Are Supply Chain Organizations Neglecting Their Gen X Talent?

Are Supply Chain Organizations Neglecting Their Gen X Talent?

New research shows Gen X business leaders are being promoted slower than their millennial and boomer counterparts. This Gen X talent looking to jump ship.

This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.

Much attention has been given to millennial employees over the years –what attracts them, what causes them to stay in a role, how to manage them differently than other generations of employees. It was a hot topic of discussion at the recent SCMA National Conference. At the same time, more baby boomers are beginning to retire. These two generations represent the back and front end of the Supply Chain industry’s talent pipeline, and they’ve been the industry’s focus. But of course, the demographic picture is broader and more nuanced than just these two generations.

Last week, we wrote an article about the importance of the emerging Generation Z – people born between 1997 or so and the 2010s – to companies seeking to win the war for Supply Chain talent. Hopefully, it helped fill in the generational picture even further.

Now a recent, very interesting article in Harvard Business Review has us wondering – are Gen X employees being forgotten by the industry? If so, what’s the impact on their careers, as well as organizations who employ them – the companies who stand to lose if dissatisfied Gen X’ers begin to jump ship?

At the risk of explaining the obvious, Gen X’ers are generally defined as being born between the mid-1960s and early 1980s – after baby boomers, but before millennials. They also came of age with a reputation for being “unambitious” – a reputation that’s just as outdated as some of the most famous slacker movies (classic though those movies may be).

As we said with our article about Gen Z, these generational distinctions are a bit fraught. Career motivations are different for every person. They’re too complex to paint everyone with the same brush. But when you can marshal enough data, you can start to learn some interesting high-level things about the hopes, dreams, and discontents of a particular demographic. In 2018, HBR worked with EY and The Conference Board to collect and analyze data from some 25,000 business leaders. Those surveyed were from all over the business landscape, but there’s data here that will be useful for Supply Chain organizations looking in the mirror.

Some of the results related to Gen X in the workplace were very interesting, in particular:

  • The majority of Gen X leaders (66%) had either not been promoted in the past 5 years, or had only been promoted once.
  • Baby Boomer and Millennial leaders were more likely to receive promotions (58% and 52% respectively). This is unsurprising for the boomer generation, but it is surprising that a generation younger than Gen X seems to be getting promoted more. It suggests Gen X employees are being “skipped” compared to their counterparts.
  • The data found that Gen X employees are promoted typically 20%-30% slower than millennials are.
  • Generally speaking, Gen X managers have more direct reports than millennial managers at the same level, indicating a higher workload.

This is the situation on the ground for Gen X talent and leaders. But how are they responding to this lack of advancement?

Gen X employees tend to be more loyal to their current employers, with 37% contemplating leaving their current role compared to 42% for millennials. They came of age before the 2008 financial crisis, in a time before the rise of the gig economy, which might account for their willingness to spend longer in a role.

But companies shouldn’t mistake this loyalty for complacency: according to the data, only 58% of Gen X employees feel that their careers are advancing at a good rate, which is significantly lower than the 65% of millennials who feel the same way. Almost one in five Gen X leaders surveyed reported an increased desire to leave their current role (18%).

Many organizations are beginning to reckon with the retirement of the baby boomer generation. They’re trying to attract and retain millennial talent by improving opportunities for career growth. Maybe they should also be doing more to nurture Gen X talent, to avoid losing that all-important middle group within the talent landscape.

As Stephanie Neal, the HBR writer puts it, a significant number of Gen X’ers might be reaching a “breaking point in” their careers. But she identified some key strategies for companies to avoid neglecting Gen X talent:

  • Invest not only in continuing education for employees, but personalize it. Most Gen X employees have developed a broad base of skills, but individual needs and desires vary. Organizations should tailor their talent development to each person. Stay interviews, which we’ve written about recently, are a good strategy to better understand what motivates each individual in your organization.
  • Give Gen X leaders opportunity for mentorship, and not just within the organization. We also recently wrote about the power of mentorship in a Supply Chain career, so we were happy to see HBR highlight the importance of mentorship as well. According to the research, a majority of Gen X leaders craved mentorship outside their organizations, which is enabled by things like industry conferences and professional groups. Investment in these opportunities not only helps with retaining Gen X leaders, it also offers chances to expand your supplier network or find new business.
  • Hire and promote based on data, rather than gut feelings. Hiring managers often work hard to try to eliminate unconscious bias from the hiring process, but ageism often goes under the radar. Applying stereotypes to a certain cohort introduces bias that harms your process and leads to dissatisfaction. Neal uses the example of assuming that a millennial would be better at a digital marketing role than a Gen X employee. Decisions based on data such as assessments and quantifiable achievements will always be more successful than those based on stereotypes.

It’s a good start, but maybe this is issue deserves an even closer look. If we may add another tip: avoid stereotypes. Data surveying the preferences and mindsets of a large group of people can be instructive, but don’t assume that every Gen X employee is wired the same way.

What do you think? Are there any specific talent retention strategies for individuals in the Gen X cohort? Are you of this generation, and if so, how do you feel about your career prospects? We’d love to hear from you.

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How Supply Chain Management Can Make or Break a High-Growth Company

How Supply Chain Management Can Make or Break a High-Growth Company

Supply Chain Management can boost productivity – and alleviate issues – for companies as they scale.

This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.

Awhile ago, we blogged about how more Startups are looking to Supply Chain Management to boost their productivity as they scale. Procurement – the effective purchasing of raw materials, back-office goods and professional services – as well as Logistics – the orchestration of the movement of those goods – might not seem to be as important as sales, marketing, R&D or finance at first blush. But failure to account for these factors can be a major bottleneck to growth, and many a startup has failed because of Supply Chain issues.

Supply Chain Management is an important factor for fast-growing hardware manufacturing companies, whether they’re producing goods overseas or at home. But it’s important in food manufacturing, consumer goods, Pharma, and Cannabis as well, as well as any industry with direct B2B sales. In fact, we recently brought on a new Cannabis client who’s scaling up a strategic sourcing operation in all of their Procurement, so that all their spend is captured and accounted for as they grow, rather than after. Rather than taming out-of-control spend later, they’re maximizing profitability by being strategic about the company-wide spend now, by hiring a team of Procurement category managers.

The most successful startups grow quickly by relentlessly focusing on the consumer – giving them a better product, or a better customer experience – but customer service is dead on arrival without an effective Supply Chain. Any growing company needs people to forecast demand, produce or source the goods to meet that demand, and ship it quickly and reliably to consumers, while only holding as much inventory as absolutely necessary.

As a founder or senior leader in a growing company, you might think that you have the expertise to “figure it out” on the fly, because how hard can it be? But trust us, if you don’t have Supply Chain experience, you can’t. Developing a product line and business model is hard. Getting it funded is harder. But as a founder, you don’t know true pain until you’ve been saddled with massive inventory because you failed to plan, or until you’ve seen an entire shipment waiting at port for customs clearance three weeks before your launch because you don’t have someone on staff who has the experience to get the paperwork in order before you need to.

Avoid failure.

That’s how Supply Chain has always advocated for itself, and you may have even heard about these considerations before. Get your Supply Chain in order, and you might avoid pain, but you’ll also experience innovation and opportunities to improve your customer experience in ways you never thought were possible. It can also reinforce your core company values and mission, and pass it on to customers in ways you haven’t considered.

As Dave Evans recently talked about in Bloomberg, setting strong values early is the key to sustainable growth at a startup. Most entrepreneurs get that. But what they don’t always get is the importance of making sure that these values extend into your Supply Chain. Founders need Supply Chain experts who can forge close relationships with suppliers, and find manufacturing partners who can provide opportunities to improve the brand.

Too many founders treat Supply Chain like a transactional necessity: “okay, where are we going to source product from fastest and cheapest?” But Evans talks about how founders can actually use Supply Chain Management as an opportunity to improve and build their brand. He uses the example of Everlane, which has built a successful fashion brand out of radical supplier transparency – making it plain to customers exactly where their products come from, and breaking down all the costs associated with bringing it to market.

So where do you start?

Different areas matter more for different industries, and different levels of maturity. A seed-stage startup might need to set an overall direction for logistics and distribution (i.e. what sort of 3rd party logistics solution will you look to leverage?), whereas a scaling business might be able to leverage strong Procurement to extract additional value from supplier relationships – as with the Cannabis company we mentioned above.

Do you want your Supply Chain to be fast, cheap, or flexible? Skilled supply chain professionals can usually help you excel at two of those. The best in the business can get you all three. But if you don’t have any of that expertise, you’ll get zero.

Areas that startups need:

  • Logistics and Distribution Strategy
  • Demand Planning
  • Production Planning
  • Lead Time Management
  • Inventory Planning
  • Supplier Relationship Management
  • Strategic Sourcing/Shared Services Procurement (growth stage)

Today’s top Supply Chain Management professionals can bring all these considerations to bear. One other thing to consider: manpower expenses are one of the highest costs in scaling a business, and you don’t want to take on extra full-time staff if you don’t have to. So one thing companies will do is hire a seasoned expert who has developed and implemented Supply Chain strategies at scaling companies before on a contract basis – say 6 or 12 months – to implement the process and strategy, and then move on to another contract. You will likely have to pay a bit more per-hour, but it can be a tremendously flexible and high-value option, especially because some of the best in the business are now working on contracts for growing companies.

Any way you go about it, failing to plan a Supply Chain can quickly sink a growing company – and developing one that excels will make a growing company soar.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Having Supply Chain Management professionals in the room is some of the best business planning possible in 2019. That’s why they’re a founder’s secret weapon.

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Corporate Social Responsibility in 2019: 5 Trends Leaders Should Know About

Corporate Social Responsibility in 2019: 5 Trends Leaders Should Know About

Corporate social responsibility is no longer optional; it’s expected. Here are five trends that today’s business leaders need to be aware of.


Highlights:

  • 75% of millennials expect their employers to take a stand on social issues.
  • In a polarized political climate, successful corporate social responsibility requires authenticity and open dialogue.
  • Companies are increasingly measuring the results of corporate social responsibility campaigns, ensuring that they align with business objectives.

Corporate social responsibility in increasingly becoming a buzzword — and a consumer expectation. Businesses are facing external and internal pressures to act in socially responsible ways, tackling issues related to sustainability, social advocacy, and more. And, corporate leaders, in response, are increasingly paying attention.

A recent study by Glassdoor found that 75% of employees between the ages of 18 and 24 expect employers to take a stand on social issues ranging from immigration and equal rights to climate change. Not only that, 84% of U.S. workers of all ages believe that companies have an important role to play in proposed legislation, regulation, and executive orders.

In 2019, donating to charities is no longer enough. Writing for Forbes, Community Health Charities President and CEO Thomas Bognanno points out that today, “corporate leaders are aligning social impact and employee engagement with business objectives.” Companies are evaluating the effects of corporate social responsibility to ensure that these efforts “demonstrate real value to the company.”

Staying abreast of trends, expectations, and issues related to corporate social responsibility is a must for today’s business leaders.

5 corporate social responsibility trends leaders should know about

1) Authenticity

Let’s start with one that’s likely here to stay. Social media has rapidly accelerated the expectation that companies should be both authentic and transparent in their digital marketing. It’s had a similar effect when it comes to corporate social responsibility.

Companies are learning to actively promote authentic social engagement, whether through encouraging internal dialogue among employees or company leaders’ sharing personal messages related to important issues. From Dan Schulman of PayPal standing up against North Carolina’s so-called “bathroom bill” to Chick-fil-A’s Dan Cathy voicing his opposition to gay marriage, corporate leaders across the political spectrum are increasingly speaking out authentically.

[bctt tweet=”Companies are learning to actively promote authentic social engagement, whether through encouraging internal dialogue among employees or company leaders’ sharing personal messages related to important issues.” username=”Fronetics”]

As Bognanno points out, however, “Aligning a corporate brand with social issues can backfire if it’s not done thoughtfully and with authenticity, so be sure to understand your brand, measure stakeholder interest, and align with issues that resonate.”

2) Dialogue

In times of deep political and social division, companies and corporate leaders are increasingly recognizing their role in fostering dialogue. In fact, one expert predicts that dialogue is replacing taking a stand when it comes to corporate social responsibility in 2019.

“Faced with the prospect of a divided government in Washington, a looming presidential election in 2020, and the fact that some companies are seeking more federal oversight of their work in areas like data security, businesses will tone down their public advocacy in favor of more dialogue on the issues,” writes leadership strategy expert Timothy J. McClimon.

Whether increased dialogue comes at the expense of advocacy or goes hand-in-hand with it, the fact is that it’s a trend to watch. Companies like Campbell’s are stepping up their efforts to engage employees in social dialogue, using platforms like Workplace by Facebook. Externally, Campbell’s UnCanned by Campbell’s campaign has promoted open conversations on “real food,” GMOs, MSG, BPA, and more.

3) Educational opportunities

Workplaces are arguably far more complex environments than they were a few decades ago. The #metoo movement, for example, has thrown glaring light on issues of sexism and sexual harassment, and companies are tackling them not only with policy, but through education to enact real and lasting changes to corporate culture.

Whether it’s internal training classes, peer-to-peer dialogues, or formal executive education classes in corporate social responsibility at programs like Harvard and Wharton, companies are encouraging personnel to educate themselves on the complex issues we face in the modern workplace.

4) Preventing or mitigating disasters

Disaster relief has been considered a primary corporate social responsibility for generations. American Express, for example, has made disaster relief grants dating back to 1872. However, as natural disasters become more and more frequent globally, companies are looking at new approaches to tackling this issue.

While companies are expected to continue their relief efforts for natural disaster victims, there’s a trend toward increasing proactivity. This means helping communities build up resiliency, as well as taking a tough look at business practices that may be leading to or worsening natural disasters.

“While most natural disasters cannot be prevented from occurring, the impact on people can be mitigated or even largely eliminated through better urban and rural planning, and more restrictions on building and development,” writes McClimon. Companies are increasingly seeing these efforts as a key aspect of their corporate social responsibility.

5) Measuring results

Corporate social responsibility is increasingly being viewed not as a nicety, but as an aspect of doing business – and that means it needs to be measured, evaluated, and adjusted accordingly. Benefits of corporate social responsibility range from increased employee satisfaction to increased creativity, and companies are looking to quantify results.

Recent campaigns from Nike and Gillette have demonstrated that a strong stand on important and controversial issues can have varying consequences for a company’s bottom line. In its essence, corporate responsibility is about serving global interests without regard for gain, but companies are increasingly recognizing that for advocacy to be effective, it needs to align with business interests.

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Infographic: Leadership and Social Media – 3 Ways Social Media Breeds More Effective Leaders

Infographic: Leadership and Social Media – 3 Ways Social Media Breeds More Effective Leaders

The intersection of leadership and social media is receiving growing attention. A leadership expert has identified 3 surprising ways social media can create more effective leaders.


Highlights:

  • Very few Fortune 500 CEOs are personally engaged in social media.
  • Corporate leaders can get valuable unfiltered information through social media use and encourage a culture of free-flowing information.
  • Social media’s transformative leadership effects can only come into play when leaders are personally engaged.

Social media is a nearly ubiquitous presence in our lives, both personal and professional. As the influence of these platforms extends, the connection between leadership and social media is increasingly gaining attention.

A recent report from Chief Executive found that the vast majority of American CEOs have no personal presence on social media, relying instead on ghostwriters or marketing staff to post on their behalf. Less than 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are personally active on social media, despite growing public demand for corporate transparency and accountable leadership.

Engagement Leadership expert Céline Schillinger, in exploring the relationship between leadership and social media, has identified more than just the practical benefits (like strengthening brand, managing crises, and presenting a human face to the public) of CEOs on social media. Schillinger has identified three key ways that social media can actually create better leaders.

3 ways leadership and social media intersect to improve corporate leaders

Leadership and social media

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1) Access to unfiltered information

One of the biggest changes that social media has wrought on modern society is the widespread, unfettered dissemination of information, directly from its source. Boiled down to its essence, social media gives everyone a voice. For today’s corporate leader, access to unfiltered information comes at a premium: “Be it competent and well-intended, or self-protective and risk averse, CEOs’ entourage form a distorting bubble,” writes Schillinger.

What better way than social media to burst the bubble and get the raw, uncensored information that leads to mindful and effective corporate leadership? It’s an ideal way to combat the gap in perception between employees and managers, for example, or the service gap between customer expectations and the customer experience. Using social media gives leaders access to real-time, accurate information from the people their businesses serve.

Schillinger says that the informational benefits of leadership and social media extend further. “By role modelling curiosity for unfiltered information and by exchanging thoughts and ideas directly through social media, leaders give symbolic ‘permission’ to their organization to do the same,” she writes. Social media can help leaders create a corporate culture that encourages the free flow of accurate, uncensored information.

2) Relational engagement and enhanced business performance

Best-selling author Brian Solis, who explores the effects of technology on business, marketing, and culture, writes, “Brands are co-created by consumers through shared experiences.” That’s actually a pretty radical message. Particularly for those of us in the marketing world, it’s easy to get caught up with the idea that brands are purely created through the careful work of marketing teams, designers, and image consultants.

But, in fact, what Solis is saying is that thanks in large part to social media, the totality of what makes up a brand identity no longer fits in the frame of what businesses create themselves. Brands are relational. For this reason, corporate leaders need to embrace the idea that effective leadership is “contextual and relational.”

“Relationship building is now a required core competency for all professionals — and for senior leaders in particular,” writes Schillinger. Social media gives leaders the opportunity to form the kinds or organic relationships that have no less than the potential to shape the core of their brands. These are “connections that arise within communities, born from a shared sense of belonging, acknowledgment of emotions, and co-creation of work.”

3) Transformation through mindset change: where leadership and social media intersect

Social media usage has transformational potential: it leads to new modes of interaction and relating to others. As Schillinger points out, “This is why it is fundamentally experiential and cannot be delegated without dampening its impact.” For corporate leaders, social media can help welcome diverse input and create a culture that is capable of managing the complexity of doing business in a global economy.

Schillinger identifies a powerful example of the transformative power of social media on corporate leaders, resulting in unmatched improvement in output. Corporate leaders at Sanofi Pasteur, a vaccines manufacturer, chose to personally involve themselves in an internal online community, interacting on a weekly basis with their employees. Their “asking questions, sharing insights, recognizing achievements, and ‘liking’ posts… had a huge positive impact on their own perception, their leadership, and the flows of knowledge between employees.”

The connection between effective leadership and social media participation is a topic that we’re really only beginning to understand. But what’s clear at this point is that when leaders commit to personal engagement in social platforms, information flows are enhanced, brands are strengthened, and the businesses unlock the kind of transformative potential that leads to unprecedented success.

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Never Need to Know: a Work-Life Balance

Never Need to Know: a Work-Life Balance

A new LinkedIn post takes a refreshing look at achieving a work-life balance for working parents. The article has been shared all over social media begging the question: does your office need to know?

The New York Times reported that more and more couples are choosing to have smaller families due to economic factors. Let’s face it: kids are expensive. Most families have to balance wages with the exorbitant cost of childcare.

And that doesn’t even begin to look at finding harmony between your career and your family.  In a recent post on LinkedIn, Ian Sohn, a single father and president of Wunderman Chicago, takes a clever and honest look at creating a work-life balance, a juggling act many of us know all too well.

“You should never apologize for having a life.”

The post was a list of things this Chicago-based boss ‘never needs to know’ about his employees, including:

  • I never need to know you’ll be back online after dinner.
  • I never need to know that you’re working from home today because you simply need the silence.
  • I never need to know why you chose to watch season 1 of “Arrested Development” (for the 4th time) on your flight to LA instead of answering emails.
  • I never need to know you’ll be in late because of a dentist appointment. Or that you’re leaving early for your kid’s soccer game.
  • I never need to know why you can’t travel on a Sunday.
  • I never need to know why you don’t want to have dinner with me when I’m in your town on a Tuesday night.

The sentiments of Sohn’s post hit home with a lot of working parents — the post has almost 2,000 comments to date. So why does this list ring true for so many working mothers and fathers?

“Like any modern business … there’s an additional need to respect other people’s lives and environment you work in, and everyone is accountable for getting their job done,” says Sohn in USA Today.

As businesses have become more digital, the ability to do you work remotely has increased. Ask any employee who works remotely, and they’re very likely to tell you that working from home makes them happier and more productive. And they aren’t necessarily wrong. There’s certainly evidence to suggest that with today’s technology, there’s essentially no downside to working from home, and it does often enhance productivity.

Here at Fronetics, we believe, much like Sohn, in the balance between work and home life. As individuals, we strive to excel at our jobs through accountability. Have a doctor’s appointment? Need to attend a school performance? We don’t need to know.

Has your office implemented policies to encourage flexibility? Has it been successful?

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5 Books for Supply Chain Professionals to Read This Year

5 Books for Supply Chain Professionals to Read This Year

Here are 5 books for supply chain professionals to gain insights about the industry and leadership practices.


Highlights:

  • There’s no substitute for the in-depth analysis and explanation made possible by the long-format of a book.
  • Leadership and professional growth means learning from the perspectives and insights of others.
  • This year’s list includes works by Richard J. Sherman, Steven Bowen, and Edward H. Frazelle.

There’s no question that we live in a digital age, with information on almost any topic quickly accessible at our fingertips. But even in this age of short soundbites and reductively simplistic explanations, there’s no substitute for the value of sustained analysis and critical insight. To that point, we’ve put together a list of five books for supply chain professionals.

[bctt tweet=”Being your best professional self means learning from the successes, failures, and insights of others.” username=”Fronetics”]

The supply chain leaders and analysts whose books are on this list each bring unique skills, perspectives, and approaches to the table. Being your best professional self means learning from the successes, failures, and insights of others. Add these five books to your summer reading list, and let us know how they make an impact on your professional life.

5 books for supply chain professionals

1)      Strategic Supply Chain Management: The Five Core Disciplines for Top Performance, Second Edition

Co-authored by Shoshanah Cohen and Joseph Roussel, this classic guide to supply chain strategy has been re-created to help business leaders gain an advantage in today’s volatile, globalized arena. The global landscape has changed dramatically since the first edition of Strategic Supply Chain Management established itself as the authority on creating value and achieving competitive advantage from the supply chain.

This second edition is your answer to gaining a strategic advantage in the face of these challenges. Drawing on dozens of new company examples as well as cutting-edge benchmarking research, it shows you how to make your supply chains more agile, flexible, and resilient.

2)      Supply Chain Transformation: Practical Roadmap to Best Practice Results

Much is being written about global supply chain and sourcing options emerging in today’s marketplace. Transforming supply chain management to achieve operational excellence is a mandate for many companies globally. Supply Chain Transformation, written by Richard J. Sherman, walks you through this potentially difficult process and gets you started on the journey.

Much more than just a how-to book, it’s a why-to book that is as compelling for any business person as it is for supply chain management professionals. This book provides an invaluable road map to companies looking to transform their supply chains and organizations to achieve best practice results, beginning with guidance on how to make the case for change. Change is inevitable; growth is optional.

3)      Total Value Optimization: Transforming Your Global Supply Chain into a Competitive Weapon

Today’s corporate leaders are under increasing pressure to deliver differentiated, lasting performance, fast. New business models are continuously cropping up, with competitors becoming more numerous, more formidable, and more global. This puts profitability at risk as whole supply chains shift in industries.

Steven Bowen provides a clear pathway to transforming supply chains into the ultimate competitive weapons. Bowen’s method, which he calls Total Value Optimization, places customer value at the heart of the business-model, through a demand-driven digital supply chain. Grounded in data analytics, Total Value Optimization is essential for companies looking to survive and thrive in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business environment.

4)      Designing and Managing the Supply Chain – Third Edition

Designing and Managing the Supply Chain provides state-of-the-art models, concepts, and solution methods that are important for the design, control, operation, and management of supply chain systems. In particular, authors David Simchi-Levi, Philip Kaminsky, and Edith Simchi-Levi attempt to convey the intuition behind many key supply chain concepts and to provide simple techniques that can be used to analyze various aspects of the supply chain.

Topical coverage reflects the authors’ desire to introduce readers to those aspects of supply chain management that are critical to the success of a business. Although many essential supply chain management issues are interrelated, the authors strive to make each chapter as self-contained as possible, so that the reader can refer directly to chapters covering topics of interest.

5)      Supply Chain Strategy, Second Edition: Unleash the Power of Business Integration to Maximize Financial, Service, and Operations Performance

The industry standard in supply chain management, Supply Chain Strategy’s Second Edition is fully revised and updated to provide today’s logistics solutions. The proven pillars of success in logistics and supply chain management introduced in the first edition of Supply Chain Strategy now guide the supply chains of many of the world’s most successful organizations.

Written by Edward H. Frazelle, Supply Chain Strategy includes up-to-date case studies showing how some of the world’s most successful companies meet supply chain goals and helps you overcome your own challenges with the latest supply chain innovations, including big-data analytics, supply chain command and control centers, large-scale supply chain optimization, integrated supply chain planning, and real-time global supply chain visibility.

Bonus read: “First: Sandra Day O’Connor”

No, Evan Thomas’ bio of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor doesn’t specifically relate to the supply chain. But if you’re looking for inspiring reading on leadership, overcoming adversity, and empowering women in the workplace, this newly released biography of the first female Supreme Court Justice is an excellent read.

What books for supply chain professionals have you read recently?

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