Today’s supply-chain executives are saddled with both traditional business initiatives (make products faster, better, cheaper) and customers’ new insistence on corporate responsibility (workers’ rights, environmental protection, moral supply chains). Throw in the unexpected, such as changeable economic conditions and floods in Thailand that affect the supply chain, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But setting and prioritizing initiatives to meet these challenges can be remarkably quick and reassuring.

When asked the right questions, executives can identify and prioritize initiatives that yield corporate profitability and also well-being for employees, suppliers’ employees, and the environment. Having a roadmap that spans the next 12 months to ten years, our clients report feelings of confidence and enthusiasm about accomplishing these goals.

This week, a general manager at a USA-based contract manufacturer set and prioritized initiatives with us, and was surprised to discover that his most important and urgent business initiative also had numerous corporate responsibility benefits. With this realization, we could witness how some of the weight he was bearing regarding this business challenge lightened. Now he can consciously further the business, employee, and environmental benefits of this daunting initiative in an integrated way, and in the process of doing so inspire others.

Another executive, Joe Zaccari, who heads up Strategic Partnerships at prototype-house Screaming Circuits, said that prioritizing initiatives for profitable sustainability “could make a real difference for a company’s future. I came away feeling positive and motivated about what I’m doing.”

Finally, prioritizing initiatives for sustainable profitability should incorporate executives’ personal and career goals. Executives are people, first and foremost, and to ignore or subjugate the effect of their own values and dreams is to undermine long-term efficacy at work.

We have found that the Sustainable Profitability Exercise―our year-end gift to TFI’s clients―takes as little as 30 to 60 minutes and produces surprises, confidence, and an actionable roadmap.

How about you? Do 2012 and the years beyond look muddled or clear regarding prioritizing and executing on strategic steps toward sustaining your company’s profitability and sustaining the well-being of your employees, suppliers, and the environment?

Tags: executive goals, personal and work priorities, supply chain executives, sustainable profitabiliy

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 11:25 am and is filed under Environment, Lean Practices, Logistics, Outsourcing, Supply chain management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.