345: Stephanie Forbes - The $4.2 Trillion Problem: Why Boards Can't Afford to Ignore Supply Chain Fraud

Today, Steve sits down with Stephanie Forbes, CEO of the Forbes Group. Stephanie is a supply chain expert who recently released Global Wealth, Local Impact: How Supply Chains Build Thriving Companies, Cultures, and Countries, a book about building supply chains using lessons from our past. She and Steve discuss what she learned in her research for the book and supply chain management principles leaders can rely on in these unsteady times. Stephanie also gives advice for small and medium-sized businesses, how to manage supply chain issues across departments, and digital risk management.

Key Takeaways:

1. Frequent reviews of internal systems and supplier compliance are key to supply chain management in uncertain times.
2. We innovate and solve problems better when we work in teams and across departments, and it’s the leader’s job to enable and encourage such collaboration.
3. Boards have the responsibility to ask questions and investigate whether their organizations are managing their supply chains as well and securely as they could.

Tune in to hear more about:

1. What history teaches us about how we manage societies (2:08)
2. How supply chains will change over the next five to ten years (10:25)
3. The three questions boards should ask to secure their supply chains (25:58)

Standout Quotes:

1. “If I'm only a couple of people, 10 people, then I'm probably not going to bring in a full-scale audit unless I'm importing a lot of goods, unless I have a really big tariff bill, and then it's probably worth it for me to take a look at that. So you're going to want to cherry pick the things that are really important.” - Stephanie Forbes
2. “It's going to become very difficult, I think, in another five, 10 years to buy anything that doesn't have a full life -cycle knowledge, awareness or paper trail. And that's gonna be all the way down to the ink or the physical ore, all that kind of stuff.” - Stephanie Forbes
3. “The more as a leader in your organization that you can really encourage and foster that cross-functional collaboration between your operations and whether it's procurement, supply chain, even finance, to really make sure everyone's talking the same language, it becomes a huge competitive advantage, especially when things are changing so rapidly.” - Stephanie Forbes

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