thoughtleaders
because of the economic downturn,
the issue is going to resurface.
Regulation is probably going to come
in the future, and they’ve got to figure
out a way to get ahead of that, and at
the same time, they are reducing their
carbon footprint, they are really reduc-
ing their energy usage. It ties very nice-
ly with how you get more efficient.
entire supply chain, the entire value
stream.” We are getting lots of questions
about near sourcing and putting production closer to markets. We are seeing a rise
in interest in more in-depth 3PL and 4PL
services, where we are actually becoming
their lean departments for them and
teaching their businesses how to lean out
their processes.
QWould you say that companies that aren’t taking a look at these sorts of
initiatives could be putting themselves at
risk in the long term?
AI’m not sure that I would term it a risk to a company’s very survival,
but it certainly puts businesses at a risk of
not recovering as quickly when the economy starts to come back. That’s where we
see the differentiators happening—and
again, we’re not talking about the feel-good stance; we’re talking about improvements in energy usage, improvements in
corporate reputation, becoming the
employer of choice, and so forth.
QIf someone were to ask you for advice on how to get a social
responsibility initiative up and running,
what would be on your short list?
ABenchmark against the people out here that are using best practices. We
have done a lot of that and continue to do
that ourselves, even when we feel like we are
making pretty good progress. The other
thing I would stress is the need to have
champions for the initiative at the very, very
top. This is not one of those things that can
bubble up from the bottom. If the executive
team is not behind this, it won’t work.
QAny closing thoughts?
AI can’t put a big enough exclamation point on the statement that the deeper we get into this, the more we surprise
ourselves with the value that is derived. It
has just been stunning to me. You know,
you expect better employee engagement
and you expect good results. You expect
people to notice externally. It has just been
impossible to overestimate how that would
happen and how much people in the company were starved for this sort of thing and
have jumped on board with both feet. ;
