Supply Chain View

A little while ago I was involved in the recruitment and selection of a planning manager for a new operation. The role involved managing a small team of planning analysts, and we were looking for someone with both strong technical skills and the ability to manage and motivate people. It’s a relatively junior position – we had in mind a bright young professional with 3 or 4 years of relevant experience.

Recruitment dilemmas

What should have been a simple recruitment turned out to be a real headache. The candidates we saw fell into two broad groups. There were those with very good technical knowledge but very poor people skills. And there were those who had the communication skills to manage the team but who lacked technical depth.

Not one candidate came up to the role requirements for both technical knowledge and people skills. Without the former we were concerned the candidate would lack authority with the team or make poor decisions. Without the latter we were worried the team would lack direction and motivation in a difficult period.

In the end we had to make a decision and plan for the second-line manager to support in the weaker area – but that’s recruitment.

Early-careers: generalists and specialists

What’s going on here? My judgement is that we encountered people with different behavioural preferences who, while having similar early-career experience, were on divergent career paths.

Unsurprisingly we found a lot of people who had thrived in planning roles because they enjoyed analytical work. They had not, so far, found their less-developed people skills to be a handicap – perhaps that even allowed them greater concentration on the technical side. These people seemed to be pursuing specialist careers.

Others had been successful for other reasons. They had managed upwards, worked through problems in teams, won support from functional managers – and picked up a reasonable amount of technical know-how along the way. They happened to have picked planning as an area from which to develop a more generalist career.

So partly what we saw was a function of the special nature of the planning discipline, and partly it stemmed from the level of role we were recruiting. In other supply chain roles at this level the challenges are different. Operational managers are usually excellent at communicating with a team and motivating individuals – often in a very forthright way. But they in turn often find it difficult making the transition to more senior roles which require more strategic thinking or sophisticated influencing.

A note to the specialist: “I could have been a contender!”

For those who prefer the technical path, here are a couple of uncomfortable truths. The first is that employers regard people skills as more difficult develop than technical skills. If you don’t have the technical skills as long as you are a good manager and have some aptitude, there is the feeling that you can pick up the technical side pretty quickly.

The second uncomfortable truth is that in the English-speaking world, technical specialists (with the exception of accountants) do not rise to leadership positions. This is not true, for example, in Germany, where the directors of a manufacturing organisation are more than likely to hold a handful of doctoral degrees between them.

So, keeping that in mind, and as it is the time for plans and resolutions, the ambitious technical expert should be thinking about taking control of the situation and developing those people skills him/herself.

In interviews, one of the indicators of a candidate’s people skills is the answer to questions such as: how would you get your team to solve some problem. Those without a good appreciation of people management will concentrate on a technical solution. There is little or no account taken of the team as people rather than cogs in the machine.

A good first step is to remember the motto of the stereotypical method actor: “What’s my motivation?” Yours is probably different from mine, isn’t it? Understanding what other people want can be difficult if you’re not attuned to it – but, it just takes practice. Simply bearing in mind that the other person – your team, your manager, a colleague from another team – has a motivation, is a very good start.

Those who are interested in planning learning could do worse than follow the advice set out in this the Guardian (Work suppliment, 06/01/07) by Dr Laurence Solkin from City University, London. He says:

1. Know what you want to achieve. Why do you want to learn? Where will the skills fit in your life?
2. Experiment… with working at different times of the day. Learning to learn is a skill in itself.
3. Choose to study something that you really enjoy – learning should become fun.

Links

For more on types and behavioural preferences, you might like to read about the Myer’s-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Although not without its problems – not least the idea of the “type” – I believe it can provide valuable insights into behaviour and motivation. This is a good place to start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTI

An Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) is normally used by recruiting employers to assess suitability for a role, but it is also a useful development tool. If you can find a friendly HR person, they may be qualified to run a test for you. OPQ32 is a product of SHL.

In the UK, information on training for supply chain professionals can be found at:
CILT(UK)
IOM

Please leave comment if you have any suggestions for good training providers.