The emergence of the strategic leader

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the November 2016 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

November 2016

Is supply chain management strategic or tactical? Are the best supply chains collaborative? Should the goal be an integrated supply chain or an integrative supply chain? The answers are a mixed bag, according to this month’s contributors.

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Supply chain management is on the cusp of a metamorphosis. For as long as the term has been in use, supply chain practitioners have been tacticians. They focused on making sure that the production lines rolled and orders were filled in the most cost efficient and timely manner. Execution and firefighting were highly valued skills. The profession even had its own language and metrics, apart from those used at the C-level.

Whether those same skills will serve tomorrow’s supply chain manager is very much up in the air. That is especially true as supply chains are transforming from tactical to strategic. In this new model, the key challenge is to harness the supply chain to deliver on a business’ go-to-market strategy by focusing on a broader set of outcomes—outcomes such as responsiveness, innovation and sustainability. Indeed, many supply chain managers are questioning whether they or their organizations will have what it takes to make this change.

In a recent survey of supply chain issues published in CIO Journal, Deloitte noted that the major concern facing the executives it surveyed was the lack of adequate supply chain talent. Indeed, only 38% of the respondents were confident that their organizations had the required competencies today. They were even less optimistic about the future: Only 44% felt confident that they would have the skills required to meet their needs five years from now. On one hand, this finding emphasizes the fact that there is a supply chain talent crisis—a fact of which most supply chain managers are only too painfully aware. Yet, of more importance than the numbers is the nature of the skills respondents believe will be required of supply chain leaders in the future.

As can be expected, being technologically savvy is seen as important (including the ability to understand and integrate the technological capabilities offered by such developments as Big Data analytics, 3D printing, artificial intelligence and wearable technology); but the management skill that causes the greatest amount of concern is that of critical thinking and problem solving (Figure 1).

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