Few businesses have developed a sufficient
understanding of how dependent their competitiveness is on the creation of
skills in the organisation. In general, businesses rely on the spot market for skills,
rather than cultivating skills pipelines to ensure sustainable
competitiveness.
The
360o Success Formula
With the continued emergence of new
technologies and ever evolving customer needs, the sustainable supply chain
management organisation recognises that the skills required to succeed tomorrow
are not the same as the skills required to succeed today. It was once possible
to establish skills benchmarks based on the success of the past, but today we
must anticipate the benchmarks of the future to plan people development
proactively.
Sustainable success calls for a general
skills framework to promote balanced development so that, at every stage of his
or her career, the individual is building a blend of technical, business, and
leadership skills. The key question to be answered is which specific skills
within that framework are most critical?
In today’s environment the answer lies in
regularly re-assessing skills needs against market demands. In this context it
is most instructive to take the skills needs identified in different sections
of this year’s supplychainforesight survey and to classify them according to
the three different types of skills listed above:
|
supplychainforesight
skills needs
|
Type
|
|
Identifying and managing change
|
Leadership
|
|
Growth and expansion into new markets
|
Business
|
|
Enhancement of services and products
|
Technical
|
|
Predicting customer demand
|
Business
|
|
Integration of technology
|
Technical
|
|
Improving the flow of business intelligence
|
Technical
|
|
Improving service levels to customers
|
Business
|
|
Lowering procurement costs and reducing order lead
times
|
Technical
|
|
Outsourcing functions for cost and service
improvement
|
Business
|
|
Improving relations with customers, suppliers and
service providers
|
Leadership
|
This indicates that the organisation needs
to focus away from instances where people are missing skills they need for
their current function and towards opportunities to develop skills they will
need for their next role.
The formula
for enhanced professionalism
Enhanced professionalism is a process, not
an event and it has four key components:
Expectations and attitudes: Whilst on the
one hand it is up to each individual to recognise that their marketability
relies on lifelong learning, the responsibility lies on the organisation to
make recommendations for a career that sets the standard for creating a
development plan.
Education and training: That key ingredient
of formal learning that supports current skill sets and accelerates future
development. Match care must be taken to ensure that what is being offered is
in fact what is needed. In very, very few instances will an off the shelf,
formal training programme cover the exact needs of every learner: some
tailoring will be required by the organisation (that’s what gives you your
competitive edge, dummy!).
Mentoring: Career relationships that foster
individual development
Workbased experiences: There is just no
substitute. But, you say, if we are training for the future and not the now,
how do we ensure that this happens? There are four steps:
1. Identify
“superheroes” who already demonstrate the desired skill. Build your experiential
solution(s) around the key differentiators that separate these “superheroes”
from the rest.
2. Share
with other organisations to find out if they have faced a similar skills gap
and the lessons they learnt in addressing it.
3. Having
identified an experiential solution, run a pilot to evaluate its effectiveness,
adjust as necessary, and gather a group of advocates (participants and their
leaders) who will promote the value of the solution with their peers.
How equipped is your organisation to
capitalise on the opportunities which these times of uncertainty bring?
Are you confident that you have sufficient
skills reservoirs which are the muscles that power organisational flexibility?
Please join the discussion.
