Same-same, but different

Inspired by the mid-term holiday season in Denmark, just a short excerpt from the Commercial/Supply Chain/Commercial phrase book, should you have forgotten during your holidays:

Commercial: “We have presented it to the customer!”, “We need to be more flexible!”, “It is a strategic product!”

Supply Chain: “Maybe we could…!”, “We’re fully booked, we have to do it later!”, “That’s a very difficult shape to work with!”

Commercial: “Ok, I’ll tell the customer that: Yes, we are working on it!”

Across businesses and industries, I have often heard, and participated in, dialogues like above – in product development it even seems like if they are part of a ritual dance between the first idea and the product launch.

At first it sounds like Commercials are extreme risk takers and always presenting solutions whereas Supply Chains are the masters of finding just any possible problem on the palette… It could also be that Commercials are simply operating more result oriented and Supply Chains more process oriented.

One example from above could be launching a new product in the market: When focusing on the result you’ll just need the final product. How it’s provided is less important, or should I say, you are very flexible finding solutions (But can’t we just…?). When focusing on the process you see a lot of necessary steps that, if not adding complexity, then at least often will be more complicated than simply running your daily business (But then we’ll have to…!).

No right or wrong here, just remember that when talking to a colleague from another department and it sounds like you are working in opposite directions – it might be that the same word has different meanings in your languages.