Supply chain is in a state of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Whether you look at the impacts related to wars and chokepoints throughout the world, the uncertain economy and resulting backlogs, or the uncertainty of the reliability of key sources of supply, the bottom line is that supply chain disruptions are the new normal. Leading during VUCA requires adeptness, resilience, and strength.
Simultaneously, the skills gap is widening. Baby boomers are retiring, leaving vast experience and knowledge gaps in their wake. The generation following the baby boomers is much smaller, and clients are scrambling to keep up. And, according to a leading authority on the subject of generational diversity in the workplace, the younger generations struggle with ambiguity. Thus, demographics and changing conditions has led to a leadership gap.
As companies embrace advanced technologies and automation, more and more lower-skilled roles become obsolete with a greater need for high-skilled resources to navigate successfully. Collaboration with end-to-end supply chain partners while negotiating win-win-win solutions has become a necessity, requiring leadership, communication, and technical expertise. These combined factors have resulted in a serious high-skill and leadership talent gap in the supply chain. Learn more in our article, “Skills Gap Challenge for Manufacturing Success“.
The Leadership Opportunity
Those companies that step up and focus on the leadership opportunity in supply chain will far exceed the competition. If we take a step back and look at our most successful clients over the last twenty years, those with strong leaders succeed while the rest struggle. This holds true no matter the starting position, the team, the processes, the systems or the strategies. With the “right” leaders, the rest falls into place.
Given the turbulence and transitions occurring in businesses throughout the world, there will be more opportunities than there have been in any time in history for those that “get it right”. Do you have supply chain leadership to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
The most successful focus on key strategies and “basics” that include:
- Building leaders: Instead of hiring leaders, the most successful companies will “build” most of their future leaders. It is a complete reversal from pre-pandemic strategies to fit post-pandemic realities. For example, read our recent article about a successful client that “built” leaders for more insights.
- Experiences: The best leaders will make sure their future talent gains a wide variety of experiences working in different functions, geographies, collaborating with supply chain partners, participating in cross-functional projects, etc. For example, I wouldn’t be half as successful today if I didn’t have an HR mentor who knew how to successfully navigate organizational development topics and generously shared her expertise. She gained her experience from P&G and working in a wide variety of experiences.
- Training, education & development: Experiences should be backed up with training, education and development. Training includes learning specific skills whereas education involves learning about concepts. Development refers to a learning progression. For example, having a mentor is key to success as you can follow someone who has “been there and done that” to learn from as situations arise.
- Pilots: Throwing people into the deep end is required at times; however, the best strategy is to set up a pilot or key milestone to test knowledge, provide feedback and adjust as needed.
- Retaining talent: It is pointless to build talent if you do not retain talent. The good news and bad news is that retaining talent is quite simple yet rare. People follow people; not companies. Do you care? Are you investing in talent? Are you willing to provide the harsh realities and give corrective feedback? Will you remove poor performers? Do you provide opportunities?
- VUCA qualities: The most important leadership traits in the current business environment is the ability to successfully navigate ambiguity and build resilience. In our experience, less than 5% of leaders have these qualities. What are you doing to build them, encourage them, and attract them?
Talent is a cornerstone topic to succeeding during times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. To learn about several strategies for success, refer to our special report, FutureScape: Crafting Tomorrow’s Supply Chain Today. Start by taking stock of your talent, think about what you expect to change in the next year or two with your talent pool, consider what business transformations will be required to meet your business objectives, and start down the path to building your talent pipeline.
If you are interested in reading more on this topic:
Where Has the Talent Gone & Strategies for Success