Everyone is talking about AI, analytics, and the next planning platform. Far fewer are talking about the reason two teams can sit in the same meeting, look at the same data, and walk out with completely different conclusions.
Process design assumes people will read it the same way. They don't, and that gap is where most transformations quietly stall. In this episode, Christine Barnhart is joined by Eric Wilson of IBF, author of Beyond Borders: Cultural Complexity in Global Business, who spent a year on research and hundreds of global interviews after realizing his own S&OP framework was missing the layer underneath it. His argument: structure is necessary, but structure is not the same as inflexible, and the sequence most companies use: build the process, then hand it to the people, is backwards.
In this episode you'll learn:
- Why the number one missing skill in forecasting and S&OP isn't analytics, it's communication and business acumen
- What it means to design a process with people in mind, instead of designing one and assigning people to it
- Why trust is the golden thread across every cultural dimension and why "do I trust the person or the output" is a different question in every region
- Where the framework transfers beyond national culture, to generational and functional divides inside your own building
