What will the Future of Transport and Logistics look like? (Transcript from my presentation at the CILTA AGM in Sept. 2014).

March 27, 2015

What will the future of transport and logistics look like?

This was the theme of a presentation I was asked to participate in at the CILT Australia September 2014 AGM meeting in Melbourne. Below is the transcript of my presentation including the references and necessary links for further reading.

Thanks to CILTA for the invitation and for the participants for their thoughtful and engaging questions that followed.

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THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS – 3 MAIN ELEMENTS UNDER DISCUSSION

There are many things one can discuss when contemplating the future of Transport and Logistics. Today I will focus on Shipping and in particular on three elements that are becoming part of our everyday discussions and which, I think, have the potential to change the industry forever:

  1. Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions
  2. Crewing
  3. Size and type of vessels.

LEADERSHIP IN THE 21st CENTURY – ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND SHIPPING

Reflecting on the subject I came across Rachel Kyte’s interview to Fran Kelly (Radio National, 29th August 2014). Rachel is the VP of the World Bank responsible for Climate Change. While discussing Leadership, Rachel gave her own definition as follows:

“Leadership in the 21st century is about getting the economic fundamentals right so we drive carbon out of our growth” Rachel Kyte

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) brought about many devastating effects for economies all around the world. However, the refocusing on fundamentals also brought about new thinking around energy consumption. The vessel charter rates dropped and with fuel been the major expense, shipping lines had to think about new ways of reducing that cost.

So, shipping lines trialed Super Slow Steaming which is the running of a ship’s engine with extra slow revs (MCR as low as 10% – see here). This has its challenges as the engine needs to be cooled down constantly by an air blower so, special arrangements and special agreements and clauses needed to be developed to allocate the risk for this to become reality. Well, this worked and more vessels were introduced in the routes which elongated their lead times and reduced their running cost by reducing speed lower than any such endeavor made before.

The price of Heavy Fuel Oil (which as quality is close to bitumen) keeps on increasing and this trend may well continue (in the mid term) due to the refinement process becoming more efficient leaving less and less fuel for the shipping world (i.e. when LPG, petrol, Jet fuel, Diesel oil etc are drawn from the refinement process a smaller and smaller percentage of Heavy Fuel Oil remains – see here for a diagram of the the refinement process).

So, in 2010, the Classification Society Germanischer Lloyd signed an agreement with Japanese shipbuilder IHI to jointly investigate and develop solutions for large LNG-fueled container ships.

You may be aware of the Searoads built vessel in the Melbourne-Tasmania route which uses LNG and also shipping lines such as CMA CGM who is developing dual fuel vessels (able to burn Heavy Fuel Oil and LNG) and is investing in research for LNG type vessels. The technology is becoming more and more mainstream as Natural Gas becomes available at more locations fast, its price is becoming more competitive, it has good energy density and it offers clear environmental benefits i.e. “elimination of SOX emissions, significant reduction of NOX and particulate matter, and a reduction of GHG emissions” (see here).

In the mid to long term, Nuclear energy will become more prevalent. Cleaner and safer technologies are been developed now. Apart from Uranium, extensive research is been done in Thorium (see here), pebble-bed reactors (see here) etc. Focusing on next-generation nuclear energy solutions that result in minimal or none toxic waste and have reduced risk of meltdown in case of an accident is going to drive the perceptions about safety, as well as, our risk/benefit view to levels that allow for this technology to be used more extensively than ever before.
Solar is also coming into our lives as a form of energy for supporting smaller though vessel types. It has been reported in 2012, that the MS Turanor PlanetSolar yacht completed it tour around the world using exclusively solar energy (see here). It is unlikely though that Solar will be able to support the mega commercial vessels we nowadays see sailing our seas.

All of the above means that carbon emissions are going to reduce (and are already reducing) with shipping lines reporting significant reductions in their carbon output. e.g. CMA CGM reported 40% reduction of CO2 emissions between 2005 and 2013 and also that they are on track for the target of 50% reduction by 2015 (see here).

Apart from the GFC and the obvious economical advantages of developing and introducing alternatives energy sources, legislation has disincentivised the continuation of the current energy consumption styles e.g. ECA Zones in the North Sea and the Baltic sea (see here).

One thing is for sure, that the vessels of tomorrow will be more efficient than today and the carbon emissions (CO2 g/TEU-Km) will reduce.

Furthermore, assisted by Climate Change and the melting of the Arctic Ice, the Northern Sea Route, with particular interest to the shipping lanes connecting Asia and Europe, has started to open allowing vessel navigation.
There have already vessels transiting mostly with the assistance of icebreakers. Utilizing this route means that the distance between key markets in Asia (e.g. Shanghai) and Europe (e.g. Hamburg) reduces by approx. 1/3. This of course means less energy consumed for transference of the goods on the biggest current market route (see here).

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CREWING – UNMANNED NAVIGATION

It is evident that the global fleet of vessels that carry around 90% of world trade is ever increasing. For the last 10 years the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has raised alarms for the lack of enough able crew members that can man these vessels as well as the quality of seafarers has been reported to be on the decrease.

At the same time, we see driverless trains, airplane drones controlled with joystics and driverless cars been developed. In Australia, we have semi and fully automatic terminals running already e.g. the Patrick Brisbane Auto strad terminal has been successfully running with Australian developed technology for years.

Sea navigation seems to be more traditional than other industries but it has become apparent that we are reaching a point where shipping will have to consider again the risk/benefit equation and with the technology of today to venture into unmanned navigation.

Today, the European Union is funding 3.5m euro into the MUNIN project (Maritime Unmanned Navigation through Intelligence in Networks). This project will produce a prototype for simulated sea trials to assess the costs and benefits by 2015 (see here).

Moreover, Rolls Royce has entered the discussion (see here). They believe that unmanned navigation vessels may be introduced within a decade in regions such as the Baltic (although global expansion may be slower).

Automation of movement of all means of transportation seems closer than most people think as the technology is presently available and is been refined fast.

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SIZE AND TYPE OF VESSELS

The third trend we have been seeing in ship design is the fact that vessels become bigger and bigger. Containerisation started in the mid-1950s with ships that could carry only approx. 50 TEU (Twenty Equivalent Unit). By 1970, 1700 TEU were present and by 2010 13,000 TEU vessels were in the water.

Now, we have the mega vessels of 18,000 TEU and already a 21,000 TEU vessel is been built. The trend will probably continue taking into account that the new upgraded Panama Canal will be able to cater for 13,000 TEU vessels going through, Nicaragua appears to be starting their own project to compete with Panama (an endeavor that has raised many questions), Malacca strait is constrained and the Suez Canal is considering opening a parallel canal to the Suez Canal to ensure constant two way traffic.

The current crane technology been developed has an outreach of 70m (taking into account that the beam of the 18,000 TEU vessels is 59m) there is still scope for growth although limitations of ports to cater for these will make certain ports hubs (e.g. Shanghai) and others, feeder ports (e.g. Melbourne with its ability to effectively only cater up to 7000 TEU vessel designs).

There are of course, many questions to be answered. The answers to which will define the pace and the priorities for innovation and change and the centers of innovation of tomorrow (see Richard Florida’s excellent book The Rise of the Creative Class on a current innovation map of the world).

Which are going to be the markets of tomorrow? At which point will Europe come out of the recession and how much will the demand grow? When will the Chinese economy surpass the US and the Intra-Asia trade lanes surpass the rest? Will the current economic model continue unimpeded or will the global derivatives “bubble” (see the Bank of International Settlements report which reflects their notional value in June 2014 at around the 700 trillion $USD) burst. Will globalisation continue the expansion and how will the creation of the BRICS equivalent “IMF” affect the global trade?

Finally, will 3-D printing take off and if so, will we see less finalised products moving in containers making bulk cargo vessels the next growth area as raw materials will be in demand and large workshops will be used close to the end customer to make the actual product?

When reflecting on topics like this, I remember a story shared by Charlie McDonald, in one of his presentations when he was discussing about how to view the future. The story goes like this:

In 1905, the wise men of London gathered to discuss how London can best equip to face the challenges of the future. It is worth noting that the car had been invented at that time. However, after serious deliberations the wise men came up with three key questions that needed to be answered:

  1. Where will the horses “park”? (horses was the prevalent transportation of cargo and people medium at the time and the demand was increasing).
  2. How will all the horses be fed?
  3. How can the horses s..t be taken care of (as they were becoming a health hazard).

Well, I hope we have learnt our lesson.

The technologies and the questions are today more apparent than the ones contemplated back in 1905 (hopefully). The answers may vary but I believe that the above suggestions and thinking indicates what is likely to happen in the not so far future.

George Vrakas – 24th September 2014

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What is your Excalibur? Power Sources in organisational settings – an enhanced model!

November 21, 2014

“One of the things about powerful people is they have the ability to make it look easy” Ice-T

Which are the sources of power in an organisation setting? 

Are the previous studies’ outcomes regarding organisational sources of power still relevant? Will these be still relevant in the 21st century setting? 

Do the current organisational goals allow the same thinking about power to flourish or is there additional sources that we need to consider as more relevant in this age?

This article will argue that, as I have mentioned here and here, the skill-set of a good “questioner” i.e. someone that has a well-developed inquisitive mind, is the additional source of power that needs to be added to the existing lists. Let’s have a look why.

Excalibur

BRIEF HISTORY IN THE RECENT RESEARCH OF SOURCES OF POWER

1959: French and Raven’s Sources of Power:

In 1959, John French and Bertram Raven (American Sociologists) published an article called “The Bases of Power”. This is regarded as the basis for classifying power in organizations.

They identified five sources of power, namely: coercive, referent, legitimate, expert and reward power. These were defined as follows (reference from Paul Merchant’s article “5 Sources of Power in Organisations“):

 

1. “Coercive Power is derived from a person’s ability to influence others via threats, punishments or sanctions.

 

2. Referent power is derived from the interpersonal relationships that a person cultivates with other people in the organization.

 

3. Legitimate power is also known as positional power. It’s derived from the position a person holds in an organization’s hierarchy.

 

4. Expert power is derived from possessing knowledge or expertise in a particular area.

 

5. Reward power arises from the ability of a person to influence the allocation of incentives in an organization”.


1982: Hersley and Blanchard’s addition to the model

French and Raven’s model was expanded in 1982 by Hershey and Blanchard’s publication titled “Management of Organizational Behavior”.

In it, Hershey and Blanchard added two more sources of power namely:

6. Connection power which is derived from the ability to connect people and also from the width and breadth of one’s network (within and outside the organisation)

7. Information Power which derives from been able to gather, process and turn relevant data into information and knowledge. This source may or may not coincide with the Legitimate or Expert power source. The internet has flattened the information field and so, expertise and/or position may not be the only indicators for up to date and relevant / useful information nowadays.

 

SUMMARY OF POWER SOURCES

We can summarise and possibly simplify this list in the below broader categories i.e. Power because of:

i) Position (Coercive, Legitimate, Rewards, Referent),

ii) Relationships (Connection, Referent)

iii) Information (Expert, Information).


TODAY AND TOMORROW

We currently see that the 21st century brings along a different type of complexity. In the most dynamic and fast changing landscape we have ever experienced the skill sets for breaking down and working through complex issues based on critical thinking and good logical skills become more and more in demand.

The Customer base is becoming increasingly astute, as there are many more tools enabling it to compare and find out a highly customised solution.  This is the new norm.

Moreover, social media allows for information to spread rapidly throughout the world. It has been mentioned that, through social media, it now can take less than 20 minutes for an event to spread globally.

As I have discussed here, our ability to combine knowledge and invent solutions to the new challenges encountered can be a very strong differentiator in the marketplace.

“Thinking outside the square” becomes a skill heavily sought after.

Learning how to deal with new issues and organising your analysis, plans and actions towards effectively breaking down a situation and seeking solutions thus, becomes a critical skill.

Just think, when was it last that you had faced a “new” challenge, a more complex situation that you had not encountered before? Who did you seek advice from?

It is possible that you weren’t necessarily looking for a person with the power source described above but for someone who could guide your thinking through the maze of the problem’s elements and potential solutions towards effective mind mapping.

I firmly believe that this is a new source of power that is slowly evolving and establishing itself as a key for the future. We can call it “Effective Questioner” Power.

Organisations by default have positional power figures. The more successful organisations also have relational and informational-experts that deliver results.

How many though have implanted the critical thinking skill-set as a requirement in their Human Resources strategy? I believe that the successful ones of the future will.

Finally, the above plethora of power sources means that we now have more ways to differentiate and add value in an organisation. Like King Arthur who by searching and finding the Excalibur embraced a unique Power and privilege to rule, you now have to consider and reflect on your source of Power and answer the question:

What is your Excalibur?

OTHER RESOURCES 

Previous blog posts on critical thinking, logic and innovation.

  1. 8 must know question types for Effective Leaders (link here)
  2. Innovation: SCAMPER- A Practical Guide
  3. Top Tips – Avoiding Common Negotiation Pitfalls (link here)- First published in TheSource e-news
  4. 6 Additional Pitfalls to Avoid during a Negotiation – Cognitive Biases (link here)
  5. The Future of Learning – Are you part of the Learning Revolution? (link here)
  6. How to Conquer tomorrow? (link here)
  7. Conscious Communication – A paradigm for the 21st Century! (link here)
  8. In pursuit of Best Practice – Intrapreneurship (link here). First published in www.procurious.com
  9. The Leader’s Role is Setting and Keeping the Tune (link here) – Two inspirational Videos included.
  10. How to develop a winning organisation today! An inspiring talk (link here)
  11. “All Models Are Wrong, But Some of Them Are Useful” (link here) – First published in Procurement and Supply Australasia


 

 

 

Filed under Continuous Improvement, Future Trends, Leadership Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

In pursuit of Best Practice – Intrapreneurship

August 6, 2014

This article first appeared on Procurious.com as a guest blog contribution. You can find the original blog post here.

 

“At its simplest, Best Practice means we are doing our job better than others. …that might translate to closing deals faster, achieving consistently good negotiated results, establishing terms and change processes that support high-performance relationships or realizing results that regularly exceed expectations. So we want to be better, faster, contributing greater value, making fewer mistakes” Notes on “What do we mean by Best Practice” by IACCM

As already elaborated here, an essential aspect for becoming successful in the future, is Creativity.

The term, Creativity, most probably conjures up images of successful Entrepreneurs that have a vision and the courage to pursue their dreams.

Outstanding Entrepreneurship is a well-defined quality behind every successful organisation.

Entrepreneurs like Richard Branson are followed and their ideas celebrated in the public domain.

However, it would most likely be better for an organisation to not only try to maintain its competitive edge on the ideas of one or even a handful of forward thinking individuals, but also find ways to tamper into the creativity and ideas of every one of its employees.

Hence, organisations should also look into the promotion and support of Intrapreneusrship.

Read on if you want to find out more about this idea, as well as, get to learn about one way to harvest the concept of Intrapreneurship as a means to pursue Best Practice within your own organisation.

Outside the box

Intrapreneurship

Jeroen de Jong and Sander Wennekers explored the concept here.According to them:

“Intrapreneurship refers to employee initiatives in organizations to undertake something new, without being asked to do so.”

There are a few companies that actively promote intrapreneurial behaviour e.g. Google  allows its employees to spend up to 20% of their time to pursue projects of their choice.3M and Intel appear to have programs towards similar promotions (see here).

However, intrapreneurship is not only about the pursuit of new products and revenue streams.

Intrapreneurship contains an element of innovation. Innovation refers to the production and implementation of useful ideas, including the adaptation of products or processes from outside an organization. As Antoncic and Hisrich highlights (here)

“Intrapreneurship is about “emergent behavioural intentions and behaviours that are related to departures from the customary ways of doing business in existing organizations”

In other terms Intrapreneurship is about the pursuit of Best Practice.

In parallel, it is also important to note that the support of the practice of Intrapreneurship also helps maintain engaged teams that always challenge themselves and evolve the organisational practices, processes and results (read more about team engagement here and here).

Ideas Charter (a simple and practical way to pursue Best Practice)

As part of an effort to promote employee engagement and Intrapreneurial behaviours, I developed the Ideas Charter.

This is a simple process which ensures that all new ideas are captured, evaluated, and then through a process that promotes and supports undertaking innovative projects, implemented.

The Ideas Charter Process works like this.

i) A champion is assigned to capture all ideas that can enhance processes or contribute to efficiency and effectiveness in a simple spreadsheet called the Ideas Charter (see template here). This is done on a non judgmental way to the perceived value of the ideas i.e. following Edward De Bono’s six hat definition – by wearing a green hat.

ii) The ideas are then evaluated and validated by a selected committee and approved or not approved for further development.

iii) If an idea is approved, then that idea is made available as a potential candidate for a future side project to be done by a team member or a team.

iv) Every two months the team is asked to select a side project to work on. Each team member is encouraged to pick one of the Ideas in the Ideas Charter and work on it. A due date is allocated.

v) At the end of the allocated period each member presents his/her side project along with a benefits analysis.

vi) The side project outcome is placed into production. This outcome  could be a change in process, a development of a business case i.e.  it could be anything that promotes efficiency or effectiveness.

vii) After 3 side projects are completed and presented, the team is given the opportunity to vote for the best one. The winner is celebrated.

This is a simple but effective way to work towards Best Practice in small teams. From personal experience this concept has the power to engage the team and also to elevate the level of efficiency and effectiveness as delivered by its outputs.

Finally, it works towards Yves Morieux’s vision elaborated in his presentation about “How to Develop a Winning organisation” – see here . Yves eloquently summarised his position as below:

“The real battle is not against competitors. The real battle is against ourselves. Against our bureaucracy, against our complicatedness” – Yves Morieux

What systems do you have in place to promote and support the pursuit of Best Practice?

 

 

 

Image courtesy of glendale inquiry

 

Filed under Future Trends, Innovation Tagged with , ,

The future of Learning – Are you part of the Learning Revolution?

July 23, 2014

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Alvin Toffler

In the future (see also here), I believe that our ability to learn and take advantage of varying environmental shifts and opportunities will define how successful we are and how successful our organisations become.

Johannes Gutenberg

Johannes Gutenberg

The concept of the Learning organisation has been discussed at length and indeed some companies have embraced it looking forward to how the marketspace would be endeavouring to equip themselves with the right tools and right skill-sets and attitudes that would enable them to remain relevant and succeed in the future.

Considering the Future, it is hard to predict what the art of Learning will look like. Technology, social media, interactive learning spaces and our thinking about education and learning is rapidly shifting e.g. embracing concepts like “multiple intelligences” (see here) slowly but surely will remove ourselves from the overly structured and dry learning spaces.

However, it will take years if not decades to fully understand how this shift in thinking will evolve and how it will affect us. To understand this better consider that:

“this is exactly what happened with the invention of the printing press. When Gutenburg first invented the printing press in the 15th century he did not have any idea of the transformative change this machine would bring to the entire humankind. A century later and after printing became a taken-for-granted part of life only then people realized the grandeur of such invention. This is probably what will happen with learning too”. educatorstechnology

As part of this discussion, I came across three resources that very eloquently discuss this issue and contribute to our thinking on how to make Learning more effective for our organisations and for ourselves.

Ken Robinson – his famous talk on the Learning Revolution on TED.com

Ken’s book the Element is also a great resource on the topic.

Sugata Mitra’s TED talk on his Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) Project.

SOLE is a great paradigm of how technology can stimulate engagement and learning.

FInally, Knowledgeworks have taken a look into the future of education and learning put their thoughts in this great infographic.

The Future of Learning - knowledgeworks

The Future of Learning – knowledgeworks

Download the pdf version from here.

 

How do you promote learning and employee engagement within your team and your own organisation?

 

Filed under Effective Communication, Future Trends, Leadership, Team Development Series Tagged with ,

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