解锁供应链领导潜力的四把钥匙

编者按：

供应链管理负责人经常被要求带领团队进行不断的创新变革。但是，我们是否告诉他们创新变革所需要的技能呢？以下四种技术也许对供应链管理者有所帮助。

本文4359字，大概7分钟阅读时间

文章来源：CSCMP供应链管理季刊（2018年第二期）

文章作者：Bruce c.Arntzen麻省理工学院（MIT）

翻译整理：高珉

随着经济全球化的深入发展，企业对供应链管理的需求越来越高。目前一所顶尖大学毕业并拥有供应链管理硕士或者工商管理硕士毕业的应届毕业生，通常会得到一个薪水很高的供应链岗位。这些新人往往会被安排到一个总部集团，比如说一个“创新中心”专注于推动整个公司的最佳实践。或者他们会被安排到职能岗位，去改变和优化公司的供应链流程，不仅仅是去运营。甚至这些新人还没有到岗就被委以重任，成为流程管理的新星 - “为公司的流程去做改变吧！”。然而对于企业而言，他们需要的是一个能够帮助自身流程管理创新和改变的“变革制造者”，而不仅仅是公司中的一名普通员工。

这个话题说起来容易，但是做起来很难。由于供应链横跨全球各地的设施，同时企业中任何一个结构或因素都会对其产生影响，所以它既是实现变革的最佳战场，也是实现变革的艰难之地。在供应链管理中任何一个不良商业行为环节都会导致企业业绩不佳。例如，工程师在产品设计中喜欢使用定制的、独特的组件。市场营销人员喜欢将SKU（库存单位）扩散。在公司销售季度的最后三天，销售订单突然高增。制造业要求百分百的机器利用率。规划者喜欢电子表格和避开企业ERP系统等等。以上所有的做法都可能导致一个不健康的供应链。此外，不同的职能岗位往往有相互冲突的动机，当然，每个人都有惰性或者不愿意去改变和采纳新的思路及方法。

同时在一个企业组织中还存在其他阻碍变革的屏障。例如一些大型公司中，总部/创新中心与大部门之间存在的冲突。有许多文化、职位和许多性格的人。许多员工不是工程师，也不是专业的商业人士。而是更多的受感情、习惯、态度和传统思维的驱使。最后，在任何大型组织中，都有许多改进方案和变革计划，他们相互之间也都存在的争夺支持和资源的情况。

供应链管理岗位又往往被予以厚望，被期望去“实现变革”，但是没有任何资金、团队或者专业的支持，同时这些新人从未接触和了解企业组织中的各部门以及人际关系。还有一些部门或管理者真的不希望让这些刚刚入职的新人来指挥他们。

所以这是一个具有挑战的岗位，要想迎接这一挑战，仅仅在学校中学到的知识和技能是远远不够的。

我们需要更加专业的教育模式

目前每个以商业为重点的硕士学位和MBA课程都至少安排一节讲授领导力的课程。同时许多公司还为自己的管理层提供内部领导力培训。但是鉴于这些管理者在日常工作中遇到各种各样的突发情况，这些课程是否真正的为他们提供有效的帮助或者说能够正确的引导和辅助？

领导力有很多种形式：项目管理、团队管理、思想领导力、跑步运动、组织跑步、团队拓展、建立联盟、倡导事业、以身作则以及各种形式。

作为教育工作者和企业培训师，哪种类型的领导力是我们针对企业实际情况所设置的课程目标？这些毕业生对领导力的学习需求是他们在大学生涯中学习的课程之外的技能。

目前硕士级供应链课程通常有物流系统，库存管理，数据库分析，供应链计划，全球供应链管理，采购和采购，统计，线性规划，运营研究，财务和成本分析，运输管理，模拟，信息系统等课程。技术和管理主题。一些为期两年的课程还包括在供应链公司中的企业实训。有些课程包括公开课、演讲和写作课。通信专业课程通常包括如何设计一个完美的PPT以及如何在求职面试中写好自己的简历。

那么又有多少课程专门是讲授供应链管理领导力的课程呢？在回顾许多知名供应链硕士课程时，我们发现只有4%-7%的课程涉及到真正的供应链管理。大多数专业都有一门关于领导力的课程，但是我们没有看到用于这些课程的实践课程。截止到目前我们惊喜的发现至少有一所学校提供了关于“创新管理”的供应链课程，但这仅仅是一个例外。

结论

虽然大多数供应链硕士的学生至少上过一门关于领导力的课程，但其中没有多少是针对“创新管理”的。很多领导能力的培训都是通过在职培训来完成的，当然还有很大一部分是通过在企业中经历过多次的时间和验证错误才真正领悟到的。虽然许多公司都提供了领导力的课程，根据我们收到的反馈表明，他们与大学水平的课程同样都存在类似的缺陷。

目前的领导力课程都包括什么？在我们的研究中，整理出最常见的领导力课程，包括团队领导力、自我评估、领袖风采、有效的沟通、领导力和职业道德、组织能力、领导理论和案例研究、团队激励等。但是关于优秀领导者的特征、高级管理人员的领导模式、伟大领导力的组成部分以及管理心理学的课程设置就不那么频繁，可以看出领导力和创新管理的课程并不常见。

缩小知识差距

这些领导力的课程与许多刚刚加入工作的毕业生所面临的现实不符。我们换位思考一下，假如我们是一名刚刚参加工作的毕业生，您将成为跨国公司卓越中心的新员工，有这很高的薪酬和待遇，同时你可以直接向供应链副总裁汇报。在没有团队、预算以及实际权限的情况下，你的老板要求你做以下的任务：

访问我们遍布全国的每个配送中心的运输经理，让这些人建立集中采购运输服务。

访问销售和财务组织，让这些人重新开始参与销售和运营计划（S＆OP）流程。

去俄亥俄州辛辛那提的工厂，让那些人开始使用我们刚刚支付1000万美元的新规划软件。

去销售并让他们在本月的最后一周停止引入所有订单。 

去说服设计工程师在他们的产品设计中使用独特的定制原材料。

仅仅拥有传统领导力技术的课程对于上面这些场景应用往往是无助的。那么作为教育工作者（和公司培训师）如何才能做得更好？我们建议将重点放在还在学习过程中的学生，而不是等他们成为首席执行官的时候再去培训。学生需要简单实用的工具或方法，以便他们能够轻松的记住。

我们在为麻省理工学院（MIT）供应链管理计划开发课程时，对当前基于理论和自我评估的领导力课程的不足经过了四次专门的研讨实验，重点的“如何让变革成为现实”。我们发现，在许多领导力课程中使用的自我评估和人格类型的培训方案很难转化为具体的领导力技巧。此外，作为领导力计划的基础课程学生们对自己的性格类型记忆很模糊。因此，我们把重点放在角色扮演的练习上，这些练习可以帮助学生通过反复的操作来掌握必要的领导技能。

“如何让变革成为现实”具体的研讨实验思路：

主观因素

这个实验是老师安排了一批学生通过逐一上台演讲，演讲者与听众的互换。研究构成听众心里定式的主观原因。人类从出生到长大，都喜欢观察人的脸部。例如在一个很大的展架上，你能看到很多很多的杂志封面，封面的目的就是让一个人停下来，拿起杂志并开始阅读。出于这个原因，你在现实中看到的报摊上几乎所有的杂志都会有一张人脸图片。同时在研究用我们还发现，与脸部相关的口头或文本描述的效果会更好，并且传播时间会更长。结果得知，通过图片、图表以及原理图来提升供应链管理更加有说服力。

同时这个测试教会学生如何在演讲中使用图片以及如何通过文字描述让听众听起来能够想象出来是一个真实的人。在测试中学生们通过分组比赛的形式，在提前一个小时的如何能够提高主观因素的开发令人信服为主题。当课程开始时，每个小组都会使用他们的演讲PPT来说服其他小组，并得到支持。

VELD

是Vision, Emotion, Logic, and Details.的简写，视觉、情感、逻辑和细节。在供应链管理创新过程中，我们需要跟形形色色的人建立联系并说服他们支持我们的事业。对于很多人来说，没有一个很强的说服力和论据是不能够让人信服和支持你的。例如当前我们面对的全球变暖、疫苗接种和转基因作物等等问题，我们需要的不仅仅是正义感。VELD方法的灵感来自亚里士多德的三种说服模式（逻辑、人格和情感）。在测试中我们发现学生们在逻辑这个模式上遇到了困难，我们发明了VELD，它为我们现有的“诉诸逻辑和细节”的倾向增加了“诉诸令人信服的未来愿景”和“诉诸情感”。

这个实验教会了我们的学生如何根据不同情境的需要针对不同受众的特点，利用推理加以人格和情感的诉诸及时注意受众的反应。以理服人，以情动人，情与理相结合最终让对方接受自己的说服。在以数字为想到的传统教学中，课程往往安排学生通过逻辑和细节来完成每个项目。如何通过愿景以及情感的诉求吸引力往往被忽略掉了。然而大多数人还是受愿景和情感吸引力的影响比较多的，而不是受逻辑和细节的影响。例如最近的选举活动。

在测试中，学生们被安排了不同的角色，例如市议会、交通部、文化委员会和NASA等等。每个小组都有不同的VELD配置文件。然后各个小组设定不同的主题和目标，去说服其他人，同时展现和证明自己的观点。

互投赞成票

在立法机关中，1835年美国众议院众议员戴维克罗克特首先将（据称）称为“互投”的幕后交易投票行为。为了支持一项事业，我们通常的直觉反应是成为一名传道者，并使怀疑者和反对者相信我们立场的利益和正义。这个工作量很大，可能不会成功。在非常大的组织中，特别是跨国公司，任何时候都有很多变革计划在推广。每个关键决策者都可以支持或反对或中立任何这些举措。通过在幕后安静地工作来理解每个关键决策者在每个问题上的立场，可以促进项目的推动。

这个测试有两个角色扮演。最初，六到八名学生的团队，无知登记，试图说服他们的同伴以任何方式支持他们的创新计划，通常是通过激烈的争论。后来他们发现他们可以通过互投更快地达成交易并减少用力。在最后的角色扮演中，他们练习互投以快速进行交易。

Cialdini的六种劝说原则

亚利桑那州立大学心理学和市场营销荣誉教授罗伯特·西亚迪尼（Robert Cialdini）在其畅销书“《影响：说服的心理学》”中阐述了六种说服方法：互惠，信守承诺，社会证明，权威，喜欢和稀缺。我们每天都看到这些，因为营销公司是使用这些原则来销售产品的专家。“这个价格只剩下两个名额”是稀缺的一个例子。但这不仅仅是使用这些技术的营销公司。发展中国家停在红灯处，穷困潦倒的人们会冲上去挡风玻璃，希望得到小费。这是互惠的一个例子。

在测试中教授学生如何在一个大型组织中以非常微妙，专业的方式使用这六项原则，以建立对其创新工作的支持。学生团队通过角色扮演练习六种技巧，并讨论在每个示例场景中使用哪些技巧。

帮助变革者成长

我们的优秀毕业生相对分析技能而言更加需要领导技能。然而，领导力培训仅占大多数供应链计划课程的4%到7%。此外，对于我们有天赋的毕业生和新员工，所提供的领导力培训通常针对的技能都不含有“创新管理”。

 “实现改变”，教育工作者和企业培训师都需要改变他们教授这些重要技能的方法。需要简单实用的技术来为大型不同组织提供支持。通过角色扮演反复练习是发展这些技能的关键。

本文中描述的测试代表了良好的第一步，但相对创新，无疑将得到改进，因为我们收到学生的反馈，并获得更多这种新方法的经验。我们欢迎来自学术和企业教育工作者的反馈。

“后起之秀”的绰号不是给那些创造最佳线性规划模型的人。这是给予改变发生的人。让我们为未来的领导者提供他们今天和明天成为有效变革推动者所需的工具。

SCPro™认证可以对贯穿于供应链活动中的知识与技能进行评估。以从业人员为对象，该认证流程考察其分析实际案例以及制定可以实现诸如提升ROI水平的综合项目计划的能力。以此为基础，SCPro™认证进一步对其在战略层面的商业挑战评估以及有效实施供应链改善方案的能力进行验证。

点击了解SCPro F级认证项目

以下是英文原文，如果中文翻译的不准确，请指出哦。

原汁原味读起来更过瘾！

英文原文

Four keys for unlocking leadership potential

Supply chain managers are often called upon to lead major change initiatives. But are we doing a good job teaching them the skills they need? Here are four techniques that could help.

When students graduate from top universities with a master of supply chain management or master of business administration (MBA) degree, they typically command a very high salary. And in our experience, hiring managers have equally high expectations. They want a "change maker," not just another cog in the organizational machine. Top graduates often get hired into a headquarters group, such as a "center of excellence," that focuses on driving best practices across the company. Similarly, if they are hired as a functional manager, they are expected to improve the process, not just run it. Even before they arrive, new hires are expected to be the rising star, to "go make change happen!"

But that's often easier said than done. Because the supply chain straddles facilities across the globe and is affected by almost every other function in the company, it is both the best place to make change happen and a tough place to make change happen. Bad business practices in those other functions cause poor performance especially in the supply chain. For example, engineers use custom-made, unique components in product designs. Marketing loves stock-keeping unit (SKU) proliferation. Sales piles up orders in the last three days of the quarter. Manufacturing wants 100-percent machine utilization. Planners love spreadsheets and shun enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. All of these practices can lead to an unoptimized supply chain. Furthermore different functions often have conflicting motivations and, of course, everyone has inertia, or a reluctance to change and adopt new ideas.

Other barriers to change exist in the corporate structure. In a multinational corporation, there is conflict between headquarters/centers of excellence and big divisions. There are many cultures, many functions, and many types of people. Many employees are not engineers or quantitatively focused business people, but are driven more by emotions, feelings, habits, attitudes, and tradition. Finally, in any large organization, there are many improvement programs and change initiatives all competing for support and resources.

So, top graduates are typically expected to "go make change happen" but without any funding, staff, or authority and among all types of people who they have never met before. Moreover, the divisions and remote sites really don't want a "youngster" from headquarters coming to tell them what to do. 

It's a tough challenge, and to stand a chance of meeting it, graduates at least need to be equipped with skills and knowledge they learned at college or in corporate training programs that can help them to perform as leaders. Invariably, however, this is not the case. 

Classrooms fall short

Every business-focused master's degree and MBA program teaches leadership in at least one course. And many corporations also provide internal leadership training for their best and brightest. But given the wide variety of leadership scenarios that managers can encounter, are we teaching the right ones? 

Leadership comes in numerous forms: leading projects, leading teams, thought leadership, running operations, running organizations, leading troops up the hill, building coalitions, championing causes, leading by example of good work, and countless more.

As educators and corporate trainers, which type of leadership should be our target in the classroom?

One of the reasons why business graduates are ill-prepared for leadership challenges is that they are not learning the right skills in advanced degree programs.

Consider the master's-level supply chain curriculum. There are typically courses on logistics systems, inventory management, database analytics, supply chain planning, global supply chain management, sourcing and procurement, statistics, linear programming, operations research, finance and cost analysis, transportation management, simulation, information systems, and other technical and management topics. Some two-year programs include a summer internship at a company site working in a supply chain role. There are programs that include classes in public speaking, presentations, and writing. Communications courses often cover how to give an excellent PowerPoint presentation and how to tell your story in a job interview.

How much of the curriculum is devoted to teaching leadership skills? In reviewing the curricula of many of the top supply chain master's programs, we found that only 4 to 7 percent is devoted to any kind of leadership training. Most curricula have one course about leadership. We saw no internships devoted to learning leadership. We were delighted that at least one school offered a supply chain course on "change management," but that was the exception.

Conclusion: Although most supply chain master's students take at least one course on leadership, not much of that is targeted to "go make change happen." Likely, most leadership is learned over the years through "on the job training." Most people pick it up by osmosis and/or trial and error. Many companies offer leadership programs, but the feedback we receive on these programs suggests that they have similar flaws to those offered at the college level.

What are the current teaching approaches? In our research we found that the most frequent aspects of leadership courses focus on leading teams, self-assessment, personal leadership style, effective presentations, leadership and ethics, organizational processes, leadership theory and case studies, leading organizations, energizing others, and building high-performance organizations. Less frequent are courses on attributes of great leaders, leadership models for the C-suite, components of great leadership, and management psychology. It was uncommon to see a course on leadership and the implementation of change.

Closing the knowledge gaps

These types of leadership courses do not match the reality that many recent master's-level graduates face. Imagine the setting. With your new master's degree in supply chain, you are the new hire into a center of excellence in a multinational corporation. You are paid very well and report directly to the vice president of supply chain. You are an individual contributor with no staff, no budget, and no actual authority but are viewed as the new "whiz kid." Your boss asks you to do tasks such as:

Go visit the transportation managers in each of our      distribution centers across the country and get those people to set up centralized procurement of transportation services.

Go visit the sales and finance organizations and get      those people to start participating in the sales and operations planning      (S&OP) process again.

Go to the plant in Cincinnati, Ohio, and get those      people to start using the new planning software that we just paid US$10      million for.

Go to sales and get them to stop bringing in all      their orders in the last week of the month. 

Go convince design engineering to reign in their use      of unique custom-built raw materials in their product designs.

Having had one class where a leadership technique is described will not help a new supply chain manager deal with these types of scenarios. How can educators (and corporate trainers) do better? We recommend that the focus should be on what students need right now—the day after graduation—not when they become CEO. Students need simple, practical down-to-earth tools to use immediately that they can easily remember.

Our dissatisfaction with current theory-based and self-assessment-based leadership classes led us to develop four workshops for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Supply Chain Management program that focus specifically on "go make change happen." We found that the self-assessment and personality-type training programs that are used in many leadership classes are hard to translate into tangible leadership techniques. Furthermore, students often times could not remember enough about their personality types for that to be the basis of their leadership plan. For that reason, we focused on role-playing exercises that could help students practice the necessary leadership skills many times.

Each of these two- to three-hour workshops follows a similar format of an initial introduction to the whole class, breaking into smaller teams (four to eight people) for role-playing, and then reassembling as the whole class for a discussion and team testimonials. A preview of these workshops is given below and will be described in more detail in four subsequent articles, which will appear on Supply Chain Quarterly's website.

The workshops we created to teach "go make change happen" are as follows:

The Human Element. This workshop teaches quantitatively trained students how to use the "Human Element" to connect with a large audience of "regular people" when they give presentations. Human beings like to look at other human faces and are programmed to do this from birth. If you pause in front of a large magazine stand and look at all the covers, you can see this theory in practice. The purpose of the cover is to make a person stop, want to pick up the magazine, and read it. For this reason, nearly all the magazines you see on a newsstand will have a picture of a human face. Our experience also shows that verbal or text statements connected to a face sink in better and are retained longer. By contrast, persuasion in math and engineering—and therefore in supply chain management—is done through graphs, charts, schematics, and proofs. No human element.

This workshop teaches students how to include pictures of people in their presentations and how to have their key messages appear to be statements coming from real people. Teams of students in breakout rooms are assigned opposing sides of a controversial issue and are given one hour to develop a convincing presentation using the Human Element. When the class reconvenes, each team uses their presentation to persuade the rest of the class to support their position.

"VELD" or Vision, Emotion, Logic, and Details. To drive a change program in a large organization, it is necessary to connect with and persuade all kinds of people—not just engineers and business types—to support the cause. It is human nature to try to convince other people using arguments that sound most convincing to ourselves. For quantitative people, this does not work so well. Think about the current rebellion against such scientific concepts as global warming, vaccinations, and genetically modified crops. It takes more than just quantitative righteousness to carry the day. The VELD method is inspired by Aristotle's three modes of persuasion (ethos, pathos, and logos). We realized that we and our students were stuck on logos (appeal to logic) as the only valid persuasive method. Therefore we invented VELD which adds both "appeal to a compelling future vision" and "appeal to emotion" to our existing tendency to "appeal to logic and details."

This workshop teaches science, engineering, and business students how to incorporate vision and emotion statements in their arguments. Traditionally, math-oriented curricula urge students to make recommendations and business cases by laying out the logic and the details. Appeals to compelling visions or appeals to emotion are scorned in quantitative settings. Yet the large majority of "regular people" are influenced more by a compelling vision and an emotional appeal than by logic and details. Think about some recent elections!

In the workshop, teams of students are assigned an imaginary audience such as the City Council, Department of Transportation, Cultural Committee, and NASA, among others. Each has a different VELD profile. Teams then proceed to create a pitch tailored to persuade that audience, which they then present and justify to the assembled class. 

Logrolling. In a legislature, the act of trading votes behind the scenes to get your bill passed was (supposedly) first referred to as "logrolling" by Congressman Davy Crockett of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1835. To champion a cause, our usual gut reaction is to become an evangelist and convince the doubters and naysayers of the benefits and righteousness of our position. This is a lot of work and may not succeed. In very large organizations, especially a multinational corporation, there are always many change programs being promoted at any one time. Each key decision maker can be for or against or neutral on any of these initiatives. Logrolling can be facilitated by working quietly behind the scenes to understand the positions of each of the key decision makers on each issue. It is then possible to bring together people who are neutral on each other's issue and have them agree to support the other person's issue, thereby building enough support to ensure that your issue gets passed.

This workshop has two role plays. Initially, teams of six to eight students, ignorant of logrolling, try to persuade their peers to support their change program any way they can, usually by impassioned arguments. Later they see that they could have reached a deal faster and with less exertion through logrolling. In a final role play, they practice logrolling to quickly make deals.

Cialdini's Six Principles of Persuasion. Robert Cialdini, professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University, brilliantly laid out in his best-selling book, **italic{Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,} the six methods of persuasion: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity. We see these every day since marketing firms are experts at using these principles to sell things. "Only two seats left at this price" is an example of scarcity. But it's not just marketing firms that use the techniques. Stop at a red light in the developing world and destitute people will rush out to wash your windshield in hopes of getting a tip. That's an example of reciprocity.

This workshop teaches students how to use these six principles in a very subtle, professional way in a large organization to build up support for their change effort. Teams of students practice the six techniques through role-playing and discuss which ones to use in each example scenario.

Helping change makers excel

Many of our top graduates are in greater need of leadership skills than analytical skills. Yet leadership training makes up only 4 to 7 percent of the curriculum of most supply chain programs. Furthermore the leadership training that is provided is often targeted at less important skills than "go make change happen." For our gifted graduates and new hires to "go make change happen," both educators and corporate trainers need to change their approach to teaching these vital skills. Simple, practical techniques to generate support across large diverse organizations are needed. Repeated practice through role playing is key to developing these skills.

The workshops described in this article represent a good first step but are relatively new and will no doubt be refined as we receive feedback from students and gain more experience in this new approach. We welcome feedback from academic and corporate educators.

The moniker of "rising star" is not given to the person who creates the best linear-programming model. It is given to the person who makes change happen. Let's give future leaders the tools they need to be effective change agents today and tomorrow.