Category Archives: Talent

Great Advice on Career ROI Can Be Found on the E-Side

Yes, on the E-Side. ISM’s eSide Supply Management to be precise. Earlier this year, it published “Career ROI: Advice From the C-Suite” which offered 10 great suggestions to get, and keep, your career on a successful career path. These were offered by a career procurement professional with over two decades of experience and were right on the money. These five in particular were on the money.

  • Own Your Career Plan
    Actively take charge of your career growth and the opportunities that come your way. This includes educational opportunities, professional opportunities, and networking opportunities — whatever and wherever they may be. And be sure to check out the talent management resources popping up from the leading consultancies (Greybeard Advisors, The MPower Group, etc.) and professional organizations (ISM, Next Level Purchasing, etc.). Start with the presentations from the recent ISM conference which had a track on talent management.
  • Develop a Personal Brand
    Figure out who you are, how you are different from everyone else, and what it is that you bring to the table. Then work the brand online and offline. Start by establishing a great electronic image, that has clout (with or without Klout), and advertises who you are, and then live it when you network and interact with people. And be sure to constantly maintain and build your networks as this will help demonstrate the success of your personal brand.
  • Work Hard on Your Soft Skills
    If you look at a top 10 skills list for Supply Management today, you are just as likely to find team management, change management, negotiation management, supplier (relationship) management, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) management, leadership, communication, cultural sensitivity, and professional development as key requirements as you are e-Sourcing/e-Procurement technology experience, data analysis, risk management, financial management, innovation management, or working capital management.
  • Be a Strategic Thinker
    Supply Management is about the long term. It’s not about reducing costs today just to inflate them tomorrow (by cutting too deep into a supplier’s cost margins, selecting components of inferior quality, or hanging on to last generation technology too long and avoiding investment in next generation technology that can greatly reduce costs and increase sustainability in the long term). It’s about finding ways to increase the pace of innovation, assist the organization in NPD (new product development), and assist the organization in new market entry. It’s about finding new opportunities for value generation, and not chasing the same cost reductions year over year. At some point, 2% just doesn’t make a difference.
  • Don’t Be Afraid to Take Risks, or Fail
    If you aren’t willing to take risks, you’ll never push the envelope and see what you are, and are not, capable of. If you don’t figure this out, you won’t make much progress in developing your personal brand, and won’t really stand out form the crowd. So take a few risks, fail once or twice, learn from your mistakes, and exceed expectations the next go around.

For five more great tips, see the original article on Career ROI: Advice From the C-Suite.

For Lasting Results, Follow the Procurement Leaders …

… but be sure to focus on the right characteristics first. Reviewing a recent summary of A.T. Kearney’s 2011 “Assessment of Excellence in Procurement Study” over on the A.T. Kearney site on why you should “Follow the Procurement Leaders” that described seven ways to lasting results, I couldn’t help but notice that they had all the right suggestions, but in reverse order. Starting from the bottom of the list, and working our way up, we see that the suggestions will transform your organization from an average performer to best in class.

  1. Win the “War for Talent”.
    This is the first T necessary for supply chain success and the most critical one. No supply chain function can be happen without someone in place to plan, manage, and execute it — and for any function to be planned, managed, and executed in an optimal manner, you need world-class talent.
  2. Adopt Technology.
    This is the second T necessary for supply chain success and the next most critical one. Once you have found the right talent to take your supply chain to the next level, you need to enable your talent with the right technology to make them as efficient and effective as possible.
  3. Transition to Category Strategies.
    As the article notes leading procurement organizations use more advanced toolkits — systematically employing more than twice as many methods as the followers — to tailor their approaches to each situation. That’s why leading e-Sourcing / e-Procurement providers are now offering platforms with category templates / workflow management capabilities to allow platform customization to each organizational category and support the third T of supply chain success.
  4. Use Supplier Relationship Management.
    Suppliers are key to supply chain success, and leaders manage the relationship to get the most out of it. They use suppliers to improve innovation and growth, monitor compliance and risk management, and improve capabilities across the supply chain.
  5. Manage Risk Systematically.
    Leaders use risk-impact analysis, financial risk management, and disaster planning as ways to protect against, and mitigate the effects, of disruptions — unlike the risk management “followers” that constitute 80% of companies that are a single natural disaster away from a major supply disruption.
  6. Contribute to Top and Bottom Lines.
    It’s not just about cost reduction, but about value generation. Good Supply Management doesn’t just stop at cost reduction, but goes onto demand reduction, component innovation, product innovation, and even market innovation. This is done by managing risks, managing supplier relations, applying category strategies, using technology, and using all of the skills your talent possesses.
  7. Align with the Business.
    Leading supply management organizations support the business strategy. And while this is the most important goal from the viewpoint of Supply Management, as the goal is to increase the image of Supply Management in the organization, this can not be accomplished until all of the pieces of the puzzle, described in the first six steps, are in place.

Where Should Your Supply Management Organization Be Located? Part I: Factors

Chances are, if your organization is a better-than-average Supply Management organization on the path to becoming a world-class Supply Management organization, then it is in the process of moving from a centralized to centre-led organization — and in the process of trying to figure out where to locate the centre of excellence (CEO). It’s a tough decision. Chances are the organization has identified the following factors as important in location selection:

  • customer location
    the organization should be close to its customers
  • supplier location
    the organization should be close to its suppliers
  • business incentives
    the location should provide some business advantages over other locations
  • infrastructure
    there should be a good infrastructure (in terms of utilities, business support, and personal services for the employees) to support the organization
  • the local talent pool
    there should be a good mix of talent to draw from

And on the surface, these sound like good selection criteria. However, for an organization on the path to world class centre-led Supply Management excellence, only one of these factors really matters. Can you guess which one?

Let’s take them one by one, starting with customer location. The organization should be close to its customers, but this doesn’t mean Supply Management has to be. Sales and support should be close, because they interact with the customer on a daily basis, but Supply Management can be half a world away as long as they take the time to consult with a customer focus group periodically to find out what needs are emerging and with sales and support regularly to find out if the current customer needs are being met with the current products and services being sourced.

Similarly, while the organization should desire to be close to its suppliers, generally speaking, it’s more important for the manufacturing organizations to be close to the raw material and component suppliers, as this minimizes shipment time and lead-time requirements when a spike in sales requires a corresponding spike in production or a quality issue or supply interruption requires a quick shipment replacement (from a different supplier). Plus, your suppliers today may not be your suppliers tomorrow and some are unlikely to be your suppliers in three to five years with constantly shifting market conditions and organizational needs. Thus, any attempt to locate near suppliers (unless, of course, your organization is a significant shareholder of a supplier and it’s part of the organizational strategic plan to take a strategic interest in the supplier for the long term) is likely futile.

Business incentives sound like a great idea, until you realize that any incentive on tax reduction is probably not going to result in any savings as most taxes are based on the (country) headquarters location. Similarly, any reduction on payroll taxes is going to be minimal as Supply Management tends not to the anywhere close to the largest division in the organization. And any one-time start-up grants that may be offered are going to pale in comparison to the savings a good Supply Management organization is going to deliver. So, from a Supply Management perspective, business incentives are rather irrelevant.

This takes us to infrastructure. This is somewhat important, but nowhere near as important as it is for the placement of a manufacturing facility. It’s not like a Supply Management organization requires 3-phase 480-Volt power, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water each day, or a thousand telephone lines coming in. The only thing it requires is decent phone service and good bandwidth so its people can collaborate in real time with their colleagues around the world. And these days, you can get decent bandwidth in just about any city, so infrastructure is only a minor concern.

This leaves us with talent, and this is the one factor that really matters. You can take the doctor‘s advice and get the best technology available, and manage the implementation using the best transition process that change management gurus can provide, but without talent to properly use the technology or implement the transition, it will all be for nought. Processes and systems don’t find savings, people find savings, implement the changes to capture those savings, track those savings, and ensure that those savings are delivered. This says that you need a good talent pool available to you. While a few top-notch people may be willing to relocate to your chosen centre for the experience, and a few more new hires might be willing to move for a chance to rise rapidly through the ranks, most people won’t move just anywhere for a job — no matter how good that job is. Consider the findings of Professor Richard Florida, as chronicled in Who’s Your City, when he asked his students if they would move anywhere for a great job. While most initially said yes, diving deeper into the answer (by asking if they would move to a place like Des Moines, Iowa), we find that most people would not be willing to move just anywhere. Most people who say they will consider moving anywhere in fact mean they will consider moving to any big city with lots of opportunity or a growing city where they have lots of connections. This means if you don’t already have a talent pool locally, you’re not likely to attract one.

So where should you locate your new centre-led Supply Management organization? Using talent as our indicator, we’ll discuss that in detail in Part II.

Want Supply Management Pros? Avoid the Culture Clash!

Chief Executive recently ran a good, but short, article on Talent retention that said “More than Money: Culture is the Key to Employee Retention” that is worth a read by every Supply Management Director looking to recruit and retain talent, which, due to a lack of talent development programs, is in short supply at many Supply Management organizations.

Noting that in this economy, however, companies can’t afford increased salaries and lots of perks for employees, the article also notes that, however, that though employees do care about how much they’re making, there are many other things that you can do to keep employees engaged and motivated, which includes corporate culture.

Quoting a USA Today article that covered GreatPlaceToWork.com’s list of the 25 best multinational workplaces, the article noted that companies with exceptional workplaces have three things in common:

  • employee trust in management
  • pride in the company
  • camaraderie with colleagues

This is because everyone wants a positive work environment. The article points out the obvious when it notes that you should treat your employees with respect, and that employees who have pride in what they do can make up for other organizational shortcomings, and misses the obvious that employees want to feel empowered, want to feel like they are contributing, and want to look forward to getting up and going to work in the morning. This requires all three of the elements of culture outlined above, and, in the doctor‘s view, also requires

  • employee accomplishment

A dedicated professional wants to feel, at the end of the day, that he or she accomplished something and made a difference. This is why your talent must be trusted by management to work on meaningful tasks, empowered to do so, given the support they need to succeed, a peer group that has common goals, recognition of their results, and pride in their work. Hit these nails on the head and your chances of recruiting and retaining top talent go up a notch or three.

CBTM #5: Fighting the War for Talent – Focus on Career Management!!!


Today’s guest post is from Anne Kohler of The MPower Group and is the fourth in a series of seven posts on Competency Based Talent Management.

We’ve been hearing about the “War for Talent” in the Sourcing / Supply Chain space for quite some time and it does not seem to be improving. In our previous posts, we explored how the lack of a holistic approach to competency based talent management (“CBTM”) is the root cause of the problem. In addition, we have advocated that to be sustainable, CBTM must cover ALL five phases of an employee’s journey through a company — recruiting, performance evaluation, training / development, career management and succession planning.

Let’s focus here on one element – Career management. According to Wikipedia, Career Management is the combination of structured planning and the active management choice of one’s own professional career. While career management should ideally be the responsibility of the individual, it MUST be driven by the organization. To start, employees need to know which skills / competencies are required to be successful today and how those skills /competencies need to grow and develop in order to progress within the company. These can only be defined by the organization and are the foundation for CBTM. A well-defined competency model, which is critical here, can also be used and integrated into the other four phases of CBTM. In addition, individuals need to see the career options (career path) and the expectations associated with moving through the path. How many Sourcing / Supply Chain organizations have actually taken the time to not only define the competencies but also lay out a career path for their employees? Not many. By the way, the first people to leave because of the absence of career management are the people you most want to hold on to — your high potentials. They are off listening to other companies who seem to be able to articulate a career path – can’t all companies do this during the recruiting phase even if it is all smoke and mirrors?

Without a Career Management process in place, you will:

  • lose your best people
  • constantly be recruiting (this is an expensive proposition)
  • never realize the full ROI of your asset (your people) base
  • lose the opportunity to infiltrate (love that word) the rest of the organization with Sourcing / Supply Chain thinking
  • never get beyond tactical contribution (real value comes thru competency growth)

The consequences of ignoring Career Management as part of your talent management program (if you have one) can be devastating to an organization. While the official definition of Career Management places the responsibility with the individual, the organization needs to put the infrastructure (process tools, metrics, mentors, etc.) in place AND drive the adoption and execution of the process. If we look at Career Management as benefiting both the employee and the organization then we MUST ensure that it is happening — tools are of no use unless they are being utilized.

What do you need to do to fix the career management void? Here are a few Next Practice tips:

  • Develop a competency model which allows employees to see their path for success
  • Tie career progression to competency growth
  • Ensure that competency growth is NOT about “what you know” but more about “what you DO with what you know”
  • Link career paths across functions by competency
  • Ensure career management is integrated into ALL phases of CBTM
  • Create a “success culture”, providing organizational mobility and access to new opportunities
  • Provide employees with “stretch” assignments to further competency growth
  • Ensure your organization is the “place to be” to ensure professional growth
  • Provide ongoing feedback and coaching so that employees can grow and take advantage of new opportunities

If you are interested in getting involved or would like to follow this topic further, here are a series of critical activities coming up:

  • Release of the results of the Executive Forum we just facilitated at the IACCM Global Forum for Contracting & Commercial Excellence on Talent Management.
  • A major research project to not identify the problem one more time but to identify Next Practices to solve the problems.
  • A webinar with IACCM on CBTM.
  • A White Paper to focus on Next Practices in CBTM.

Please contact Crystal Jones at crystalj <at> thempowergroup <dot> com for more information.