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The fun & fascinating stories of Supply Chain & Logistics.
Bryndis: [00:00:03] Hi, my name is Bryndis Whitson and you're listening to the Zebras Apples podcast, the fun and fascinating stories of supply chain logistics. Today's episode is chatting with Adela Parilla, a lawyer by training, a category manager and someone who got into strategic sourcing. We talk about all of those different aspects, and then we get into what Adela’s true passion is, and that's negotiating. And she demystifies it for us and makes it just a little less scary. Thank you so much for listening and have a wonderful day. I'm here with Adela and we will kind of get into Adela's expertise in many, many different areas, too. Welcome.
Adela: [00:00:48] Hello.
Bryndis: [00:00:49] So one of the things I first wanted to kind of talk about is your career history, because I know it's been diverse, multifaceted in a whole bunch of different areas, and I thought maybe we'd start there. So.
Adela: [00:01:01] Okay, so I didn't get into any industry until I graduated law school, and then I went into the legal field in different positions. I started out as a legal secretary, then a paralegal, and eventually I became a lawyer once my bar passage was confirmed.
Bryndis: [00:01:20] Oh, good.
Adela: [00:01:21] So I practiced law for ten years, and then I left law and moved back to Canada and started a communications program, thinking that I was going to get into sanitation because I wanted to use my voice, because I'm not shy about talking about any subject. So I know that a lot of the problems with sanitation is that people go into the water rather than the actual waste part, and the waste part is just as, if not more important. And I thought I would be a great addition to that. So I started focusing on that, but I got kind of lured by the realities of living in the big city and needing a job immediately. So I got back into law. Yeah, and I worked as a paralegal here for about a year. And then I made my move into tax law.
Bryndis: [00:03:40] Okay. Well, and I think the law background probably helped a lot in that kind of, you know, starting with the contracts and really changing that kind of area of…
Adela: [00:03:52] It did. It also gave me a lot of flexibility because one of the things that people in my department would get slowed down from was waiting for legal to to weigh in on the strategy or the contracting. And although I'm not licensed here, so I couldn't give legal advice, I did know how to read the documents and I could identify the problems myself. So I would use my law a lot more than I expected I would. And I think that's probably why I ended up in strategic sourcing, because I could do the contracts without needing a lot of hand-holding.
Bryndis: [00:04:29] Yeah. Well, so we were kind of talking about before this, we started with category management and how when you start in category management, there wasn't really a playbook of what is category management? And I know you just started in that, just kind of explaining that a few minutes ago, but I think many people get into this kind of area and go, oh, okay, what do I learn now? How do I get into this? And so it's a learn on the job as opposed to learn in a textbook kind of thing.
Adela: [00:05:05] Right. So I had no idea what category management was. And I tried looking it up online before my interview. So I would have some answers to questions. And because it's not as popularly known as, say, sourcing or purchasers, there isn't a lot of, or there wasn't a lot of, online materials. So category management is when we take all of our supply chain and we divide it into categories, whether that's cranes, rental equipment, scaffolding materials. And then we come up with strategies because each one requires different strategies. Like are you going to have 2 or 3 suppliers? Are you going to be working off of just purchase orders? Or you can have long-term… develop long term relationships with companies? And it depends. Sometimes you get together and you decide that this particular category needs a secondary supplier, where you need to go to market and find a new one, which is not something that companies like to do because they like to… they don't like change a lot. So just coming up with the theory, studying the market, learning all the factors that drive the stress behind it all and how the company can mitigate all these potential risks. That's basically what we did in category management. A lot of graphing, a lot of usage knowledge, a lot of things like understanding how we're using equipment or how we use a particular department goes a long way before you contract, is to know why you're contracting and what you want out of that contract. It's not just about price. And so category management they do for the areas that are the big spend. So some corners that they're spending a lot of money on scaffolding, they'll come up with a theory of how they want to approach scaffolding over the long-term, and what they can do now.
Bryndis: [00:07:04] Oh yeah, because I've heard lots of different stories of not really knowing where your product is or, but also knowing you know how much you're utilizing it. But I think that's really important, that piece that you're talking about, of what do you want out of the, you know, contract too? What do you want out of this product?
Adela: [00:07:28] Yes. And I think it's natural for everyone to focus on price. But that's where category management comes in and tells, you know, you know, price is always something that you want to focus on. But it can't be your determiner, your sole determiner of who you're going to contract with. Because there's safety, there's efficiency. What do you need? Do you need timeline? What's more important in the market? And being oil and gas, you're looking at global markets, not just what's necessary today out in the field.
Bryndis: [00:07:59] True. Yeah. I thought it was interesting when you were talking about the two different pieces of like, cranes too, like, if you're going to be utilizing a crane for a longer period of time versus, you know, just a short kinda moment too.
Adela: [00:08:15] Sure. And, you know, there's different types of cranes, like there's mobile cranes, there's cranes that get built in for like warehouses where you're using the crane all the time. So they're overhead and you need to know which one you use more, and when, and what market forces are impacting that. So in rental equipment you need to know about things. So that's the first one that I did was rental equipment. We needed to know that worldwide they were changing the standards for the motors being run and they're needed to meet. So for rental equipment, the US, which is the global driver of all products, really was implementing new requirements for energy efficiency in their equipment that has that.
Bryndis: [00:09:09] Yeah, the ISO standards and all of those things.
Adela: [00:09:13] So we had to know and stay on top of how that was going to impact how we're using them and, and how we're paying for them, which is bottom line, one of the biggest things that we care about.
Bryndis: [00:09:26] Yeah. Well, especially when sometimes the equipment isn't just in one country, it's potentially moving back and forth or something, too.
Adela: [00:09:35] Yes. And there's a lot of seasonal needs that change. So in the summer you might need a certain type of equipment. But in the winter, especially up in the oil fields, where you get a harsh winter, you need access to a lot of different equipment, and how we use it involves safety. Like we did a pilot project on using more energy efficient light towers. And we didn't realize that it was not just the light towers themselves, the rental equipment, but it involved, you know, so many man hours. And those individuals go out sometimes into the middle of nowhere, and they're installing and replacing and fixing the light towers. So when we're able to get something that's more efficient, it doesn't just save money in the short-term, but it means that less people are exposed to the elements, and there's less risk driving in the middle of the night because suddenly they don't have access to any lights where they are. We have to provide everything.
Bryndis: [00:10:41] Correct.
Adela: [00:10:41] When you're up in the oil field. So just knowing what other seasonal requirements are of what you're doing, working with a lot of different business units.
Bryndis: [00:10:50] Yeah, especially when, you know, in the summer it might be plus 30, but in the winter it's going to be at least -30 at times, if not colder. And those are two completely different, you know, systems that you wouldn't think about normally, but they really would have a huge impact.
Adela: [00:11:11] They do. And the interest was towards more sustainable energy. That's always been a highlight of, I think, most companies right now. And finding out that when you're working in the oil sands, where you have long days in the summer and very, very long nights in the winter, a light tower that is solar-powered only makes sense during the summer. In the winter, they have to rely on things like battery-powered, so that they're not being powered by propane or diesel, which means somebody has to go out and fill that. So it's just learning about every individual piece of equipment and how the different business units use it. Because when you're contracting, you think you're contracting just for the price. But one business unit might prefer that you have a price that is based on 24-hour a day usage, whereas another business unit only wants to pay for the hours that they're actually using it.
Bryndis: [00:12:13] Yeah. Those are a whole bunch of different things to think about in that entire factor.
Adela: [00:12:20] And that's what takes up most of the time in category management is that. And then managing the high-risk clients that you have.
Bryndis: [00:12:27] Yeah.
Adela: [00:12:28] Even if it's not high-spend. Like we don't spend a lot of money, let's say on the elevators, but our elevators have a lot of risk.
Bryndis: [00:12:37] Yeah.
Adela: [00:12:37] Whether it's a person risk, a safety risk or is it that someone just doesn't have access to certain equipment? So even though the spend might be small, it goes into category management because the risk is so big, right?
Bryndis: [00:12:53] Yeah. It would. Yeah. And then from category management you went into strategic sourcing.
Adela: [00:12:59] Correct.
Bryndis: [00:12:59] And how was the transition? Was it similar or were they completely different areas?
Adela: [00:13:07] Strategic sourcing felt similar because in category management before they separated we did our contracting within category management. But strategic sourcing was specialized contract managers and that's all we did. We didn't focus on strategy. We took the strategy from category management. They told us this is the company we want to contract with and these are the business requirements. And so it was a very a much more narrower field. So not as technically complex, but a lot more interesting from a negotiation standpoint because I enjoyed negotiations a lot. So…
Bryndis: [00:13:49] Yeah.
Adela: [00:13:50] Having that be 80% of my day was exactly what I wanted anyways.
Bryndis: [00:13:56] And what kind of equipment or different things were you kind of sourcing in this role?
Adela: [00:14:02] So when I got into strategic sourcing I worked on EPC contracts, which is engineering, procurement, and construction. And those are usually the biggest contracts that we do because they involve all three things. We need a company that has enough engineers, has the knowledge for that, and then has their own procurement because they usually have better access or knowledge of how to source the materials that they need for their construction.
Bryndis: [00:14:33] So yeah.
Adela: [00:14:34] We would run the EPC contracts from beginning to end, and those were a lot of fun to negotiate for me because I got a wider view of what we do.
Bryndis: [00:14:43] Yeah. Well, and, you know, that's one of those pieces that I did kind of want to get into because your face fully lit up. And when you said negotiation and how much you could spend 80% of your day doing it. And I think negotiation for some people is, you know, makes them get heart palpitations of like, oh, my goodness, I don't know if I can do that. And yet, as other conversations I've had have said, well, everyone is negotiating every single day. You just… it depends on your scale that you're negotiating. But I was hoping you could kind of demystify the world of negotiation.
Adela: [00:15:28] Sure. So I do agree that we're constantly negotiating. Every time that you meet with somebody else, it's a negotiation, whether it's formal and informal. When you want to figure out how to pay your phone bill, and maybe you need to use a different source, that's a negotiation. Do you want a pay raise? It's not just, hey, I want a little bit more money. And they say, okay. You have to have a plan, and you go in there with an understanding of what you need and why you need it. We negotiate, in fact, like children are the best negotiators, natural negotiators. If you study how children learn to negotiate with no power, they learn to get what they want, as we all know. And so a lot of the focus on negotiation is kind of bringing back ourselves to that time in our lives when we knew how to do it without any formal knowledge.
Bryndis: [00:16:22] Yeah. Well, completely, because there is the amount that a child can negotiate is really quite something.
Adela: [00:16:30] Yes. And the… and children know how to instinctively. That's why I'm saying we are all negotiators because we all instinctively know how to change the tone of our voice to sound more needy, if you will, or to sound more insistent that this is what we want. We know the power of repetition. Anyone who has been around a child that wants something knows that they will stay on that same question and ask over and over again in many different ways if they don't get the answer they want. Children are very, very focused on what they want.
Bryndis: [00:17:09] So yeah.
Adela: [00:17:10] They make, like in my studies for negotiation where I'm outlining a negotiation handbook, I really study how children approach all negotiations with parents, with other kids, with teachers, and try to find commonalities that we do as adults in our lives. So, I find it fascinating. I have a lot of fun in negotiating.
Bryndis: [00:17:36] Yeah. Do you have a technique that you can share that you really like to use?
Adela: [00:17:43] I do tend to rely a lot on the classical rhetoric. So I look at your reputation, I think that's called ethos. You look at emotions involved, and that's pathos, I think.
Bryndis: [00:17:56] Yeah. Using classical rhetoric. Yeah. That's an interesting way to kind of look at those pieces.
Adela: [00:18:03] I've… it was actually a class that I didn't think I wanted to take when I was in communications, but it was a requirement. And I went in there with my eyes partly rolled in the back of my head saying, what are you going to teach a lawyer of ten years about rhetoric? You know, the class was oral and written argument. And I thought as a litigator that I knew this, but when I went and took the class, it was… it turned out to be one of the best classes, because I had not, had never encountered classical rhetoric as a device. It was more as like reading material. But to actually use it and then employ that in my jobs, negotiating. It was very eye opening for me and a lot of fun again. Yeah, approach it like a game.
Bryndis: [00:18:51] Yeah. True. Because, so if we were say we were negotiating a contract and I had, you know, this really big important piece that I, you know, of equipment that I wanted, but you wanted something else. How would we start that kind of conversation?
Adela: [00:19:11] There are a lot of different ways. And I think that negotiation styles are very personal. I think a lot of people focus on the business need, but I like to approach negotiations from a personal standpoint, forming my reputation. And that accomplishes a lot of the groundwork if they know coming in that I'm coming in with a right intention, with not an intention to succeed at all costs, but to arrive at a good solution for both parties.
Bryndis: [00:19:42] Mhm. Yeah I think that's. Sometimes we get caught up in the, it has… it can be win-win not winner-loser in negotiation.
Adela: [00:19:54] Yes. There's a lot of, I mean some of that is external pressure that can't be avoided. You're at a job and you're working for a particular site. And they, the standard understanding of negotiations is I want what I want and go get that for me and get the best deal. And people feel a lot of personal satisfaction in getting the best deal. But if you approach it from a legal standpoint, you know that no contract is good if it has a lot of risk involved. And so you don't want a contract that's heavily favouring one side because executing the contract will be full of problems down the road. So looking at a contract as a whole and knowing how to balance the needs of your employer versus what the long-term needs are.
Bryndis: [00:20:45] Yeah, that totally would be kind of a piece of… to really focus on, too.
Adela: [00:20:53] Balancing that and convincing your employer that you're really looking for a long-term solution and why this is the best way about it, if it's not absolute price driven is a challenge. Especially when the bottom line is so important to most people in management.
Bryndis: [00:21:12] True. But yeah, it adds like a whole other context in that kind of piece of negotiation that I don't think we think about sometimes.
Adela: [00:21:25] I think that we don't… I think people from the outside or someone just using the contract doesn't identify the risks, and so they expect a lot more movement on prices. But somebody who's going to be administering the contract that they're negotiating has a longer term approach to, is this contract going to be good? I don't want to do this again in 3, 4 years. This… will this work for us long-term? And those are the forces that I think are a lot more… they take up a lot more time trying to explain your position to your employer.
Bryndis: [00:22:04] Well, and I… is there a time that you can think of or an example of a negotiation that you really always think back to, of like, I really loved that moment?
Adela: [00:22:18] So one of the biggest projects that I worked on towards the end of my time in category management before I went into strategic sourcing, was when one of my suppliers indicated that they had just… that their drivers had just issued a strike notice, and they didn't give us any advance warning, thinking that it wasn't a really big deal because they could just find other drivers. The problem was that if the drivers did go on strike, then that would impact our production of oil, because the oil sands had switched to not allowing individual cars on site. So we had bus drivers that would pick everybody up and take them to the site, and we were worried that they wouldn't want to cross the picket lines of their brothers. So production would come to a standstill. And there's no worse thing in oil and gas than a day that oil stops being made. So the main concern was that in talking about it with the management, and they were looking at things in just the immediate impact of not having potentially not having enough people driving. Nobody had stopped to think that globally, as a company, that this was going to impact oil production. And so I had to arrange a cross-functional team of, I think, almost 50 people from all the different business units, from legal, insurance, from health and safety, and convince everybody who has, you know, varying needs of of these contracts that they needed to reach out to suppliers and get additional coverage for their needs, because we weren't going to get hit from this, and we had to plan what we could do in advance so that we wouldn't hold us. And I think between the notice that they gave and the final resolution of the strike notice was about three and a half weeks of just… All we did at the company was worry about this and planned for it. And it meant reaching out to suppliers who the relationship at the moment was perhaps strained and asking them to do a favour.
Bryndis: [00:24:44] Oh, right.
Adela: [00:24:45] To provide additional coverage. It was an interesting time of just negotiating past things. And those are things that happen, you know, often happen before you even get to a company and you're dealing with long-term histories and people who aren't there and still trying to negotiate a good way around the forces today.
Bryndis: [00:25:11] Yeah.
Adela: [00:25:12] You know, using past historical guidance. And it can create a lot of problems.
Bryndis: [00:25:18] Oh, yeah. Because sometimes it's not even your landmine or your thing that was created. But you're having to adapt to what has already been part of the precedence and part of the history, and put your own stamp on it while also, you know, changing those kind of pieces.
Adela: [00:25:41] Yes. And convincing everybody that their short-term needs might be making things worse. And when you have a team of 50 people trying to convince everybody that what you're doing, that we need to have a uniform approach that involves negotiation in every corner all day long. And I found that fascinating. I loved it, actually.
Bryndis: [00:26:03] Yeah. And, you know, even when you were kind of in law versus when you were kind of in strategic sourcing, I'm sure those kind of pieces of negotiation, while different, but similar, too.
Adela: [00:26:18] Yes. And, you know, in law, you're… so I did a variety of areas of law. I did class action litigations, I did patent litigation, except finance agreements. And you feel like you're not really dealing with people. And it's easy to think of a company as just like some formless entity that you're going to give the best that you can, but doesn't get you as involved as when you do something like family law, which I also did. And the stakes are different there than when you're negotiating a contract for a corporation. Even though people put a lot of emphasis on the size of the contracts, especially in oil and gas, they'll say, oh, this one's very, very expensive because it's, you know, a quarter of $1 billion. But they don't understand that negotiating on a small risk, it looks small, but it could be people's lives. It could be a marriage with children has a huge financial difference, but the impact on the person can be life-changing where you’re touching people's lives forever. So you have to pick and choose which of your values are more important when you're dealing with the different types of negotiation. But the tactics you use are still pretty much the same. You still always want to make sure that you're negotiating something that works for all sides.
Bryndis: [00:27:47] Correct. Yeah.
Adela: [00:27:49] And that works long-term because the short-term, the immediate gain, it's easy to focus on the immediate things because that is how business is structured. But it's not sustainable. And you have to look at the long-term.
Bryndis: [00:28:05] Right. And you know, in this process too, you're not only worried about, you know, the company's reputation, but it's your own reputation as well, too. That's a big part of this.
Adela: [00:28:18] Yes. And how I approach negotiation, my reputation is probably the number one thing that I protect at all costs. And you know, through me, the company's reputation. I'd like to lend that reputation of mine to the company. But I know that at the end of the day, it's me sitting across the table from the supplier or the potential supplier, and they're not looking at the corporation. They're looking at their media person that they're negotiating. And they need to know that they can trust me, that they've heard that I come out with a fair deal, that I'm interested in arriving at a solution that works for everybody. So bringing down that… the energy is part of, a very big part of that job.
Bryndis: [00:29:02] Mhm. If you were giving advice to someone entering into category management, entering into negotiation, entering into strategic sourcing, or anything in between, what advice would you give?
Adela: [00:29:17] I would definitely highlight everyone should be reading classical rhetoric, even just a basic summary of what that is, because there is a reason why, for thousands of years, these formulas work in how to present a message. Because everything in negotiation is just how you're presenting the message. And then depending if I'm talking to a male or female, there's a difference. Because women are historically amazing advocates for other people, but not for themselves. And so that's kind of like a pet project of mine that I want to be able to provide some guidance and see women reach their full potential as negotiators, rather than being held back by the orces in a corporation and in society. I want to remind women of who they are and to hell with what society expects of them.
Bryndis: [00:30:18] Yeah, exactly.
Adela: [00:30:18] Like, I don't know the numbers exactly, but I know that there might be, let's say, 15 different styles that a man can use to negotiate and still be seen, still have a positive reputation. But women might have 2 or 3. Because when a woman does something that a man does, she comes across as shrill or demanding, even if there's no difference. That's just the way she's received. And I don't care. And so I didn't mind pushing the boundaries because I figured I'll make way for someone behind me who maybe is a little bit more shy, who does care.
Bryndis: [00:30:59] Yeah.
Adela: [00:31:00] I don't care. And I want to make that space. And I want to make women more… less caring about how they're being perceived. I mean, I've heard it all.
Bryndis: [00:31:11] Oh, yeah. Fully. But that's interesting. The interesting, the 15 different styles.
Adela: [00:31:16] Like I don't know the exact numbers, but it’s huge like that, like all these different styles of negotiation are available to men and which allows them to still maintain their reputation in their opponent's eyes or in their team. But when a woman does those same things, no.
Bryndis: [00:31:36] Very much so. Yeah, it's a totally different aspect. And then I think women get nervous then and don't really want to show that side, and then they don't want to show any of those other pieces for fear of being perceived in a certain way.
Adela: [00:32:01] Yeah. Like I saw it in salary negotiations where I told my team lead, I'm like, would you have said that to a male person you were negotiating with? And he couldn't come out and say, yes, of course, because he wouldn't have. But he really did try to tell me that ,or ask me and guilt me into feeling bad that I was asking for too much. And how did I feel about being… that would make me the highest paid person on the team. And how was I comfortable with that? And, you know, I was like, would you really ask, you know, so and so guy that? You wouldn't ask them because they wouldn't care. And I don't care. I'm comfortable being the highest paid person.
Bryndis: [00:32:43] Exactly. But why is that even a?
Adela: [00:32:45] Yeah, but, and your starting salary has a huge impact on what you end up making throughout the course of your career. And women are not taught to negotiate that.
Bryndis: [00:32:58] No.
Adela: [00:32:58] Especially coming out of, let's say, college or school or whatever their first job, they really don't have that room in their minds to negotiate for a better salary. But that has such an impact because if, when you go from there, you go to another place and expect an increase. But that increase will be based on what you were making before. And so men will come in and they'll automatically feel more entitled to a higher salary. And that's what they'll ask for. And they'll get it. And then any increase is based on a higher amount. And then we're not even talking about the years that women leave the workforce. I'm just saying, you know, two equals who stayed in the workforce the same amount of time.
Bryndis: [00:33:43] Yeah. It's all dependent on that initial piece, too.
Adela: [00:33:48] And women are less likely to ask for raises because they think raises are, do I deserve it? You know, like, do you like me enough to give it? But it's not that. It's…
Bryndis: [00:33:58] Or you like me enough that you should see my merit and therefore be offering it for me, as opposed to asking for it.
Adela: [00:34:10] And as a lawyer, the one thing I learned was to document everything. So as for women who want to negotiate their salary, you don't just show up and say, I would like this amount more. You go in with a business case already saying, this is why you should pay me more. You know what? The market pays. You know what you've brought to the table. And men are taught that. Women are not. And I think that that's a big problem because I've encountered, I've had managers tell me that I was mercenary because I was so money-oriented. And I was like, well, of course I am, because this is a job. This is not life. You know, if I don't produce for you at the end of the year, you're not going to say, well, she didn't make the numbers, but she brought a nice feel to the office. She was sweet. And you're going to fire me. I'm like, as you probably should. And so.
Bryndis: [00:35:06] Yeah.
Adela: [00:35:07] I want the same thing. I'm not doing this work for a pat on the head, or to be made to feel like I'm part of a team. I'm doing it for money. And that money has to be fair.
Bryndis: [00:35:20] Yeah. And that's more it, it’s more about fairness as opposed to… Yeah, that's really admirable. And I can, I see the need for that. And it definitely is kind of one of those factors that people don't always think about. And I'm glad someone is.
Adela: [00:35:38] Yeah. They don't. And I… having worked in law and seeing a great number of lawyers, female lawyers, saw them in law school, saw them in the law firms and have seen the work that they can do as advocates. And then coming into business, seeing that women have no problem whatsoever advocating for someone else. But when it comes to their own demands, whether it's getting a pay raise or getting a promotion, the negotiation just falls apart. I don't think that women as a whole understand that there are ways that they can work around what society allows for them. There are different expectations from society and negotiation styles based on gender.
Bryndis: [00:36:27] Very much so.
Adela: [00:36:28] There are ways that women can learn. And I see it as my mission to try to teach women how to make that space because they belong in every room just as much as the males do.
Bryndis: [00:36:43] Exactly. Very much so. And I'm really grateful that we were able to have this conversation to ensure that there are more voices at the table negotiating. And I think there's more to come on this conversation, too.
Adela: [00:37:03] So I'd like to be available whenever you would need. It is something that's very important to me.
Bryndis: [00:37:10] No, and I really appreciate the conversation and thank you so much for sharing it.
Adela: [00:37:15] Thank you for having me.
Bryndis: [00:37:20] Thank you for listening to this Zebras to Apples podcast episode. I hope you enjoyed the showcase of the fun and fascinating stories of supply chain logistics. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could give it a rating and review. For more information about this topic, you can go to ZebrastoApples.com or follow Zebras to Apples on the social media platform of your choosing, whether that's Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, Bluesky, or LinkedIn. You can support the show on Patreon. Also, check out the show notes below. Please join me again for another episode of Zebras to Apples. Have a wonderful day!