As businesses face evolving challenges, four aspects of leadership will become dramatically more important: Insight, Integrity, Courage, and Agility. Taking these insights forward, we present to you inspirational words of wisdom by the exceptional supply chain leaders for the young managers to imbibe and excel in their career. Read on…
Sarala Menon, Former Executive Vice President – End-to-End Supply Chain, Colgate-Palmolive
Sarala Menon
I was managing the end-to-end supply chain of Colgate Palmolive, which involved manufacturing, engineering, safety, quality, procurement, packaging, planning, customer service, logistics, etc. I have also worked in different geographies including New York, Central Europe West comprising Germany, Switzerland, and Austria before I moved back to India in Q4,2019. Having worked in various geographies across the globe, I would like to state that at work, we get into unconscious biases in many ways. For instance, on the issue of equating hard work and motivation to working late hours, I would like to share that in Germany, people leave their workplaces right on time. Does that mean they are not motivated enough, or they are not competent performers? No, not at all! I have seen first-hand how efficient they are. For them, striking a perfect work-life balance is an extremely critical affair and it helps them to be more productive. We need to be open and learn best practices from other countries, other cultures and imbibe them in our work environment.
As Indians, we have two terrific strengths – Analytics and the ability to handle ambiguities and this is true especially for supply chain professionals. The key lies in leveraging these two strengths to shift the dialogue in the right direction. In today's VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous), these are especially critical, and I would like supply chain managers to use their strengths and explore managing overall businesses to become CEOs like Tim Cook (Apple), Mary Barra (GM), Doug McMillon (Walmart), AG Lafley (P&G), etc.
I would love to see more diversity at the workplace and especially in the supply chain. Collectively we need to prioritize this agenda and bring about an equilibrium at our respective workplaces because I believe diversity brings in better thought leadership. Lastly, leaders should have passion and energy. Leaders must be able to set a vision for people and have the clarity of communication. Once you do that and get the team onboard on how to set the bar higher, and truly empower them, you will see MAGIC happen. In summary, leverage analytics, develop the ability to handle ambiguity, have a clear vision and clarity of communication, empower your team, strive to set the bar higher, embrace diversity in all aspects and you will have passionate leaders for the future.
Arush Kishore, Vice President – Petchem Supply Chain Management group of Reliance Industries Ltd.
Arush Kishore
Supply chain managers, by definition, are leaders. I think the theme is very clear – you don’t need to lead a number of people in order to be qualified as a leader, you need to be mindful of the work at hand. We must continually learn and unlearn things to get past our own achievements. Resting on our past laurels is not an option. We must set ourselves on the journey of continuous improvement and enhanced efficiency. Additionally, a leader today must focus on safety and sustainability, both are bed rocked by optimization.
To make the transition to CEOs, all leaders need to understand cash, profitability and the people, process and platform continuum very well. For this, we need to continually keep ourselves informed of the developments in our market and world at large. We need to be able to see and understand the trends and interconnections that inform our larger businesses.
Supply chain leaders should not restrict themselves to only supply chain as a silo. They should understand the entire business end-to-end and participate in wider business discussions with Marketing, Sales and Finance. They should know each and every line of the P&L of their company and understand how company makes money. SCM Leaders have a very good opportunity to get 360 degree view of their business by engaging with Vendors, Factories, Warehouses, Transporters, Distributors, Sales Team, Retailers and Consumers. They also get enough opportunities to know and engage with people in person in corporate functions like Finance, IT, Marketing, HR, Legal and Taxation. Thus, I see a Supply Chain Leader being equally capable of handling CEO’s role, as any other functional leader.
At a broader conceptual level, the tenets of supply chain management remain common. However, companies within the same industry often have variations in the design, execution and ‘culture’ of their supply chain which makes them more differentiated and competitive. This makes Supply Chains unique and the subtle innovations in the brick & mortar, technology, people processed and thus the culture makes Supply Chains an ‘Inexact Science’ like economics, philosophy & psychology. Taking a cue from this underlying principle, as supply chain practitioners, we come with a lot of practical realities. Understanding the business end-to-end would set us on the right trajectory to be the CEO. While we might find it overwhelming at first, some interesting success stories of inspiring personalities around us such as Tim Cook who was the SCM Head and went on to lead Apple, will help us carve the right leadership trajectory once we are determined to explore and advance into the Supply Chain Leadership Maze. As supply chain leaders, we must establish the critical importance of the profession so that our younger generations are enthused to join the supply chain cadre and bring in their innovative streaks to make this a wonderful place to work in and drive holistic growth of businesses and make a lasting impact.
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