Supply Chain Excellence and People

In the last article, it was identified and established that Supply Chain is the key enabler for business growth. It is time now to understand what measures within supply chain drives supply chain excellence. As shown in the below figure, five elements contribute towards supply chain excellence. It starts with People, Quality, Velocity, Cost, and finally Agility to react to the dynamic business environment.

In this article let me share my experience about how people can effectively contribute to the success of the business.

People:

Bill Gates once said, “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” Success is not a permanent partner, success is a visitor in some cases, and hence, people may have to pursue the path of continuous improvement to sustain in this challenging environment. “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”. If one critically examines the only difference between successful people and the rest is nothing but lack of will to succeed.

In order to be successful in business we need a leader who can articulate the vision and goals of the organisation and along with him we need group of people whom we can call them as cohesive team. In order to be a successful team we need few critical attributes and they are:

Engagement – It is a challenge to any organisation to create an environment where employees who are part of the cohesive team understand the organisational goals and commit to the organizational vision created by the leader. Job engagement and organisational engagement leads to employee engagement. Happy employee is a productive employee. Hence, it is a key measure.

Leadership – It is an old school of thought that there is only one leader in the organisation. Yes, there is one leader at the top and he/she needs leadership support from many functional silos. It is essential that these emerging leaders should be trained in the areas of Communication; Motivating teams; Team building; Risk taking; Vision and goal setting. Last but not least is to recognize and reward the team’s performance. Say at least thanks for their contributions.

Think outside the box – Today’s business is dynamic, volatile and challenging, and the ability to improve continuously is very critical to the success of the organisation. The core driver to make your team to think outside the box is to deliver competitive differentiation in the market place. Due to product proliferation, there is no dearth of choices to the consumers, the product has to be unique and deliver total customer experience. This process is not static and it is continuously evolving. Unless one develops ideas and transforms them into reality that meets tomorrow’s customer needs, it would be highly challenging to survive in the market. Thinking is unlimited, there is myth that humans use only around 10% of their ability to think. It is not thinking that matters, Lateral thinking is the need of the hour!

Team Work – Success of any team depends upon the team work and team’s collective strength and wisdom. The best teamwork comes from group of individuals who collectively agree to work independently and together towards one identified organisational goal in unison. Let us not forget ““The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” In short WE = Power of Success!

Change Management – “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future” John F. Kennedy. The world is changing in other words, it is evolving and if you live in the past and deliver a product belonging to yesterday for tomorrow’s world, the outcome would be disastrous. Obviously change is driven by a vision, get your vision right, build a team that could deliver your vision, empower the team, celebrate short term successes, and most importantly communicate and deliver the change message periodically. Change ushers exciting opportunity and at the same time could deliver loss, disruption or threat to some organisations. How such change process is managed can be the difference between surviving and thriving in a work or business environment. Change management should be developed as an inherent characteristic of any organisation who would like to survive and thrive in this world.

Perseverance – As mentioned earlier success is a visitor if you fail to pursue it consistently, it will desert you. In my opinion one may face many defeats in our journey in search of excellence, but you should never get defeated. The defeat teaches the critical lessons to how to succeed. Whereas success only makes you complacent. In order to manage sustainable success, it is absolutely necessary to be persuasive. Abraham Lincoln once said, “I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.”

Continuous Improvement – “Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change” Tom Peters. We can write tons of information how we can achieve continuous and sustainable improvement through the leadership vision and team work. Let us examine a case study which delivers invaluable information how continuous improvement in supply chain delivers competitive advantage in the market place.

Note: Please double click the image to see it large.

The human being is yet to invent an automated system that could foster sustainable continuous improvement in any field. It is all driven by the committed teams all around the world. Team of individuals is not a system, it is the group of people with commitment to make tomorrow a bright one and with emotions to win with persistent efforts and with a faith to turn hopeless failure into glorious success.

Any business organisation must have a clearly identified unique core objectives which differentiates the organisation with competitors. The so called differentiation comes through innovation of the people in the form of enhanced technology, improved quality, cost competitiveness, total customer experience. All these factors are articulated by a leader and implemented by the group of people whom we called an integrated and cohesive team.