Supply Chain Talent Our Most Important Resource

The importance of managing and developing talent is certainly not a new concept to business.

In the classic business book Good to Great, author Jim Collins emphasizes the primacy of people (talent) over direction (strategy) using a metaphor of getting the right people on the bus in the right seats, and removing the wrong people [before beginning a journey].

Critics of this approach point to the idea that organizations never intentionally hire inferior talent or knowingly sabotage themselves from achieving remarkable results. However, our experience interacting with hundreds of companies demonstrates that supply chain leaders often unintentionally deprioritize talent management to the detriment of organizational performance.

Our goal with this white paper is to make a clear case for why talent should be the highest priority - above strategy, cost compression targets, and everything else - and to share best practices from companies that are already finding a focus on talent will successfully address many other business challenges.

In the following sections we will address:

• Key aspects of developing a talent strategy;
• Results from industry research on talent management and critical recommendations based upon that research;
• Eight talent management best practices gleaned from work with best-in-class industry partners;
• Talent management issues in two key hourly supply chain employee categories (drivers and warehouse technicians); and
• Provide a supply chain skill matrix and development plan tool for use in assessing your own supply chain talent development needs.