LaHowchic: Well, I think part of it is making sure you really want to be a more a general business manager or leader in an organization and not just a supply chain expert. That doesn’t mean that sometime in your life you shouldn’t have great functional expertise, but you can’t know everything about everything. Hopefully your skills at bringing leadership along allows you to have great people who really have the same desires as you have, and who have the ability to produce similar results.

So, part of it is making sure from a company perspective, no matter what you’re doing in that role, that you are thinking about the supply chain from a total company perspective. Only in that way can you really start to connect, because a key part of leadership is connecting with the rest of the senior team of the company. If you cannot relate with what is important to them and show how your value helps them with their individual imperatives, then you are really not going to be able to do things for the organization that you should be able to do.

Gilmore: In industry overall today, there are a lot fewer COOs - Chief Operating Officers - than there were 10-15 years ago. Is the Chief Supply Chain Officer becoming in many respects the new COO?

LaHowchic: That’s an interesting question. I’d say that what has a bigger impact is when the senior leadership team of a company becomes a quasi-executive office. So, supply chain and/or operations, or supply chain and/or technology, whatever way it lays out, become part of the two or three senior people that are moving the organization forward.

Unfortunately, what I’ve also seen is the politics of one organization slighting another, saying, “We’re the new “sheriff in town.” Versus, “This is the new integrated way we are going to operate the company.”

So, it’s difficult to say. I’ve seen a lot of different models work. There was a time when technology was taking that quasi-COO role. You saw many companies putting CIOs and supply chains together. Others combined IT and finance - a terrible mistake. They built systems that were financially sound but operationally delinquent.

Gilmore: You have worked with several CEOs. What is your advice on how to work most effectively with a chief executive?

LaHowchic: It’s critical to stay up on the imperatives of the company and how you are helping them move the company forward, not what you are doing in supply chain. You have to understand what the agenda items are for the CEO to be successful, and how you can link into those things as directly as possible. That’s the key.

In some cases, that may mean not doing the things in supply chain that you as a technician believe are the things to do, because you are just going to alienate yourself rather than connect the organization together to achieve a better level of performance.

Gilmore: Too often, supply chain executives talk in terms of the technical aspects of the supply chain rather from an overall business perspective, don’t they?

LaHowchic: Exactly. You really shouldn’t have to translate to people at that level about how what you are doing affects your company’s business needs. You should be able to more generally talk about your company and industry business. There may actually be more need for the reverse, translating to your own team at times and hopefully educate them on what the connective tissue is. But it should never have to be that way within the senior teams.

Gilmore: That is a very interesting point. If you are at the “translation” level, you are still not where you need to be in terms of leadership, are you?

LaHowchic: No. It has to be wherever the CEO is coming from. Whatever the imperatives of the company are, you have to relate it to that context. And in some cases - and this happens in every function, so it is not just supply chain – if you are looking for results from someone, you don’t care about the 10 steps it takes to get there. There is an understanding from the CEO that “Look, you need to know the 10 steps, I don’t.” So part of leadership is understanding that.

Gilmore: Over the last couple years, there has been this sort of iron-triangle model regarding supply chain improvements - it’s about people, process and technology. Is that the right model? Did you think about change using these three dimensions, or would you add anything to that triangle?

LaHowchic: Work is activities, and activities are processes done well. They can be made more efficient and very effective. Technology has evolved so much, and now with the Web you have to think about it very differently. On the people side of it, you are always operating inside of a culture, which either needs maintained or enhanced. So all three of those things are important, but at times you really need to go back to the core: “Why are we here?” And the answer to that question is customers, associates, and suppliers.

The whole supply chain is really trying to think of them together, and you need to make sure they are part of that solution set in terms of designing what I’ll call the supply chain architecture. In many cases, unfortunately, we get focused on the people, process and technology first, and then we are try reconnecting with the consumer and the customer again. By the time the supply chain got to that, the other stuff was irrelevant.

So, my dogma is that you continue to go back to the customer. If you don’t keep that straight in front of you, the rest of the stuff is important but not sufficient.

Gilmore: There’s often some debate about how savvy a supply chain leader needs to be in terms of the technology side. What is your take on that?

LaHowchic: What they need to be savvy on I think is more what are the appropriate capabilities, not how the technology works, and I’ve seen some execs get tied up in that. For example, in many cases now we have the ability to have visibility so that we can all parallel process. But most companies still serially process. I don’t really care what technology allows me to do either of those, but understanding that the team can know everything about what is being produced, what is being sold, and everything in between at key milestones, so they could make better, faster and contextual decisions based on a response to the ultimate consumer – that’s what the executive needs to understand.

The underlying technology capabilities that get us there, that’s what CIOs are for.

Let me put this in simple terms. If you are a great race car driver, how much do you need to know why the engine burns the way it does? Your talents and skill are taking those things and getting a better result from it. I think your question about the leadership is very much the same thing. A supply chain leader is not there to figure out what the pit crew ought to know or what the scientist ought to know about the engine, but to know what the engine is capable of doing and how can I use it with other things to move myself, my organization, and my company where it wants to go.

Supply chain leadership needs more than ever to change now to support the growing global nature of business today and the rapidly accessible information that matters to lead organizations that can better than ever create more satisfied consumers and profitable companies. Our belief in this new call to action is what convinced Don Bowersox and I to write a book with this discussion in mind called START PULLING YOUR CHAIN! Leading Responsive Supply Chain Transformations.