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Michael J. Stolarczyk

2012 presents our industry with a plethora of challenges. These opportunities in supply chain and logistics will evolve via a simple, SOCIAL framework, utilizing vested collaboration:

  • Speed: Everything is happening faster between purchase order to point of purchase. Cash flow is affected by technology, people and process.
  • Open, cloud-based technologies: If you don’t have an open environment inside your company, and give your partners a chance to share in that open-source environment, tools deployed by smaller, more nimble organizations will chip away at your market share.
  • Collaboration, empathy through open dialogue: Determining involvement in your partner’s decision-making process indicates the level of interest a company has in delivering quality service. A solid communication program and vested collaboration with customers is essential.
  • Individual, application programming interface, geographic information systems and augmented reality: We have the ability to reach across the globe to collaborate on something farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before — as individuals or corporations.
  • Alignment, empathy and attunement: With the power of social media, the cloud and new technologies, it’s easier than ever to articulate and reinforce the vision and values that create and inspire alignment.
  • Leadership, less ego: Leadership must be a mix of bottom-up and top-down. Leaders need to inspire, enable and empower everything percolating up from below in a company and then edit and sculpt it with a vision from above, creating a mutually beneficial final product. To succeed, industry executives need to lose their ego to lead.

Successful partner organizations that build mutual empathy and vested collaboration need to establish a committed leadership structure — creating insight, foresight and trust, not just oversight.