Choice Overload

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the May-June 2016 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

May-June 2016

The procurement function is at an inflection point.” So begins “The reinvention of procurement," an article by Jonathan Hughes and Danny Ertel, partners at the Boston-based consulting firm Vantage Partners. The authors argue that while many leading companies have transformed their procurement organizations into a linchpin of their enterprise strategy, far too many others remain trapped by procurement models that are out of date in today’s fastpaced economy, where the acquisition of innovation, collaboration, services and solutions is more important than transactions based on the lowest cost per unit. Reinvention is a fitting theme for…

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Water, water every where, Nor any drop to drink.

From The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

The old sailor telling his tale in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem has just returned from a long voyage. He recounts how he shot an albatross that was once viewed as a good omen for the voy¬age, and how he was then blamed by his crew when the winds turned against them and they were trapped on a ship going nowhere, depleting their supplies. They were surrounded by salt water, but neither he nor the rest of the crew had a drop of fresh water to drink. It became the albatross around his neck.

In today’s business world, those lines could be updated for any manager who, like the ancient mariner, is surrounded by data and information and choices to be made based on that information—in fact, there can be so many choices and so much information that it is difficult to move the ship forward. Think of it as “choice overload.” As with the ancient mariner, the plethora of choices becomes an albatross around the manager’s neck.

While choice overload could apply to any functional area of an organization, I believe there is no area within product-based companies where this is more applicable than the supply chain. Managers are challenged every day to make the right decisions to get orders out the door, deal with the inevitable hiccups of late deliver¬ies, inventory shortages and quality miscues all while coming up with new processes to enable new business strategies. Therefore, although this article has applica¬tion across a business, the necessity for avoiding choice overload is greatest when it comes to making supply chain choices. For that reason, I think it is important that supply chain managers put in place a foundation of strong leadership that can cut through the choice over¬load and make the decisions that drive supply chain excellence. The following is a look at what I call the “cycle of choice overload” as well as recommendations for supply chain leaders who want to break the vicious cycle, and get the albatross off from around their necks.

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