Supply chain talent is scarce and interest in the profession is thin. What can the supply chain community do to make the profession known and attractive? What should supply chain directors in 2030 be able to do and what needs to be done to prepare talents to do so? In any case, 21st century skills appear to be more important than technical knowledge.
In late June, the third meeting of the Supply Chain Excellence Leadership Platform (SCELP) on talent development focused on this theme. Guest speaker Jan Suiskens, creative director of CorporateTrailer, confronted the attending supply chain directors with an uncomfortable fact: on a list of 50 favourite professions of students, the profession of supply chain does not appear in any way. He himself also had to look up what it is and in the process got caught up in a multitude of words. Not an ideal starting point for recruiting young talent in an overstrained labour market. Yet there is hope.
Reaching and convincing talents
To get students excited about supply chain management from an early age, the business community should, above all, show how much impact you can have with it. Whether it is sustainability, interesting products or big events: they are all based on collaboration. Someone has to direct that collaboration: the supply chain director. By using techniques of storytelling and focusing on a young audience not yet familiar with the profession, companies can spark a love for supply chain management. After all, students make college choices at a young age and if the profession is not in the picture then, you lose these talents at an early stage.
Suiskens therefore suggests building a storyline, a 'never ending story' in the form of a series of short and powerful videos aimed at young people, highlighting all facets of the profession. Combined with a targeted online strategy for dissemination, this could lead to reaching and convincing the talents we so desperately need online.
What skills does a supply chain director need?
If young people choose the profession of supply chain management, what, above all, should they learn? To determine that, the SCELP community in attendance got together to discuss the ideal profile of the supply chain director in 2030. Four clear focal points emerged from this:
1. Customer focus
This one stands at undisputed number 1: a supply chain professional must always start from the customer, use the customer journey as a starting point and want to add value. This requires outside-in thinking. The supply chain professional does not have to physically work with the customer himself, but must be able to work with parties such as sales and marketing to get to the bottom of what is important to customers and to represent customer interests in the best possible way.
2. Connecting collaboration
Supply chain professionals must be able to work with many different parties, not from functional silos, but from an end-to-end perspective. This is all the more important in a rapidly changing environment that requires adaptive working within an agile organisation.
3. Working strategically from business model
Supply chain is part of a bigger picture and largely determines the success of a company. The supply chain professional must be able to translate the company's business model into a supply chain that is optimally aligned with it, from the business strategy and long-term perspective. He or she must be able to answer the question: what customer value do we want to offer now and in the future, what is needed to continue realising this over a longer period of time and what choices do we have to make to achieve this now?
4. Digital proficiency and systems thinking
We are in a sixth industrial wave in the Kondratieff cycle: the digital age, with technologies such as nanotechnology, biopharma and AI. It is important that today's talents realise this and can deal with it, that they are the drivers of these developments and understand their potential application. This also ties in with another important theme, namely system thinking: seeing how everything is connected and being able to respond to it.
Call: pay more attention to skills
What does this mean for training in the profession? SCELP members conclude that some basic technical knowledge is definitely necessary. In the list of technical knowledge that a supply chain director should learn during their studies, the attendees mainly see added value in data analytics, (supply chain) finance, network design and business IT.
In addition, skills such as collaboration, communication and strategic thinking and action are just as important. Guest speaker Elle Dings, VP Supply Chain at Lumileds underlined this with the story of her international supply chain career. Her success in this role is mainly explained by her ability to be able and willing to work with everyone, her understanding of complex systems and the initiative to tackle problems quickly and solve them together. In this way, supply chain can drive Lumineds' business.
Traditionally, current academic and higher education is still mainly geared to transferring knowledge. Even within companies, the ability to properly mentor young talents in strategic and interpersonal skills is still often lacking. This is still a task for business and education to work together to create a curriculum that optimally prepares young supply chain talents for a career in this field.
SCELP's next meeting will be on the topic of sustainability and will take place in the third quarter of 2021.
