🌟 Leadership: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.“ Leadership in the sight of the transformation from tactical to strategic.

Case Study - Leadership within Siemens Smart Infrastructure Supply Chain-Logistics by Sven Markert Alexander Tschentscher

Leadership is required to create a holistic supply chain strategy for a diverse business: Outperforming, Adaptable and Flexible, Digital Interlinked 

Leadership is a set of behaviors used to help people align their collective direction, to execute strategic plans, and to continually renew an organization. 

~Benjamin Franklin 

Accountability in the supply chain nowadays brings in various challenges on the one hand side supply chain is visible and has awareness all over the world from shortages to staffing to sustainability, on the other hand Supply Chain must deal with extreme pressure to ensure a stable customer experience. 

This is the tipping point of management to leadership – keep the focus on influence towards a long-term goal without neglecting operational accountability. 

The goal is clearly to create a better future with all Supply Chain has to offer. Future markets are getting more volatile and require flexibility and adapting quickly towards changes. Support in crisis and push growth phases will be essential. Today’s historically grown and established structures do not focus on preparation for these markets. 

Supply Chain has dedicated roles from classical boosting customer service, reducing operational cost and improving financial positions to societal roles like ensuring human survival, improve quality of life and creating the sustainable base for the future generations. 

All these roles require culture change, especially in a matrix organization in large companies. 

Leadership is not a one-way road nor a gridlock, it depends on the team, it depends on the ones who are willing to courageously follow. 

This creates a broad acceptance of trust and accountability, which supports the evolution of Supply Chain & Logistics.

Supply Chain strategies often fail to provide a methodology for the frequent connection between business strategies and disruptions.

Strategy implementations are linked to a high failure rate, often caused by the lack of the ability of the underlying strategic framework to resist risks and manage changes. Many functional strategies are not being able to be closely aligned with the business strategy, which also results in challenges and isolation for functional strategies. In this regard, especially supply chain management and logistics strategies may lead to ineffectiveness and failure in the face of future disruptions to supply chains. The reason is that strategic frameworks in supply chain management and logistics often neglect the required adaptability to the faster pace of change and the required dynamics in the volatile and uncertain world. Instead, they are often closely linked to the enhancement of quality, cost, and time. Future strategic frameworks in supply chains need to consider market impacts and developments as well as strategic goals in a dedicated struc- ture.

The need for action:

• Being visionary beyond executive
• Being architect beyond planner
• Being catalyst beyond director
• Being coach beyond controller

Visionary and architect does not only require having the skills but much more to bring in the right people, who create and design the models which foster the implementation.

One example is our well-known and communicated Strategic Diamond:

Our Strategic Diamond is the conceptual base to create structure, allowing us to continuously identify, integrate and, if needed, adopt to change (as risk & opportunity) from market into our strategy and allows for being strategic rather than deviating to tactics. It filters the relevant impacts on the strategy. In addi- tion, it addresses the reasonable challenges to keeping the strategy relevant and alive. Thus, it facilitates supply chain leaders in not merely focusing on current but beyond leveraging future profits. Overall, it concentrates on four core characteristics:

• CONNECTIVE: Connecting external market side and internal strategy side
• SAFEGUARDING: Acting as a shielding layer for impacts on the strategy
• ADAPTABLE: Keeping strategy’s relevance high through an adaptable framework
• TRANSPARENT: providing intra-organizational transparency

The role of a Vision

Vision gives direction and a view on the journey to the supply chain of the future; it is the why we follow to reach our goals and purpose becomes reality. To understand where we want to be, we must have a clear vision. So, as the vision clarifies purpose, our daily actions will become simpler and more meaningful.

In Siemens Smart Infrastructure Supply Chain, we created a vision which covers the major elements, we believe have key influence in the supply chain.

Robust: as it will logically not work to continuously request resilience - Being able to react in combination with long-term robustness

→ Avoid the collapse of the supply chain

Smart decisions: addresses digitalization and automation

→ We have a leading role in SC-digitalization and set new standards, striving for performance and process excellence with highly skilled people.

Dynamic World: “Multi-challenges”, no sequence and limited time to recover request a different approach to ensure your organization does not burn out,

Care: The focus not only on expectation, but experience. This is valid for customer

→ Our logistics is a differentiator for the business based on outstanding logistics performance and total customer experience and our environment

→ Ambitious activity to authentic achievement & Transformation into our supply chain sustainability world.

So we consider performance as the combination of Ability + Motivation + Attitude.

The role of empowerment

Siemens Smart Infrastructure Supply Chain & Logistics is represented by a unique team from different cultures, competence backgrounds and skill expertise level. Bringing these personalities together creates the ecosystem that sparks the inventive thinking leading to create the supply chain strategy.

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.

~Albert Einstein

Empowerment plays a major role as we create a structure of trust, encouragement, and teamwork, which not only executes, but furthermore is future oriented.

"Finding the Team Diamonds”

This leads to an organization which is becoming stronger and more confident. Individuals shine and team contribution increases.

"With coaching and Mentoring individuals are supported to stand in and be “#onesilogistics”

One mayor success factor is the understanding of the importance of followers, leadership is nothing without the ones that courageously follow.

How do we support the “one community” – three fields can be mentioned here:

1.        Creating team spirit with logo’s visual, catchphrases and more

2.        Flat hierarchies with ownership and guidance

3.        Open and frequent communication