but
Chris Hamley
[00.29.47]
also but also here's another for us. Um, you know, we've got. Of course, I thank you for that. We've got a course called Precision supply Chain Operations. And and what it is, it's just that it's about, um, what, eight hours of me talking to a classroom of operator? Only about here is, you know, how to think about KPIs in your operation, right? The things that matter here are, you know, a way to implement or a way to to manage to those and really kind of talking about our frontline leadership techniques that you could use to be better at it. Right. Um, and it is it's a lot of say there's some conversation around the theory and the why things happen. Right. But then more practically, just wouldn't do about it. What to go take what action to go take. Right. Yep.
Ben Hopkins
[00.30.37]
And I think here's how I see it. Because I was young in this industry once, just like what we all were. And two things. One, if you know more than your boss knows. Then that is helpful to you and your career, right? And and and so if there's a way to get that, if there's somebody out there that has a course, they have lecture that I can absorb all this knowledge. And now maybe I'm a little bit smarter than my boss that can help me. And to a lot of the the junior managers out there, no matter what they say, are afraid sometimes to raise their hand and say, I need help or I don't understand this or I don't know this. Can you teach me? Some people do. Some people are very good about that. So if you're not that type of person, if you're not comfortable, like raising your hand and doing all that, here is a perfect way for you to get that. Basically that same information that you would be getting from ops or senior ops or a GM. But but you're getting it without having to. I don't want to say expose yourself because that's not a good word, but you kind of get in it without having to do
Chris Hamley
[00.31.39]
that. Yeah, it's a low risk conversation. Yeah. Okay.
Ben Hopkins
[00.31.43]
Yeah, yeah. You don't have to worry about all that. So. All right, let me ask this question. Uh, your opinion, you know, your opinion. We're going to talk industry opinion now. And we talked a little bit about this before the show. What do you think about the overall state of warehouse distribution center industry right now? Because there's a lot of different opinions out there depending on who you ask. And what do you how do you see it changing and growing over the next 5 to 10 years? And there's no right or wrong answer? I always like curious what different people's opinion are. But some people think, oh yeah, nope. Automation is taking over robotics. We're going to have blacked out warehouses in five years. There's no going to be nobody in there. I disagree with that. But and but then other people say nope, that's never going to take hold. So like, what do you think? I mean, you think it's a good industry to get into and be in? Is it good for career? Or would you, you know, would you try to steer people in a different direction. So you know, I I've been in the industry. This is my 37th year. Um, just for the record, I started out really young EPs. Just for the record, I was six. Um, yeah. We, uh. Tricky, tricky math folks. Tricky? Yeah.
Chris Hamley
[00.32.58]
Um, but
Ben Hopkins
[00.33.00]
for me, the industry is an amazing place to work. Right? And I think it's an amazing place for me. For me, it's been an interesting journey because one, you know, the diversity of people and the the set of skills you have to develop to be good in this industry is amazing. Right. I don't know another profession that you have, the range that we have in supply chain operations. And I don't know how many people actually recognize we're taking data to that sometimes. Right. Um, first of all, secondly is, is that, you know, when I got into it, um, early on, I actually met a friend of mine who, uh, you know, I've known him 30 years now, but he had been a very. Well-educated individual on a piece of technology and manufacturing. Right. And he'd spent a decade prior to me meeting him in that space. He'd gotten laid off and and came in to supply chain. Right. And while he was there in that manufacturing environment, one of the things that he and I used to always talk about were that, you know, no matter where you're at in the world, we have to move product around right now. Contents of the box might change. Right. But at the end of the day, boxes are still flowing, unlike whether or not manufacturing is onshore, offshore, whatever that is. Right? Those become more volatile careers in a lot of ways than supply chain. My joke has always been, I don't really care what. I don't always care what's inside the box. The box still has to move, right? Right. It's a
Chris Hamley
[00.34.30]
widget. Exactly. So from a stability standpoint, it's an amazing place as well. Um, it's been my experience. Now, that doesn't mean every company stable. It doesn't mean that every roll is stable. But as a as an industry, our skills are very transferable.
Ben Hopkins
[00.34.44]
Right? Yeah. And I think, uh, and I and I've said this to people before when they ask me about it, there are a lot of people out there coming up in society that feel like. And I and I remember feeling this way too, when I, when I was coming up, like, I'm kind of a generalist, you know, I'm not necessarily I don't I'm not I'm not really an expert in this or that. I'm kind of like a little bit good in a lot of different things. And if that's you, if you have that, this industry can be extremely rewarding for you because that is a valuable skill to have in this career.
Chris Hamley
[00.35.17]
I might even just rephrase that. You know, the I think the people who do really well in our space, right, have a couple of skill sets. Right? One is is kind of a natural leadership style, right. Because we've spoken before about the need of leaders in what we do because we're people based organization or operation, and we need to go get people to, to respond to us. Right. Yeah. The other thing, though, is, is that we tend to be really good problem solvers. And people who excel in this industry, how can figure out their way through a problem? Even though we don't have all the knowledge, we're not experts in something. We can be generalists because we're better at problem solving and understanding the situation and working our way through it, right? I use the joke all the time. Our roles really adapt and overcome, right? Actually, what's an operator? It's to deal with what's in front of you and overcome it, right? That's problem blowing. Skill is at its highest
Ben Hopkins
[00.36.10]
100%. I mean, the variables that happen on any given shift, on any, any given facility, I think would just be mind blowing to people that are not in the industry, people that are in the industry, they they don't even think about it anymore because they're just so used to it. They don't even realize that that ability to troubleshoot and problem solving flex is a huge skill, because it's just it's just baked into the cake of what they do on any
Chris Hamley
[00.36.33]
given shift, right? So now you ask this about the state of the industry, right? Um, to start this, I would agree I don't see automation in. A holistic view of an operation for for years to come. Right. And there are a lot of reasons for that. But, you know, one of the things that we do see happening though, is, is that automation projects are have a better ROI on them today than they did five years ago. Now, there are a couple of reasons for that. Price points have come down. What what not right. But the other piece of that is, is that as an industry as a whole,
Ben Hopkins
[00.37.09]
we've seen a decline in productivity right now. You know, you can blame generational questions or workforce and all kinds of things. Right? I don't personally subscribe to that because I would guarantee if you wouldn't talk to our parents, they would say the same things about our generation as well. Yeah. Um, what I do believe, though, is, is that we as a leadership of generation, don't do the same things that maybe other generations have done. Either we've lost some of the fundamental, um, skills out there. And personally, I see that a lot in terms of we rely too much on reports and technology and whatnot. Right. Um, I talked to one of our managing directors a lot, actually, that that I used the line that we he'll come to me and say, well, we don't have to report. That tells us that, right? I'm like, hey, dude, you and I grew up in a generation. We didn't have reports. We we could figure it out. Right? So if your job depended on you figuring this out today, could you do it well, yeah. Then don't do it. Yeah. And the mindset is, is that we're often waiting on information instead of going and finding it and figuring out the
Chris Hamley
[00.38.22]
problem. And that's the real problem is if we're not getting the performance out of the group that we need, we're waiting for a labor
Ben Hopkins
[00.38.29]
standards report. We are
Chris Hamley
[00.38.31]
waiting to, um, you know, for new hires to show up, or we start progressive discipline instead of going out and just talking to people and figuring out how to lead them through that process.
Ben Hopkins
[00.38.41]
Yeah, I remember, so when I first started my career at Amazon, I worked at Amazon FC. I've said this on the show before and, and, and there were so many metrics, and if there was amazonians that are listening to this, they'll know that the temptation is manager, you just sit there at your computer and you just keep hitting refresh. You just they just keep hitting refresh to see that the the new measurement of their shift and that's, that's their day and, uh, that's not good. Right. Like, you should be out. You should be dry. Like that's just the scoreboard. Um, but the the plays that you make on the field is what shows up on the scoreboard, not just refreshing the scoreboard. Uh, I never did that, of course, but all the all the other crappy managers were the ones
Chris Hamley
[00.39.23]
that everybody else. And I agree. Right. Is that you can go out and control your own destiny or be a victim of the results. Right? And I, I always chose to go control my own destiny.
Ben Hopkins
[00.39.36]
Yeah, absolutely. So, Chris. And where can people find out more about you now? Now you're all over LinkedIn. You're on the podcast circuit. How do you want people to come find you if they're interested in learning more about you and the group?
Chris Hamley
[00.39.50]
So connecting with the breadcrumb group on LinkedIn, we would appreciate that we are actually looking for followers, right? My my son's only job in life. My my son's in our business. His only job in life is to drive, uh, our our followers up. So I go see how that works out. Um, but if you were to follow us on LinkedIn, that'd be awesome. Um, if you want to talk to us, feel free. Um, you reach out to us via our website at, um, and we're always happy to talk. Right. Um, doesn't always have to be, you know, in the vein of paying us to do something if you just want to chat. We're always happy to just chat. Yeah.
Ben Hopkins
[00.40.24]
Awesome. Well, Chris, man, I, I loved having you on the podcast. I love chatting with ops folks just like you. I mean, it's it's just always makes for a great conversation. I love what you're doing at the Brecon Group. I love what you're doing online and you're out there. I just, like I said in the intro, I respected a lot. I mean, you're just putting a ton of great information out there for all the folks to benefit from. I really hope that they do. And I I'm just I'm a big fan. So I appreciate you appearing on the podcast again.
Chris Hamley
[00.40.51]
Thanks for having me, Ben. It's been a pleasure.
Ben Hopkins
[00.40.53]
You got it. Take care. Chris.
Chris Hamley
[00.40.55]
You too.
Ben Hopkins
[00.40.57]
It's all right. Thanks. Chris Hamley again of the Brecon Group for appearing on the podcast. Fantastic conversation with him. You should definitely, definitely check them out. All of them on LinkedIn. See, there are other podcasts that they've been on. Great guys, great group. Putting a lot of good information out there in the industry. Also very personable people to talk to to you. I really enjoy that very, very good group. As the Warehouse Underground goes, please sign up for the community if you've not done so. We have 330 people that have signed up for the community at the warehouse underground comm. In there we have message boards, networking information, share. We've done some live shows that you can play in there, and we have some more live shows coming down the pipe in the future. So sign up for the Warehouse underground.com. Become a member. All free, uh, at the site there. And also please check out the other show that I do the spin off to this podcast, if you will. It's called the Tiger Team Show with my co-host Jordan. It is all about life in warehouses and distribution centers and fulfillment centers, but it has a sarcastic, witty, humorous slant to it. So lots of good stories and cathartic relief out there, if you're so inclined. Check that show out today with the Tiger team. We think that you will like it. As this podcast goes, I will see you next week for another episode. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
