Supercharged Supply Chains

CHAPTER 18People and Behaviors: Get the Team Behind You and Plans Will Be Delivered

It is not enough to have all planning processes correctly defined, documented, and integrated. Leadership and Management must demonstrate the required behaviors, create a culture that supports the approved processes, and hold people accountable for following the new ways of working.

FIGURE 18.1 Business Excellence Planning

As with culture change, the expected behavior change starts with Leadership, ensuring they set the expectations for others. People must be educated, comfortable, confident, and empowered in working with new processes before they will fully align.

Without question, the most often observed behavior that undermines Business Excellence Planning is the failure to distinguish between aggregate and detailed planning and the different management approaches required for each. All too often, Leadership becomes distracted with problems associated with execution details, in the firm and trading zones (usually months 0–3), the zones in which Middle Management should be leading. The near term is where the aggregate plans, previously approved by Leadership, are converted into the detail required for successful planning and scheduling. When Leadership and Middle Management are both focused on the near term, described as a compressed organization, Leadership takes its eye off months 4–24, ...