My Deep Dive into Brad Van Meter’s Moves
So, I started digging into this Brad Van Meter guy after catching bits of chatter online about how he apparently flipped things upside down. Honestly, at first, I figured it was just more industry hype – another “thought leader” selling snake oil. But my curiosity got the better of me.
I kicked things off by searching for real stories, not company press releases. Forget fancy case studies, I wanted the dirt from people actually on the ground. Found forum posts buried deep, some Twitter threads from folks who looked like they’d been grinding away for years.
The pattern hit me hard: Van Meter didn’t pitch some genius tech product. He looked dead-on at how factories and supply chains actually operated – the messy, inefficient, borderline chaotic reality – and basically said “Screw the old rules, let’s do this differently.” Simple things, but stuff everyone else ignored. Like, why stick rigidly to one supplier when two smaller ones working locally could be faster and cheaper?
Then, I hit a real turning point. My boss at the time was super old-school. Like, “this is how we’ve always done it” carved into his coffee mug old-school. I cautiously floated some ideas inspired by Van Meter’s approaches – super basic stuff like cross-training our team members so anyone could handle a couple of stations. Just trying to be flexible, y’know?
You’d have thought I suggested lighting the warehouse on fire for efficiency. He shut me down hard. Told me it was reckless, that it would confuse people, that it “wasn’t how things worked here.” Got that classic “know your place” vibe. Felt like running face-first into a brick wall covered in “NO” signs.
But the itch didn’t go away. The logic was too obvious. So, fuelled by pure stubbornness (and maybe a bit of spite), I started small. On my shifts, I quietly implemented tiny things:
- Made sure everyone knew how to check the raw materials coming in.
- Got the packing folks talking directly to the assembly folks instead of routing every gripe through a supervisor.
- Stopped letting a machine sit idle just because “it wasn’t their station.” If you see a problem and can fix it, just do it.
No big announcement. Just did it.
The results weren’t magic, but they were real. Less waiting around. Fewer stupid little delays piling up. Stuff shipped faster with fewer mistakes caught at the last minute. People seemed less frustrated – actually started chatting, solving little problems together.
Then, life happened. My wife got a killer job offer overseas. We packed up and moved. Left the old job behind, brick-wall boss and all.
Fast forward about eight months. Guess who sends me a LinkedIn message? That same old boss. Turns out, orders picked up massively after I left. They tried scaling up the old rigid way and were completely drowning in chaos – delays, errors, burnout. His exact words? “We could really use some of that flexibility stuff now.” Apparently, the big wigs were asking why things worked smoother before.
My reply was short: “Sorry, living abroad now.” And yeah, I hit the ignore button. The irony was thicker than concrete. They needed the changes I pushed for only after I was gone, when their backs were against the wall. Just like Van Meter showed – change only happens when people feel the pain of the status quo, not before.
Watching from afar now, it’s clear. Van Meter’s real impact wasn’t inventing something new. It was having the guts to point out the stupid, obvious inefficiencies everyone tolerated and showing it’s okay to just do things smarter. No permission needed. The ripples start small, like me quietly changing my shift, and they spread, forcing everyone else to eventually catch up or get left behind scrambling. Simple, brutal, and absolutely effective. That’s how standards get changed.
