 Okay. We are live. Thank you all for joining. We'll get started soon. And Nancy will give them one more minute. Sure. No problem. Okay. Let's get started. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us today. I'm Sugathri Kalluru, director of the Trailblazers Initiative at the DSCI, and I'll be your host. In today's session, we have Nancy McQuire, Vice President, Global Procurement Services, and General Procurement Sourcing at IBM. In her 25 years of career, Nancy has taken active leadership roles in various divisions of supply chains. And today she's going to tell us about her impressive career and share some important insights from her supply chain leadership. Nancy, thank you so much for joining. Sure. Happy to be here. And before we begin, a couple of points. Duration of the session is 30 minutes. So we will have five to 10 minutes of Q&A at the end. We will have a chat activated on the Zoom. So please type your questions or comment on anything you find interesting during the course of the session. With that, let's get started. So Nancy, thank you for your time. So you've managed and work in every nook of the supply chain. You currently serve as the Vice President of the Procurement Services at IBM. Can you give us an overview of your professional journey? Sure. I started with through an industrial engineering degree at Ohio State University. So through my college time, I interned or co-opt, which is what we actually called it, with General Motors. So I was in the manufacturing supply chain part of the world through college. And then when I came into IBM, I was supporting manufacturing. And I came in as a process engineer. But in a few years, I went into management and I went into managing procurement engineering. I managed supply-to-man planning. I managed fulfillment. I managed direct procurement. I manage now indirect procurement. So pretty much the only thing that I never had direct management responsibility for in the supply chain was logistics. But for sure, in a role like I've had in all those aspects, I've had plenty of opportunity to expedite and work with my logistics colleagues. But I've never had that specific role across the supply chain. Thank you. I mean, you've basically been all around it, I should say. Yes. As you look back and reflect on all the work, supply chain work, especially you've done in the past 25 years, what has been the most favorite part, if you can pick one, and why? Well, they've all been different. And some of the jobs you take, you take because you kind of need to get that stripe, you need to learn that part of the supply chain. Those jobs maybe were not quite as fun, but you had to do them. I would say, though, that the experience that I had that has been the most rewarding or most fun was about four years ago. The chief procurement officer at IBM asked me to lead a team to implement agile techniques and agile practices into the procurement process. And many of you on the phone may know agile is typically steps that are used in software development. And IBM made a decision to bring it into operations, which means into supply chain procurement specifically. So I led that for the procurement team and it was awesome. It was so cool for three reasons. One, it was the first time we'd ever done something like that. So there was a lot of creativity that we had to apply to something that we knew very well. Two, I had an incredible team that I was able to put together to make this happen. And then thirdly, this was one time where I designed something and then I was the recipient of it, right? I actually led one of the teams after we implemented agile so that I could, you know, course correct and fix things that worked well or didn't work well. So that was probably the most meaningful thing I've done, you know, really in my nearly 30 years. So just to build off on that. So is there something from your previous work experience, you know, from your early stages of your career, which helped you build this agile experience or, you know, or work on this agile project for the first time? I think, yes, I think that understanding that what we do in supply chain is end to end and having experience in several parts of the supply chain. So when you go to do agile, what agile is is, you know, you basically are having a team take responsibility for everything to search for speed. It's all about speed. So for sure, those experiences helped inform the way we thought about the redesign. And again, the team that I had together, they brought in all sorts of experiences that I didn't even necessarily have. It was a global team. So they were bringing in global perspectives that I wouldn't necessarily know. So yeah, that combination of years of experience and global reach I think really helped with our design. That's interesting to know. Let's maybe talk about the challenges, you know, in all your years of public supply chain experience. I mean, no supply chain leader has been an exception. You must have faced substantial challenges in 2020 and as a result of the pandemic. Can you share some of these challenges, and personally as well as, you know, with respect to in terms of, you know, IBM supply chain and the actions you took to overcome them. That's just a great question. And one of the benefits of my experiences I've been through a few, what I would say, you know, we're just huge alterations in the way things were happening right so we had the dot com bust in the early 2000s, coupled with 911 event right and just change the everything for for a period of time and in the terms of the way transportation product was moved, etc. And then you went to the end of the 2000s 2008 and 2009 when the economy, the US economy broke, right, which had global implications. Many of you had tsunamis we had some really significant earthquakes out of Japan that had serious supply chain disruptions. So a lot of our processes have been developed as a result of those events that really had us well prepared for what happened with when the pandemic struck. So things like, you know, supply chain risk, we were really good at supply chain risk, but what the pandemic did was show us we needed to be even better so we had to go further and further into our tier one tier two, tier three supply base for supply continuity. Some other things like supplier financial risk assessments, very good at that but we really had to increase the frequency, and we had to expand how far we went, because in a global pandemic where everybody is affected. Now you've got supply chain vulnerabilities that could be popping up all over the place. So I would say that our preparation and learnings from those prior events, really enabled us to deal better with the pandemic than maybe, you know, a less experienced organization might face the other really big thing that that we did which I would say was unusual compared to other events. We had a huge human element to this. So the, the practices that that leadership employed right we literally as leaders in IBM signed commitments made pledges about how we were going to lead in a work from home environment. So within two weeks of the pandemic being announced week 95% of our employees were working remote, and they were working remote with environments that none of us really could get our heads around right they might have three generations of family living in the household they might have kids at home, you know, taking school at the same time that they weren't doing classes, these poor parents are trying to, you know, deal with business continuity issues while making sure their kids are getting their their homework done right unprecedented we've never dealt with that before. So the human element was really amazing and this pledge that we had and we used to you know an online social tool to do this. But the pledge was about 10 different elements that basically said hey, we're going to do this during this environment we're going to be empathetic we're going to be mindful we're going to be kind. We're going to be compassionate right and which is such a funny thing to say out loud that we had to do that but it really did shift your mindset to say, This is different. This is not business as usual people are dealing with unprecedented, you know, human situation and what's interesting is it's happening now again to us just in spades we have a very large organization in India. And that's topical right that the challenges in India are just skyrocketing. So again that pledge and and that recognition about understanding people are trying to work they're trying to juggle their home they might have somebody sick in the house they might be sick themselves. Right. That whole pledge was a new element I think that's something we had not had to deal with in prior, you know, I'll call them crises. Thank you. I mean, those are very good points you raise Nancy I think what we keep hearing and you emphasize is the importance of having the long term strategic for you, especially around balancing suppliers and the leadership, you know, practices which emphasize the human element. I think that came out loud and clear. Yes, I think everyone myself included have evolved an emotional quotient that we didn't necessarily have a year ago. Every meeting starts with a conversation about the human stuff before you get into the business stuff. We used to talk that way but you know now we're really doing it right so I think I think there's been some real blessings from this, from this whole, you know, shift to working within a pandemic and working remote. All right, so let's move to the next question and I should call it the question of the order of my favorite question. Supply chain has historically been a male centered environment. It's slowly changing. Do you believe that is still the case, especially in your environment, or is it changing. What advice do you have for organizations to address this gap and promote women leadership and supply chains. I knew you were going to ask me about this so I went and you know looked at some data before we got on the phone today just so that I could ground myself on supply chain. Right and just some data points that I found is it appears that it's roughly a 4060 mix now 40% women 60% men that are in supply chain types of roles. I would I don't have the data but I would speculate that that is that is an improvement over when I started years ago. I don't know how much of an improvement it is but we're getting close to that 5050 mix which you would expect given you know global demographics. So that's an improvement however is still only around 20%. And so that means the leadership and supply chain still hasn't kept up with, you know, the female balance right and and so why is that what's going on with leadership. And you all know on the phone, when you have leaders that are representative representing your organization you have a better chance of being a successful organization. I would say you know this is something that we look at really closely. I can tell you that within our organization we're about a 5050 mix. And this is a procurement statement by the way not a supply I don't have the supply chain data for IBM but procurement. And we are very intentional I guess that would be my first piece of advice is you need to be intentional about this and when I say intentional. So you understand your data right so what look at your data what does it tell you and some some of the data that you might want to collect is, you know, representation what what is female representation. What is female representation in the different levels within your organization. A lot of companies will see, you know, really heavy penetration at the entry point. But then it tapers off as you get higher and higher up the food chain so why is that go underneath that data to see what things you can find out so that that's the first thing in terms of being intentional is get the data that can help inform you. It can also help you when you take actions to look back to see are those actions having an impact. So for I'll give you an example, we had a challenge where we saw all of a sudden one year we saw a bunch of attrition occur out of whack from our normal attrition right. And we get exit interviews and those types of things so we went underneath it like what is going on why are we having all this attrition and we, and we, we had the data. Then we have round tables we had interventions to talk to people we had those exit interviews, and we took actions, resulting from that, and sure enough, you know we've seen a stabilization of that attrition back to normal rates. Our next intentional thing is to really look in that pipeline and see how are we actually moving and progressing with ratios that are equivalent as you get higher and higher up in the leadership ranks because you know going back to my data. Why do we have 40% women in the workplace but only 20% in management. Right, so that that doesn't make sense. So, there's something going on underneath it and you want to get into the data and then make intentional actions around that. Very good points I think being intentional and what's more interesting it's about the data point you raise in a data is very crucial, especially in supply chain right you know manage your demand or managing your suppliers but now from what you said it's it's even important especially for managing your talent. When you're saying like, you know, having a lot of women in the entry level positions and why are they not going up the ladder, what is happening in between. Are there enough incentives or is it are the other fields more attractive so I think the importance of expressing that the supply chain has changed over the past few years, it's no more the men's only club, you know, how it's a wall it's it's become more interesting I think it's important for the organizations to bring that up and say it out loud and clear so that it's attractive and stays as a viable option for for the you know talent. I agree and you know when you think about getting underneath that data and understanding what's happening why there's fallout as you go higher and higher up the ranks, you know, programs like mentorships and sponsorship those are critical. So, women can have someone to talk to and learn from about how they navigate, you know, what happens when you move from one level to the next right this focus on retention, what happens in the middle when you know women have babies. And you know they have to take the time that goes with that a lot of companies have recognized now how important it is to give a healthy amount of time off, give meaningful reentry back into the workplace. Allow for all the things that women have to do when you have a newborn right you want to nurse you want to be able to you know do those types of things a lot of companies IBM being one have really gotten clever about how to make it much more manageable for women to to to have families as well as as work, which is a huge change to you know 20 years ago 30 years ago 40 years ago it's it's amazing what the come what what corporations have done. I think they agree more. My case here and talk about personal strategies you've touched upon slightly. So, what was your approach to self development and building leadership skills which which enables you have a successful career at IBM. And what advice do you have for the, and the audience who joined us today to succeed in the supply chain journey. I, I, I would go with three things right off right off the top and I know there'd be more but let's just, let's just talk about three of them. The first one is curiosity. You have to have an interest in understanding how your role fits in how your role fits into the next role and understanding of you want to kind of understand things all the time and that curiosity for me extended to, I was always asking what your job was, how they got that job, you know what how they grew in their career, what kind of roadblocks or things I should watch out so that curiosity really started to help me when I would talk to other people about, you know, future roles. The second advice I would say to you is, take the hard jobs and do them really well. So if you if you want to advance in your supply chain. In your career, you really do have to do some of the hard stuff and some of the jobs are ugly, and they may not always be fun. But they, they teach you and they help develop you sometimes it's something that you're uncomfortable with or something that's risky. You usually learn something pretty important through those types of roles so I would say take the hard roles and do them really well. And then finally, just recognize that development is just it's a continuum, it never stops. I'll give you an example of one for me. I'm, I've been in leadership, you know, for for years and years and years. Every day I get a, a feed into my inbox of a bunch of leadership articles that were published the day but day before eight eight articles let's say and I look at the titles, and I can guarantee I read one a day. Just not because I'm thinking oh I have to do this I'm interested in it. And I know I need it for me to continue to be a good leader, and research and advice around leadership is changing right. So, I need to recognize that I need to change and I need to grow so so lead. So I would say, you know, recognize that development as a continuum, you're never done. And then if you keep that sort of as a mindset I think you'll grow naturally in your, in your, in your supply chain career. Great tips Nancy. Again, I think, just a continuation to the self development part. You mentioned about network and mentorship slightly, you know, in earlier chat. So has mentorship played an important role in your career. How early in your career way, you know, did you have your mentor and if yes what have you learned about yourself along the way. Yeah, mentorship, sponsorship, absolutely critical in my career. I work in a huge company for one thing so just having mentors who can help you navigate the maze right is is huge. I would say it was very early on again I mentioned that I'm a very curious person so I would just, you know, strike up conversations with people and to understand things about their background and their career trajectory people love to talk about themselves right and so they would share and sometimes there were natural affinities that grew as a result of that mentorship or mentorships that that were created through that others were more where you know some maybe a higher level executives saw work that I did and reached out and and really kind of pulled me in. It was super helpful they really became more like sponsors of me to say you know Nancy this is a job I think you should go do. And they would sort of sponsor me into that role. I would tell you in hindsight. I wish I wish I would have listened to them more and then more risky about some things I think I would have moved quicker in some areas. I held myself back because I was afraid or I didn't trust enough about how they could see things right and it's interesting I talked to my kids about it now and say, you know you really should listen that they kind of know a little bit more than you do. So that's the one regret as I do wish I would have taken more risk based on based on the recommendation that I have from some of my mentors. That's awesome. And there is a very important reason why I asked this question and say because we kept hearing from all our guests that how important of a role mentorship and network has played in the career. And that is for the very same reason that DSCI we are launching 21 for 21 it's a mentorship program. If I may I want to just quickly talk to our audience a little bit about that program. Sure. It's a pre mentorship program for women who are at the early stages of the career and through a four month program we teach them the idea is to teach them important elements to enable a digital supply chain mindset, and also assign them a senior teacher just like Nancy to be their mentor. I think we want you touched upon it. We believe this, having less women and supply chain is more of a pipeline issue and not just a cultural or a diversity issue. And through the program like this like 2021 we believe that it is more of a sustainable long term strategy for building divers and performing teams. To all my audience it's a great networking and learning opportunity. You've heard from see how important a mentorship or a mentor can play in your role of a mentor can be in your career. Applications are open. So we have most of the past speakers join us as mentors so please check our website for more details and submit your applications. Nancy I think with that let's move to the Q&A. Audience please feel free to type your questions in the chat box. Meanwhile, I'll take the questions which I've received from the registration form. So Nancy the first question for you is what is the key difference between supply chain leadership and leadership in other business units. That's a great question. I think that there is a mindset that goes in supply chain leadership, which is largely operational supply chain people I think you mentioned it right we, we are all about numbers we are all about execution. It's a mindset of operations, and that kind of rises to the top it's also about innovation, because we're always having to transform and make whatever we're doing better. So those two things I think really rise to the top in terms of the leadership characteristics and supply chain, whereas perhaps if you go into let's say research, the leadership in research. The attribute of operations isn't as high up right there they're much more creative. They're doing things just to do them, you know, to break, break and find new things so operations is not as critical in, let's say research so my answer is, I do think the attributes of leadership shift in terms of organization, depending on which organization that you're in, and then if you're in supply chain operations and innovation really rise to the top. Thank you. And we have one more question. How do you discover your career passion. How important was family support during your career. Oh man that second part huge. So the the first part I you know I kind of stumbled into procurement and that type of thing I, I was an industrial engineer. You know that's what I studied and I knew I was going to be an industry but I didn't really know where my career was going to grow. So I'll be honest, it kind of it kind of evolved it wasn't like I sat down and said ooh I really want to be a Vice President of procurement one day. I didn't know that. So, so let me just say that I did know that I wanted to aspire to a higher level leadership role so I knew that, but I didn't really know where that role was going to land and that sort of evolved over time. I respect to family support, absolutely 100% I have three kids, my husband is a professional also supporting me in my professional environment that is, that is a family thing. It's especially a parent thing, both my husband and I spent a lot of time making sure we can balance the things that we have to balance. We have a, we have a bit of a nontraditional household he does the cooking. That's not necessarily true in a lot of households we and he does a grocery shopping to that doesn't fall on me. But there are a lot of other things that I do. So, you know, we balance it and when I have decisions about taking when I took a director role or VP role. We had a very serious discussion about how, you know demands in the household would change and how we would do that so absolutely support thing to make my job successful. That's wonderful to hear. Next question. We say, how did you manage your team's morale during the pandemic. I think it's likely test upon the pledge, by the pledge, but I think the question is more focused on how you personally manage your team and get the morale high. Yeah, you know this was this was just wild right we had both we had both the pandemic, where we were all figuring out how to stay engaged now agile practices are brilliant for this because I don't know if you guys know agile but you have daily stand ups or weekly stand and you're always getting together as a team. And so we were just doing that on on WebEx versus, you know, in a conference room together. So, so the keeping in touch part was good but then we had the social unrest of the summer in the US right we had, you know, the George Floyd killing and then all of that unrest and all that sort of recognition that. Wow, our teams are under incredible stress. So we really need to talk and that really became we got a lot of great help from our human resources team about how to have conversations. You know, stopping talking about business and shifting gears towards talking about personal stuff. So that's really how we've done it it's been, and you almost have to shift some of your practices that you have in the in the face to face world, like roundtables or that type of thing and you got to start having them on WebEx and you have to start teaching people how to do that on WebEx, or on zoom. So, it's really using a lot of the old techniques but applying them with the technology that is available to us today. We'll take one last question, which is live. I think I'll rephrase this a little bit. What has been the biggest failure in your career, if you consider anything and what are the lessons you learn from it. The biggest failure did you say. Yes. Oh, that's the easy one so I went, I think I shared this with you I actually tried to go out on my own in 2008 to start a consulting company. I left IBM and I went out on my own and the economy crashed. I left in April and the economy crash in August and I spent the next two years trying to sell consulting services in an environment where no one was buying anything. So, I learned so much during that two years I don't regret it one bit, but it was not successful right and I went back into corporate America and I took all the things that I learned during that two years I actually think it made me a better corporate citizen and I was when I left. So again no regret about it but it was, it was, it was a crazy time it was a hard time. Thank you for sharing that amazing. And with that I think we can, we have come to the end of the conversation. I should say I really enjoyed this 30 minutes with you Nancy it's been amazing 30 minutes and I'm sure that audience are feeling the same as well. Thank you very much for your time, as well as thank you for your willingness to volunteer as a 21 for 21 mentor. You didn't have to do it, but you decided to do it so I think that speaks volumes about your commitment to support women leadership. So with that, I would say thank you everyone for joining stay safe. Have a good rest of your week. Thank you bye bye.