In this episode of People Solve Problems, Jamie Flinchbaugh speaks with Mark Fegley, VP and Team Manager at Gartner. Mark brings more than 20 years of global supply chain leadership in consumer products, process improvement, and business development, and today leads a team of executive partners who advise supply chain leaders at client companies. The two also share Lehigh University roots.
Jamie opens with a question he rarely gets to ask: how do you know when a problem calls for deliberate, careful thinking rather than a quick fix?
Mark explains that the answer is often instinctive, but it rests on understanding the nature and importance of the issue. He describes how his executive partners kept running into the same wall: they lacked the material to lead workshops with clients on artificial intelligence. Before building anything, Mark had the team name the real problem: clients were taking those conversations to competitors. Over six to eight weeks, the team shaped a solution, deciding what to include and what to throw out. Mark credits staying close to customers for spotting the problem early, noting that the people nearest the client are often the first to tell you something needs solving.
On intuition, Mark observes that it usually grows out of experience. When a client asks a hard question, he often draws on how he solved something similar as a supply chain leader. Mark believes a problem should be roughly 80 percent understood before anyone starts talking solutions, and his team relies on careful questioning to get beneath the surface. He traces his own appreciation for this style back to a Lehigh government professor whose relentless questions felt like a rude awakening at the time. Today, Mark looks for that same curiosity when hiring, asks candidates to present to a panel, and has every new team member read “The Coaching Habit,” supported by training from “Box of Crayons.”
Mark also explains that questioning only works when there is trust. With clients who are reluctant to open up, he encourages his team to build rapport first, sometimes through a conversation about family or college football.
When the discussion turns to finding root causes, Mark points to familiar tools such as lean and the five whys, which means asking why repeatedly until the real cause appears. He warns against the common belief that new technology will fix a struggling operation. Moving a broken process into a new system, he explains, only helps you discover faster that it doesn’t work. He sees the same risk with AI and urges leaders to treat it like any other improvement effort: start with strategy, define the problem, and then decide where the technology fits.
On leading his team, Mark describes listening in on client calls to see how each executive partner works. He looks at two things: whether they truly understood the client’s problem, and whether they connected the client with the right help. He steps in only when a call drifts away from what the client needs, perhaps 10 to 15 percent of the time, and he encourages his team to find the courage to do the same.
Mark closes with an enthusiastic case for supply chain careers, a field that is changing quickly, becoming more professional, and drawing in more talented people. He sees the growing need for skills in data and technology not as something to fear but as something to embrace.
To learn more, visit Gartner at https://www.gartner.com or connect with Mark on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/markfegley.