The Challenge of People Management in Supply Chain Improvements

Supply Chain Practitioners appreciate the need to improve Supply Chain performance and in all probability the improvements focus on "hard" aspects of Supply Chain like Network Redesign, Technology Applications, Infrastructure development so on and so forth. Supply Chain best practices are introduced to leverage on those for enhanced Supply Chain performance. The trap here is the structure for improvements is in place, the enablers are identified and the "facilitators" of that improvement are "assumed" to deliver on those. The failure of Supply Chain improvements is not so much to do with "hard" aspects as much as it has to do with "Soft" aspects. From my experience i am penning down a few thoughts on this area.

A Supply Chain practitioner landed in Supply Chain, mostly, by accident. It is not by design that a large cross-section of Indian Supply Chain professionals are in Supply Chain. By academics very few are Supply Chain qualified. Rather Supply Chain qualification is a recent phenomenon to the academic world (mostly it was Operations Management or Materials Management.) So a Supply Chain practitioner who works in this domain is educationally not a match to the role. A person working in Purchase may actually be an Mechanical Engineer who wanted to be in Design or Shop floor, but life brought him to Purchase. He has been advised that his engineering skills set will help in the role. Naturally he focuses more in technical details than the Supply Chain perspective. Particularly in Indian context Supply Chains this is a real time issue. Naturally this leads to sub-optimal performance of the individual as he in a a place where he least expected himself to be and also has no academic background to grasp the complexities of the Supply Chain. Supply Chain improvements hence is a distant goal.

One more People Management challenge is that the past generation in India, started its career in one of the functions of Supply Chain. It may have been Production, Stores, Purchase or Distribution (as it was called then). Organizations used to function that way till a few years ago. As time passed by, this generation has grown in hierarchy and the organization has shaped up functions like Supply Chain. Now with Seniority the generation is at top of the Supply Chain pyramid but by value systems the people still have functional approach which attempts to safeguard interests of its own function or department. The new generation which probably works under them and wishes to introduce Supply Chain improvements, will suffocate with a less responsive management. In Supply Chain People Management this is also an issue in Indian Organizations who have recruited best of the talent (with the right academic background of Supply Chain) but has an inflexible and functional approach oriented past generation Senior Management. (I don't intend to say all Senior Managements hence i have qualified in the previous statement)

My next challenge, as experienced in my own engagements, is that Supply Chain is a domain where improvements can be "tangible". Which means they can be counted in "Monetory" terms. People working in Supply Chain on these improvements know their direct or indirect contribution to company performance. It may be in the form of Lead time reduction, Improved availability, Inventory rationalization or Logistics cost optimization and so on...Issue really is Supply Chain improvement "facilitators" who are the core to bring about the improvement always have a question in mind - "What is in it for me?". Some organization pacify by giving some awards of recognition and some organizations monetary rewards (which are a very small fraction of the total benefits). I see the challenge in my engagements. Performing your tasks based on the Job Description is one thing and willing to make improvements happen is completely something different. Unless organizations respond to "What is in it for me?", People Management for improvements will always remain elusive. (I happened to work for a client where the professional told me that even if a 40% improvement is possible, let us make 5% happen this Financial Year as if he delivers 40% this year, it sets an increased benchmark for next year and the variable pay gets negatively impacted of the next year!)

One last observation also is that People competency mapping in Supply Chain needs an analysis. Many a times competence mapping is undertaken as a HR domain initiative and the assessors utilize the generic competence framework which lack Supply Chain domain specifics. These lead to a skewed reporting of persons behavioural characteristics than his knowledge content of the job being performed. With so many evolving fields within Supply Chain domain, competence assessment frameworks need to incorporate Supply Chain specific details.