THE TITLE OF THIS COLUMN MIGHT BE SUNG TO THE
tune of a Peter, Paul, and Mary hit from the days of peace and
love. But the real question could—and should—be, “Where are
all the leaders coming from?” Not that we are awash in leaders.
The supply chain management space has produced, or attracted, pioneering icons since the early 1960s. Some were, and are,
leaders. Most were, and are, managers, practitioners, mavens,
gurus, and factotums. And the trailblazers are dying off, surely
and steadily.
So, what are we, as an industry, doing to
create successors who can do more than drive
the bus we are already riding in? The casual
observer would conclude, “Not much.”
WHERE DO LEADERS COME FROM?
Before we understood that leaders could be
“made”—developed with tutelage and practice—they were “born.” We believed that some
among us were just hard-wired at birth to
create, visualize, persuade, motivate, charm,
empathize, and communicate—to lead by
example, to embody core values, to walk the
talk, and to attract followers. It took us a long time to probe what
made leaders different and what made them tick. It took us a
while to suspect, to research, to learn, and to codify the attributes
that made them leaders.
We now know that leadership can be developed and honed,
that no one has to be locked out of a leadership role by accident
of birth. But that raises the question of who will nurture a next
generation of both do-ers and leaders, as well as managers and
administrators.
By and large, organizations do not provide specific career
development designed to create leaders; they might not know
why they should, and they most probably don’t know how.
Universities are absolutely wizard at teaching functionality, at
execution levels and in integrated concepts contexts when it
comes to supply chain management (and many other disciplines). They may teach management skills and administrative
techniques.
Don’t get me wrong; these are important. Someone has to man-
BY ART VAN BODEGRAVEN basictraining
Where have all the leaders
gone? Long time passing …
age inventories; someone has to ride herd on
sales and operations planning (S&OP) processes; someone has to design distribution networks,
or source materials, or rationalize the carrier
portfolio. But to what end? To what vision and
strategy that a leader has positioned as a unified objective toward which to align resources
and effort? And who, where, is creating leaders,
nurturing those who can conceive visions and solutions—
and develop followers?
WHAT IS A LEADER?
Definitions and descriptors
abound, depending on whose
book you have just read. Pick
an exemplar, any exemplar.
Jack Welch, Rudy Giuliani,
Colin Powell, Dick Cheney,
Dwight Eisenhower, George
Patton, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli,
whatever and whomever
turns you on. Absorb the wisdom of busi-
ness writers: Tom Peters, Michael Porter, Guy
Kawasaki, Daniel Goleman, Daniel Pink, Simon
Sinek, Stephen Covey, Ken Blanchard—the list
is endless, a Mobius strip of both acclaimed and
self-appointed experts.
Here’s what leadership comes down to,
though, and it is not a slogan or a simple set of
attribute labels. In essence, leaders:
; Create, keep, and pursue visions
; Align teams around objectives
; Know their team members on both personal
and professional levels
; Build teams deliberately for skills, experience, and style mix
; Understand, and teach others, team dynamics, roles, and stages of growth
; Communicate, with forethought, in written,
