Kristina Stevens loves to challenge norms, so clearly not your average Operations and Supply Chain leader. Kristina's big vision for life, unconventional perspective, and unwavering ambition for improvement shape the core of our discussion.
Our conversation reveals a compelling narrative of Kristina's life - conquering a demanding career, raising young children, and training for a marathon - a living testament to the power of self-belief and the audacity to demand what you need. We talk about self-imposed limitations, as mere figments of our imagination. Kristina's story is a call to action, inspiring us to invest in ourselves and take that first step towards our dreams, leaving the 'how' for later.
Towards the end, we pivot towards the power of intentional friendships and the growth they facilitate. Kristina muses about her aspirations to pen a book for her kids. To connect with this dynamic personality, Kristina's LinkedIn details are shared in our chat. Don't miss out on this episode brimming with wisdom and inspiration. Always remember, growth is a constant journey; keep moving, keep growing!
Kristina Stevens loves to challenge norms, so clearly not your average Operations and Supply Chain leader. Kristina's big vision for life, unconventional perspective, and unwavering ambition for improvement shape the core of our discussion.
Our conversation reveals a compelling narrative of Kristina's life - conquering a demanding career, raising young children, and training for a marathon - a living testament to the power of self-belief and the audacity to demand what you need. We talk about self-imposed limitations, as mere figments of our imagination. Kristina's story is a call to action, inspiring us to invest in ourselves and take that first step towards our dreams, leaving the 'how' for later.
Towards the end, we pivot towards the power of intentional friendships and the growth they facilitate. Kristina muses about her aspirations to pen a book for her kids. To connect with this dynamic personality, Kristina's LinkedIn details are shared in our chat. Don't miss out on this episode brimming with wisdom and inspiration. Always remember, growth is a constant journey; keep moving, keep growing!
Welcome to the third growth option podcast, where we talk with business leaders and innovators hungry to drive growth that can be faster than internal organic growth and less risky than acquisition. Your moderator is Bernal Dunke-Schpuller, chief Sherpa and CEO at Realign, who has led private equity owned distributors through turnarounds and growth. With battle proven leaders from all frontiers, we want to provoke thinking about business growth beyond conventional wisdom and binary choices.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm Beno, your host talking today with Christina Stevens and Operations and Supply Chain Executive, with several multi-year assignments in buying, sourcing, operations roles for pretty big, well-known companies and for the last almost five years, I think, as director and now vice president of supply chain at DEMDaco, a well-loved company in the gift and decor industry. Welcome to the third growth option podcast, christina.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're neither average nor predictable and you always want more. So, to a guy who thinks about growth, nurtures growth, makes growth happen for clients. I'm super excited to have you on this podcast because the conversations that we've had over, I guess, the last year and a half and then the last few weeks. So, looking at your LinkedIn profile, words like operations, supply chain, logistics are in your job titles and that sounds a lot like more accounting, reporting, safe historical perspective, as opposed to break the rules. I want to write my book about the future. What do you like about each?
Speaker 3:Well, what I love about just supply chain and operations is it's really about solving, and it's been around forever, since the day at time. But it's not about how everyone else is really doing it how I view it. It's about how can you become better at it than anybody else. Right, and at times I think it's about challenging the rules.
Speaker 3:I've also, as I was growing up and going through my career, I've had people question like you know, you've failed so many times. Why do you keep getting back up? You know you always come up to the batter's plate, but sometimes, seeing you swing and miss, sometimes at their rate at which people wouldn't come back, but I think it's, you know, everyone's like oh well, failure is. You know what you take away from it and learn. They say that. So, simply put, but it truly is about just learning as you grow in this industry and then applying that to your personal family, work life is trying to reflect on how you got things done or your approach, and then just trying to figure out how could you do things differently to again win or raise that bar. And I think over time, as success does come after each trial and in there, right, you get to that finish line and you're like wow, I mean, I made it work. This is, it's rewarding, and in supply chain sometimes it could take a long time to do that, like moving a distribution center.
Speaker 2:Right, turning around the Queen Mary and the Hudson River.
Speaker 3:right yeah just really shifting gears that take a lot of people and a lot of time and effort. So when it all comes to flourishing and the best part about it is saving a ton of money right, I love doing that. But when it really does come to light, it's so rewarding. And then you got to reflect back and say what else could I do? You know like what? What is that next bar? But it also comes at a fault, I've also been told. You know you got to lower your bar. Your bar is always so high, your expectations are too high. Someone once said if you don't ever want to be disappointed in business, don't have high expectations. I don't know what I'm going to do with that comment yet.
Speaker 2:You know, the biggest crime is low expectations.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I think. Yeah, we got to challenge ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I love my, one of my very dear friends and we used to work together at Pottery Barn. He would always quote Charles Schultz, the cartoonist of Peanuts. Life is like a 10 speed bicycle. Most of us only use one or two gears.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:So I love the way you're talking about the roles you've had. It's not so much about the roles and the functions, as you just seem to thrive on challenge and knocking barriers over, climbing over them, walking around them, breaking through them, whatever it is to get to the other side, right.
Speaker 3:If there's anything in like I mean supply chain or just some operations. It's constant change. Someone just said it's an ecosystem right it's. It's ever-evolving. So I'm not exactly sure what I would do in an environment when there wasn't change. I'd probably be introducing change, maybe not for the good. I Don't know how much you can change financially accounts payable, receivable.
Speaker 1:I don't.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure, but I thrive under change.
Speaker 2:You know, you used it, an expression the other day questioning without boundaries. Actually, before I ask you about that, I want to have you describe a little bit about that conversation you had with your boss and CEO your successful mid-career vice president and a leading company, and and you approached your CEO but Reducing your work time whether it's from, you know, 80 hours to 70 hours or 50 hours to 40 hours, whatever it is but you had a conversation hey, I need to kind of Reduce my time commitment a little bit because I need time to write my book and and I don't know if you mean literal writing of a book or more of a figurative, writing the book of life right, and making plans.
Speaker 3:And Tell me a little bit about that conversation with your boss, about reducing your time commitments so that you can plan and Write your book you know, so kind of just stepping back sometime in Q4 Q1 of either last year, this year and Q4 of last year, so 2022 I made this decision. I'm like you know, I'm gonna run a marathon, I need to do something on. You know, I kind of break my life up or think about how do you invest in your, in yourself, like one third, family and friends. The other third, work. The other third is self, like yourself and growing yourself.
Speaker 3:And one on one of the points on self is I was kind of just at a stale point of Health, mental wellness, like how do I challenge a bit growing that? So I made this decision I'm gonna go run a marathon, start training, and so I started doing that and then, and Probably every month, my boss had said I don't know how you're going to do all this, because then she quickly promoted me to this VP of supply chain and distribution and I was like, well, I'll finish you by promoting you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know how you're going to do all this, you know, with two young kids seven and three and a husband and that also has a very demanding job. And so she was like I just don't know how you're going to do it. This is a lot. You know, I'm concerned and I took that with a grain of salt because I can do it. I think anything that you put your mind to you can do. You become what you think as you think about it. You can figure it out, you become that. And so you know, I didn't say, well, I can't do it, I'll figure it out.
Speaker 3:And there were days where it was like, ok, I got to train at 2.30 in the morning and I got four hours of sleep, but I'll pick up naps on Saturday, I'll be OK. So, as I'm closing in, on coming to this marathon, she goes you know, what are you going to do next? You're almost done. You know you're going to run this marathon. I was like, yeah, let's talk about that. You know, because now I'm reflecting I was like, ok, so I still want to keep on some of this. You know, training I've done. I also need to write figuratively Maybe. I mean, now you can just kind of challenge me. I was just thinking.
Speaker 2:I was like well, maybe I do have to write a book.
Speaker 3:Maybe they'll come after. Like I launched my own business or something you know. You know I was. We were in a discussion and she goes you know, like what are you going to do next and how are you going to keep up with this? You know you need to slow down, and I didn't. You know I don't do well when people tell me what to do. So I was like I'll figure it out. I just have to, like you know, carve out like a couple hours out of out of my training a week and then I can dedicate it to like, maybe do my own business.
Speaker 3:And so I joke. I jokingly said why don't you give me? I'll just jump from maybe like 40 to 38 hours. I already put in enough in the prior years and she found it very comical. She said, no, not yet. So yeah, I highly believe you got to keep investing in those sections of life. I don't think you need to work harder. I think you need to work harder on yourself, and if you do that, I feel like all the other pieces will fall in place.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting Everything in your answer to my question. What was that conversation like? To ask for a little bit more time, there was no fear in your answer. I was afraid how my boss might react. You described why that is important to you. You described how you articulated that in a conversation to your boss and you know I love this expression that you used you become what you think and I think you approach the conversation with your boss about hey, I'm going to need a little bit of leeway. You know I can't always burn the midnight oil or you know what have you. You approach it as here is what I need. I'm sure you and your boss have had lots of conversations about what she needs or what the company needs. Otherwise they wouldn't have promoted you to vice president from director Right. So back to this expression of questioning without boundaries.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think it actually ties right into what we were just saying that if you don't ask the question, then you may be sitting in regret for a long time and you don't know what rock is going to be uncovered, you don't know what the response is and the worst thing that you know and Dummy could say it, my boss, dummy it could say would be no.
Speaker 2:Demi, as I thought you just called your boss Dummy. No, no, I was like. I know, demi, she is no dummy. No, she is not.
Speaker 3:But I think that when you're thinking about what could be, you can't have limitations. Limitations come when it's down to implementing or putting it into place. Whatever that thought is, I've talked several times with like, okay, well, if I want to do more, then I got to give something up. And I always am like, well, maybe I do it in moderation, I reduce this so I could add a little bit more time here. And the challenge I think comes for most people is thinking about how they're going to get something done versus just trying to take that first step of just doing it, investing in it. So I think that we are I don't know our success and our who we could be, or that 10-speed bike that we're talking about, is hindered from the sole perspective of people having doubt, not thinking in the I can. I will state.
Speaker 2:Sort of self-imposed barriers right and not following the Nike slogan of just do it.
Speaker 3:You know 100%. Another good one was like anything that you're looking for, like if you want that spark in life and you want that spark in either your family, friends, life or just yourself or work is most often times sitting in the work that you're avoiding to do. So if you don't take that step forward and like just do it, don't think about the how, just go, take that first step and try, don't be afraid to fail, then you're never going to uncover what could be.
Speaker 2:You know the big rock sand analogy right, where you know if you fill a glass with sand first and put the rocks in later, as opposed to put the rocks in first and then fill the sand later, obviously that's the way to do it. You got to have the big rocks first. There's so much sand in our life that just takes up time, like you mentioned mowing the lawn the other day, or you know chores, and then you know you had a conversation with your husband like do we really need a lawn? You know, maybe, what if we had a townhouse or a condo, right, I bet you find yourself within this framework of questioning without boundaries, just questioning all kinds of annoying sand in life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that mowing the lawn, like if I could take more time and put it towards this, like whether it be my. You know how do I put more time towards, you know, the investment in the family and friends aspect. If we weren't, you know, mowing the lawn. You always think about the tradeoff too, like if you made a little bit more money and you could hire someone to do X, could you invest in more work. Not that you know, not that that's not already I think, exhausted, but not fully, or yourself. So, yeah, I'm always challenging if there's a better way of thinking about how to crack this puzzle called life and to write my book. I always refer to that like what do I want this story of my life to look like and how am I going to make that happen?
Speaker 2:So what's the title of your book?
Speaker 3:Oh, geez, you know that's. Don't take no for an answer. I don't know.
Speaker 2:You might have to think about one of your grandfather's quotes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my grandfather. Yeah, he said pricks live forever. So you just can't be you just can't be that nice. You know, that is a good one. That might be the title, that might be the title right yeah. I don't know if it'll make New York Times, but hey, but he was right about that.
Speaker 2:I do love the idea of thinking of a title of that proverbial figurative book about your life, because that is a way of really crystallizing your thinking. Right, Because you mentioned your kids the last time we spoke and you're like, you know, I want to teach them certain things, I want to live by example for them, and so I think it would probably be a good exercise to for you, you know, over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, to jot down a bunch of different titles of your book to see which one sort of resonate and that might become sort of a rallying cry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that might. That's actually not a bad idea.
Speaker 3:Not a bad idea right, it's actually a really good one. I'll have to print it on t-shirts Ready for a handout, because you know I got to write that book. Now that you just mentioned this, yeah, I want my kids to see that it's okay to fail. I feel like nowadays people are so scared of failure. I think we need to celebrate failure. Jonathan Jones had said well, that's being alone, but the biggest fear and I don't know where failure comes in I made it second to that, but one of the greatest fears is being alone. Maybe second is failure, and that's why we're now all winners.
Speaker 2:What a joke. I mean it's so dumb. Right Like our kids get participation trophies instead of, and all of us have this pressure of living this, you know, social media version of life, where there's only good things, there's only success, there's only wonderful dinners and all of that, and that's not life. I mean it's part of life, but that's not all of life. You talked about your close circle of friends. I love that phrase because it implies something very intentional and it certainly articulates the difference between friends and acquaintances, which I think. A lot of people sort of put all 300 of my Facebook friends into the friend pocket, but you know they're not all friends. There are many acquaintances there. So you said, I want my close circle of friends, or my peeps, as I like to say, to hold you accountable. How do you push them to push you? Or maybe you nudge them or you remind them? How do you encourage them one way or the other to hold you accountable?
Speaker 3:I mean, I think, naturally, if you have a really solid friendship and foundation, that's part of being a solid friend. And I also feel like your friends have got to bring some kind of growth for you. Like, how are you going to learn from one another? Because you can't be in, you know a million different places and so you have to be able to learn from their experiences. You may not have the same learning, but there should be some kind of takeaway and how you apply that throughout life.
Speaker 3:In my eyes that's like organic friendship, but that's very hard to come by Because, yeah, you got that acquaintance, the soft, you know handshake and how are you and you catch up on, you know the weather, family and life. But yeah, but if you're able to have that, like you know, that hour long conversation that feels like five minutes, and you're coming, you know, you're leaving with, like you know, multitude of takeaways, it's like, wow, this is an apical and you know, two thirds of my life, I just learned something. So it's the value of time that's so precious, which every birthday I have. It's like my husband if he's ever going to listen to this, he's like, oh, don't talk about her birthdays Because they're so depressing for me because the bar is very high of what you got to get done in a year. I don't know what it takes away because that sounds so depressing.
Speaker 2:That sounds depressing, Christina.
Speaker 3:I know, I know, but you got to put that bar so high. I mean, you got to put that bar high. What are we going to get done in the next year? Right, and how are we going to grow all three categories of like that family friend, you know the work and then the personal?
Speaker 2:You know, there's a saying that doesn't even matter to whom it was attributed to Bill Gates, who knows, it might have been somebody completely different. You know how everything is attributed to, like Einstein, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's probably right.
Speaker 2:But the saying is that all of us underestimate what we can get done in the next five or 10 years and all of us overestimate what we can get done in the next week or year. Yes, right 100% and I think that is so important in what you're talking about you know writing and living my book of life and work that you're probably putting too much pressure on your birthday to get stuck down in the next month or year and all of us are, you know, accuse ourselves and can be accused of not dreaming big enough in terms of the next decade.
Speaker 2:And that's where I think this picture that you have in your mind about writing my book on life and work is so powerful, because it allows you to dream big and put that big idea out there. And then you know, part of it is reverse engineer and sort of a you know, logistical, strategic planning kind of way, and part of it what you said about your close circle of friends, it's just organic and because you put it out there, you become what you think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%. I also think that people are always looking for like that immediate satisfaction of effort, which you know we could go all day on medical industries, because that's always fascinating to me, right, but the long effort, the long haul, like that reward. I wonder how many people actually get to feel a sense of like wow, that amount of work over that period of time. Look what I was able to do, you know, I mean just the sense of accomplishment.
Speaker 3:And then, like I, said you got to reflect back and say okay, let's put another goal out there and see where it goes.
Speaker 2:I took a couple takeaways, stuff I wrote down while I was listening to you in this conversation that just resonated with me. As you know, you got to always challenge the rules. You become what you think. I want my friends to bring growth. Bring growth to them, have them bring growth to you, to each other. I think your image around Writing and living my book and sort of a book for my kids to write, sort of a leave behind Not to get morose or depressing, but but it is I think it's a very powerful image of writing your book of life and so I would say, you know, keep thinking about the title. It started writing a book. I want to read you a book, christina.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when I, when I come up with a, I promise you will be the first. No.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll be the second after your husband.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it might be at four in the morning, so I'll be okay, you know, yeah, online before that terrific.
Speaker 2:Hey, if folks wanted to reach out to you and just maybe have a one-on-one conversation, where, where might they find you?
Speaker 3:you can find me on LinkedIn under Christina Stevens. Christina with a K, stevens with a V.
Speaker 2:There you go. All right, see, that's so much easier for you to describe how to spell your name than it is for me. I could say doing good spoiler, you know, just you know, yeah, yeah, you got it.
Speaker 3:You got a K and a V. No, I think terrific.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for jumping on this podcast together. I think, just like writing and living our book Put it, you know, having a conversation sort of out in the open on a podcast is another way of writing your book Right, because now you put it out there and live in cyberspace forever. Terrific. Thank you so much, christina.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Hey, if folks wanted to explore other growth topics, you can find me on our website, realign4resultscom, or you could just email me, benel be and and oh at realign4resultscom.
Speaker 1:Thank you and keep growing you can listen to more episodes on Apple, spotify or Google. We would love for you to subscribe, rate and review it. Share it with your friends or colleagues if you enjoyed the content always growing.