You Don't Arrive Ready

A few weeks into my first role out of college, I walked across the fulfillment center and found 50% of my team with nothing to do.

I was a new Area Manager over Inbound Receiving. My job was to receive product in and move it along to the group on the far side of the building to be put away (Eaches Receive and Stow, if you know you know). Simple enough on paper. What I hadn't fully absorbed yet was that the receive team's output was the stow team's input. If I got the receive side wrong, the stow side felt it immediately.

That day, I had gotten it wrong in the direction that costs the most: not enough coming through, so people were waiting. That was the first time it really landed for me that wait time is one of the most expensive wastes in an operation. The clock on labor runs whether product is moving or not.

So I overcorrected. Sent too much through, and now the other side was underwater. Pulled back, and we were short again. I went back and forth like that longer than I'd like to admit. Nobody removed me from the role while I sorted it out, because sorting it out was the role. Those first months are supposed to look like that.

Here's the thing: no matter how much training you get, these learnings only happen by being in the seat, getting it wrong a few times, and paying attention to what happens next.

Here's what I want you to take away from this:

If you're waiting to feel ready before you apply, you're waiting on something that only shows up after you're hired. The learning curve isn't a gap you close beforehand to earn your way in—it's the exact thing you get hired to walk through. Ask anyone in this field, at any level, and they'll have their own version of my receiving story.

This matters for how you interview, too. A hiring manager isn't checking whether you already know the formula for their specific operation. They know you don't. What they're assessing is whether you're someone who will go figure it out: Do you ask good questions? Do you stay steady when something breaks? Are you curious enough to learn why a process works the way it does, instead of just running it?

That's what preparation and energy signal—not that you have all the answers, but that you're the person who will go and find them. So if you've been sitting on an application because the posting lists three systems you've never touched, send it anyway. The formula is on the other side of the door.

Until next Saturday,
– Mark