The Responsible Supply Chain Show is a must-hear podcast for insights and strategies on building ethics and sustainability into global supply chains. Each episode delves into the challenges and opportunities businesses face as they strive to create more responsible, transparent, and environmentally friendly supply chains. From innovative sourcing and trade disruptions to reducing carbon footprints and combating modern slavery, we explore the critical issues that define the future of global commerce.
Welcome to the Responsible Supply Chain show, where we explore the world of responsible
sourcing, sustainable practices, and ethical supply chains.
I'm your host, Justin Dillon, and in each episode, we'll dive into real stories,
challenges, and solutions that companies are facing today as they strive to build more
transparent, ethical, and sustainable supply chains.
Welcome, welcome, welcome everyone to the first episode of the Responsible Supply Chain
Show.
I'm so happy all three of you are here.
This might be the worst or best name of anything I've named or titled, the Responsible
Supply Chain Show.
But you know what?
You gotta love titles that tell you what it's all about.
You know, I thought about calling it, super weird things like mission statement or buying
better.
If you're listening to this,
You know what we're talking about.
Responsible supply chains.
Now, responsible has got some like, okay, what's responsible?
I think we all know what a supply chain is.
I'm just gonna assume that if you're listening to this, for God's sakes, if you don't know
what a supply chain is, honestly, go find another part.
mean, or go Google it and come back.
But responsible supply chains for me is something that I've been working on for over a
decade.
I mean, really, actually quite, really for reals, over a decade.
Years ago, I got asked by,
the State Department to create a website similar to Carbon Footprint, but for, wait for
it, slavery.
And they wanted to call it Slavery Footprint.
So essentially, they reached out to me to create the world's best bummer calculator to
determine how many slaves it takes to run anyone's life.
And that's where I discovered supply chains.
By building an algorithm, and by the way, I say building an algorithm, I hired people, you
don't trust me with math.
But by bringing people together to build an algorithm and build a website, we helped build
a kind of global awareness.
When the website launched, I think we wanted to get like 150,000 people to visit it in a
year.
That was the goal.
I had to like make a goal, because it was like working with the government, like you have
to claim some goal.
So we were trying to get 150,000 people to visit a website called Slavery Footprint, of
which the first page of the website says, do you want to know how many slaves work for
you?
I thought this was going to be an absolute epic failure.
There was no way we were going to get 150,000 people to visit a website like this in a
year.
But we ended up reaching 150,000 people like in minutes.
And ended up back when things went viral, went viral.
It was really a moment for me learning and seeing like when you put an idea out into the
world about where the world could go, it's really interesting to see how people will go
along with you.
I think over 50 million people ended up visiting the site to learn, get this, to learn how
many slaves work for them.
How powerful, how amazing is that?
That people want to know things about themselves.
They want to leverage.
who they are and what they spend and what they buy to build a world to help people they
will never meet.
And that's essentially what the Responsible Supply Chain Show is about.
We're here to learn about how we can fix our supply chains, learn how to buy better, learn
how to buy more ethically, more sustainably, more whatever you want to put on top of it,
so that we will build a world for other people to benefit from, not just ourselves.
That is powerful.
And that's what the community that we're trying to build here in this podcast.
So I hope that all three of you will come back and maybe bring one more person next time
to the next episode.
We are gonna do our best to bring together the most interesting people who believe that
supply chains can be a force for good.
So to kick off this inaugural episode, I wanted to interview one of my close friends,
Afdel Aziz.
He's, after leading marketing teams for over 20 years for companies like Procter & Gamble,
Nokia, and Heineken, Aftal decided to quit his job and start to tackle the problem of how
to find purpose in work.
And so he co-founded a purpose consultancy called Conspiracy of Love, which, if I was
still doing music, I would absolutely call my band that.
And Conspiracy of Love helps Global 500 companies unlock purpose in their organizations.
He's also the co-author of Good Is the New Cool, Market Like You Give a Damn.
And I do, Afdel, I do give a damn.
And he's also a contributing writer at Forbes.
Today, we're going to be talking about how companies can leverage supply chain
responsibility to achieve their financial goals.
I hope you
Good to see you, my friend.
Afdel, how are you doing?
Hey, Justin.
Always a pleasure, man.
Thanks for having me on.
Where am I finding you today?
I'm at home in Los Angeles, California.
Not to get creeper, but like, what part of Los Angeles?
I live in the middle of LA, a neighborhood called West Adams.
It's right next to Culver City.
In other words, the coolest part of LA.
Yeah, sure.
It's getting there.
Yeah.
OK, you're making it so.
Well, that's good.
Thank you for doing your part, your civic duty to make
To make LA cool.
This is a conversation I've wanted to have for a long time because we've had these
conversations in New York, in LA.
I don't know where else we've like, but we've been talking about social good for long
time.
And I've just, I'm just so glad and grateful that you've decided to join this podcast.
man.
You've always been an inspiration to me.
I have your book, A Selfish Plan to Change the World on that bookshelf right there.
It's one of my Bibles in this space and
You've been so kind and gracious to come and speak at our conferences.
This is the least I can do to say thank you.
Thanks.
And we'll make sure we zoom in on that, you know, in the edit.
Tell me, tell me.
So you've got a couple different roles right now.
Why don't you tell me what your consultancy is and you've got looks like you do a couple
different things.
You've got conspiracy.
Tell me the different things that you're doing on a daily basis.
My background is I'm originally from Sri Lanka and then I spent 20 years doing marketing.
I in London and New York for companies like Procter & Gamble, Nokia, Heineken, Absolute
Vodka.
In 2016, I co-wrote a book with my dear friend and co-author Bobby Jones called Good Is
the New Cool, which was a message to brands that they needed to start thinking about their
values, not just being cool.
That led to a starting Conspiracy of Love, which is a consultancy that today works in
companies like
Adidas, Sephora, The Gap, Coca-Cola, around the area of purposeful growth.
How do these companies grow by solving societal and environmental problems?
And then Good as a New Cool is now a production company and media lifestyle company.
We're starting to make shows, make docu-series that are all about how you can live a super
cool but sustainable and ethical lifestyle as well.
Okay, hold on.
You just started off with two major chapters.
You were doing...
marketing and now you're doing consulting.
I've known you for a little while and I know that every great story and you're living a
great story, but every great story has some type of disruption that gets started.
hero is doing their thing and then there's a disruption in their lives and then they
change their life and go into a new direction.
What was that for you?
Well, there were several crucible moments that really led to me and
coming here to this point in my life.
So one was being in the tsunami in Sri Lanka where I grew up in 2004.
I was back there and survived a devastating tsunami and I had PTSD.
I had survivor guilt where I started to really think about why I had survived.
And that I realized was where that inception occurred, that seed of what is my purpose
entered my brain.
And then another one was becoming a dad.
I became a father in 2014.
I now have a 10-year-old son.
We adopted him from Sri Lanka.
And you know what that's like when you become a parent, right?
You know that you are no longer the most important thing in your life.
And you start to think about not just what kind of role model you're setting for them, but
also what kind of world you're helping create for them.
When you say purpose, mean, people hear this word a lot.
Could you put some color and some architecture around the concept of a purpose led brand?
How would we know, how would we define, you know, for those of us with untrained ears and
untrained eyes, how would we determine one from the other?
Yeah, so, you know, if you go back 100 years ago, all companies and brands were created
with a purpose in mind.
They were created to solve a problem, you know.
And somewhere along the way, lot of companies forget why they exist.
It's become lost in the midst of time.
And so all we're trying to do with these brands of companies is figure out their why.
Why do they exist and specifically how can they benefit the world?
And in doing so, it actually becomes one of the clearest ways to differentiate themselves,
to communicate their values clearly.
And increasingly, it's a pathway to growth that this is what we preach at Conspiracy of
Love is a mantra of purposeful growth.
If you know why you exist, you know how you can be of service to people on the planet,
then you can find that sweet spot where you can do so profitably.
instead of making money by accidentally damaging the planet or causing harm to society,
you can actually flip that, you know, and find a way of doing good and making money at the
same time.
And then just to address that topic, not just from an organizational point of view, but
from a personal point of view, which is the subject of a third book that's coming out
October 29th about how to find personal purpose.
I think that's what so many of us are craving in our lives, a reason for their own
existence, to find their own why and do so in a way that gives them clarity and courage.
My theory of change is really how do we solve both of those problems at the same time?
How do we help people inside these companies, leaders and employees find their purpose?
And then by mapping it to that of the organization, that's how you unleash the power of
business to do, to become a force for good.
So am I hearing you correctly that you go in with a business model before you go in with a
mantra?
Like there is an, there's an ROI on this.
My guess is this teaching and consulting that you're helping them understand that you
start with, hey, this is going to actually help you grow.
you're concerned that this is just going to be another offsite where we all forget it and
just like move on, it sounds like you're talking about, you go in like, because of your
business background, you go in with an ROI in mind.
100%.
So there's three things that conspiracy does.
One is what we call discovering purpose, right?
So that's actually articulating.
the purpose, vision, values of a company.
And we do that by looking at the intersection point between what the superpowers of the
company are, what it does better than anybody else, and then what the world needs.
Right.
And so the superpowers are unearthed by going in really diving deep into the history of
the company, what its employees believe it does well, what its business model for growth
is and what its future objectives are.
And on the right hand side, it's mapping it against consumers, their customers, their
partners, their communities, ultimately what the world needs, right?
And by finding the intersection point between those two things, that's where purpose
exists, why the company exists.
Next comes what we call designing impact, which is to say, okay, if this is your focus
area, what is a societal problem you can focus on profitably?
with...
Adidas two years ago, was, okay, what if you could solve the problem of women and girls
and them not having access to sport, you could create a huge new consumer base by using
all of your different, you know, channels and strengths to break down those barriers.
We're working with Sephora right now.
We're in year three of working with this incredible company.
And we're looking at, for example, disability and looking at how
disabled consumers are excluded from the beauty conversation and what happens when you
find ways to include them as well.
So that's really where the business case for impact starts to become really tangible.
And then finally, what we do is what we call employee transformation, which is, all right,
now that we've got clarity on the purpose, we know the area of focus.
How do we light a fire in every single employee?
So they find their purpose.
and they find that overlap between what the company is doing.
That's really what supercharges all of this stuff and makes it real.
Interesting.
So I would imagine before you can construct some type of purpose framework for a company
inside their customers, inside their practices and all the rest of it, there's some
deconstruction that has to go down.
So you've done this a lot.
You go in, you're starting with an empty slate or blank slate or a very confused slate,
know, scribbles all over the whiteboard.
How do you start to deconstruct and pull ideas out or pull concepts out that aren't
helpful?
Cause you know, we deal with the same stuff with what, with what we do at freedom.
have to like deconstruct that this isn't just about compliance.
This is about running a better company that actually helps run the world better.
But I'm wondering how you deconstruct when you're meeting with a company like a, like
you know, Sephora or someone else?
Yeah.
Well, one of the first things to do is to actually do an audit to see if there's any blind
spots, right?
And to see if there's any issues that need to be taken care of first, before you start
looking at how the company is making the world better externally, right?
So I'll give you an example.
We work with a food company who I won't name.
And they were really passionate about the idea of looking at hunger as being their focus
area of impact.
But in one of our research sessions, we unearthed the fact that, you know, I can't
remember the percentage.
was like 20, 30 % of their factory workers were in food stamps.
we're like, okay, wait a second.
You can't go and talk about this externally if you aren't addressing this issue in your
supply chain.
Did they know that?
Did they even know that?
They kind of anecdotally heard it, but it was only once we put that in the context of
this being a reputational blind spot and a potential conflict area that really galvanized
them to go, okay, we understand now how this is an issue.
And one of our mantras is purpose has to start inside out.
And you've got to really start with the product first.
And this is where it overlaps with what the incredible work you guys do, right?
No company is perfect.
Just like no human being is perfect.
Of course.
That's our starting point.
And especially when you start to look at how products are made, there is so many layers
that you need to unpack.
So obviously what the product is made from.
We could have a whole separate podcast just talking about materiality and sourcing and
carbon emissions and off that.
But then it's who is making your products.
Right.
And how are they making them?
and are they paid well and are their conditions fair?
And so there's all these layers where the tricky thing is not to get paralyzed by
imperfection.
It's acknowledged that all companies are imperfect.
But as long as these companies have a clear pathway to resolve the issues, they have
commitments in place, they have guardrails in place.
And by the way, this is where regulations are great.
You need government to regulate these companies to make sure that people aren't unfairly
treated on the factory floors or in fields where they're sourcing materials.
You shouldn't be paralyzed waiting for perfection in order to start taking action.
And so that's why it's a really hard, there's no objective way of looking at it.
Every company is different.
Every company is a different situation.
But our belief is that
with a few exceptions, every company in every industry on the planet could be doing
something more.
So let's find a way to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
And as long as it isn't some huge reputational blind spot, it's okay to proceed.
Have you ever gone into a consulting session or done a project with someone where
everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're gonna do it.
That sounds great.
We're gonna do it.
And you just know that the minute you walk out the door,
this stuff is going to get shelved.
Have you ever had a situation like that where you can just kind of read the leaves and,
you know, recognize that this isn't going to go anywhere?
I think what we realize is that multinational corporations are hugely complex machines
with hundreds of thousands of moving parts.
And so all we can do is be guided by the integrity of the people who want us to work with
them.
Our focus is on making
helping them see the opportunities for growth.
Because that is the fastest way to make change happen in the company.
Right?
I always say my, my ultimate audience is maybe not the chief sustainability officer or the
chief impact officer.
It's a CFO.
Like if I can make argument to the CFO, right to say, here's how doing more good can make
you more money, then there's a chance this thing will survive in years, you know, three,
four and five.
But that's what's so rewarding, right?
When you do find the Maven, when you do find the...
Because it really is about building a coalition of the willing.
And when you can find those folks, we just get, you you just try to pour and pour and pour
into them because they're the ones that are gonna carry the water.
At the end of the day, whether it's someone in Sephora or someone else, they're the
heroes.
They're the heroes of the story that get to reshape this gigantic thing and turn it into
good.
It seems like sustainability movement had...
brands were just putting out goals and grabbing share a voice around this, pulling all
that two decades of equity forward, burned it up, and now we're kind of still moving.
sometimes it sours.
When you're pulling equity forward or towards you, it kind of sits there and stale because
there's nothing real to look at.
It's like, that's what we're going to do.
It's like going to gym and going, I'm going to be so, so jacked in five years, but I want
you to look at me as if I am now.
Yeah.
It's like, what?
No, you're You're you.
I'm just wondering how how you're guiding companies into this what it seems like is an era
of pragmatism, not just goal setting.
Yeah, it's a great question.
You know, so I saw I would look at all these companies who had a 2050 goal and I would say
in what other area of the business?
Could you with a straight face say, I have a 2050 goal.
If you're in marketing or sales, be like, hey, I'm a sales guy.
Here's my 2050 goal.
You'd be laughed out of the boardroom, right?
And so it's okay to have a 2050 goal, but what's your 2024 starting point?
And what's your 2025 goal?
What's your 2026 goal?
And what is your calibration to show me how you're going to get to 2050 starting now?
Right.
And so that's the first thing I look for.
The second thing is, are your executives incentivized and bonus against this?
This year's okay.
You are.
Okay.
I think Mars is a good example of this as a company.
Executive compensation is linked to sustainability targets not in the future, like this
year, next year, this quarter, next quarter.
And so it's important to really hold the feet to the fire of companies who make these
goals.
and probe whether they are time bound and transparent and whether they're linked to
compensation in the here and now.
So that's the first thing I'd advise everybody to go and do.
The other temptation is one of proportionality, the problem of proportionality.
I had this young guy come up to me in a conference once and he said, when a company spends
$100,000 doing something good, and then $10 million telling me about that thing that he
did.
How would you guide sourcing departments in terms of speaking to the marketing department
who literally I don't know if they're ever in the same room, but the ability to say, hey,
our supply chain is X amount more sustainable or X amount more responsible because we've
done these things.
And by the way, we're not perfect.
We'll never be perfect.
It'll never be perfectly sustainable.
it'll never be completely free of child labor, just because we don't live in that world.
But it's better.
It's better than it was last year.
That is a messaging, like, trigger wire, right?
Like that is very, very hard to say, well, we're a little bit better on child labor than
we were last year.
Yet I look at that and go, Hallelujah, that's incredible.
But how do you how do you message that as a marketing person?
Yeah.
Well, I would say to the supply chain professionals, you know, you guys are the
shield that allows the marketing guys to do their jobs.
Right?
To go back to your point, if there were flaws in the supply chain, then that is the
fastest way to wreck brand equity.
You've seen it.
You've seen it so many times.
We're living in an era of radical transparency.
Consumers with a few clicks can unearth labor issues or trafficking stories or whatever
else.
you give the marketers social license to operate.
And that's first thing there should be constant reminders about.
But I think it's more than that.
And to go back to your your your trifecta, your your kind of duality of it's not
compliance versus it should be responsibility.
I'd go even further and say it should be about opportunity.
There is a whole turf where supply chain professionals
should stake out, which is we're the ones who are able to spot growth opportunities for
companies and growth opportunities for brands to be able to communicate what they stand
for.
And the link between supply chain and marketing is stories.
Storytelling is what all marketing is.
That's all a brand is trying to do is saying this is our story.
And this is why you should buy us, right?
So by being an engine of storytelling and going to the marketing guys and saying, hey,
this is amazing story that we've uncovered about this issue that we're able to point to,
you are giving them ammunition that they desperately need because it is a story battle out
there.
And again, as long as
the story is real and authentic and it's not fake and exploitative, there needs to be a
constant engine of stories.
And so I'd encourage the supply chain professionals to think beyond the numbers and think
about the stories as being one of the greatest assets that they're sitting on that your
fellow marketers need every day, all day.
Yeah, they need a pipeline, just like everyone else needs a pipeline.
They need a pipeline of stories, especially
you know, ones that have the benefit of being true.
Yeah.
And now, not 50 years from now or 40 years from now, or whatever it is.
I mean, I'll give you a real time example.
We're working with the Gap right now.
know, Richard Dixon is an incredible new CEO who's joined and we've had the privilege of
working alongside, you know, his incredible team.
And when you look at the Gap supply chain, you know, and
the work that they do in factories around the world to create economic opportunity, to
create places of safety for women to come and work.
There's incredible stories there.
And I think that's where going back to those stories now, not only being for consumers,
but also being for potential employees as they decide where to go and work.
Those stories become even more important.
Well looking forward like what do you see shape in the future of purpose-driven businesses
if you were to go out five ten years from now You know, what are you working for today
that you're hoping is gonna turn into fruit five years from now Well, I'll tell you one
thing which is making me really happy which didn't exist when you know Bobby and I wrote
that first book in 2016 is Now in every single category there's purpose-driven disruptors
So there's the incumbent companies, you know
the two or three large companies who are the leaders, but in every single category, it's
fashion or food or travel or pharmaceuticals, there's purpose-driven disruptors coming for
those companies.
And those companies are built with purpose at the core.
They built with inclusivity or sustainability at the core.
In fact, inclusivity and sustainability are the disrupting factors that they decided to
focus on.
This jacket I'm wearing is a great example.
I wore it especially for you, man.
This is a Nudie jeans jacket.
love those kids.
Yeah, guys are great.
Yeah.
This is a recycled fiber jacket, right?
I picked it up in, I think, in Copenhagen.
I walked in just, I was like, that's amazing.
It looks cool.
And then I learned the story behind it.
I'm like, okay, I have to buy this thing now because it is the epitome of good and cool.
You're wearing a story.
I'm wearing my what is it an onomatopoeia or whatever you are that way.
I'm wearing my back.
When you talk about wearing your values on a sleeve like I'm literally wearing it on this
sleeve.
It's hard on a sleeve for sure.
And yeah, there's 100 products in my house and my you know, my jeans to my sneakers to my
you know, water bottle.
Yeah, where I have a choice now to say, okay, I'm going to vote with my dollars and I'm
going to vote with my values.
Right.
That's what makes me happy.
Right.
Well, yeah, and it's sometimes these responsibly sourced goods.
just to, know, they do, they're sacraments, they're unique.
And in some cases, they're almost, you know, for lack of a better word, kind of holy
because they represent what we can be.
They represent the ultimate, where everything in the closet and the cupboard can one day
be that.
I think sometimes we have to have the jackets with the great story or the water bottle
with the, you know, or the shoes.
We've seen this over the last 10 years, these.
these challenger brands that go, no, it's possible and it's possible to scale and it's
possible to sell for a good billion dollars to private equity, all the same things
everyone wants.
But we, you know, we embed this.
It's hard to reverse engineer it when, when a company is just built on something a little
bit different, no judgment.
But like if you're a hundred year old company or a 50 year old company, that's, you know,
billions of dollars.
Yeah, there's, it's important for you to understand that.
re-triggering, re-building is much harder than starting from zero, starting from the very
basics.
And I think sometimes we can see that that's just as important work as it is working for a
company that started with those principles.
And here's, since we can get nerdy for a second here.
Let's do it.
Here is the thing which is the Holy Trinity, which is the hardest nut to crack.
And I call it...
Affordability, sustainability, desirability.
So think about a triangle with each of those things at a point.
Affordability, sustainability, and desirability.
Usually you can get to one.
Sometimes you can get to two.
It's really hard to get all three.
And so that's where you can make something affordable and sustainable, but it's not that
desirable.
Like you don't want to...
wear it, eat it, have it in your house.
It looks kind of ugly and it's not sexy and cool.
You can make something desirable and sustainable, but it's not going to be cheap.
The only people who have a certain amount of disposable income can afford to buy the
electric car, the whatever, right?
So I think that's where it's really interesting where you can get the disruptive startups.
who can tackle things like the sustainability and the desirability, but they need the
scale of the larger corporates to get to the affordability, to get to those economies of
scale to get there.
So I believe that there is a role for all of these companies, the small startups and the
large incumbents.
And if we can crack a way for them to work together, that's how we're gonna solve this.
this issue that every single industry is facing.
Like we're going to have 10 billion people on the planet by 2050.
They're all going to have to be fed and clothed and housed in a way that is affordable,
sustainable and desirable.
And so if every single company is thinking about how to get there, how to repurpose their
supply chains, how to think about design in a new way, to think about, you know, scale in
a new way, that's the grand challenge that everybody's dealing with.
at the moment, you know, and that's where everybody needs each other in this space to
collaborate with to get there.
I can't think of a better note to pivot towards our departure.
But before we go, first of all, I want to thank you so much for taking time to do this.
Your time is so valuable.
You are such a gift to everyone who meets you.
When I met you, I think it was in New York and Soho House.
I think that was where you came up to me and from
from the minute I met you, you've just been generous and kind and that's to me when I
didn't deserve it and you do that with everyone.
So I'm just, I'm just let everyone know like read good as the new cool and on October
what?
29th.
29th read, what's that title?
The good as a new cool guide to personal purpose available on Amazon now.
Yes.
Okay.
I'm on it.
Last question.
What's a good day on the job look like for you?
man.
I get to have, I'm so blessed because I get to have incredible conversations with
incredible change makers all the time.
Sometimes they're the clients we get to work with.
Sometimes they're people I'm interviewing for Forbes.
Sometimes they're an inspiring young nonprofit leader or, you know, a social entrepreneur.
And I come away feeling inspired.
You know, I come away feeling like I have a very privileged view of the world where 90 %
of the conversations I have with
with people who are doing something mind-blowingly good to help make the world better.
And so that's a good day for me.
It restores my faith in humanity.
And then my job is to be a vessel for that inspiration and take it back out into the world
in whatever form, the consultancy, my books, my speaking, my writing.
So yeah, just being a conduit for those stories is always a good day.
This is the one thing, the part of the show where we remind you of one thing.
This triangle of cost, sustainability and quality that Afdel was talking about, and you
can insert whatever word you want for sustainable, responsible, ethical.
This idea that the products that we create need to be both affordable and support our
values and also be of good quality reminds me of when I used to work in the music industry
and
I would sometimes in a recording session come up with an idea that was difficult to pull
off.
And I remember my engineers would turn around and say, all right, fast, cheap, or good,
pick two.
In other words, you can't have all three.
You've got to, if you want something cheap and good, it's not going to be done very fast.
And of course I always wanted all three.
I still do.
I still work with engineers and at freedom.
We try to do things that are affordable, that are good, and that are good for the world.
And I think that you can get all three around this triangle.
You just have to work a little bit harder and smarter.
And there's no one that's proven that, proven it at such a massive scale.
No one's proven that more than Tesla.
They, through relentless innovation and optimization, they got all three.
And if you were to put $1,000 into Tesla in 2012,
to have over a million dollars today.
So whatever good or service your company provides, aim for all three.
But here's the lesson.
It's a lie to believe that in order for something to be good, it has to be expensive.
That's just quitting.
Turning your company's buying power into a superpower does take courage and it takes work,
it takes innovation.
And if you're the one in your company
trying to transform your supply chain, it is going to take a lot of work, a lot of
innovation.
But there's something that's really important to remember.
Your supply chain will never be perfect.
So if your interpretation of the word sustainable or ethical equals perfect, then you're
already going in the wrong direction.
There's never been a perfect supply chain and there never will be any more than there'll
be a perfect person.
Building ethics and sustainability, in other words, putting your values and using your
buying power as a superpower to turn your values into something that is going to change
the world, that just takes a little bit harder work.
It's important to remember that as you're building a responsible supply chain, you're
essentially planting a tree, the shade of which people you will never meet will benefit
from.
Thanks for listening.