High Performance Organizations: Embracing generational differences and virtual networks will be key

This is the fifth of six articles on our research into High Performance Organization (HPO) best practices. In our first article, we discussed the challenges — from the speed of business to world events — driving the charge toward High Performance Organization (HPO) renewal. In the second article, we looked at two of what we refer to as established 1980s best practices. The third article looked at what it takes to develop High Performance Leadership. And the fourth article examined the shift from rigid role descriptions based on daily tasks to looser role descriptions enabling work on a series of projects and teams.

Research conducted by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Global Supply Chain Institute (GSCI) reveals that benchmark supply chain companies are leveraging high performance organization (HPO) principles to create substantial competitive advantages by 2025. Previous articles in this series covering GSCI’s research have outlined the ten best practices discovered, detailed five based on established, 1980s principles, and discussed one new to the world principle, Project Oriented Career progression. This article explores two new to the world principles: Embracing Generational Differences and Virtual Networks and how they interplay in the workplace.

Leading supply chain organizations leverage workforce diversity, and specifically generational diversity, to deliver high performance organization (HPO) results. A wealth of research shows that Millennials challenge traditional workplace organization, specifically that they value leveraging technology like virtual networking over traditional communication tools like meetings and phone calls. Best-in-class supply chain organizations recognize that adjusting for generational differences can be a tremendous catalyst for adopting HPO principles.

Understanding how different generations communicate, how more tenured leaders coach and motivate, and the unique developmental opportunities afforded by a diverse work force, reveals how all employees can be fully engaged and empowered.

Embracing generational differences: The pace of market, technology and social change functions as a wedge for different generations: younger generations see change as a challenging opportunity; older generations often see it as threatening and overwhelming. Traditional tactics for helping employees thrive in a changing environment include over communicating, investing in continuous training and development, delegating decision making and reinforcing longstanding company principles and values. While these strategies have their place, simply bringing the strengths of both generations together—the organizational and leadership skills of long-tenured employees with the energy and digital prowess of less-tenured employees—complements both generations to serve the organization.

HPO supply chain organizations consciously build teams that have this tenure diversity, establishing an expectation that employees share their unique perspectives and even encouraging mutual mentoring relationships to ensure the best of both. Employees develop their own mentor-mentee relationships and shadow other employees who can assist them in their work, development, or career planning. These personal relationships often help bridge understanding between generations and an increasingly diverse workforce. Such relationships, when encouraged and enabled by leadership, can also provide a safe setting for employees to share ideas and foster innovation at the pace of market changes. Few tenured employees seek to become obsolete. Few new hires want to ignore the mistakes made by predecessors. Mutual mentoring creates a crosswalk of generational knowledge, and appreciating the power of bringing diverse generational perspectives together is an important part of the HPO and inclusion culture.

Virtual networks: With the onset of COVID-19, virtual teaming can no longer be seen as a ‘nice to have’ business function. HPOs were already using digital teaming apps and in-house virtual community platforms (OnSemble, Mindspark, NiceJob, Honey, VeryConnect) to enable article posting and idea sharing, and foster innovative best practices, social connections and opportunities to contribute beyond local boundaries. These virtual networks allow employees to mentor each other across the organization and unite people in disparate teams with similar technological passions to accelerate adoption and solve pressing business challenges.

While today’s virtual work arrangements present challenges and require adjustments across all generations, virtual networks and teaming can be especially difficult for many tenured leaders. Virtual networks require a new management style, one that is far more tailored to individual needs. No more one-size-fits-all approaches pushed across the organization. Instead, work processes and organizational designs have become flexible and are ‘pulled’ from employee feedback and insights to enable peak performance across the workforce. Giving employees the technological tools to play an active role in their development, work, project planning, and organization are all examples of this pull approach.

Many benchmark companies are marketing their HPO culture and design actively to attract and retain the workforce of the future, while using teamworking technologies to upskill experienced employees and enable them to flourish. Bottom-line, leading supply chains embrace virtual networks while leveraging generational diversity to accelerate HPO adoption and thrive in this environment of unprecedented pace of change and innovation.

About the authors: Mike Burnette is a distinguished fellow at the Global Supply Chain Institute, University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a retired supply chain executive.

Mike Policastro is a researcher at the Global Supply Chain Institute, University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a retired supply chain executive.

About the Research: Research conducted by The University of Tennessee Global Supply Chain Institute reinforces the need for supply chain leaders to prioritize renewing “2025” high performance work systems (HPO) as a primary pathway to competitive advantage (Mike Burnette, Mike Policastro, Tim Munyon, “High Performance Organization Best Practices” – white paper University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business, 2019). An explanation of each best practice can be found in the GSCI white paper (Click here to download a free copy https://www.haslam.utk.edu/gsci).

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