Category Archives: Talent

CPO Agenda’s Skills for the Future

A recent article in the Winter 2009-2010 issue highlighted the results of a recent Human Capital in Purchasing workshop on “Skills for the Future”. According to the article, a buyer will need the following skills in the Supply Management world of tomorrow:

  • risk management
  • financial management
  • working capital management
  • cost management
  • functional strategy management
  • profit management
  • innovation management
  • product (composition) & service management
  • flexible production management
  • team management
  • change management
  • negotiation management
  • supplier (relationship) management
  • corporate social responsibility management
  • sustainability management

as well the following skills:

  • market intelligence
  • leadership
  • communication skills
  • cultural skills
  • personal professional development

In other words, if you want to survive in the Supply Management world of tomorrow, you have to be ready for the New Renaissance coming in the supply chain, get back to the classroom for your true Renaissance education, strive to be The New Polymath, and hope that today’s Leonardo da Vinci takes an interest in supply management, because even if you’re a Mensan, that’s a tall order!

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Old MacDonald Was Right — It Is About E-I-E-I-O!

Today’s guest post is from Dalip Raheja, President and CEO of The Mpower Group (TMG) and a contributor to the News U Can use TMG blog.

Most of us missed it. They were trying to tell us about it when we werevery young. We were not even in nursery school yet! It’s all aboutthe vowels. It’s not about Old MacDonald’s farm, his pigs or hens or any of that … it’s about E-I-E-I-O! Now what do vowels have to dowith Sourcing and Supply Chain Management you might be wondering? Well, as it turns out … everything! The vowels are the most critical link between our alphabet and our language. Without vowels we don’t have words … we just have letters! Without words, we have no sentences, no language, no meaning, no intelligence — in short, we have nothing! And so it is in our organizations. We focus on the tools, templates, processes, systems (the farm, the pigs, the hens) and we forget about the most critical elements in achieving superior business results — the vowels. And without the vowels, all we have are letters. There is no meaning … and we add no value!

The vowels I am referring to are Adoption, Execution, Implementation, Optimization and Utilization. Without these, all we we have is an organization that has the best practices, the best processes, the best tools, the best templates, etc. In other words, what we have is a Toyota. We might have an organization that may be succeeding at a large scale, but we don’t have a sustainable model in the long run. For that, we need the vowels … the ever powerful vowels! If you were strategically sourcing a surgeon for yourself, I am sure you would look at more than just the tools that the surgeon has at her disposal and the training that she has been through. You would want to know what she could do with the tools and the training … n’est-ce pas?

And yet, sadly, it is still very hard to convince most organizations where they need to invest their focus and their energy. They all think that all they need is to develop the right infrastructure in terms of the processes, tools and templates and then train their people on the infrastructure and — voila — just wait for the results. We keep trying to tell them that they should budget at least an equal amount of effort in the vowels, including the help of an expert talent management consultancy, and they continue to insist that all they need is what Old MacDonald talked about … and that the vowels will take care of themselves. Alas, they don’t. The superior business results never materialize. The organization gets frustrated and decides that it needs to adopt new processes, tools and templates because the current processes, tools, and templates must be broken. The cycle starts all over again. And the lessons of childhood are forgotten … that’s it’s not in the verse … it’s in the chorus … it’s all about E-I-E-I-O!

And the focus on the vowels needs to start very early. After all, thealphabet does begin with an A! Furthermore, the focus cannot end with just the creation and training around the process, tools and templates. It has to extend all the way to the point where superior business results are achieved. And while we will need the best tools, templates and processes (for the infrastructure), the mere presence of, and training on, the infrastructure is clearly not enough. In order to truly achieve superior business results, we have to make sure that we pay attention to the vowels.

The focus has to be on what happens beyond the training, how people will actually achieve superior business results, and how they will successfully adopt, implement, and execute the processes. It is the same with supplier relationship management processes. It’s not how you design them, it’s how you implement them. You need to focus on how these relationships will be established and managed to extract maximum value. It’s not just about getting to the contract. At my company we believe in this so much that we even approached a couple of the major law firms to encourage them to include the vowels in their deliverables to clients when they work on executing large transactions between providers and suppliers to help set up these relationships. We did not avail, but we know we’re right. (By the way, it is the same with organizational structures. To optimize them, we have to focus on the lines [vowels] between the boxes, not only the boxes.)

Here is how the doctor described the goal of a transformational journey:

We mostly agree with this except we think the potential is even greater than that. A truly transformational Sourcing / Supply Chain department actually should be transforming other departments. They should be totally focused on value across the entire supply chain. The department should function as if it was a consulting group. The best strategy for such a department is actually a “Sunset” strategy. This concept, and others, will be discussed in later posts.

We will examine this issue in detail in a series of posts. We will begin the transformation journey together. We will discuss the use of maturity models, both current and emerging ones (which look almost identical to the current models) and talk about the gaps and the roadmaps. You can rest assured that we will not ignore the consonants (the maturity models, roadmaps, infrastructure and talent management) … but, we will also focus on the vowels (Adoption, Implementation, Execution, Optimization and Utilization). Because there’s gold in them thar vowels. We will take you back to your childhood, to the days of Old MacDonald, to E-I-E-I-O and then we will build a solution framework and challenge your thinking. We encourage you to join the conversation. Add a cluck, cluck here and a cluck, cluck there … and pretty soon we’ll have everywhere a cluck, cluck!

Thanks, Dalip.

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How To Slow Your Supply Chain Transformation to a Crawl

In my last post, we discussed how transformation is necessary for high procurement performance and gave you some advice on how to get started. But transformation is not easy, and there are many pitfalls you can encounter along the way. In this post, we’ll addres some of those.

As a supply chain leader, you are probably in the midst of a process to redesign your supply chain to be more fault tolerant, more secure, and more safe to avoid the fiascos that your brethren (Huntington Meat Packing, Mattel, Toyota) have recently faced in the media. If you want the transformation to go smoothly, and be effective, you better avoid these “six mistakes that can derail your company’s attempts to change” its supply chain, as described in a recent HBR article on Accelerating Corporate Transformations. (Subscription Required)

  1. Cautious Management Culture
    There’s a time and a place for incremental improvement. That time and place is not during a supply chain transformation project. During times of “incremental improvement”, executives tend to be too preoccupied with daily operations and too busy to get involved in redesigning the entire business. During a transformation, the entire management team needs to be charged, focussed on the goal, and involved in making it happen as a team.
  2. Business-as-Usual Management Process
    A transformation can’t be pigeon-holed into established systems and processes and meeting times. It has to be its own system, it’s own process, and its own, all-hands-on-deck, meeting — run alongside the existing systems, processes, and meetings until you’re ready for a transition. People may feel that they don’t have quite enough time, but that’s normal, and often good. Put a little pressure on and stick to the schedule, otherwise a three-month initial phase can quickly become a six-month, nine-month, or longer phase as people keep delaying it because they’re too busy with current processes, systems, and meetings, which aren’t working and need to be replaced as soon as possible.
  3. Initiative Gridlock
    Sometimes you have to kill an old initiative for a new one to fly. As the article points out, executive leaders may lack the insight and courage to discard efforts that have come up short and, to avoid admitting failure, pile new initiatives on top of the ones that are struggling — and the result is gridlock. Success is best achieved when action agendas are restricted to only three or four companywide initiatives, each targeted to two or three carefully selected areas of focus and tied to clear outcome metrics. That way workers aren’t overloaded and can focus on achieving clear, non-conflicting, goals.
  4. Recalcitrant Executives
    Many executives … choose to avoid conflict and hope that the “clarity” and “efficacy” of their grand plan will quickly win people over. Problem is, what’s clear to them isn’t always clear to their counterparts or their direct reports. And if you don’t take the time to win over a “deep denier”, resentment, and a need to undermine your efforts, can build and eventually bring your project to a dead stop. You have to be willing to confront, debate, and fight-for your project. You might not be able to change everyone’s views, but if you can convince them you’re serious and that your initiative is well researched and thought out, and earn their respect, you greatly improve the chances that the dissenters don’t stand in your way.
  5. Disengaged Employees
    Employees, who do most of the actual work, are the key to your transformation. It’s critically important to involve them in the transformation process as early as possible. This should include sessions that inform them of the upcoming transformation before it starts as well as training and Q&A sessions as early as possible in project launch. Roll-out to the entire organization should be as rapid as possible.
  6. Loss of Focus During Execution
    If you don’t continually champion the transformation initiative as the day-to-day grind again takes centre stage, you might find that old habits gradually sneak back in, that leaders switch back to command-and-control mode, or that attention is turned to other “important” activities. As a leader, you have to follow the project through to the end to ensure success.

Basically, as the article points out, transformation launches must be bold and rapid to succeed. Even if the project can’t be done in less than a year or two, it still needs to get into gear quickly, and hit its early milestones as soon as possible, so that the team can see the early indicators of the improvements that will come their way. This will get their full support early on. And as the byline points out, to be successful, don’t lose your nerve!

I highly recommend you check out the full article. It has some great advice on avoiding each of these speed brakes that can bring your transformation to a grinding halt.

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Are You Relevant?

Before you answer, think about it.

Carefully.

Because you’re probably not.

That’s right, there’s a good chance that you’re not relevant.

And the worst part? Most likely, it’s not your fault.

The business landscape is changing, the old normal is coming back, and it’s no longer about better, faster, cheaper (or lean and six sigma) or closed systems. As noted in this HBR post about “The New Paradigm of Advantage”, we’re returning to a time where innovation and creativity rule, and where only the relevant companies are going to succeed.

Given that most companies are still struggling, with more going bankrupt every day, it’s pretty obvious that most companies are still not offering relevant products and services. So even though they did well in the last upturn — and let’s face it, it’s hard to fail when money is flowing like the reservoir will never empty — it’s pretty obvious that it wasn’t because they were relevant, but that their success was just a side effect of the overall buoyancy in the market.

Since only a few companies are succeeding right now, relatively speaking, it’s obvious that most companies are not relevant. And these companies are dragging you down with them.

So what can you do?

Get creative. Get innovative. And show your company what they should be doing. As per my recent post on the talent innovation imperative, these companies are not succeeding because they’re wasting their resources — namely, they’re wasting your talents. And there’s no need for it. So get busy and show them what you got. And if they don’t listen, join the majority of your colleagues who are already looking for new opportunities with relevant companies. Because YOU deserve to be relevant!

Does Innovation Begin and End with Leadership?

After reading a recent article on “Boeing’s Innovative Approach to Leadership”, I have to ask. Boeing found that engaging the workforce in innovation requires positional leaders and managers to abandon the command-and-control style of management that is so prevalent in business today. Instead, leaders must employ a more participative approach and solicit collective ideas from the workforce rather than imposing initiatives on them.

Senior managers in Boeing’s C-17 program took a bold first step toward establishing this new leadership paradigm by gathering all 10,000 C-17 employees in a hangar and communicating their philosophy directly to the front-line employees and the epic event just changed everything inside the Boeing C-17 culture. As a result, the program went from the brink of cancellation in the early 1990s to he model acquisition program for the U.S. Air Force,” earning the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award in 1998. The innovation captured by the program saved over 90M in less than a decade.

While I believe that innovative thinking begins and ends with the individual, if the business doesn’t support the individual and harness the innovation she produces, then it doesn’t go anywhere. And if the leaders don’t see the value in the innovation, it won’t get harnessed. Which suggests that innovation begins, or ends, with leadership. What do you think?

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