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Let Skills Lead the Way

Author(s):

Jim Adkins
Jim Adkins is vice president of sourcing, supply chain and new product development governance, North America and Oceania for Bobcat Company in Fargo, North Dakota.

January 2013, Inside Supply Management^® Vol. 24, No. 1, page 10

Out In Front: Leading People, Leading Organizations
Strategic leaders need transparency, alignment, partnership and accountability to pave the way for successful change management.

Throughout my career, I've focused on practical and objective business skills as I transitioned from being an engineer, to a program manager, to a Six Sigma champion, to a sourcing professional. However, as an executive leading from a strategic vantage point, I find that leadership skills that excite and guide team members contribute more to success than reams of results and objective data. Teamwork and collaboration create an atmosphere for improved communication, and ultimately greater success, for supply management and the overall company.

Create a Positive Environment

A supply management organization or change management program can't be completely successful unless four key elements — transparency, alignment, partnership and accountability — are understood and delivered by leadership. Following is an examination of the importance of these elements and the roles they play in successful leadership.

Transparency. If employees are experiencing fear, it often is created by a simple lack of information. When direct reports are unaware of your goals, or how those goals may affect them, their tendency is to fill in the gaps, which fuels worry and uncertainty in an organization. A leader should effectively and frequently communicate the goals and objectives of a change initiative, explaining how the change will affect and improve the company. This type of transparency has the added benefit of creating a better understanding of the need for change.

Alignment. Aligning separate, functional elements throughout a company requires each group to understand how its contributions support the company and advance individual careers. When I joined a company with a highly engineered product line, I knew engineering's support was critical to supply management's success. During my first meeting with the vice president of engineering, I learned he wanted us to improve the turnaround time on quotations. My organization analyzed its processes and within three weeks reduced the response time on quotes from an average of 60 days to nine days. The alignment of procurement and engineering grew from that day forward.

Partnership. True partnerships can only occur when internal business units are informed, synchronized and aligned. For example, when a highly engineered product goes through a cost-reduction initiative, the project can't be successful unless the engineering, operations, marketing and procurement teams work as partners. Several years ago, I was in charge of a project to reduce costs of a product line. More than 2,000 ideas were generated from staff; only one was considered, though, because a partnership among various functions had not been formed. Marketing rejected many ideas, claiming that customers would never accept some of the suggested changes. The engineering department, which had to approve any proposed changes, became defensive about changing their original design plans.

The project was relaunched in hopes of achieving greater success — only this time I changed the approach. Support from senior-level management and all functional leaders was conveyed throughout the company. Senior management also issued a clearly communicated mandate for cost reduction.

Functional leaders met weekly with their staffs, which kept visibility high and allowed for transparency and alignment. The results were scored by the finance department, which other business units considered an impartial function. We required that all ideas be judged objectively, and found that previously unacceptable ideas were harder to criticize. The result was a high approval rate of the same, or similar, ideas generated during our first attempt. We also were able to move quickly because of partnering and alignment of resources across all functions.

Accountability. Accountability — which includes tracking, monitoring and reporting successes and failures — is an area where many companies fall short. Too often, there is a lack of clear ownership of a task, project or initiative. We all know that "when everyone is responsible, no one is responsible." That's why I believe holding others accountable also requires us, as supply chain leaders, to hold ourselves accountable. Without accountability, it is difficult to achieve true success. In the previous cost-reduction example, a senior executive was selected to champion each project to be certain someone owned the end result.

Trust Holds It Together

Transparency, alignment, partnership and accountability are important to successful strategic leadership, but the glue that holds them all together is trust. If a leader at any level in the organization has a hidden agenda or fails to be a true partner, none of the four elements will be effective, because trust will have been lost.

I recall an incident when a senior procurement leader at a decentralized organization rolled out a purchasing card program to nine separate business unit presidents. He failed to mention the program included a 2 percent surcharge on the card's use that would help fund the creation of a centralized procurement organization. When the business leaders realized they had not been consulted or given the option to approve the use of money from their operating budgets, the establishment of a centralized procurement department ceased. Because of a hidden agenda and an ethical lapse, trust was lost.

Strong, successful leadership involves many skill sets, and when those skills combine with a leader's commitment to transparency, alignment, partnership and accountability, amazing results can follow.

For more information, send an e-mail to author@ism.ws.

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