The people problem is worse than ever

John Kern, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain Operations at Cisco, is hosting an event at his company’s headquarters next month on the topic of talent and transformation. Interest in the event, which also features a keynote speech by Bonnie Curtis, Vice President, One Health Product Supply at Procter & Gamble, is very high. Having just seen the new data from our recently closed Chief Supply Chain Officer survey, I can see why; talent management is starting to really hurt.

Talent drought

Since 2011, when we first started surveying supply chain practitioners on talent management, the pressure has ramped up steadily. Despite rising interest in supply chain among universities and significant investments by professional associations (e.g. APICS, ISM, CSCMP), business leaders seem to be facing harder times building and managing their teams than ever before. In fact, 423 of 999 respondents say that it has become harder in the past two years – nearly double the rate in 2011 and up notably over last year.

Digging into root causes shows that much of the pain comes at the front end of the pipeline, with “finding talent” comfortably at the top of the ‘extremely challenging’ list. Also up from last year, and trending positive since 2011, is “hiring talent”. Skills are obviously getting harder to find on the open market.

At the same time, we are seeing a slight downward trend in the pain felt around managing people that are already on board. In 2011, the top problem by a wide margin was “offering staff a compelling career progression” and, while this is still the second most serious talent management challenge, it is down from its original peak. We have also seen a slight downtick in the share that considers “developing skills among existing staff” to be extremely challenging.

One interpretation may be that supply chain leaders are working harder to leverage what they already have since raw recruitment is such a problem. This should be good news for Human Resource folks dedicated to supply chain organisations, but it may end up merely kicking the can down the road to be solved later on. We still need a better draw at the gate.

Next-generation supply chain talent

We persuaded John Kern to host the event described above after he delivered a fantastic presentation at SCM World Live last February on talent and, in particular, millennials. I wrote recently about building an organisation around this new young tranche of professionals and received a lot of worried comments back about how we’ll cope going forward. The reality is that work itself is changing forever and our next generation will need to be built from this new raw material – a multi-tasking, eternally connected, mission driven gaggle of new hires.

In parallel, and just as prominently, I’ve been privy to a series of conversations this past week around sales & operations planning and the increasingly urgent question of what awaits at the end the proverbial ‘S&OP journey’. Each time, and across industries as diverse as cosmetics, consumer electronics and building products, the story has been the same: S&OP maturity cannot be defined primarily in terms of process adherence. Instead, it must be about finding pure profit opportunities in the never ending game of supply-demand balancing. In other words, business logic applied to make the deal work, rather than technical logic in pursuit of the perfect forecast.

The connection between these two ideas is basic, even if it’s not obvious. Finding and hiring supply chain talent might be easier if we were looking for general business instincts first and technical supply chain skills second. The thrill of building an agile supply chain that seizes market opportunities, changes competitive dynamics and provides a sustaining ecosystem for the business has a lot to offer the young and ambitious.

S&OP and supply chain talent intersect on this journey. If the destination is compelling, your talent pool gets a lot bigger.