Quick Take: Transforming the supply chain with hybrid work teams

The best B2B innovations arise from collaboration between companies; can innovators apply hybrid practices, building the "supply chain of the future" via teams of external business partners?

Teamwork, redesigned

Perhaps the most crucial pandemic lesson about the future of work is that workforces are forever hybrid; teams will sometimes work together from far-flung locations, enabled by virtual technologies, and at other times they will work in real-world spaces through direct human-to-human interactions. The best companies will master the organizational design and talent management requirements for operating as a hybrid company and achieving a competitive advantage.

In an MIT Sloan Management Review article, The Future of Team Leadership Is Multimodal, Michael Watkins and Robert Hooijberg provide expert guidance and useful examples for helping companies enable teams to excel in a post-pandemic, digital-age workforce. Global and local supply chain leaders can draw on these insights, but with a critical difference: The most consequential B2B innovations result not from teams working within a company but from teams with members collaborating across companies.

Through collaboration, digital-age innovations may change the way distribution systems work by leveraging shared data, connected processes, and coordinated activities. Progress requires that suppliers, intermediaries, and customers digitally transform by acting not just in their own interest but by working together toward a shared purpose and mutual benefit. New leadership frameworks and skills are required, and Watkins and Hooijberg point the way for leading in virtual and in-person modes, digging in with actionable insights for driving new outcomes through the face-to-face meetings that are essential for achieving change.

Reading the article, I learned that virtual teams are best managed when leaders act as a conductor, coordinating efforts by “establishing goals, monitoring progress, driving information sharing, and sustaining connections among colleagues working remotely.” But when teams work face-to-face, leaders must shift modes and act as a catalyst. Supply chain leaders must be trained to operate in different modes as a catalyst or conductor—and to drive innovations, deftly switch between modes to optimize overall results.

The essential observation for B2B leaders and innovators is that in-person work, not virtual interaction, is mandatory for teams to “achieve breakthrough innovation, build culture, and manage conflicts.” Today’s virtual communication tools are impressive, but they do not create true human-to-human interactions and are therefore limited to coordinating and monitoring efforts, not ideating and solving problems.

Let me say that again, with emphasis—the future of global and local supply chains can only arise from teams working in face-to-face meetings. Virtual meetings are necessary but can only monitor progress, not create it.

Watkins and Hooijberg’s insights are particularly relevant as I prepare for CSCMP EDGE 2022, the Council of Supply Chain Management’s annual industry conference. There, I will offer distribution’s bold and bright vision for a supply chain that is resilient, responsive, and regenerative. Achieving a supply chain reborn to better serve our economy and society will require unprecedented collaboration, with leaders stepping up as never before.

Below, I introduce Watkins and Hooijberg’s “four dimensions of impact” for leading face-to-face and apply their insights to B2B leaders working with teams from organizations across the supply chain:

• Collaboration. Collaboration is not just working together, but learning how to build a “shared understanding, learning, and trust.” B2B innovators must commit the time and effort to help team members discover how they can benefit from each other’s knowledge, resources, and skills. New partnering arrangements must be invented to protect proprietary assets while creating new wealth that is impossible without collaboration.

• Innovation. More than brainstorming, collaborative innovation is achieved through knowledge integration and shared learning. Doing so among teams staffed across companies is immensely stressful, in part because teamwork is work away from one’s core responsibilities. Supply chain innovators may need to change reward programs and performance review processes at each team member’s company or completely break free by establishing a co-owned venture company to create innovations. 

• Acculturation. Acculturation is typically defined in anthropological terms as the process by which the culture of a society or community evolves in contact with a new or different one. Something like this will happen as leaders build teams with people from different companies to invent the future supply chain. Their company’s culture initially guides every team member’s actions, but a new culture will emerge as they work face-to-face and virtually. The important task is to intentionally craft a team culture characterized by innovative behaviors and values, including curiosity, thoughtfulness, collaboration, a careful balance of data- and human-centric solutions, and more.

• Dedication. Dedication flows from acting on a shared purpose and achieving outcomes aligned with intrinsic values and opportunities for achieving financial wealth and personal goals. This lesson is critically important for attracting, motivating, and rewarding team members. But it is even more important for their employers. Every team’s work must include designing new supply chain business models, meaning core capabilities, cost structures, revenue sources, critical business processes and platforms, and so on. Stakeholders could achieve this outcome through several means, including working with digital startups, sponsoring innovation contests or scholarships, working with universities through innovation labs, establishing Chief Innovation Officer positions, and more.

Your take?

In many ways, the work described above is a moonshot, meaning that it can only be accomplished when supply chain companies come together to share resources, investments, and risks. Like all moonshots, reinventing the supply chain is a critical mission that will benefit every economy, society, and human on the planet. Watson and Hooijberg’s article offers an excellent frame for intentionally designing consequential leadership. More is needed, and I will continue my investigations in future editions.

Do you agree? What are you doing? Can you do more?  What can we do together? Please share your comments below or reach me at mark.dancer@n4bi.com.