There is a mandate at a lot of organizations right now. Learn AI.

Great directive. Genuinely important. Absolutely necessary for anyone who wants to stay relevant in an environment that is moving faster than any formal curriculum can keep up with.

There is just one small problem. The training doesn't exist yet. The mandate is real. The roadmap to get there is not. Which means a lot of well intentioned professionals are sitting with a directive to learn something and no structured path to actually learn it.

So this week I did what operators do when the resource isn't available. I figured it out myself. I spent time this week going deep on Claude. Not surface level. Not the "here is how to write a better email" version. The actual capabilities. The depth. The ways an operator with the right questions and the right framework can build something that creates real measurable value inside a real operation. Shipping dashboards. Order flow visibility. Financial reporting models. Contract analysis. Scenario planning. Drafting communications that used to take an hour in twenty minutes. And I am still just getting started.

Here is what I want to say to every operations and supply chain professional who has heard the mandate but hasn't found the path yet. You don't need a formal program to begin. You need curiosity and a willingness to sit with something long enough to understand what it can actually do. The people who will have the most value in this industry over the next five years aren't the ones who waited for someone to teach them. They are the ones who taught themselves while everyone else was waiting.

The mandate is real. The training is self directed.

Ten thoughts on a Friday.

One - the meeting that just got added to your calendar for 4pm today was a choice someone made and I hope they have four hours of bumper to bumper traffic to think about that on their commute home.

Two - "let's circle back on this Monday" is just a polite way of saying this was never actually urgent and we both know it.

Three - somewhere right now a warehouse picker is more productive before 7am than most executives are before their third coffee and we should all sit with that.

Four - the reply all button exists solely to test our character and most of us are failing. Reply thank you to all if you agree.

Five - if your standup meeting is longer than fifteen minutes it is not a standup meeting it is a meeting that hasn't figured itself out yet.

Six - per my last email is the professional equivalent of I already told you this but go ahead. Next up - copy in the boss.

Seven - nothing humbles you faster than confidently walking into the wrong conference room and having to back out slowly while twelve strangers watch.

Eight - the best thing about Friday afternoon is that the inbox has given up on you and you both know it.

Nine - somewhere in your building right now there is a process that exists because of a decision made in 2011 that nobody remembers but everyone still follows. "That's the way that we have always done it!"

Ten - it is Friday. The week did its best. So did you. Go enjoy the weekend.

There was a point in my career where I was the hardest person in the room to lead. Not because I was difficult. Not because I was disruptive. But because I was so certain I already knew the answer that I had stopped asking the question.

I was moving fast. Hitting numbers. Building things. And somewhere in the middle of all of that forward motion I had quietly stopped being curious and started being certain. Certain about the solution before I understood the problem. Certain about the people before I understood their perspective. Certain about the direction before the team had any idea we were moving.

Certainty feels like confidence from the inside. From the outside it looks like something else entirely. A leader who has stopped listening. Who already knows. Who is executing a plan the team didn't know existed until they were expected to be aligned with it.

The moment I got out of my own way didn't come from a book or a seminar or a performance review. It came from watching a team member solve a problem I had already decided was unsolvable - in about twenty minutes - using an approach I never would have considered because I had already concluded it wouldn't work. I hadn't tested the conclusion. I had just reached it.

That moment was uncomfortable in the best possible way. Because it reminded me that the value I bring to any room is not having all the answers. It is knowing which questions to ask. Creating enough space for the people around me to bring what they know. And being secure enough in my own judgment to recognize when someone else's is better.

Getting out of your own way is not weakness. It is the most advanced leadership skill there is. And the ones who master it build the best teams. Every time.

I'm going to say something that will make some people uncomfortable.

Your 3PL Is not your partner. And that is probably your fault.

Most companies don't have a 3PL partner. They have a 3PL vendor. And the difference between those two things is costing them more than they realize.

A vendor executes the transaction. They receive the purchase order, fulfill the obligation, invoice accordingly, and move on. The relationship begins and ends at the contract. No strategic input. No proactive communication. No skin in the game beyond the service level agreement.

A partner does something different. They tell you when something is about to break before it breaks. They bring ideas that improve your operation even when there is no line item for it. They treat your inventory like it matters because they understand that your inventory is your business.

Most 3PL relationships never get there. And here is the uncomfortable part - it is usually not entirely the 3PL's fault.

I've watched brands treat their logistics partners like interchangeable commodities. Squeeze the rate in every negotiation without leaving value for the other side. Escalate every problem without ever acknowledging what went right. Change requirements constantly without understanding the operational impact on the other side of the wall.

Then wonder why the 3PL just executes the minimum. You trained them to.

I've negotiated 3PL contracts that delivered millions in savings. And the ones that performed best over time weren't the ones with the lowest rates. They were the ones where both sides were invested in the outcome. Shared metrics. Transparent communication. A rate structure that left enough margin for the 3PL to actually staff your account properly.

If your 3PL isn't proactively solving problems you haven't discovered yet - ask yourself what kind of partner you've been. The answer might be more useful than the next RFP.

Disruption in 2026 is not a temporary condition. It is the operating environment. Tariffs shifting overnight. Fuel costs swinging on geopolitical events. Carrier networks repricing in real time. Consumer expectations that don't adjust because your supply chain is having a hard quarter.

The companies I've watched navigate this well aren't the most resilient ones. They are the most adaptable ones.

There is a difference. Resilience is built into the structure. Adaptability is built into the culture. Resilient organizations have backup plans. Adaptable organizations have people who don't need a plan to find a solution.

I've built operations from the ground up and inherited ones that were barely holding together. The ones that performed best under pressure weren't the ones with the most redundancy built in. They were the ones with teams empowered to make decisions in real time without waiting for approval from someone three levels up who wasn't close enough to the problem to solve it anyway.

Stop optimizing for resilience. Build for adaptability. The disruption isn't going away. The question is whether your organization can move with it or just survive it.

Today the US Customs and Border Protection tariff refund portal goes live.

Approximately 127 billion dollars in tariffs. Now eligible for refund requests starting this morning.

Let that number sit for a moment. One hundred and twenty seven billion dollars.

That is more than the GDP of several countries. It is also the amount that has been quietly sitting in the cost structure of importers, manufacturers, DTC brands, and CPG companies - showing up as margin compression, price increases, sourcing pivots, and the kind of after hours stress that doesn't show up in any report but absolutely shows up at 2am.

I've watched companies make significant operational decisions - reshoring, nearshoring, supplier diversification, SKU rationalization - in direct response to tariff pressure. Some of those decisions were right. Some were expensive reactions to a variable that just changed again.

That is the reality of operating in an environment where the rules of the game get rewritten while the game is still being played.

To everyone that has been watching and waiting - the refund is welcome but the lesson is more valuable.

The companies best positioned right now aren't the ones waiting for a portal to open. They are the ones who used the last two years of pressure to build operations that are leaner, more flexible, and less dependent on any single variable - tariff, carrier, supplier, or otherwise - to hold together.

Disruption has a way of accelerating decisions that should have been made sooner. The ones who moved first are already ahead.

The portal is open. The operational clarity you built to survive the pressure - that is already paying dividends.

Go check your import records. There may be money waiting for you.

To everyone that I annoyed with my calls discussing the Supreme Court decision and the steps to retrieve these funds - thank you for your insight and guidance.

Sunday.

The week ahead is already taking shape whether you are ready for it or not.
There are decisions to make. Conversations to have. Problems to solve that don't know yet they are going to meet you this week.

Here is what I've learned after years of operating in environments where the unexpected was the only thing you could count on. Preparation is not a to-do list. It is a mindset.

It is walking into Monday with enough clarity about what actually matters that when the urgent things arrive - and they always arrive - you already know which ones deserve your best thinking and which ones just need a response.

Most people spend Sunday dreading Monday. The best operators I know spend Sunday deciding what Monday is going to be. Not the whole week. Not the whole quarter. Just - what is the one thing that if I move it forward this week changes the trajectory of everything behind it. Find that thing.
Put it first. Protect it like it matters. Because here is the truth about high performance that nobody says enough - it is rarely the big dramatic moment that separates good from great.
It is the Sunday night decision to show up Monday with intention instead of just showing up.

The week is waiting.

The week is behind me. No agenda. No deliverables. No one needs anything from me for at least a few hours and I am choosing to believe that is still true even as I type this.

I've been thinking about something simple this week. The best moments in my career didn't happen in boardrooms or strategy sessions or annual planning meetings.

They happened in the margins.

The conversation in the hallway that turned into the solution nobody had found in six months of meetings. The team that stayed late not because they had to but because they wanted to see it through. The moment when something clicked and everyone felt it at the same time.

The margins are where the real work lives.

This weekend I'm going to do something I recommend to everyone who operates at a high level and rarely practices. Nothing. Intentional nothing. The kind that clears the noise and makes space for the thinking that doesn't happen when the calendar is full and the inbox is loud.

Protect your weekends like they matter. Because the version of you that shows up Monday is built on Saturday.

Every great job I've ever had came with a cast of characters I didn't expect. Not on the org chart. Not in the job description. Just people who showed up every day and made the whole thing worth doing in a way that no compensation package or corner office ever could.

You know exactly who I'm talking about.

The one who could defuse any tense meeting with a single perfectly timed comment. The one who knew when to knock on your door and when to slide something funny under it instead. The one who showed up on the worst days with the best energy and made the impossible feel manageable just by being in the room. And the ones that said - let's get a coffee.

I worked with someone once who had a gift I've never seen replicated. They could look at the most dysfunctional situation - and there were many - and find the one angle that made it absurd instead of catastrophic. Not dismissive. Just reframing it in a way that reminded everyone we were humans doing a hard thing and it was okay to laugh while we fixed it. That is a superpower.

The work was serious. The people didn't take themselves too seriously.

There is a difference between a team that performs and a team that performs and genuinely enjoys the people they perform with. Both get results. Only one builds something that lasts.

Careers are long. The problems are real. The stakes are high. But the people who made you laugh when everything was on fire - those are the ones you remember.

After enough years and enough environments you start to recognize patterns. You walk into a room and within the first hour you have a working theory about what is broken and why. The experience is real. The pattern recognition is earned. And it can absolutely be the thing that leads you to the wrong answer.

Here is something I have learned to do that has changed how I approach every new challenge.

I flip it.

Before I trust what my experience is telling me - I argue against it. I take everything I think I know about the situation and deliberately ask - what if the opposite is true? What if the thing that looks like the problem is actually the symptom? What if the solution I've used successfully three times before is exactly wrong this time?

Fresh eyes are not just for people who haven't seen it before. Fresh eyes are a discipline. A choice. A deliberate act of intellectual humility that says - my experience informs my thinking but it does not get to conclude it.

I've walked into operations where the obvious answer was staring everyone in the face. And I've learned to be suspicious of obvious answers. Because obvious answers are usually the ones the team already tried before I arrived. If the obvious answer had worked - I wouldn't be there.

The best solutions I've ever been part of didn't come from applying what I already knew. They came from questioning it first.

Staying curious longer than feels necessary. Sitting with the problem before reaching for the solution. Asking the question that feels too simple or too disruptive to say out loud.

Experience tells you what usually works. Curiosity finds what works here. I trust my experience completely. I just never let it be the only voice in the room.

Most business problems come with an obvious solution attached.

The number is down - cut the cost. The team is underperforming - replace the people. The customer is unhappy - discount the product. The shipment is late - change the carrier. One variable identified. One lever pulled. Problem solved.

Except the problem was never one variable.

I've walked into enough operations to know that leaders who solve for the visible problem while missing the twenty underneath it don't fix anything. They just relocate the pain. Sometimes to a place that costs significantly more than the original problem ever did.

Here is what single variable thinking looks like in practice. You change the carrier because shipments are late. But the shipments are late because the pick and pack process takes four hours longer than it should. The new carrier delivers faster - but the operation is still slow. Now you are paying premium rates for a problem that lives entirely inside your own four walls.

You replace the underperforming team member. But the team member was underperforming because the process they were working inside was broken. The new hire inherits the same broken process. Three months later you are having the same conversation about the same role.

You cut costs to improve margin. But you cut in the wrong place. The function you eliminated was quietly holding three other functions together. Two quarters later the cost of what broke is double what you saved.

That is checkers thinking in a 3D chess environment.

The best operators I have ever worked with don't ask - how do I solve this problem. They ask - if I pull this lever what else moves. They map the downstream before they commit to the upstream. They understand that every decision inside an operation is connected to decisions that haven't been made yet.

Pattern recognition is the skill nobody talks about enough in operations leadership. It is the ability to see not just what is broken but what breaking it created - and what fixing it incorrectly will cost.

I've spent my career building that muscle. Across DTC brands, CPG companies, fulfillment operations, and scaling businesses at every stage of growth. The single variable solution feels decisive. The multi variable problem doesn't care how decisive you feel.

Slow down enough to see the whole board. Then move.

It was the middle of peak season. We had a client launching a major promotional campaign. Inventory positioned. Team ready. Carriers confirmed. Everything lined up the way it was supposed to.

Then the vendor called. Thirty percent short on the shipment. No warning. No lead time to recover. Just - here is what is coming and it is not what was ordered.

That call lands differently when you are the one who has to tell the client. When you are the one who has to look at the team and figure out how to ship what you promised when you don't have what you need to ship it.

We triaged immediately. What did we have. What could ship. What was the priority SKU that the campaign absolutely could not launch without. We called the vendor back within thirty minutes with a specific ask - not a complaint. A solution request with a deadline attached.

We reconfigured the launch sequence. Communicated proactively to the client before they asked. Gave them a real picture with a real recovery plan instead of a vague apology and a promise.

We shipped what we had. Received the balance within seventy two hours. The campaign launched late by one day. The client renewed their contract three months later and cited our communication during that crisis as a primary reason.

Here is what that situation taught me. Vendors will short ship. Systems will fail. Carriers will miss. Peak season does not care about your plan. What separates operations that survive disruption from ones that unravel is not whether things go wrong. It is how fast the leader picks up the phone and starts solving instead of reacting.

Speed of response is a competitive advantage.

The largest supply chain event of the year kicks off in Atlanta this morning. A thousand exhibitors. Two hundred sessions. The best minds in operations and logistics under one roof for four days.

I'm not there. But I know what I'd want to hear if I were.

Not another panel about AI adoption. Not another keynote about digital transformation. Not another session on the technology that is going to solve everything if you just implement it correctly and train your team and change your culture and restructure your data and trust the algorithm.

I'd want someone to stand on that stage and say the quiet part out loud. The old playbook is gone. And most companies are still running it.

Tariffs have rewritten sourcing strategies overnight. Fuel surcharges from every major carrier have stacked on top of each other in a matter of weeks. Shipping lanes disrupted. Diesel prices surging. And the companies that built their operations purely for efficiency are finding out that efficiency without resilience is just a well organized vulnerability.

I've spent my career building operations that perform when conditions are ideal and hold up when they aren't. Those are not the same skill set. Most organizations optimize for the first and discover too late they neglected the second.

The technology on that floor in Atlanta is only as powerful as the operation it sits inside. The most sophisticated warehouse management system in the building cannot save a process that was broken before it was implemented. Before you buy the tool - fix the foundation.

The companies that win in this environment aren't the ones with the most impressive technology stack. They're the ones who built operations that can absorb a bad Tuesday and keep shipping.

That's not a technology problem. That's a leadership problem. And leadership is the one thing nobody at MODEX is selling.

Force majeure was designed for the genuinely unforeseeable - Acts of God. Events so far outside the reasonable scope of business that no contract could have anticipated them.

Fuel cost volatility is not that.

Fuel prices fluctuate. They always have. They are a known variable in every transportation business model. They are factored into rate structures and contract negotiations for exactly this reason. Fuel surcharges are percentage based add-ons tied to fuel price indexes - a standard mechanism carriers have used for years to manage this precise type of volatility.

Invoking force majeure to justify mid-term contract modifications because fuel went up is not legal protection. It's a negotiating tactic wearing legal clothing.

History suggests that force majeure will not be at the same pace on the way down as it was on the way up.

Read your contracts. Understand your force majeure language specifically. Know what triggers it and what remedies are available to you. Audit every surcharge hitting your invoices against your contract terms. And have the direct conversation with your carrier partners about what the path back looks like when fuel stabilizes.

The carriers adding surcharges aren't wrong to protect their margins. But shippers aren't wrong to protect theirs either.

I spent an hour with a Claude power user this week. One hour.

I walked in thinking I had a pretty good handle on what AI could do for an operation. I had been using it for a while. Built a few things I was genuinely proud of. Shipping dashboards. File conversion tool. Financial reporting models. Automations that were quietly saving hours every week and freeing me to focus on work that actually required - human judgment.

I thought I was ahead of the curve. I was barely at the beginning of it.

What I saw in that hour reframed everything I thought I knew about what was possible. The models. The complexity. The ability to layer data, logic, and operational context into something that doesn't just report what happened but starts to predict what's coming and recommend what to do about it.

I've spent my career building operational infrastructure. Systems that create visibility. Processes that generate reliable data. Teams that know how to use both.

That foundation matters more now than it ever has. Because AI doesn't create good outcomes from bad data. It amplifies whatever you feed it. Clean operations produce powerful models. Messy ones just produce confident looking wrong answers.

But the ceiling on what's buildable right now - for operators who are willing to learn it - is higher than most people in this industry realize.

I'm not done learning. I'm just getting started.

If you're in operations and you haven't sat down with someone who really knows how to use these tools - find that person. Buy them coffee. It might be the most valuable hour you spend this year.

By now most of the supply chain world has seen the news. A 1.2 million square foot Kimberly-Clark distribution center in Ontario, California was destroyed in a six alarm fire that 175 firefighters battled. A building the size of eleven city blocks - gone overnight.

It was allegedly started by a third party warehouse employee who filmed it. His words: "All you had to do was pay us enough to live. There goes your inventory."

The fire is the headline. The flags that preceded it are the story nobody is talking about yet. Because events like this don't materialize from nothing. They build. Quietly. Through a series of moments that individually seem manageable and collectively represent a system that was never designed to catch what was coming.

I wonder:
What did the engagement look like? Disengagement has signals. Behavioral changes. Withdrawal. Verbal frustration that escalates over time. Was anyone paying attention? Was there a culture where a team member could raise a concern without fear of consequence? Or was this an operation where people showed up, moved product, and clocked out?

What did the third party relationship look like? This employee worked for NFI Industries - the 3PL operating the facility on behalf of KC. Who owned the culture inside that building? Who was responsible for the people working in it? When you outsource operations you cannot outsource accountability for the human beings running them. The contract doesn't cover that. Leadership does.

What did the safety and security systems actually cover? The facility had a fire suppression system that was operating. It was compromised when the roof collapsed under the scale of what it was asked to contain. Sprinklers are designed for accidents. Not for a deliberate, accelerated fire in a building full of paper products. What was the security infrastructure beyond that? Cameras. Access logs. Monitoring. After hours protocols.

What did the early warning systems look like? The alleged arsonist posted video to Instagram. That means signals existed outside the building before the investigation even began. Were there signals inside it too? And if so - did anyone see them?

No single system prevents everything. But layered systems - engaged leadership, real culture, access controls, behavioral awareness, third party accountability, and security infrastructure create an environment where a threat has to get through multiple barriers instead of none.

This facility lost its entire inventory, its building, and nearly lost twenty lives. The systems that might have prevented it were apparently never in place.

Every operator should be asking questions. If something like this were building inside my operation - would I know?

Because the answer to that question is a direct reflection of how well you actually know your people, your culture, and your building.

Not your metrics. Your operation.

Not every day is loud - some days are just about putting the right things in the right places and trusting that the work compounds. No announcements. No highlight reel. Just head down, focused, and moving something meaningful forward one deliberate decision at a time. Building days don't always feel productive in the moment - but they're the ones that matter most when you look back at how something great actually got made. Today is a building day. Let's go.

Inventory Management is Adult Babysitting.

Inventory is needy, irrational, emotionally unavailable. It shows up when you don't need it and vanishes when you do. It takes up more space than expected, costs more than budgeted, and has absolutely no interest in your Q4 goals.

I have managed hundreds of thousands of SKUs across multiple facilities and I can tell you with complete certainty - inventory has a personality. And that personality was raised without boundaries. It's like the cast on a bad reality show.

The Hoarder. Arrived eight months ago in a quantity that seemed reasonable at the time. Nobody ordered it recently. Nobody is asking for it. It has now claimed an entire bay like a very slow moving squatter with excellent documentation. Procurement is investigating. Receiving has accepted it. Everyone else has simply learned to walk around it.

The Diva. Temperature controlled. Shelf life monitored. Rotation required. Handling instructions that read like a pre-nup. Touch it wrong and it files a complaint directly with your largest customer. It requires more attention than every other SKU combined and knows it.

The Ghost. Confirmed in the system. Cannot be located in the building. Three people saw it last Tuesday in three different locations. It is currently somewhere between row four and an alternate dimension. A cycle count has been initiated. Nobody is optimistic.

The Overachiever. Sells faster than any forecast predicted. Constantly depleted. Creates a five alarm panic in purchasing every single month like clockwork and yet somehow surprises everyone every single time. The supply chain equivalent of Thurman Thomas losing his helmet.

The Philosopher. Expiration date approaching. Velocity nonexistent. Just sitting in row three, bay seven, level two contemplating its own existence. It has been on the aging inventory report for so long that the report feels bad about listing it. A promotion has been suggested. Nobody has pulled the trigger. The clock is ticking.

The Surprise. Nobody ordered this. Nobody approved this. The PO doesn't match. The system doesn't recognize it. And yet here it is. Four pallets of something that technically shouldn't exist - perfectly palletized and wrapped like it arrived with confidence and no intention of explaining itself.

Managing inventory well requires forecasting, discipline, systems, and the psychological resilience of someone who has made peace with the fact that the warehouse will never fully cooperate.

You optimize. You automate. You implement cycle counts and velocity reporting and reorder triggers. And then the Ghost reappears in a completely different zip code and you start the whole process over.

Inventory management isn't a science. It's a negotiation with chaos that occasionally produces a perfect pick rate. Cherish those moments. They don't last.

I've seen some things.

A vendor show up to a meeting - the wrong meeting - in the wrong building - for the wrong company - and somehow still try to pitch us. I've seen a six inch water line burst and flood a warehouse. I've seen a pallet of product fall off a dock and land perfectly upright like it was making a statement. I've seen a CEO show up to a food grade facility with a drink in hand that I had to confiscate (that went well).

I've seen things that no SOP could have prepared anyone for. Things that would make a Harvard case study question its own methodology. Things that happened on a Tuesday for no reason at all.

And yet - after all of it - the floods, the failures, the audacious decisions, the moments that had no business working but somehow did - here's what I've actually learned:

Most things that feel like a crisis aren't. Most situations that look unique - aren't. Most problems that seem impossible have already been solved somewhere and by someone with fewer resources and a tighter deadline. The details change. The patterns don't.

Experience doesn't make you unshakeable. It just makes the shaking stop a lot faster.

I've seen some things. And the most useful thing all of it gave me wasn't a solution for every situation. It was the calm to know I'd figure it out anyway.

I had the privilege of attending the Women's Amateur at Augusta National this weekend. I need to talk about the people. Because Augusta National doesn't just host an event. They deliver an experience. And the difference between those two things was visible in every interaction from the moment I arrived.

Every staff member I encountered knew exactly where they were. Exactly what they were doing. Exactly how to make the person in front of them feel like they were the only person on the property.

Directional questions answered before they were fully asked. Needs anticipated before they were expressed. A standard of hospitality so consistent across every touchpoint that it stopped feeling like training and started feeling like culture.

That's the part that got me. Because here's what makes Augusta remarkable from an operational standpoint - this is a short event. An incredibly narrow window. A staff that is assembled, trained, and deployed for a concentrated period of time and then dispersed.

And yet the execution is flawless. That doesn't happen by accident. That happens because someone invested serious thought into what the experience should feel like - and then built the training, the standards, and the culture to deliver it consistently across hundreds of people who didn't exist as a team six months ago.

I've built event teams. I've trained temporary workforces. I know how hard it is to get fifty people aligned on a standard let alone hundreds.

Augusta does it at a level that most permanent organizations never achieve.
The course is immaculate. The competition is exceptional. The history is undeniable. But the people are the experience. And the people were extraordinary.

There's a lesson in that for every operator, every leader, and every organization that thinks culture is something that takes years to build before it can be felt. Augusta assembles it in weeks. And you feel it the moment you walk through the gate.