The Services Procurement Foundations for Total Workforce Management
Services procurement plays a critical role in achieving true total workforce visibility and control. Establishing clear foundations around structure, data and governance is essential to managing employees, contingent labour and services as one workforce.
With Lisa Williams, Sr. Director Operations Talent Strategy and Employee Experience, Dow
22:04 - 25:49 - Making Total Workforce Management make sense
44:02 - 49:11 - How does services procurement fit into TWM and why is it often the biggest gap?
50:55 - 54:28 - Adapting to leverage services procurement
55:19 - 01:00:50 - Services procurement as a core skill
01:01:04 - 01:06:59 - Bringing Total Workforce Management together
Episode Highlights
Transcript
Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.
00;00;00;22 - 00;00;06;12
Jonny Dunning
okay. So I am very pleased to welcome Lisa Williams to the podcast today.
00;00;06;12 - 00;00;09;09
Jonny Dunning
Lisa, thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing?
00;00;09;11 - 00;00;12;23
Lisa Williams
I'm good today, Jonny Thank you for the invitation.
00;00;12;26 - 00;00;41;10
Jonny Dunning
Excellent stuff. So we've got some really interesting topics to talk about in relation to services procurement. It's place within total workforce management and just the broader total workforce management topic as a whole, which I know you are a very strong advocate for and do some great, great talks and produce some great content in this area. You're you're the senior director of operations, talent strategy and employee experience at Dow Chemicals.
00;00;41;13 - 00;01;04;04
Jonny Dunning
And you've had a really interesting journey through that business. I was looking back through your LinkedIn history earlier. You know, you've got it's really interesting how you've gone through that process to get it started. Would you be able to just talk us through that kind of a bit about your background? I know you studied, mechanical engineering.
00;01;04;06 - 00;01;10;08
Jonny Dunning
Originally just took us a little bit past through that and how that journey progressed at Dow
00;01;10;10 - 00;01;54;22
Lisa Williams
Sure. And and again, thank you for having me. Yes. I have a bachelors of science in mechanical engineering from Prairie View A&M University here in Texas, in the United States, as well as a master's in manufacturing management from Penn State University, which 25 plus years ago was the beginning of supply chain. It became supply chain, right. So, it and it through that time in Dow, I was very fortunate to start my career in engineering and design, construction as a mechanical design engineering lead, again designing equipment, lab facilities, and then ultimately working with the procurement organization to get that equipment delivered and erected into the field.
00;01;54;22 - 00;02;17;12
Lisa Williams
So a real engineering and design and construction experience. But then I really wanted to lean into my master's degree and move into supply chain, and spent quite a bit of time there in planning and scheduling and ultimately the expertise center. And I had the opportunity to support an ERP uplift in Dow. So I worked a little bit in our IT organization for supply chain as well.
00;02;17;15 - 00;02;42;03
Lisa Williams
But the journey continued and I wanted to get yet another functional experience under my belt. And so I moved into procurement, which ended up being a full circle moment. I was able to be a category leader twice in procurement, first in, process containment equipment, which was a tip of the hat back to my engineering design days. So I was actually the category leader for a type of equipment.
00;02;42;03 - 00;03;00;09
Lisa Williams
I onced designed it as engineer. That was those were interesting conversations with the suppliers. Let me tell you, I gained a lot of immediate respect in those at those tables. And then I was able to be a category leader for both marine and logistics, which was a tip of the hat to the supply chain experience I had.
00;03;00;10 - 00;03;24;19
Lisa Williams
So I was very, very fortunate. Again, being at the negotiation table with suppliers on both marine equipment contracts and being a supply chain professional, very unique perspective that was in Dow's advantage. So after doing that for a while, I really wanted something new and different. And the company, decided that we needed to develop a contract labor strategy.
00;03;24;21 - 00;03;56;09
Lisa Williams
So I was put on, asked to lead, actually a corporate program to develop Dow's first ever contract labor strategy. And it was a it's a big, undertaking cross-functional enterprise wide. And after doing that for 2 or 3 years, through that journey, I really learned the importance of total workforce management and total workforce strategy. And as that opportunity sunset, it transitioned into a role back into my home function.
00;03;56;12 - 00;04;16;21
Lisa Williams
As I love to refer to many operations because I will always be an engineer at my core, to come and lead talent strategy for manufacturing engineering operations, which after being gone away from the function for, I don't know, 15 plus years. It was an honor and a privilege to be trusted, to come back and do this for the function.
00;04;16;23 - 00;04;48;02
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, that's so interesting. Like you say, some real kind of circular moments that throughout that, that journey. I think the thing that I find that strikes me from this is you have a real understanding of the business. It's like you're, you're a you've got a total perspective of the business. You understand it from the very, fundamentals of what the business is doing in terms of the products and services that they're providing and that technical, actual delivery aspect.
00;04;48;05 - 00;05;20;00
Jonny Dunning
And then you obviously got that supply chain experience, the procurement experience on both the direct and indirect sides and dealing with, I always like to look at it as kind of dealing with buying things and also dealing with buying people and services. You've got that kind of total perspective across all of that. So the fact that you all now such a, you know, a thoughtful speaker when it comes to that total workforce conversation is a tribute to the fact that you have a really good understanding of the business.
00;05;20;02 - 00;05;33;14
Jonny Dunning
And I always, I, I always look at it like this, you know, it's a strategic imperative to make the best use of the organization resources. But with your understanding of the business, you're going to see that pretty clearly.
00;05;33;16 - 00;06;02;01
Lisa Williams
I appreciate that, Jonny. And I really do feel that. I feel my last two roles in Dow have been culmination of, you know, 20 plus now 28 years of experience in this company in a lot of different places. And Dow is a big company, right? Dow is a chemical manufacturing fortune 100 legacy leader in material science and chemical manufacturing, deeply diversified, innovation focused, globally integrated.
00;06;02;01 - 00;06;29;15
Lisa Williams
We're talking about over 35,000 employees. And at the height of the chemical industry cycle, it could be almost that many contractors on site trying to get the work done. We've won ten Edison Awards, 63 R&D, 100 awards, American Kim, Street Counsel, Sustainable Leadership awards. And we've, just this year, our manufacturing and production, organization was recognized as number one in great places to work.
00;06;29;21 - 00;06;53;29
Lisa Williams
And Dow has been on great places to work for the last five years. So I run that resumé about my company. And one more, one more I'll throw in 2025 CIO 100 Award for excellence in IT. Why is all that important? Because it describes who we are right in our DNA and how we show up in the marketplace for our customers, for our community, by employees.
00;06;54;01 - 00;07;18;05
Lisa Williams
And and this DNA is critical to the transformation Dow and many other companies like Dow are going through now. And we'll go into in 2026, which really sets us up for the conversation we're going to have today. So, thank you for allowing me to do that. But I really want your audience to understand the size of Dow and the size of the enterprise and the investment.
00;07;18;05 - 00;07;25;01
Lisa Williams
We're talking about, because I'm also going to talk about some things that we've done that have worked really well for us, even at our size.
00;07;25;03 - 00;07;44;29
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. No, it's the context is absolutely everything to this. And it's I think like you say that the, the awards, the recognition, the way the Dow operates as a company, what's in the company DNA effectively. And what very much comes across to me when I talk to you about this sort of stuff is it's all about doing things properly.
00;07;45;02 - 00;08;16;19
Jonny Dunning
It's all about, you know, aligning strategically and doing things properly. And I'm I'm a passionate believer in that as well. I mean, the let's get stuff done club. So I always find it very inspiring to talk to you about this sort of stuff. With, with Total Workforce Management. I think it's one of those areas that I feel like it's kind of been around for a while, and it's, it tends to sometimes overwhelm people and confuse people.
00;08;16;21 - 00;08;44;19
Jonny Dunning
But I feel like talking to people like you, saying the stuff that you're doing and some other people in the market that that I'm engaging with and hearing from as well. I was chatting to a guy in Singapore who was most recently at Netflix, looking at some stuff around type of work. It's really interesting to see this message starting to come out from some real leaders in this area like yourselves, where it's actually taking a serious approach to no we're actually going to do this.
00;08;44;19 - 00;09;10;19
Jonny Dunning
This is going to be a full workforce optimization. So just before we get into kind of demystifying the type of workforce management space a little bit, going back to what you were saying about putting that contract labor program in place. Wow. That must have been pretty special. So the bear in mind, it was like a generation one and the, the the size of how much you guys flex up at the peak cycle.
00;09;10;21 - 00;09;14;11
Jonny Dunning
That must have been an amazing piece of work to be involved with it.
00;09;14;11 - 00;09;38;27
Lisa Williams
It was tremendous. I remember when the opportunity was posted in Dow because we had to apply to lead the team and be on the team. I remember thinking, this is a great way for me to bring all of what I know and my best self and contributions to Dow at a time when it needed it, mostly because of that cross-functional experience.
00;09;39;00 - 00;10;11;21
Lisa Williams
And the challenge and the size of the opportunity. Right. I knew that that, it would take a special kind of leader to not only envision the future and map the pathway toward a solution, but lead a team of other leaders in crafting that that plan, that strategic plan, and learning how to read and and lead and influence the organization through the change and when actually where the organization, I mean, the executive levels to the shop floor.
00;10;11;28 - 00;10;33;21
Lisa Williams
That is a lot to ask of a person and a team. And there are some days where. But this was by far the hardest job I've ever had to do in Dow and the most rewarding to date, because there were times at eight 8:30 a.m. and meeting with my team and we have literally a blank slate in front of us and a host of problems we're trying to solve.
00;10;33;23 - 00;10;57;28
Lisa Williams
And no one can really help us because we were the team put in place to come up with the answers. And if you don't know how to recognize you are in a moment like that. And the critical importance to keep moving and not get frozen in the fear of the gargantuan of what you've been asked to do, you can easily become overwhelmed.
00;10;58;01 - 00;11;27;18
Lisa Williams
So the best personal lesson I learned is that the new world of work requires enterprises to make these kind of enterprise wide changes. We can't be afraid of them anymore. And you must find the right people in your organization who have both the skill and experience, the courage and the stamina and the influence and respect to go and make these things real and accomplishable.
00;11;27;24 - 00;11;47;07
Lisa Williams
But and I just think our team was very fortunate to find the right people to be able to do that. And we had tremendous support from our executive leadership, which is critical in any change. We had advocacy and our executive leadership to go and create this enterprise wide contract labor strategy.
00;11;47;10 - 00;12;13;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. It's amazing. It feels like, it almost feels like a sort of a startup within an enterprise. So it's like you have to be like, entrepreneurial because I completely resonate with what you're talking about, where it's like you, the team, the problem, and no one's going to do it for you. I really, I really resonate to me, from an entrepreneurial point of view.
00;12;13;18 - 00;12;33;21
Jonny Dunning
But added to that pressure, you've got this whole enterprise sitting around you that are going, well, you got to convince me. And, you know, we're waiting for you to get on the this. So that's the elements of round communication and influence just cannot be underestimated with regards to this. I think it's such it comes it just comes through.
00;12;33;21 - 00;12;38;02
Jonny Dunning
And what you're talking about, if you can't do that, it's not going to happen.
00;12;38;04 - 00;13;00;04
Lisa Williams
It's not going to happen. I joke with people now, this was the probably the first job in doubt in my senior. The senior years of my career, where I literally would have butterflies in my stomach at 9:00 in the morning, and that could be a good thing, and maybe a not so good thing. And for about nine months I had butterflies in my stomach.
00;13;00;04 - 00;13;33;10
Lisa Williams
And when we got to a certain milestone where we felt like we've got a really good strategy and a good plan here, and we've got enough stakeholder alignment and advocacy to keep going, right. We may not have all of it, but we've got enough to keep going. Then the butterflies started to to ease. But I also think what a what a wonderful blessing and opportunity to be this late in your career and be given an opportunity where you can still have butterflies in your stomach and relearn yourself and say, I can still be innovative.
00;13;33;16 - 00;13;46;24
Lisa Williams
I can still be, influential. I can still be collaborative. I can still lead and inspire people to a tangible result. So it was it was, it was a wonderful experience.
00;13;46;27 - 00;14;22;03
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I think, you know, for people like yourself, and certainly I agree with this as well. It's all about the challenge. And that that certainly sounds like a monumental challenge. I think the the interesting thing about this is what you talk about, like having butterflies in your stomach and things like that. If you were advising somebody else who was in that, come into into that position right now, another company you could you just think of the words of wisdom you could give to them and think of the think of the reassurance you could give to them of like, you know, this is going to seem like you're climbing Mount Everest, but
00;14;22;03 - 00;14;48;13
Jonny Dunning
you're going to get there. It's doable. It's I think that's so important. And I mean, the contract labor program, the contingent labor programs. Now, now that's becoming more mature. But with what you're doing, for example, around total workforce management, that's why it's so important to be having these types of conversations. Same with services procurement transformation. A lot of organizations, people would would sit there and just think, I don't know how to get started.
00;14;48;13 - 00;15;08;19
Jonny Dunning
I don't know, I don't know if this is even possible. We're getting to the point now where there's more and more people coming out, around areas like services. When they carried out a transformation. I had a really interesting conversation yesterday with, David Orme, who was, in procurement, Cox Communications, you know, 1.6 billion a year spend program.
00;15;08;19 - 00;15;40;15
Jonny Dunning
Only about 120 million of it was contingent workforce. The rest was all services procurement. So yeah, it's been through that process and seen it. But people need to hear that. And I think yes, particularly when you get to I would regard total workforce management as the absolute most complex, state of that kind of work, because it's bringing everything together and you have to as nailed every channel as, as we'll discuss, you know, the there were people who don't even know how to think about this, so don't even have to organize it in their brain.
00;15;40;17 - 00;15;58;15
Jonny Dunning
So I think as people go through the process, as this maturity comes out into the market. It's so useful for other people who are at the start of their journey to listen to the experiences of people like yourselves and hear, hear this stuff, even if just to say, do you know what this is? I'm not going to just, die in a ditch here.
00;15;58;17 - 00;16;00;24
Jonny Dunning
This is this is something that we can achieve this.
00;16;00;24 - 00;16;44;10
Lisa Williams
Right? So and Jonny, that's why I am so appreciative when I'm invited to podcasts like yours. Because a year, not even a year, six months into our engagement and this was early 2022, I quickly realized there was no recipe in the marketplace for what we needed to accomplish. And as soon as I started to figure it out by the end of 2022, I started to speak about it as soon as I figured it out, and I started to speak about the lack of guidance, direction and structure for organizations who wanted to develop total contract labor strategies, not just for their contingent workforce, but for most of us.
00;16;44;13 - 00;17;23;17
Lisa Williams
The bulk of our contract labor investment is in statement of work. And because we didn't have the technology for so many years until now, attempting to tackle that beast of statement of work was just unimaginable. But now, even in the last two years, we have technology and better understanding of technology and adoption of artificial intelligence into every core of our business processes and task execution that are now making this SOW monster a lot less intimidating.
00;17;23;20 - 00;17;50;16
Lisa Williams
And the requirement of business that we must solve for it right now. So I appreciate this because this is not a Dow trade secret. This is a problem our industry has to solve collectively, because we all need the uplift of getting better control over our services procurement, because it is going to be a critical enabler of all of our business strategies going forward.
00;17;50;18 - 00;18;23;24
Jonny Dunning
I couldn't agree more. And I literally had a conversation earlier today talking about a large us, organization. The the, the total labor program or the workforce program was like I was under an MSP and it was one point just over a billion and only $80 million a year was was actually contractors, contingent workers. So, so the SOW portion of it is for so long so people has felt like an unsolvable problem or, or the kind of just leave it in the too difficult to do box.
00;18;23;24 - 00;18;46;10
Jonny Dunning
You know, we we've been doing it that way for years. But but now with, with AI and the way the technology has developed, I mean, what AI always is enabled technology providers to do, and I speak from our own experience of solving the services procurement problem. AI has just massively enabled technology providers to be able to create a better user experience, to make things more efficient, to shortcut stuff.
00;18;46;12 - 00;19;15;22
Jonny Dunning
We talked to, we were chatting, earlier about this in terms of, you know, doing research that might take 40 hours in five minutes because and enabling you so so I think the changes in the market and the way that what AI has done, it's not only uplifted what the technology providers can do, but it's also, to a certain extent, taking away the excuse that some people in some organizations might have had, but they just would have said it's too difficult and that's just not valid anymore.
00;19;15;22 - 00;19;16;18
Jonny Dunning
Is it?
00;19;16;21 - 00;19;41;26
Lisa Williams
It is it is absolutely not value that, it's not valid anymore. We, we put SOW solutioning in the latter part of our multi-generational plan back in 2021 and in 2022. However, we are now here in the latter part of the original multi-generational plan for contract labor strategy. And we are realizing and accepting, and I'm so happy.
00;19;41;26 - 00;19;59;25
Lisa Williams
That's why I'm smiling, that this is now possible to address. And we still have to address it in pieces. But this, this scope of of work is now possible to address. And even more importantly, we don't have a choice. We have to find a way to address to stay competitive.
00;19;59;27 - 00;20;24;04
Jonny Dunning
That is the crux of everything, in my opinion. You've just nailed it. It's it's it's very competitive and it's and it's, you know, how is the business going to operate effectively in the market if it can't control this part of how they do the work? You know, this massive spend? It's it's crazy. And, totally irresponsible in my opinion for organizations if they're not trying to address it.
00;20;24;06 - 00;20;46;07
Jonny Dunning
But but everyone's going to have to start addressing it. I got also an interesting question. Recently somebody said to me, what do you see within smaller companies like, say, I don't know, a thousand people that are rapidly growing? What do they do around services? Are they addressing it straight away? And it's interesting because we typically deal with larger organizations.
00;20;46;09 - 00;21;01;27
Jonny Dunning
In terms of the customers of Zivio. But we do we do deal with some smaller organizations and we deal with some kind of like fast moving businesses, and they’re on this stuff straight away because it's it's like anything they just adopting the most effective way to do things. And they know they have to do work very, very flexibly.
00;21;02;00 - 00;21;24;23
Jonny Dunning
And they expect everything to be systemized. The real challenges to the bigger established companies that have been around for years and years and years and built up this huge legacy of a giant services supply chain and a kind of manual or semi manual way of getting things done that's entrenched in the organization and the operation and the and the, culture of the organization and trying to change that.
00;21;24;26 - 00;21;36;20
Jonny Dunning
But if they don't, then someone's going to be snapping at their heels and someone's going to, you know, overtighten them. So the competitive side of it, the ability to stay competitive and get things done, I think you just nailed it.
00;21;36;22 - 00;21;38;07
Lisa Williams
Absolutely.
00;21;38;09 - 00;22;01;19
Jonny Dunning
So so going back to the total workforce management side of things or you know I've always found that if you're at a conference, a workforce conference, you know there's, there's maybe people in the not so good sessions talking about total workforce management. It just seems like people are coming out with the same kind of like, platitudes and top level theoretical things.
00;22;01;22 - 00;22;22;04
Jonny Dunning
And if you break it down in terms of, in your view, how would you really break down your approach to thinking about total workforce management in a way that, you know, you you're doing this, you're making it happen. It's not just something you're just theorizing about. How do you break it down to people?
00;22;22;07 - 00;22;47;27
Lisa Williams
I thank you so much for that question. I am definitely an advocate for having a bias for action. Of course, once you've had some thoughtful time to research and collaborate, but there has to be time to act and move and in my opinion, the first thing you need to do in assessing your total workforce strategy before you get to the management, what is your why?
00;22;47;29 - 00;23;15;09
Lisa Williams
What is how are you using your workforce today? And of course, that even starts with understanding the work that needs to be done because you need to look at that. Hopefully that has evolved and updated over time, and if it hasn't, that's where you should start, right? Your business strategy is going to dictate the work that needs to be done and how you do it, and it better be technology enabled.
00;23;15;11 - 00;23;37;17
Lisa Williams
Once you rationalize the work, then you can start to look at what is my workforce today and how does it need to change. And and in my simple approach right now, I'm saying there are three elements to your workforce. And this is not anything new. You've seen it in white papers from the big three firms and all of that.
00;23;37;19 - 00;24;03;13
Lisa Williams
You have to consider your employee work portion of your workforce, the non employer contract laborer, part of your workforce and the technology. That's almost a workforce by itself. Or it should be. And under each of those three pillars you have sub pillars to consider. So for example in the employee pillar you have to think about the current composition of your workforce.
00;24;03;15 - 00;24;33;03
Lisa Williams
What are the skills and roles in your workforce and how does that need to uplift. Where are what are the demographics of your workforce, both in if work experience across a 30 year industrial career and where they're located, you have to look at all of those traditional demographics of your workforce with the added in skills, knowledge, experience, intelligence that's required of today's, you know, total skills transformation.
00;24;33;08 - 00;25;03;24
Lisa Williams
Okay. Employee pillar, non employee contract, labor pillar. You have this whole tapestry of what is contract labor look like, what's available in the marketplace. If your company has only used staff aug contingent staffing with some kind of bubble of SOW that you that you've never really looked at before even within SOW there are some some segments of contract labor and as regional and global, you know worker labor laws change.
00;25;03;26 - 00;25;49;18
Lisa Williams
There are there are new and innovative ways that we can structure workers in our environment to the benefit of our business needs. You have to be willing to look at that entire tapestry and determine for 2026 and onward, what makes sense for where your organization is going. And then the third pillar is enabling technology as a workforce. But you can't do that if you have it first, rationalize the work and then rationalize the talent density of both your employee population and your non-employee population, because then you can better deploy the enabling technology, in my opinion.
00;25;49;20 - 00;26;22;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I love the way you broke that down. That's that's really nice and structured. Just to touch on one point there that that I think I mentioned this earlier was an AI, related dinner and discussion in a nice fancy restaurant in London earlier this week. And, and the discussion was around AI and how it's going to affect work and the move from what being considered mainly in terms of time to the fact that AI could take some of these, you know, needs to work five days a week to achieve something, to actually then only take some three days a week.
00;26;22;12 - 00;26;45;29
Jonny Dunning
So more of a mentality shift around outputs, rather than just time. Really interesting. Also, another concept that came out of that was this idea of they were actually the analysts that were running the dinner. They were actually talking about, AI workers, a little bit and the like you're saying technology as a workforce, is part of the mix of ultimately the objective, which is getting work done.
00;26;46;01 - 00;26;59;18
Jonny Dunning
So I love the way you describe it. And I think that's a very forward thinking principle. But it's also it ties into your sort of pragmatism, having that engineering and operational background. It's about getting it done, isn't it? That's the that's the thing.
00;26;59;20 - 00;27;33;03
Lisa Williams
That is absolutely about getting it done and getting the work done. And I offer to any, anyone or any organization that says it's too much, we're too big to do this, to do a total workforce transformation. First, I'll tell you, you don't have a choice. You have to do it to stay competitive. And number two, you're probably thinking about some sort of top down, initiative where, a handful of people are directing the entire enterprise to go change.
00;27;33;05 - 00;28;09;08
Lisa Williams
What you have to do is remind people they are already going through this AI revolution in their day to day lives, and teach them how to reapply what they're experiencing in the outside world and bringing it into work. So first, you've got to teach your leaders how to look at the work being done in their organizations. And again, restrategize stratify that work in partnership with their employees through a conversation of, here's the skills and task we're going to uplift and change.
00;28;09;10 - 00;28;36;00
Lisa Williams
How can we AI enable it as we go. When you teach the entire organization to do that, and then you put some infrastructure and governance in place to monitor its evolution, then an enterprise wide transformation becomes tangible and real and possible. But you got to think about it in the right way. You've got to set it up in the right way, and you've got to remind the people who this is about to impact.
00;28;36;02 - 00;28;50;07
Lisa Williams
They are coming along for the journey. They have to help craft a lot of the ground floor changes, and trust that leadership is going to keep the right guardrails in place for all of us to stay safe and productive, in my opinion.
00;28;50;09 - 00;29;13;01
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I like the way you kind of you're framing this in terms of setting it up to for success. And I think what you were talking about before, when, when, when we were talking about the taking on the giant kind of like contract labor SOW and contingent program, Gen one as a, as a, as it's something you've got to solve.
00;29;13;04 - 00;29;37;03
Jonny Dunning
I likened it to being quite like, like an entrepreneurial startup, almost like that's that attitude and what you're saying and, and I love this, you know, clearly you do genuinely have a bias for taking action, which is which is brilliant. I love that. But but but that also is quite entrepreneurial. And also I think the, what is your why?
00;29;37;06 - 00;30;00;25
Jonny Dunning
And, and understanding a fundamental level. What's the business strategy? What does that mean? We've got to do an okay, how are we going to do it? Most effectively? This is, this is very much it's amazing to see a very large enterprise thinking in the way that a scale up organization, a fast growth tech company, that's how that's how they have to think.
00;30;00;27 - 00;30;20;24
Jonny Dunning
And I think that's really interesting to see that approach being applied to it. But absolutely, I think the onus is on the business to translate to, communicate the strategy effectively. And then for, for, for this type of, initiative to take that strategy and then then, apply it to the, to the different ways that the organization can get work done.
00;30;20;27 - 00;30;30;06
Jonny Dunning
I love that. And it's that's, that's a great it's it's kind of some people might think that that seems obvious, but a lot of people miss that.
00;30;30;08 - 00;30;56;03
Lisa Williams
They do. And and the critical point is really taking those beautiful words and turning them into action, literally at the at the lower levels of the organization. Forgive me, I don't have a better word for that where the work actually happens, leaders working with their employees to say, let's take a look at your job. Let's take a look at the task you're executing.
00;30;56;05 - 00;31;16;18
Lisa Williams
One are those task gonna stay or are they're going to change Two do you have the right skills to execute the current and new tasks going forward? And if you don't, three let's figure out how to get you upskilled and technology enabled at the same time. But leaders have to have very good understandings of their own organizations to be able to do that.
00;31;16;25 - 00;31;41;03
Lisa Williams
So now we're having a different conversation about when the highest levels of leadership in the organization look across their leader levels. Do they have the right people with the right skills and experience that both technically understand the organization, but also, culturally, intuitively understand the organization to be able to drive this kind of tangible evolution. It is very real.
00;31;41;06 - 00;32;12;06
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. It's really interesting. You know, one of the things that that kind of triggers the thought in my head is how on earth one of the biggest problems. Sure. So some companies is like, how did they find somebody like you to do this type of stuff? Because sometimes and I feel like this is where sometimes organizations are not empowering people properly, where you might have somebody who's, you know, got all the right attributes, who sat in procurement, for example, but maybe they don't have a good enough understanding of the rest of the business.
00;32;12;06 - 00;32;35;29
Jonny Dunning
I mean, this is definitely where, like, you can get like, a kind of like elite, you know, Seal team six unit of, you know, the Special forces unit that are basically brought together cross-functional. But but it's it's it's having that strategic understanding and being able to apply it. I do think there are lots of really smart people in procurement functions.
00;32;36;06 - 00;32;57;28
Jonny Dunning
And I think procurement is a good center point because of the, the, the access I have to the business. And and really they should center on having a really good understanding about the overarching business strategy. And but so people who are working on the services side of procurement anyway, but also cross people in H.R talent acquisition, contingent work, contingent labor, that sort of stuff.
00;32;58;00 - 00;33;16;01
Jonny Dunning
But but I do think that idea of some the right people, the right team to take responsibility for this, that's a critical thing as well. And it's interesting to see how do you do that in terms of obviously coming up with the initiative from from a an exec point of view and saying right now we need to find the right people who can execute this.
00;33;16;03 - 00;33;43;18
Lisa Williams
That's right. And we were a fully dedicated team. I make sure I say that in all these podcasts, because any executive leadership team that thinks they're going to have a transformational team of any resort that's not fully dedicated is kidding themselves. So we were fully dedicated for almost three years, 100%. All we did was contract labor strategy, and we absolutely were like a Seal Six team
00;33;43;21 - 00;34;03;10
Lisa Williams
I mean, we because the people assembled for this team represented the best of the functions we represented. And it truly was an honor for me to lead the team. There was a lot of trust, and invested in me to do that. But I also had a lot of credibility in the organization, warranting that I deserved that opportunity.
00;34;03;10 - 00;34;38;22
Lisa Williams
Right. But it was it was, when you're doing these things, you have got to have the right people in leadership, both both administratively and in, in, influentially, to drive the kind of change at all levels that needs to happen. It's very important. And as for me, I have always been an advocate, as for myself in my organization, because I've always wanted to be the biggest contributor to Dow I could be, and that can't happen if people don't know what I can do.
00;34;38;24 - 00;35;04;28
Lisa Williams
So while I'm doing the good work, I also make it visible. I am vocal, and you know, some people could even call it opportunistic. My my driver has always wanted to be the biggest, most contributing of myself I could be for Dow in whatever space I was in, while I also gained the maximum employee experience I could.
00;35;04;28 - 00;35;14;10
Lisa Williams
But at the same time, that's the other part of my role that I don't get to talk about as much. But I'm sure that will change in 2026.
00;35;14;13 - 00;35;37;12
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I mean, you know, and and I look at that and I think to myself, well, I'm pretty sure the, the executive board, at Dow would love it. The more people that do that, the better. Because, you know, you're, you're saying, how can I be as useful as possible to my to my organization? That's that's the dream, really for for an organization.
00;35;37;14 - 00;35;52;23
Jonny Dunning
Some organizations seem to have a culture and they want to put people in a box. I can't I can't abide that. I always think if you're hiring somebody, why would you restrict them? You know, if you're if you're paying for somebody to, to do work for your business, given the opportunity to do that, give you the best value they possibly can.
00;35;52;29 - 00;36;14;26
Jonny Dunning
So I think I, I wholeheartedly agree with that approach. And I definitely that's something I certainly support in in our organization, if people are saying, hey, I want to take on a challenge or, hey, look at this great stuff I've done. You know, I'm all for it because, you know, if it's if it's done in the spirit of trying to contribute as effectively as possible, that's, that should be applauded in my opinion.
00;36;14;26 - 00;36;15;06
Jonny Dunning
Yeah.
00;36;15;09 - 00;36;42;04
Lisa Williams
And Jonny, we're still right. We're still talking about services procurement because this is a big black hole space that people have avoided. So I'm sure in your role as you're trying to connect with companies and make them understand your solution capabilities and what you're looking for, people in your potential customers like me that are courageous and capable to take on these these big problems.
00;36;42;04 - 00;36;51;25
Lisa Williams
Right. So we're we're still talking services procurement because that solution never happens if you don't get the right people in place.
00;36;51;28 - 00;37;12;09
Jonny Dunning
That it's brilliant. That's not you've you've actually, kind of clued into something there, which is it's kind of an internal thing that we have where we talk about the enlightened ones and we talk about the change makers. And that's exactly the people that us as a, as a services procurement system, a technology purely dedicated to solving this problem around this area of spend.
00;37;12;12 - 00;37;33;11
Jonny Dunning
We're not talking to everybody in the room. We're talking to the people that, I'm not happy with things being done badly. We're talking about to the people that are willing to, you know, put their head above the parapet and take on the challenge and the rewards are there for people that can do that in this massively greenfield area when suddenly these solutions are coming out.
00;37;33;11 - 00;37;56;05
Jonny Dunning
The technology is enabling it. The world is changing and the and the why of of why organizations have to do it. And the fact that there's no excuse organizations have to do this because it's a real opportunities for people to make a mark here. And so almost, it's almost like a new, type of role I feel will start to emerge that encompasses this stuff.
00;37;56;07 - 00;38;02;14
Lisa Williams
I, I, I have a point around that later, but we can get there.
00;38;02;16 - 00;38;40;16
Jonny Dunning
Excellent. Well, let's just come back to the three pillars. So looking at total workforce management, the way you break that down a lot, the way you describe that in kind of the architecture of how that operates. So ultimately with the channels that you're operating through employees non employees a contract labor of any type. And SOW contractors and temps etc. and technology as a workforce, those three pillars, the organization really has to have each of those pillars pretty well buttoned down before they can then start to architect that into some sort of overall meaningful strategy.
00;38;40;16 - 00;39;03;21
Jonny Dunning
And even before that, they've got to understand what the business strategy is and what that means in terms of work being done. When you when you were going through this process, I mean, it from what you were saying earlier, I think it's pretty obvious that it was the middle category, the contract labor SOW contingent workforce category. It sounds like that was the big the biggest gap.
00;39;03;23 - 00;39;18;29
Jonny Dunning
I guess the technology one is always evolving, but would you I feel like that's one of the that's probably the biggest gap for many organizations with regards to when they look at that, that how they do work. It's such a big area. It's so badly managed.
00;39;19;01 - 00;39;57;14
Lisa Williams
It it is. So now you're allowing me to make this point statement of work. First of all organizations need to realize they've been doing services procurement and statement of work for decades. Okay, anytime you bring in a consultant as an example to do anything that is a form of services procurement, statement of work, what we haven't done is manage that space effectively because we don't have the right skill and talent in mass in the company enough to manage statement of work or services procurement engagements.
00;39;57;16 - 00;40;27;07
Lisa Williams
I am seeing statement of work is being one of the new ways of work companies have to get work done because of shifts in the labor market, shifts in worker psychology and sentiment. People are getting more and more expensive through traditional employment means. Organizations have to be more competitive about when and where they bring in skill, expertise and capability and how they're going to pay for it.
00;40;27;09 - 00;41;15;05
Lisa Williams
The nature of work itself, if we allow it to be technologically enabled properly, the nature of work can be more segmented and package a little less consistent and continuous in the organization. Now, the organization itself, the corporate infrastructures, the work processes, those will remain to be connected in continuous. Absolutely. They have to be. But along the way, along the processes we are executing in, in the enterprise, we will be able to better see through technology the places where we can package and compartmentalize work so we can make better decisions about when it's a good option to outsource that work.
00;41;15;08 - 00;41;43;26
Lisa Williams
And as long as you start to build skills and expertise in your organization, in your direct employee organization, on how to better manage that SOW, you reduce the fear and anxiety across the organization about the concept of SOW being a key enabler. That is what I more than believe. It is what I am seeing as key for my own organization.
00;41;43;28 - 00;42;13;19
Lisa Williams
And a lot of other companies that I talk to when I go to these conferences and do these things, this is this is it. This is the moment. This is what we need to realize right now. And figure out. While AI is changing roles in our organization, there are new roles that need to either be expanded or developed in Dow, we have some really sharp people that manage contracts not only in procurement, but in other places of the in the organization.
00;42;13;21 - 00;42;43;14
Lisa Williams
A lot of those people are late career and are starting to retire, but we still need that expertise if we're going to fully, fully capitalize on the services procurement opportunity in front of this. So I'm clearly very excited about it, and I'm excited about employees who can build this new skill or suite of skills for this need that we have, and we will have even more so in the future.
00;42;43;14 - 00;42;47;27
Lisa Williams
Right now is not just Dow. Every company out there.
00;42;48;00 - 00;43;17;11
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it's I like that. It's really interesting. It's sort of it ties into what you were saying earlier about the, the, the emphasis on skills and capabilities. You know, what what can we do, what capacity have we got, what capability have we got within the organization? And in that kind of extended organizational capacity? And your, you know, your point about people who are maybe exiting, exiting the business part of a retirement point of view.
00;43;17;13 - 00;43;41;13
Jonny Dunning
I mean, you know, the skill shortages in STEM, for example, you know, engineering, it's absolutely massive. And we're seeing this is quite interesting, what we see with some of the kind of large like engineering, aerospace, defense industry organizations we work with, where a lot of the time they're thinking about, like horizon planning, they're looking down the road at the capabilities because technology is changing so fast.
00;43;41;13 - 00;44;02;15
Jonny Dunning
The markets are changing so fast, faster than ever before. Like you say, you've got to be thinking ahead. You can't just be thinking about what do we do right now? What does that look like in six months, 12 months, two years, three years? And that's changing all the time. And so obviously keeping up with that from a talent strategy point of view, in terms of your internal talent is extremely important.
00;44;02;17 - 00;44;35;16
Jonny Dunning
But being able to leverage your supply chain and by making services procurement, a well-managed part of your organization, it builds those supplier relationships when you where you can be engaging with your supply chain to say, well, you know what? We've got this sort of thing coming down the road, who's who can do this? You know, which suppliers have got these particular capabilities that we don't aware of and actually look at the gaps where you need to build that supply chain, bring in new types of suppliers, and, and enable that kind of innovation.
00;44;35;23 - 00;44;54;03
Jonny Dunning
I think it's so critical because it comes back to that whole thing of what's the most effective way for us to do the work that we need to do now and in the future. So it's if if people aren't if people have a complete mess in services procurement, which I see all the time, it's just a black hole.
00;44;54;10 - 00;45;33;23
Jonny Dunning
It's on spreadsheets, it's on word documents, is on emails and sometimes it's on phone calls. The supply chain is not shared effectively. There's no there's no rigor around contracts and compliance. There's no ability for organizations to see which suppliers are doing which projects really in any detail and whether they're even doing a good job of it. So it kind of if you're, I think, an organization for an organization to be able to get to the point where they can genuinely look at the total optimization of their workforce, their organizational capacity and capability, if they haven't got services procurement nailed, they can't even really gets the they can't even get started on it.
00;45;33;25 - 00;45;43;02
Jonny Dunning
And that's partly, I think, where in previous times, the total workforce management conversation has maybe fallen short a little bit.
00;45;43;03 - 00;46;21;05
Lisa Williams
That's right. That's right. Because the the non employee contract labor segment of it is such a big part of that is services procurement. And that's the black hole of all the disconnected processes and pieces of information and people in teams managing things in many, many, many different ways. And there's not the right that the corporation itself, the enterprise, does not have the right infrastructure to at least initially, apply enough command and control over that space to stabilize it and then rebuild it.
00;46;21;08 - 00;47;09;19
Lisa Williams
And let's just be clear, okay. And some of your listeners may not certainly agree with this. We are in a time where there is so much uncertainty and volatility, and good companies have tried to lean into empowering their employee bases, but the the mere mortal employees need some direction. They they need some direction. So in order for an enterprise to look at their services procurement cloud and say it's a mess, someone somewhere has to take ownership and control of it, even for a short period of time, and say, we are going to assess all of the assets in this cloud.
00;47;09;22 - 00;47;31;10
Lisa Williams
We are going to make this discern what parts of it we're going to keep, what parts of it we're going to change and transform, and what parts we're going to throw away. And we are going to make that decision quickly, and then we are going to be about the business of rebuilding for now, in the future, because we don't need to keep all of the assets that are in that cloud.
00;47;31;10 - 00;47;53;22
Lisa Williams
The last time we look well, we've never looked at them holistically and we are going to find a lot of it is out of date, a lot of it is broken and I mean contracts, data, we're capturing tools, we're using processes we're using. All of that is part of the asset right? It needs to be it needs to be assessed.
00;47;53;22 - 00;48;14;09
Lisa Williams
It needs to be quickly cleaned. It needs to have some governance, ownership and structure for a time period until a new system is put in place where it can start to thrive. But we need a little bit of command and control in some places, and I think some organizations are just hesitating to take that step for whatever reason.
00;48;14;09 - 00;48;29;15
Lisa Williams
If it goes against culture stakeholder sentiment, maybe the board is not on your side. I don't know what it is, but the longer it takes for you to make a decision, the more you're losing money and marketplace share and the less viable you're becoming. Okay, I say I'm sorry.
00;48;29;17 - 00;48;49;04
Jonny Dunning
But I totally agree with you. I just think that, you know, companies that do take the attitude they're going to be in for a shock and maybe, maybe by the time they realize it, it's going to be too late and they're just going to get outstripped by their competitors. You know, with this stuff, it is complicated. It is hard work, but it's not, you know, trying to fly to Mars.
00;48;49;04 - 00;49;35;15
Jonny Dunning
It's it's a solvable problem. It requires organization and it requires courage and leadership and the, you know, action positive, immediate and effective action, to actually to, to make things happen. But I think the point you made there is one of the biggest problems, as I see, is, is the lack of ownership. And I think when you look at services procurement, because the procurement of services goes across multiple categories in procurement, there's plenty of services companies, consulting category, legal, marketing, you know, facilities management, whatever it might be, engineering services, I.T services organizations are thinking about categories and they've got category managers.
00;49;35;17 - 00;50;00;04
Jonny Dunning
But the way that that that kind of like, builds up to a, to a peak, I sometimes feel like there's not that level of emphasis on. It's like the whole direct versus indirect breakdown. And I feel like that's still very valid. But in some ways I feel like that's a bit moving a bit into legacy territory, because I, I look at it now and I just think, how are the organizations contracting?
00;50;00;04 - 00;50;16;11
Jonny Dunning
So the things that they buy, the way that they buy stuff, goods and materials, has a certain type of contract, whether it's a bill of materials or however that works. And the process, the the contract and the process around that works in a certain way, the the way the organization buys people and services.
00;50;16;11 - 00;50;17;07
Lisa Williams
Yet.
00;50;17;10 - 00;50;45;09
Jonny Dunning
Has a contract that works in a certain way and the way that organizations buy services all under a statement of work or a task or a work order that's very specific. And that that's the thing that most organizations haven't solved, but it doesn't seem to sit under any particular ownership. And sometimes it will have gray areas that kind of fall under talent acquisition and HR where they're kind of they're worried about misclassification and they'll edge in to some of the kind of SOW consultancy.
00;50;45;11 - 00;51;08;03
Jonny Dunning
And then you've got the pure procurement category managers that are maybe dealing with an I.T services category, which is a huge a very critical spend. How do you think what what's the process that you think the organizations, the thought process, they could go through to look at who could or should take ownership? And I don't know, maybe it's not necessarily the same answer.
00;51;08;07 - 00;51;12;00
Jonny Dunning
So the question for every company through.
00;51;12;03 - 00;51;56;27
Lisa Williams
I appreciate the fact that you are advocating for thinking about this, this flow of work or materials or cost differently. I I've seen and as I've always practice, you have to look at your ecosystem. You must look at your ecosystem and how the work is changing in that ecosystem. And maybe the traditional functions that we've put in place, or maybe the traditional work processes we put in place no longer fit the flow of work, the flow of cost, the flow of profitability.
00;51;56;27 - 00;52;28;27
Lisa Williams
And who truly owns the levers across a value stream. And you can have a lot of value streams in a company. You can have a product value stream, you can have an IP value stream, you have talent value streams. Now, how is the knowledge capital flowing through the work that needs to happen across the entities you've established in the company that have all changed in the last ten years, five years, two years?
00;52;29;00 - 00;53;01;19
Lisa Williams
And how are you going to rationalize that down to the most granular element, whether it's work, task cost, whatever works for your organization, and then rewire your organization built on maximizing the knowledge capital required to do the work to meet your business objectives. Kind of a big answer, but the point in all of that is the wiring in your organization has changed, and you probably don't even know it.
00;53;01;22 - 00;53;25;03
Lisa Williams
But you're wondering, why is it so difficult to get even the smallest things done? It's because the nature of business and all the levers that push and pull on business have changed around you, but all of your processes and steps have not. And so now you need to rewire for the world around you.
00;53;25;05 - 00;53;49;02
Jonny Dunning
That's a very good way to put it, because it's it's adapting to the way the world has changed and the pace of change and the growth in for example, the reliance on service external service providers, the reliance on or the growth in output or outcome driven work, the skills shortages, the fact that we're moving towards a more service driven world, more service driven economy.
00;53;49;04 - 00;54;09;28
Jonny Dunning
You know, all of these things have meant that the problems around managing services procurement might, for some organizations, feel like it's come out of nowhere and it's suddenly this monster. But actually it's been growing rapidly in the background, but from multiple different angles. It's accelerated, which is where some organizations now find themselves in a real muddle with it.
00;54;10;00 - 00;54;28;24
Jonny Dunning
And, you know, as you say, you have no clear structure that's looking after it. Because the way that business is wired is, is looking at is the correct wiring for how that business needs to operate. 5 or 10 years ago. So yeah, I think that's a really great way to put it. And it's, you know, it's a difficult problem for organizations to solve.
00;54;28;27 - 00;54;50;14
Jonny Dunning
But once they get into the mentality of trying to solve it, either the, the, the Dow went down of saying, okay, we need a specialist team, cross-functional team to come and be dedicated to this and addressing this. Or there might be people putting their hands up saying, look, there's a problem here. I think I can drive massive value from it, and I want to take on the challenge.
00;54;50;17 - 00;55;18;28
Jonny Dunning
Then there are going to be opportunities for those like, say, the people that we want to talk to. We always talk about the enlightened ones or the illuminated princes and princesses that get the problem and want to do something about it. Right. And they're the people that will take on the challenge, make the change, get the results, get the kudos, and inspire other people to say this is something that can be done, which I think is one of the critical aspects of it.
00;55;19;00 - 00;55;42;11
Jonny Dunning
So, so looking at services procurement moving forward, I find it really interesting how you talk about some of the changes, that are happening in the market that are happening in the world that, fundamentally increasing the importance of the importance of services procurement. Could you give me a little bit of your thought process around how that kind of work has changed?
00;55;42;11 - 00;56;09;14
Jonny Dunning
So, what's changing that in terms of the demand around the lack of young people coming in with STEM skills? This kind of issue around early career engagement and also, the fact that people already kind of do that now. But then there's the late career side of it, which you kind of touched on earlier. But what other factors do you think are driving this kind of growth in importance of the services to an outsourced nature of service?
00;56;09;14 - 00;56;40;08
Lisa Williams
Yes. So first, in the talent strategy, we we build for many operations in Dow. We look at the talent value stream as you were alluding to, and we look at early, mid and late career. And we are asking ourselves right now what kind of experience do employee experience? What kind of experience do early career workers want to have mid-career workers and late career workers.
00;56;40;08 - 00;57;16;09
Lisa Williams
And there are personas as humans move through their natural progression of life. They want a different experience in working. And I'm not only talking about employees, I'm primarily talking about employees. But as we're talking about the rationalization of work and thinking about all the workers that engage with us. Okay, no matter what services procurement and understanding what it is and how a company uses it will be a new skill development in every phase of career.
00;57;16;09 - 00;57;49;18
Lisa Williams
worker Because likely in every phase of career, you will be dealing with a worker or a project that is services procurement style. So you've got to understand why is the organization structured the way it is? Why are we using services procurement? If I'm an early career engineer and we have a special improvement project going, what what why are we buying this maintenance consulting firms ideas or perspectives.
00;57;49;18 - 00;58;17;29
Lisa Williams
Right. Like I'm an engineer. I'm here. That's what I'm supposed to be doing. Oh, but it's something really, really technical that I don't have experience today and nobody else in our company. So we've got to go buy that service. But an engineer being assigned to work on that project, I need to understand if I'm mid-career and I'm a plant leader who was met, who's recognizing we have a technical issue going on in our plant, and we need to go buy some expertise.
00;58;18;01 - 00;58;47;20
Lisa Williams
As part of my job, in my skill, I need to have the language to be able to one understand that's possible, right? That's part of our workforce and talent and skill and business strategy to activate services procurement as a lever. And then I need to know what I'm looking for. So when I'm working with the procurement organization to identify the right maintenance company to go buy a short project services from, we can do that more intelligently.
00;58;47;22 - 00;59;19;17
Lisa Williams
And then when I'm late career and I decide maybe I'm ready for retirement, but I still want to work in this industry, I had tremendous bodies of knowledge in my head that I can now package either with myself or with other firms, and now I have industry experience, chemical manufacturing industry language that I can take and come back and offer services procurement in the right ways, in the right places.
00;59;19;20 - 00;59;42;29
Lisa Williams
It's everywhere. And if you realize that now, even while you're still working and you're learning about how services procurement is going to enable business strategy in so many ways, going forward, you get to become a smarter adopter and practitioner, and maybe even then, the future provider.
00;59;43;01 - 01;00;05;20
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, yeah. That's brilliant. That's that's a great way to encapsulate that. And, you know, it's it's I'm sure people listening to this will be, will be sitting there sitting up and pricking their ears up and saying that this is really emphasizing the importance, this is critical. And, hopefully that will really inspire some people to take action.
01;00;05;23 - 01;00;29;01
Jonny Dunning
So just to kind of bring this, bring this all together, we talked about the different channels. And ultimately when you're looking at the total workforce management type of workforce optimization, it's then the question of orchestrating all of that together. So once when you've nailed these channels, you know, we know services procurement is the biggest gap. So for most organizations and it's a giant gap.
01;00;29;01 - 01;00;50;01
Jonny Dunning
And that needs to be closed. And and that's people are starting to do that which is fantastic. But when we look at total workforce management, I kind of I described it to you at one point, it's kind of it feels like it's, a topic that's been around, but it feels like actually doing it is almost like a bit of a new skill.
01;00;50;03 - 01;01;16;02
Jonny Dunning
What what would be your advice to the organizations that are on this journey with the the leaders that are making this happen, where maybe the they've now got their channels pretty, getting them pretty well organized? Yes. What would you what do you think the, the conversation within those businesses needs to focus on in terms of what they do when it comes to then trying to bring that up into total workforce management?
01;01;16;04 - 01;01;51;23
Lisa Williams
Yes. One thing that comes to mind is, as you are, as you are making sense of your employee contract, labor and technology pillars, and you are starting to rationalize the work and how it's getting done. You need to also ask yourself, what is the most effective way to get this work done? Meaning should it be done by employees, can it be done equally or better by non employees?
01;01;51;26 - 01;02;25;00
Lisa Williams
And how much of it should I absolutely be enabling through the technology? But you have to as soon as you get your pillars set and you're reasonably comfortable with some structure around managing them, you've got to start doing the the work rationalization in that way because work is going to start to move from one pillar to another, or work is going to exit completely, and then you have to imagine the new work thereby informing the new skills that need to come in.
01;02;25;02 - 01;02;59;11
Lisa Williams
And yes, you have to do this all at once because it is absolutely a balancing act. In my engineering mind, it is an equation a plus b equals c plus d, and all four of them are going to move a little bit at the same time. And you have to become comfortable with that constant balancing and flow. So this means you better incorporate some pretty good fundamental guiding principles and and infrastructure and technology enablement that allows you to manage that.
01;02;59;13 - 01;03;03;22
Lisa Williams
That equation. There's no other way to do it.
01;03;03;24 - 01;03;25;16
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, that's a great way to put it. And I think, you know, you've spoken to me before about the people that are looking at this kind of getting the right perspective on it and looking at really how they can put tangible actions in place. How can they move it forward. I think, you know, you've emphasized how critical that is, and I, I completely agree with you.
01;03;25;18 - 01;03;55;22
Jonny Dunning
One of the other areas that that would be interesting to kind of round this off and get your view on is just what how much store do you place in the importance of kind of like internal organization, internal education? Sorry. Within organizations? Yeah. I sense that, you know, sometimes the organization there might be like a, you know, a top level strategy that's driving this where the board are really enlightened and someone or the CPO or the CFO, whoever it is, operating operations, people are driving this up.
01;03;55;28 - 01;04;18;18
Jonny Dunning
But what about so this is the, this, that type of internal education. But there's also potentially the type of internal education where you get some real change maker who wants to take action, who's kind of jumping up and down saying, this is a problem, we got to solve this, we've got to do this. How do you think those two methods and educate of education can be used within organizations to actually make this happen.
01;04;18;20 - 01;04;42;20
Lisa Williams
Make this happen? Early in my career, I read a couple of books by Stephen Covey which people clearly still reference today. And one of his principles was begin with the end in mind, right? And as a as a process certified change practitioner, myself, I believe that when you begin with the end in mind, what is the ultimate desired outcome?
01;04;42;20 - 01;05;24;07
Lisa Williams
You have to look at that outcome at all levels of the organization, and then you have to get very good at crafting a realistic, credible path to that desired end result. And in doing that, you will discover the language, the words, the storytelling that is important for both the C-suite and the shop floor. And when you start to tell that story, if you've crafted it and delivered it in the right way, you will catch all the advocates at all levels, and then you can learn how to activate them.
01;05;24;09 - 01;05;50;11
Lisa Williams
But education is not presentations and town halls, and it's some of that. But the real magic happens when you've really connected with the stakeholder audience, whether from the C-suite to the shop floor. There are dozens or hundreds of them in between. When you find a way to meaningfully connect with them with a what, what's in it for me, for them perspective.
01;05;50;13 - 01;06;15;21
Lisa Williams
And you learn how to craft that story and make it real to them and show them how they can show up in the story. And we're all marching toward this desired end result. The advocates come out in all of their best selves, ready to employ and activate all the skills and experience they have toward the common good. I've seen it.
01;06;15;23 - 01;06;32;16
Jonny Dunning
That's where the magic happens, right? It's where you've motivated all of the people in the chain. And I always make this analogy of kind of like, you know, you rowing the Atlantic, everybody in that boat matters. Everybody's going to be able to come to you need to know where they're going, and they need to know why they're trying to do it.
01;06;32;16 - 01;06;36;03
Jonny Dunning
And then everybody can really understand.
01;06;36;06 - 01;06;59;19
Lisa Williams
They must know. They must see themselves in it. They must otherwise they are disconnected. They are confused. They may even be apathetic, which is very dangerous in an organization that is about to transform. And let's be clear, we are all about to transform going into 2026, whether or not. So yes, yes, very important.
01;06;59;21 - 01;07;23;02
Jonny Dunning
Excellent. So just to kind of wrap things up, how would you how how do you think practitioners can kind of come together on this? I know there's some interesting stuff that we've spoken about before. What you've been kind of thinking about how, people can engage in more conversation or dialog, more knowledge, share. And like you say, it's not necessarily like company IP.
01;07;23;08 - 01;07;45;00
Jonny Dunning
We're just people. It's best practice. It's it's taking everybody forward. But what do you see as the ways in which practitioners, whether it be procurement people, supply chain, contingent labor specialists, you know, operations people, but the people that are trying to solve these problems, what do you how do you think they can come together as practitioners?
01;07;45;03 - 01;08;24;11
Lisa Williams
Yes, I mentioned earlier in this, episode, back in 2022, as soon as I figured out there was not a solution for total contract labor strategy available in the marketplace, I started going to the conferences and asking to be put on panels and asking for them to start talking about putting into their agendas not only contract labor strategy, but that quickly evolved into total workforce strategy, because I was trying to find and uncover the people and organizations, talking about this and more importantly, trying to solve for this literally over the last three years.
01;08;24;14 - 01;08;54;27
Lisa Williams
And I make this very visible in my LinkedIn narrative in conversation. So I continue to get invited to opportunities like this with you, Jonny and Zivio and others, because we need to identify the we need to identify the pillars of our industries and make sure total workforce strategy becomes a priority. And when I think about chemical manufacturing, one that pops at the top of my mind is the Manufacturing Institute.
01;08;55;00 - 01;09;17;17
Lisa Williams
And Dow has had a decades long relationship with Manufacturing Institute and the National Association of Manufacturing. And I was very fortunate to be in a space this this year where I met one of the executive directors, and I happened to be giving a presentation about this stuff. And that was just I never would have met this person otherwise.
01;09;17;20 - 01;09;41;03
Lisa Williams
And it started a wonderful conversation and a deeper connection between Dow and NAM and MI where now maybe we can start to evolve this topic as a part of an industry pillar that needs to be further developed, and I continue to go to the conferences. I'm always willing to do this with you, but we must create some industry foundational.
01;09;41;03 - 01;10;09;08
Lisa Williams
We must find those industry foundational communities and make total workforce strategy and total workforce management. With all the elements we talked about today, services procurement included part of the agenda, the narrative and the priorities. It can't just happen at the conferences. It can't happen in the collectives. And the, you know, the great, you know, thought leadership sessions and small groups and coffee groups we established.
01;10;09;08 - 01;10;30;05
Lisa Williams
Those are great. But the time now is for us to get embedded into the industries. For me is manufacturing and chemical manufacturing. There's there's health care, there's whatever. But it has to become part of the, the, the agenda, the narrative and the priorities. And I'm here for it
01;10;30;08 - 01;10;50;29
Jonny Dunning
I totally agree with that approach. And it's like, you know, I sometimes find with the conferences that the maybe they're a little bit behind with some of this stuff where it's really like cutting edge. And I also find that the, the format sometimes just doesn't give people enough time. It doesn't. Yeah. Round tables, you're rushing into a round table.
01;10;50;29 - 01;11;09;22
Jonny Dunning
You're rushing out with a round table with 12 people on the table. They you've got a 20 minute session. People can't even introduce themselves properly. And that sort of time, you need the time to have this sort of dialog. And the beautiful thing about it is there isn't any reason for people to be protective about this stuff. It's it's stuff that can be shared.
01;11;09;22 - 01;11;13;21
Jonny Dunning
And it's it's beneficial to within the practitioner community, isn't it?
01;11;13;23 - 01;11;48;25
Lisa Williams
And ultimately, we are all here for business success. The world is truly big enough for for all of us to be here. Now, granted, some are going to be better than others, but this change is not happening to one company. Our industries are connected because now many of us are dipping into the same talent pools for workers. Our industries are connected, so the better we get at solving for these talent systems and and making finding the right talent to come and do the work.
01;11;48;25 - 01;12;25;24
Lisa Williams
Even as humans evolved through their own talent, career experiences, value, talent, value, stream, you name it, whatever we all have to grow and evolve in these ways just to keep our industries going, in my very informed opinion. So yes, this best practice needs to be proliferated as widely as possible. And again, I am so thankful for your invitation to participate today because it's just another another opportunity, another placement in the cog of the machine that we're trying to influence.
01;12;25;29 - 01;12;31;15
Lisa Williams
But I think this is a pretty big cog today. Okay, that's the mechanical engineer coming out.
01;12;31;17 - 01;13;05;11
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I love it. No, listen, I appreciate you know, you so much. I really appreciate the fact you're getting this message out that you're willing to take the time, help other people talk about your experiences and on the journey. And it's I do think it's super, super valuable to people. And I think, you know, saying a great examples to other people who, are in their own journeys can do to share their experiences and help bring everybody forward, and make this as it should be a really exciting topic and something that really makes a massive difference.
01;13;05;11 - 01;13;14;11
Jonny Dunning
So I'm hugely grateful, for you to give up your time and come and talk to me. And, yeah, just just massively appreciate it. Thank you so much.
01;13;14;13 - 01;13;15;26
Lisa Williams
I sure, Jonny, thank you.