by Fronetics | May 1, 2017 | Blog, Leadership, Strategy
Companies usually try to understand failure, but what could they learn from analyzing their successes, too?
“Success is going from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill
Failure is said to be inevitable, and we all know it to be true. Any new venture is built on the hope of success. But accepting and managing failure is key to actually obtaining success.
Companies have a responsibility to ask the tough questions when things go awry. We have all been in these meetings: we diagnose failures, and we dissect the process, tools and staff involved to get to the root of the problem. Unfortunately, most companies only step back and really dive into what happened when something bad happens.
But what if companies took the same approach when something went right?
Focusing on the lessons in success
Companies are all a work in process. We learn as we go, and that learning should include understanding our successes. Shifting the focus from ‘what went wrong’ to ‘what went right’ creates a foundation for being able to recreate success in your organization.
Identifying and analyzing the components of a successful process can be the first step in moving into this new mindset. Paul Michelman, editor in chief of the MIT Sloan Management Review, experimented with dissecting his the publication’s successes and quickly discovered that their best processes start with transparency. Michelman wrote:
We plan a pipeline of content that is stored in a document accessible by the key participants. We track each content item’s progress on a shared project management platform. The few times we encounter bumps, a lack of information sharing is almost always at fault.
Though Michelman admits his research is unscientific, the key factors he has identified in their success stories has helped his business focus on what’s working, instead of waiting to dissect failure.
Technology can help
In today’s world, there is no end to the amount of data you can collect on your business. Your company’s digital presence is an easy place to start.
Tools like Google Analytics can give you advanced insight into how prospects are interacting with your company online. You can analyze how people are finding your business, and how they’re moving through your website all the way to making purchases. In other words, you can begin to analyze all of the little successes that make your business turn. How can you replicate that success on new projects and processes?
When things are going well, most companies don’t see the need to reflect on what happened, what went right. But don’t let this opportunity slip by. You should examine failures, but you should also look closely at successes. Take the time to brainstorm with your team on what you’re doing well and how you can keep up that success while you plan for future growth. —
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Mar 22, 2017 | Blog, Leadership, Logistics, Supply Chain, Talent
By calling them “soft skills,” are we shortchanging competencies that are critical for supply chain and procurement professionals to succeed?
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
One of the biggest stories in the world of Supply Chain and Procurement talent over the past few years has been the emerging importance of Soft Skills. Time was, the business world saw Supply Chain and Procurement as highly analytical fields, where the ability to organize and interpret data was paramount. Analytical skills are still important, of course. But as the field has become more strategic — with a greater impact on wider areas of business — professionals in the field have had to become stronger at advocating for it. No senior Procurement professional is going to get very far into a Procurement transformation without being able to advocate for their Procurement method and what it can deliver. No one is going to transform their organization’s Supply Chain without being able to explain whatever insights they’ve gleaned from data to senior management.
When we say “Soft Skills,” we generally mean:
- Verbal communications
- Written communications
- Relationship-building skills
- Presentation ability
- The ever-elusive and hard-to-define-but-you-know-it-when-you-see-it “polish”
There’s no doubt they’re important, especially when it comes to moving into the senior ranks of leadership. But by calling them “soft skills,” are we really shortchanging them and treating them as ancillary to the “main,” “vocational” skills we ask for? Maybe it’s time to put them front and center.
They may be skills, but they’re not soft
Marketing guru and entrepreneur Seth Godin had an interesting post about the concept of “Soft Skills” and whether the way we think about them needs a revamp: “Let’s stop calling them ‘soft skills.’ They might be skills, but they’re not soft,” he says.
Godin’s basic point is that soft skills build a great workplace culture. And workplace culture isn’t an ancillary bonus to a business’s core function. It is a business’s core function. Godin doesn’t discount the importance of vocational skills. You can’t make a Supply Chain run without data. But for all the talk about strategy, a truly successful company succeeds not because of its strategy, but its culture — just like a truly successful career in business is often driven by soft skills rather than vocational skills.
His point is also that we don’t put as much effort into training soft skills as we do vocational skills, which might be because vocational skills are easier to measure. For example your typing speed (or for a Supply Chain role, your facility with SAP or JAD software) is much easier to measure than the kind of empathic awareness that makes a team sing. The result?
“Organizations hire and fire based on vocational skill output all the time, but practically need an act of the board to get rid of a negative thinker, a bully or a sloth (if he/she is good at something measurable).”
Rebranding soft skills as real skills
Godin’s suggestion is to rename soft skills “real skills” and break them down into new categories by which we might assess them:
- Self Control
- Productivity
- Wisdom
- Perception
- Influence
He breaks these categories down into an exhaustive list of skills (“diplomacy in difficult situations,” “etiquette”) that’s definitely worth checking out, and worth assessing in new hires. It gets a little abstract, but we couldn’t agree more with Godin’s core point: It’s time to put “soft skills” front and center.
In Supply Chain and Procurement, which are the areas we recruit for, soft skills are taking on more relevance as automation begins to handle the nuts and bolts of how products come to market, and how companies work with suppliers. The function is becoming more nimble and more strategic, and the future belongs to those who are able to be strategic advocates — and the companies that prize this in their hires.
Yet in a field that is, by its very nature, obsessed with efficiency, measurement, and data, soft skills sometimes take a back seat.
We think it’s time to change that.
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by Fronetics | Mar 21, 2017 | Blog, Diversity, Leadership, Supply Chain, Talent, Transportation & Trucking
The founder and president of Women In Trucking discusses bringing gender diversity to transportation.
Ellen Voie is successfully breaking down barriers and changing the perception of the trucking industry. As founder and president of Women In Trucking (WIT), Voie and her team work to promote the organization’s mission “to encourage the employment of women in the trucking industry, promote their accomplishments, and minimize obstacles faced by women working in the industry.”
Voie has been named a Transportation Innovator Champion of Change by the White House, a Fleet Owner Dozen Outstanding Woman in Trucking, and a Supply & Demand Chain Executive Magazine Pro to Know 2016. Her blog was recently named one of the top three logistics and supply chain blogs in 2017 by Fronetics readers.
I spoke with Voie about her experiences in the transportation industry, as well as her hopes for WIT and the future of women truckers.
Early career
After a semester pursuing broadcast journalism, Voie unexpectedly moved back to her hometown in Wisconsin for family reasons and got a job drafting at a steel fabricating plant. The company soon asked if she had any interest in moving over to their new traffic department. Tempted by the offer that they’d also put her through school for traffic and transportation management, Voie gladly accepted.
Voie was responsible for bringing in all the raw steel and shipping out the finished product for three plants. But, as a young female traffic manager, she noticed that she was a bit of an anomaly. “I remember walking into the traffic fraternity meeting and realizing I was the only woman there,” she says.
While she proved herself extremely competent and capable, Voie still met some resistance. “I was 20 years old, hiring drivers that would tell me, ‘I’ve been working longer than you’ve been alive!’”
But to drivers who struggled with the idea that she would be their boss, Voie simply replied, “If you have a hard time taking instruction from a female, then don’t apply.”
Voie would move on from the plant to work as a freelance transportation consultant, executive director of Trucker Buddy International, and manager of recruiting and retention programs at Schneider National. Her industry knowledge and capability earned her great respect in the industry and beyond.
Women In Trucking is born
Voie’s role at Schneider involved helping the company attract and retain drivers. She was asked to focus on four groups: returning military, Hispanics, seniors, and women. “So I started doing research on what women look for in a carrier,” she recalls. “I began to realize that the trucking industry as a whole did not do a very good job of focusing on bringing more women in.”
At the time she was working on getting her pilot’s license and belonged to a group called Women In Aviation. Voie thought to herself, “Why is there not an organization for women in trucking?”
The idea for WIT was born.
After launching in 2007, Women In Trucking was well received. “Companies thought, ‘Yes we should get more women!’” Voie says. And as the driver shortage became more critical, carriers became even more enthusiastic about hiring women drivers. They began to realize that, generally, women take fewer risks and make really good drivers.
Removing obstacles
One of the pillars of the WIT mission is to minimize the obstacles women face in the industry. When asked about the biggest challenges, Voie is resolute: “The biggest obstacle is image. Women outside the industry just don’t think about driving a truck. We need to show them that it’s not the same old physically demanding job that it used to be.”
One of Voie’s strategies for changing the industry’s image is by educating young girls about trucking. WIT has partnered with Girl Scout groups across the country to develop a transportation patch, for example. And Voie says she’s close to getting a female truck driver doll on toy store shelves.
Equipment is another major obstacle facing women in the industry, so Voie works with truck cab designers on ergonomics and truck cab design. Whether it’s changing the slope of dash and the closeness of the steps or adding more safety equipment and other creature comforts, “they are very interested in learning what it is that women want in a truck,” explains Voie.
Truck stops are similarly invested in making their facilities more amenable to female drivers. “They are always asking: How are the showers? How is safety and security? How are you treated when you go in?” Voie notes.
Voie says that though the percentage of female drivers has held pretty steady (around 7%), increased awareness has helped the industry become more accepting of and accommodating to them through the years. That’s in large part thanks to Women In Trucking providing a voice and advocating for women in the industry.
Leaning in
Another shift Voie has noticed in recent years is that carriers have begun actively recruiting women employees. They’re also celebrating female drivers and executives through events and functions, and building retention programs specifically targeting their female employees. Voie points to one company that created a female driver liaison to handle all calls and concerns from women drivers. Steps like these are helping carriers to attract female talent and support existing employees in a very positive way.
Women within the industry, too, increasingly are supporting each other in their careers through networking events and mentoring relationships. Women In Trucking is helping to build these networks and provide mentoring opportunities. As a result, Voie has witnessed a growing number of women taking on leadership roles in the industry.
Voie also stresses the importance of relying on tools like social media to connect with each other. “The trucking community is very close, and social networking brings them even closer,” she says. “Physically they are away from home and their companies and are alone in a cab, and they really depend on social media to stay connected.”
Through mutual support and active engagement, women and WIT have changed the conversation about females in the trucking industry.
The future of Women In Trucking (and women in trucking)
Looking ahead, Voie is focused on growing WIT’s membership and attracting other verticals, like towing, warehousing, and manufacturing. “There are a lot of people in the industry who aren’t necessarily involved exclusively in trucking, and I’d like to be a resource for them as well,” she says.
She’s also working on developing a best-practices guide based on the successes of companies that have a high percentage of women at both the management and driver level. And she’s very excited about an upcoming partnership with Feeding America, in which carriers will donate delivery of a load to help relieve hunger.
As far as the future of women in trucking, Voie sees only more good things to come. And she offers this advice for women facing naysayers who doubt their abilities or experience: “You have to prove yourself. Don’t be a victim. Don’t denigrate yourself or feel that you can’t do it — because you can. When you prove yourself, you’ll love it.”
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by Fronetics | Mar 8, 2017 | Blog, Diversity, Leadership, Strategy, Talent
Gender diversity is generally viewed as a women’s issue. It is not.
Research conducted by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org finds that despite corporate America’s stated commitment to gender diversity, outcomes are not changing. Moreover, the research finds that employees do not believe companies are taking the necessary steps to enact change. The study’s authors contend: “It is time for a new gender-equality playbook. The old one isn’t working. We need bolder leadership and more exacting execution.” While I agree that these are necessary for change, I don’t believe change will occur unless we reframe the issue.
Gender diversity is an economic issue. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that as much as 26%, or $28 trillion, could be added to annual global GDP in 2025 if women were to participate in the economy identically to men. This is unsurprising given current data.
Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians. And a review of global stocks finds that companies with higher levels of gender diversity deliver higher returns with less volatility.
Gender-diverse leadership improves performance
Looking specifically at the impact of increased gender diversity in leadership positions, the results are even more pronounced.
Female CEOs in the Fortune 1000 drive three times the returns as S&P 500 enterprises run predominantly by male CEOs. Large companies with a higher proportion of women on executive committees realized a 41% higher return on equity and 56% better operating results than companies with zero women on executive committees. And companies with three or more women board directors significantly outperformed those with sustained low representation by 84% on return on sales, 60% on return on invested capital, and 46% on return on equity — after just five years.
For change to occur we need to reframe gender diversity not as a women’s issue, but as an economic issue. From the top down, companies need to move from commitment to action not to meet quotas, but because a gender-diverse workforce performs better than one that is not diverse.
In an interview I conducted with Cathy Morris, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Arrow Electronics, Morris drew a similar conclusion: “A better organization is not about the numerical statistics related to diversity. A better organization is about better decision-making. Diversity is essential for companies; diversity enables better decision-making and diminishes group think.”
Until it is recognized that gender diversity is an economic issue, it will be difficult to achieve bolder leadership and to realize more exacting execution, and, thereby, improve gender outcomes.
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by Fronetics | Mar 6, 2017 | Blog, Leadership, Supply Chain, Talent
Mark Cuban thinks liberal arts grads will be the next in-demand employees. Could they be the answer to the supply chain talent gap?
The supply chain talent gap has been called a “perfect storm.” Every report cites doomsday statistics of the impending crisis when, by 2025, 60 million baby boomers will exit the workforce, leaving only 40 million millennials take their place.
To make matters worse, future supply chain professionals need to master not only the hard analytical skills but also the soft leadership skills fueled by the transition from an industrial economy to an economy grounded in service and information. In numbers, it means only 20% of the workforce will possess the skills required of 60% of all new supply chain jobs.
Today’s supply chain companies face a more immediate challenge, however: filling junior-level positions (1-4 years of experience). According to Rodney Apple, founder and president of SCM Talent Group: “When you land your first job out of college… you’re not actively looking for a new job. So [companies] really have to do a lot of direct sourcing to find the analysts, engineers, inventory managers, and planners and sell them on why they should make a career move at this stage of their career.”
Where can employers find young talent that possesses both critical-thinking skills and future leadership potential?
Liberal arts majors struggle with employment opportunities in today’s economy
Students graduating in the past decade have been hit hard by a challenging economy. Almost ten years out from the Great Recession, 44.5% of recent college graduates still are underemployed, many settling for jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree.
This is especially true for liberal arts majors. Research shows that their peers in technical fields like nursing and with qualitative skills like engineering have fared better.
But this may soon change. Billionaire investor and Shark Tank personality Mark Cuban, among others, has recently stated that liberal arts majors will be the next in-demand employees. As more technical jobs like coding become automated, companies will need people with creative and critical-thinking skills to offer a human perspective to the automated output. These skills, of course, are the foundation of a liberal arts education.
Bridging the gap between underemployed liberal arts graduates and supply chain companies
Supply chain companies want to find talented employees that can succeed in junior-level positions now but that also could move into management down the road. “Soft skills” like creativity and problem-solving are crucial to both roles — not to mention, every role in between. “That means sometimes being a leader, sometimes being a good follower, monitoring the progress, meeting deadlines, and working with others across the organization to achieve a common goal,” says Lynne Sarikas, MBA Career Center Director at Northeastern University.
Liberal arts graduates bring these abilities to the workplace. Supply chain companies could be actively recruiting these qualified and eager graduates to fill open junior-level positions now, and then groom them to become future leadership. As more jobs become automated, companies will have additional resources to invest in on-the-job training and professional education for their rising stars.
Educated, qualified employees and the shortage of supply chain talent could be an obvious fit — more obvious than liberal arts and supply chain initially sound together. This untapped market of graduates could be the answer to the supply chain talent gap.
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by Fronetics | Mar 1, 2017 | Blog, Diversity, Leadership, Logistics, Supply Chain
Fronetics spoke with 6 women leaders in the supply chain and logistics industries about their professional experiences and thoughts on the gender gap.
March is Women’s History Month, a time when we at Fronetics like to focus our attention on inspiring female leaders who are bridging the gender gap in the supply chain and logistics industries.
As we have written about previously, the lack of gender diversity in the supply chain is not because women do not have the skillset and ability to succeed within the industry. In fact, quite the opposite is true.
We believe that it is important to discuss the lack of gender diversity and point to research highlighting why the industry needs to increase the number of women in all positions, including the C-suite. Additionally, it is just as important to highlight the incredible women who already are working within the industry.
We have had the opportunity to interview 6 supply chain leaders about their professional experiences, as well as their thoughts on some of these issues.
6 women leaders in the supply chain
Kendrea Durr-Smith
Director of Global Trade Compliance, Arrow Electronics
Kendrea Durr-Smith has successfully lead a diverse global team to better support the needs of Arrow customers and suppliers. In our interview, she discusses the exciting changes her team has accomplished and offers some advice for women interested in electronics and trade compliance. Read the Durr-Smith interview.
Barbara Jorgensen
Co-Founder and Managing Editor, Electronics Purchasing Strategies
Barbara Jorgensen has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist, working for leading electronics industry publications. In our interview, she discusses working in the supply chain industry and the changes she’s witnessed — both broadly and in specific regards to gender diversity — over the course of her career. Read the Jorgensen interview.
Hailey McKeefrey
Editor-in-Chief, EBN
In her extensive and distinguished journalistic career, Hailey McKeefrey has remained enthusiastic about the supply chain industry and her role within it. She spoke with us about how the industry has changed and how women interested in holding leadership positions can seize opportunities and advance their careers. Read the McKeefrey interview.
Cathy Morris
Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Arrow Electronics
Cathy Morris “stumbled” into the supply chain by coincidence but now holds a top-level leadership role at a Fortune 500 electronics corporation. In our interview, she discusses how she got to where she is today and how to turn each step in a career into a valuable learning experience. Read the Morris interview.
Mickey North Rizza
VP of Strategic Services, BravoSolution
Now a Top Female Supply Chain Executive, North Rizza was a bored pre-law major who switched to materials logistics management when she discovered a love for negotiating when seeking charity items for a sorority fundraiser. She spoke to us about her rise to success, people who have helped her along the way, and advice she can offer to women interested in the supply chain. Read the North Rizza interview.
Kelli Saunders
President, Morai Logistics
Kelli Saunders is a big believer in mentorship. And millennials. And opportunities for women in the supply chain. In her interview, she discusses her career, her advice, and her perspective on challenges within the industry. Read the Saunders interview.
Throughout the month of March, we plan to continue this interview series to shine the spotlight on more of the admirable women who make the supply chain and logistics industries run. Make sure you’re subscribed to our blog or following us on social media to catch them all.
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