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BEP 372 – English for Supply Chain Management (1)

BEP 372 - English for Supply Chain Management and Logistics (1)

Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on English for logistics and supply chain management. Today we’re going to look at the manufacturing side of the supply chain.

When you pick a product off a shelf at a local store, it’s easy to forget what a long hard road that product has travelled. It may have parts and materials from all over the world. It may be shipped to multiple locations for processing. And once it’s ready and packaged, it may travel long distances to make it to your neighborhood.

This enormous network of information, people, materials, and processes is called a supply chain. And the people who coordinate everything are involved in supply chain management. Good supply chain management can make the difference between a happy customer and an angry customer, and between profit and loss.

In this lesson, we’ll listen to a meeting at a clothing company with a complex supply chain connecting the U.S. and Asia. During the meeting, the colleagues use many English expressions we call “collocations.” Collocations are simply natural frequently occurring combinations of words. A good example of a collocation is “supply chain management.”

Native English speakers use collocations like this automatically. And specific groups of people or fields of work have certain collocations they commonly use. By studying these collocations, you’ll improve your vocabulary and sound more fluent. As you listen to the conversation, try to pick out some of these collocations and we’ll discuss them later in the debrief.

In the dialog, we’ll hear Cam and Tanya. Cam is a production planner for Boston Vintage in the U.S. Tanya is a supply chain manager helping to develop the company’s supply chain in southeast Asia. Cam and Tanya use many collocations specific to supply chain management in their conversation about the manufacturing side of the supply chain.

Listening Questions

1. What is Tanya’s first big concern on the manufacturing side of things?
2. What does Cam say that people on the ground have expectations about?
3. What does Tanya say will increase costs but help manage risk?

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Business English News 47 – Post-Pandemic Workplace

Business English News 47 - Post-Pandemic Workplace: The New Normal

In this Business English News lesson we look at English vocabulary related to how the pandemic will change the workplace.

Clearly, the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred incredible changes in how we work. At the end of 2020, a whopping 42% of the American workforce continued to work remotely. This has meant rapid upskilling and massive investments in technology and infrastructure.

According to Candace Helton, operations director at Ringspo, “It’s worth noting that 70% of companies have been working on digital transformation before the pandemic hit.” But the pandemic tipped their hands, and the resulting change in work cultures around the globe will push even more businesses to accept remote options as the new normal.

In this new normal, relationships are different. There are no corner offices in the virtual workplace, no staff rooms, and no cubicles. There are fewer physical reinforcements of hierarchy. And it’s oddly humanizing to see the CEO deal with the same interruptions, like kids and barking dogs, that we all experience working from home.

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BEP 371 – English for Startups 5: Demonstrating Leadership

English for Startups 5 - BEP 371 - Demonstrating Leadership

Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on English for startups and demonstrating leadership.

In the early stages, startup companies are built on the ideas and energy of their founders. These are often smart, creative people with great technical knowledge and skills. And this creativity and technical know-how is crucial to bringing great ideas to life.

But very quickly, a startup becomes more than just one or two individuals. As it grows, it becomes a team of people. And as it changes, or pivots, the original founders need more than just creativity and technical skills. They need to be able to lead their team with passion.

Leading a team might not come naturally to every founder. Or to any manager in any type of company, tech startup or not. But you can learn and practice the skills of a being a great leader.

For starters, you’ll want to know how to be positive and show compassion for your team members. Taking care of your team will also involve responding decisively to needs. And people are depending on you to show them the vision behind all the hard work, and to underline the shared purpose of everyone on the team.

In today’s dialog, we’ll listen to a startup founder named Quinn, who has recently pivoted his online payments company to focus on business customers. He’s talking with lead developer Jill, and a new marketing manager named Colin. To execute this pivot well, Quinn will have to call on all his leadership abilities to guide his team to success.

Listening Questions

1. How does Quinn set a positive tone at the start of the conversation?
2. What is the big vision, or change, the company wants to make?
3. How does Quinn respond to Jill’s request for help with infrastructure needs?

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BEP 370 – English for Startups 4: Discussing a Pivot

English for Startups - BEP 370 - Discussing a Pivot

Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on English for startups and discussing a pivot.

There are lots of business ideas and tech innovations that sound like good ideas. But the real test of an idea is the marketplace. People might like your idea, but will they buy it? Will enough people buy it to make the business viable? Even if you’ve done your market research, sometimes consumer feedback tells you it just won’t work.

This happens all the time with startups. And the smart ones don’t keep throwing good money after bad. Nor do they give up altogether. Instead, they pivot. When you pivot, you shift your business model or strategy based on the feedback you get from the market. That’s how Odeo, a podcasting platform, became Twitter. And that’s how YouTube gave up on video-dating and became a massively popular video-sharing site.

Pivoting well isn’t easy. It takes some tough conversations about new goals for the company and new needs. And one of the toughest aspects of the pivot is sacrificing some of your old ideas. You also have to remember it’s not just about you and your ideas. When you pivot, you need to consider your team and your investors as well.

In today’s dialog, we’ll listen to a conversation between a young entrepreneur named Quinn and his mentor, Kira. Quinn has been working hard to get his online payments business going. Now he sees that it would be wise to pivot his focus from individual consumers to business customers.

Listening Questions

1. What does Quinn say is the company’s most pressing need?
2. What is the old idea that Quinn needs to sacrifice to pivot his business?
3. What does Quinn say his investors need to understand?

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Skills 360 – Adapting to Change (Part 2)

Business English Skills 360 - Adapting to Change (2)

Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on how to adapt to an ever-changing world.

Our world has been undergoing massive changes. And it’s not just the global pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the economy. There’s political turmoil, rapidly evolving technology, climate change, and calls for greater social justice. Our work and workplaces look and feel different because of this. There’s less travel, increased automation, more remote work, and moves toward greater equity and inclusion.

Nobody’s untouched by these changes. But not everybody is equally adept at dealing with them. Now, more than ever, we need to learn to accept, if not embrace, volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity. If you’re waiting for the world to go back to the way it was in 2019, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

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Skills 360 – Adapting to Change (Part 1)

Business English Skills 360 - Adapting to Change (1)

Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on adapting to change.

You might have heard that “change is the only constant,” meaning nothing ever stays the same. That’s easy to say, but not always easy to deal with. Many of us like certainty and stability. We get comfortable and we want to stay that way. But being comfortable shouldn’t mean being complacent, especially in today’s world.

Change doesn’t always happen at the same pace. These days, change seems so fast. And the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new uncertainties and has accelerated certain trends, like the move toward remote work. Many industries have been battered. And the fact that people are tired of the word “pivot” only demonstrates how the pace of change has accelerated.

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BEP 369 – Scenario Planning 3: Discussing Strategic Responses

BEP 369 - Scenario Planning Meetings English 3: Discussing Strategic Responses

Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on talking about strategic responses during a scenario planning meeting in English.

It’s impossible to predict the future exactly. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother trying. After all, we don’t create business strategies based only on today’s realities. We need to think about what will or might happen and how we will respond to these possible events.

So if we’ve done the work of laying out future scenarios, then how exactly do we plan our strategic responses? To start, you’ll need to choose an overall strategic posture. Are you going to take the lead in your industry? Or will you sit back and respond to things as they happen?

Your strategic posture depends in part on the possible impacts of future events and your choice of strategies. You need to discuss these impacts in order to choose the best course of action out of several possibilities. So this means you’ll be doing a lot of discussing alternative strategies.

In strategic planning, we often say that you can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want. For this reason, you will have to ask your team to prioritize, or decide which strategies are most important. And to make those decisions about priorities, you’ll need to discuss hypothetical results of different actions.

In today’s dialog, we’ll rejoin a meeting of executives at a large retail firm. Gwen is based in the US headquarters. She’s discussing strategies with Natasha and Daniel, who head up the firm’s operations in another country. The group is discussing strategic responses to future scenarios they’ve already mapped out.

Listening Questions

1. What strategy does Daniel suggest for their larger urban stores?
2. What does Natasha suggest instead of making big cuts to their operations?
3. What does Gwen say could be the ultimate result of the changes they’re discussing?

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BEP 368 – Scenario Planning 2: Discussing Possible Scenarios

BEP368 - Planning Meeting English 2 - Discussing Scenarios

Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on discussing future scenarios in a planning meeting in English.

Business planning doesn’t look like it used to. The world today holds so many surprises and so much uncertainty. There is constant and unrelenting change, and sometimes it feels like we’re just trying to keep up.

In these circumstances, it’s a good idea to map out possible future scenarios. This type of exercise is often built on several key uncertainties that you’ve already identified. Mapping out the different scenarios is necessary before you can begin to develop strategies to respond to these possible future situations.

One thing you’ll do when you discuss scenarios is make predictions. In some cases, you’ll be able to make predictions with a great degree of certainty. In others, you’ll have to check whether you’re more certain than you should be. In particular, you might be affected by availability bias, where the available information leads you to make predictions with too much certainty.

Because we can’t always be certain, we find ourselves discussing the likelihood of certain events, or how probably they are. It can be tempting at this point to begin evaluating possible strategies, but it’s best to resist this and focus on the scenarios first. And throughout, you should watch out for assumptions that might cloud your thinking, or make you think unclearly.

In today’s dialog, we’ll rejoin a discussion at a large retail firm. Natasha and Daniel are executives discussing their country’s situation with Gwen, who is based in the U.S. The group is mapping out scenarios based on the situation they’ve already discussed.

Listening Questions

1. What does Natasha predict with certainty?
2. According to Daniel, how likely is it that sales will go down 30%?
3. What assumption does Natasha call Daniel out on?

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BEP 367 – Scenario Planning 1: Exploring the Situation

BEP 367 - Scenario Planning Meetings 1: Exploring the Situation

Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on scenario planning meetings.

How do we plan for a future that’s so uncertain? On a global scale, we’re faced with a pandemic, climate change, social unrest, and political instability. On a local level, your business could be dealing with another set of challenges. So how can we plan for what might happen in the future?

One of the approaches that organizations take in uncertain times is scenario planning. In a nutshell, scenario planning involves discussing different possible future situations, and planning for each possibility. This kind of planning typically starts with exploring the situation.

Exploring the situation often involves a lot of speculation, as you discuss what might happen in the future. This helps you identify the key uncertainties you’re contending with. Of course, circumstances differ from place to place, so you may find yourself explaining contextual differences when you plan for different scenarios.

These discussions can be quite complex, so it’s often a good idea to ask for a summary of the issues. One more very important aspect of scenario planning is using evidence to guide the discussion. In some cases, you will need to use this evidence to counter other people’s optimism about the future.

In today’s dialog, we’ll listen to a scenario planning discussion in a large retail firm. Gwen is in a leadership position in the company’s US headquarters. She’s talking with Natasha and Daniel, two executives based in another country. The company is faced with the enormous challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic presents. And in this discussion, they’re exploring the entire situation.

Listening Questions

1. At the start of the conversation, what government relief program does Natasha speculate about?
2. What does Daniel say is one of the biggest uncertainties they’re facing?
3. What possible change does Daniel believe might happen but Natasha doesn’t?

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Business English News 46 – US Presidential Election 2020

Business English News 46 - US Presidential Election 2020

In this Business English News lesson we look at English vocabulary related to the US presidential election.

Days after the US election, the final result still hangs in the balance. While some networks have called the election for Biden, the process is far from over. So why don’t we have a final tally on election night? As the Independent points out:

An unprecedented number of Americans – 97 million by Monday, well over twice the number from 2016 – have voted by mail. And some states will count ballots that are delivered after the election if they are postmarked by a deadline. In Washington state, for example, mail-in ballots can still be counted on November 23. In Alaska state officials don’t even begin counting mail-in ballots until around November 10.

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