Competitive Supply Chains: Excellence

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the July/August 2015 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

July/August 2015

When it comes to career development, supply chain managers have to execute a bit of jiu jitsu. They’re charged with nding and developing the next generation of talent while simultaneously advancing their own careers in a eld that is often overlooked by senior management. The biggest challenge of all is getting their agenda in front of the Board at a time when supply chain operations are more critical than ever to an organization’s success, but still largely invisible compared to sales, marketing, and product development. Remember: It’s your career—and your supply chain. We hope this month’s issue will help you make the most of both.

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Amy Chua, known as the “Tiger Mom,” has been praised and criticized for her views on raising children to be high performing. She co-wrote a book, The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America, based on eight successful cultural groups.

The book summarizes three traits that are most predictive of why certain cultural groups perform better: a superiority complex; insecurity; and impulse control. They raise children to believe they are good, but aren’t good enough, and are disciplined to work hard and await results. I believe that an excellent supply chain organization should possess these same traits.

What is Excellence?
During the MIT Supply Chain 2020 Project that researched the future of supply chain, we focused on future excellent supply chains. The research compared today’s excellent supply chains with non-excellent ones in order to answer the question: What is excellence? The definition needed to be reasonable and also operational to provide advice to managers looking to maintain excellence into the future.

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