Category Archives: Talent

CBTM #1: The Difficulty of Finding Qualified Supply Management Candidates


Today’s guest post is from Dalip Raheja of The MPower Group, who declared that Strategic Sourcing is Dead last year, and who has returned to stir up a new hornet’s nest.

“Difficulty of Finding Qualified Supply Management Candidates” is the headline of a major research project by CAPS Research. I am glad that they are bringing renewed attention to this issue. My problem is that if you go back in the history of our profession, this issue has been in the top three issues of EVERY poll, research, think tank pronouncement, conference, etc. for close to two decades! My history goes back over three decades in the world of Supply Chain and I can remember in the early 90’s when this started to become a critical issue. And yet, here we are gathering insight yet again. We started this conversation by first defining who YOU are. Clearly not a scientific analysis but close enough for government work. We then drew some insights from the profile that was created.

Let me take the liberty of using the title to develop my call to action. Let’s start with DIFFICULTY. The question we need to ask ourselves is why are we dealing with difficulty? Clearly we are facing difficulty as a result of whatever we did or more importantly did not do in the past. We have never identified talent as a top priority in our organizations. And before you quickly pull out your strategic presentation to point to the slides, my first question will be to ask for a history of your training investment over the last five years. In fact, take a look at your total investment over the last five years in supporting your Talent strategy and compare it to other investments that your corporation has made. I bet it is nowhere close!!! How does your new hire program fare under that scrutiny? Has it been increasing over the last five years? Is the leadership in your Supply Chain organization specifically measured AND incented on the maximization of Talent? Are your people specifically measured AND incented on acquiring new competencies (not skills, not training . . . . . more on that later)? These are but some of the things that would explain the inclusion of the word DIFFICULTY in the research. At our last NPX conference and a recent Gartner event, numbers like 50, 100, 200, and 400 were being tossed as the current need of some major Global corporations in their Supply Chain organizations. I will let you digest those numbers for now and we will come back to them later. By the way, once you decide to invest in your Talent, there is an incredible amount of lead time that is required to make that happen. Those companies that are looking to hire 50 to 400 new people should have started 12 to 18 months ago.

If you are still defining FINDING as developing a job description and handing it off to your HR rep and waiting for the candidates to roll in … good luck! You need to step back and understand what your real needs are in terms of competencies for the roles that you are looking to fill. Because FINDING is also a function of what you define as QUALIFIED. You then need to develop an aggressive, comprehensive approach to attract and retain the right candidates. And unless you have thought your way through that entire life cycle, you will never resolve the issue. Let me illustrate with an actual case study. We were asked by the CFO of a major bank to help figure out why they were not able to attract any candidates to even show up at the campus job fairs for their New Hire program. We helped them realize that their brand name was not enough to attract candidates anymore. The real issues were that the prospects did not know what they wanted to do in banking yet and did not want to commit so early in their life. We redesigned the entire New Hire program to include structured six month rotations for the 1st two years (and their selections would be considered), a leadership member assigned as a formal mentor (and feedback provided by mentored to CFO on mentoring), internal job fairs by senior executives of various organizations in the bank, a “friend” assigned from the previous rotation “class”, formal group meetings where the entire “class” would get together to provide feedback, etc. And then we redesigned their marketing strategy (yes, you need to have a marketing strategy!). They had lines forming up at the campus job fairs!

As I mentioned in the last paragraph, ALL of these issues are intertwined and tied together (but I’m jumping ahead of myself). For example, if your definition of QUALIFIED does not really match your needs, you will always have DIFFICULTY FINDING candidates. The definition of QUALIFIED has to be based on the real needs of your “clients”. One of the constructs that has proven very powerful as an image that we use with our clients is to think of your organization as a consulting company. You would quickly realize that your ONLY asset that delivers value to your clients is your organizational competency and talent. Therefore, you must match your competencies to the needs of your clients, both for today and tomorrow. Otherwise, you will always be FINDING because developing organizational competency has a significant lead time.

Case in point: We just had a conversation with the CIO of a Fortune 20 client leading to the conclusion that his organizational competency was geared towards new solutions that his group had been rolling out very successfully. His problem was that his clients had not yet “adopted” the solutions yet … meaning that they had not been fully deployed. The Intended Consequences of the clients had not yet been realized. What he quickly realized was that he needed to immediately develop significant deployment competencies. Think of it as surveying your market to understand what their needs are going to be so that you can ensure that you have the right organizational competencies to deliver the value when your clients need it. Ideally, you should be a step ahead.

Finally, what do you define as a SUPPLY MANAGEMENT CANDIDATE? I guess we first need to decide what Supply Management is. Because if your definition is focused on the Supply Base and managing costs and lead times and someone else is looking at the entire value conversion process, then your SUPPLY MANAGEMENT CANDIDATE is going to look rather different from your competitor. If you think the role of Supply Management is to run an efficient process to ensure lowest cost, then you are probably not looking for candidates who can look upstream and downstream and start maximizing the entire system as opposed to the tail of the dog (supply base). If you think that Supply Management is all about the process of defining requirements and negotiating contracts, then you are probably don’t want candidates with all those so called soft skills (collaboration, teams, problem solving, etc.). Now you can see why we seem to have DIFFICULTY FINDING QUALIFIED SUPPLY MANAGEMENT CANDIDATES.

Stay tuned for our next post where we discuss Competency Based Talent Management (CBTM) as a platform for solving some of the issues we have raised here. 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.

Wanted: Talent-Driven Innovation

While we’re on the subject of talent and the importance thereof to a successful Supply Management organization, a topic that we will address further in the weeks to come, it is fruitful to point out a “recent article” over on Industry Week by Stephen Gold, the CEO of Manufacturers Alliance, who asks a very important question:

Can the United States meet the challenge of creating the skilled workforce needed for manufacturing leadership?

After all, if we are going to homeshore and bring jobs back, due to the rising transportation and labour costs in the developing world, as well as the considerable overhead imposed by various import and security laws, we need a workforce that can handle them. And considering that the manufacturing workforce has declined 40% over the last 20 years, it could be difficult to bump it back up quickly given the skills required for your average production line these days.

Given that the #1 driver of competitiveness is talent-driven innovation, if the US can’t step up its game, the emerging markets may take the lead. Especially given that countries such as Germany, China and India have done far more in recent years to encourage innovation (and in turn build vibrant manufacturing bases) in their own backyards than the US has done. And given that high-skill employment has risen 17% while low-skill employment has dropped 9%, there is a double challenge to be faced. Furthermore, with the recent de-emphasis of math and science in primary and secondary schools, and the corresponding decline in math, science, and engineering degrees from 11% to 7%, there is, in actuality, a triple challenge to be faced. (And that’s not considering the fact that a global assessment ranks US students 23rd in science and 30th in math!)

The US may be able to rise to the challenge, but, like Rocky, they’ll have to have the eye of the tiger to do it. What do you think?

Talent Really Can Transform Your Organization

In yesterday’s post, we discussed the NPX keynote by Don Wirth, VP Global Operations Supply Chain and Excellence of DuPont, on DuPont’s Journey to Supply Chain Excellence and how a key to success was DuPont talent. We also said that DuPont is a company that did more than just give their talent lip service and put their corporate money where their corporate mouth was and this is a key to their recent success (which saw a year over year EPS growth of 32% last quarter) and their plans to cut 3.7 Billion in cost from their supply chain.

How did they do it? When the economy was tanking in late 2008 and early 2009 and everyone was cutting jobs left, right, and center, instead of cutting their global workforce 5% to 10% with all their peers, which was the original gut feel reaction of some executives and board members, they took a step back and said “the market will come back like it always does and the best way to recover is to be ready and more competitive when it does“. And they realized that the best way to be ready was to have people who could capitalize on the opportunity. By capitalizing, they decided that they needed people who could deliver the necessary innovation while keeping supply chain costs down as that is the key to continued success in up or down economies.

So they created a center of supply chain excellence and took people from across the company who would have otherwise been laid off from under-performing divisions and trained them. And trained them. And trained them some more on supply chain best practices — lean, kaizen, negotiation, contract management, and other areas of critical impact. Then they sent them back into the business units with new skills and knowledge to guide unit operations and manage the supply chains with guidance from the center of excellence. And then the cost reductions started to appear from across the board.

From there, they modified their Dupont Production System (DPS) methodology to include best-in-class supply chain operations to provide the highest customer service with the lowest total cost of ownership by increasing overall supply chain resilience. And then they focussed on plant operations, supply chain design, and supply chain optimization and identified almost 3.7 Billion in cost reduction opportunities through improved operations. And now development is a key part of their mandate and a continued focus. And it’s for the best.

Three Keys To Success in Today’s Competitive Supply Chain Landscape

The other keynote at this fall’s NPX was by Don Wirth, VP Global Operations Supply Chain and Excellence of DuPont who did a presentation on DuPont’s Journey to Supply Chain Excellence. Dupont, which expects to save almost 3.7 Billion dollars at the culmination of their journey through improved plant operations, supply chain network design, and supply chain optimization, will slash its overall supply chain costs across the board by about 10%. (And its efforts are making an impact. It just delivered strong EPS growth on 32% higher sales for third quarter 2011.)

How is it going to do it? Innovation, differentiation, productivity, and talent are key success requirements. In particular, it plans to align the following strategic themes:

  • Innovation & Customer Focus,
  • Differential Business Management, and
  • Productivity & Continuous Improvement

with the following growth trends (and the importance of trends was discussed in SI’s posts on minitrends and megatrends):

  • increased need for food production,
  • decreased dependence on fossil fuels,
  • environmental protection, and
  • emerging markets.

This is great strategy for any supply management organization. Align with forthcoming needs and be better prepared for the market shifts that tend to come faster than expected. So how does it plan to align?
By beginning with management practices. Metrics and incentives are revised to be consistent and aligned with goals. Risk management is organization wide. Governance and structure supports center of excellence operations. Then it leverages scale and skill. It starts with standardization and simplification. It puts experts in charge of the supply chain. Best Practices are institutionalized. Finally, it builds culture and capabilities by treating talent as an enterprise asset.

Dupont engages its workforce in its entirety. The collective power is in the group and the team, and getting the most we can out of
our operations. These words are straight from the mouth of the CEO, who puts the company’s focus where her mouth is. How? That’s the subject of tomorrow’s post.

Winning the Talent War – Start With A Resource Strategy

In yesterday’s post, that mentioned that the talent war has just begun, we discussed Don Klock’s keynote at last week’s NPX workshop, put on by the The Mpower Group. In his keynote, Don, a Senior Global Procurement / Supply Chain Executive with over 30 years of experience with multiple major multinationals who is now with the Rutgers Business School, Don noted that, as a result of the severe skilled talent shortage,

if you don’t have a Resource Strategy to build your talent
pool, you better develop one.

Why? Because, to put it in the colourful euphemism us North Americans understand so well, you’ll be up sh*t creek without a paddle otherwise. And while Seth Green, Matthew Lillard, and Dax Shepard might have parlayed their situation into a 69 Million gross for Paramount, you won’t be so lucky.

Fortunately, a resource strategy isn’t that hard. A simple one consists of:

  • an internal skills assessment
    to define your skills (& talent) gap
  • a training and development program
    to take the both the resources you have, and the resources you bring in, to the next level
  • a recruiting plan
    to get that talent

Or course, the recruiting plan can be quit an exercise. After all, where do you look? Internally? Externally? Do you use a recruiting firm? Do you use a temporary staffing agency to keep the canoe afloat in the interim? Do you rotate your top performers through temporary assignments to make sure all critical functions, and tasks, get addressed? Do you just outsource? And if you look external, where? Universities? Industry Associations? Job Boards? Your competitors? The answer is typically — as Don notes — all of the above. You need talent, and you need to get it wherever its, whenever you can, through any means necessary.

This will obviously take some work.

  1. First, you will have to identify how you will relate to your job pool.
    These days, talent wants challenging work, good benefits, life/work balance, advancement opportunities, the right culture, and the right management in addition to a good salary. And, in fact, chances are culture, life/work balance, and organizational mission are more important to them. For the Millennials, a lack of focus on environmental stewardship is unthinkable and a kiss-of-death to your organizational future.
  2. Then you have to get that message out there.
    You’ll need a great job description, a great corporate message, and a great communicator leading the charge. And this person will have to connect to your talent wherever they are — job fairs, industry events, and on-line social networks like LinkedIn.
  3. Finally, you have to rope them in during the interview process.
    An interview is a two-way street now. They are interviewing you as critically as you are interviewing them, if not more so. Not only is their unemployment rate as skilled, college-educated talent, approaching an all-time low, but they know that, in many industries, there are not enough people to meet the demand and that they have the power. You will need to address all of their concerns, and (honestly) demonstrate that your organization is not only paying better but also providing a better work/life balance while providing challenging work and advancement opportunities, and that they will shape the path of the organization going forward. (Of course, if all this isn’t true, then your organization has a big problem as it’s not going to attract much talent until it is.)

Of course, if your organization does all this right it will be one of the few in a position to find, attract, and retain talented resources, which will soon be the supply chain’s number one talent. Almost 25% of the North American workforce is now eligible for (early) retirement. The only reason they are hanging on is the down economy. When it bounces back, they’re gone, and you’re down another 25% (or more) if you’re not ready. So get ready.