Procure IQ

Today’s guest post is from Dalip Raheja, President and CEO of The Mpower Group (TMG) and a contributor to the News U Can use TMG blog.Most of us missed it. They were trying to tell us about it when we werevery young. We were not even in nursery school yet! It’s all aboutthe vowels. It’s not about Old MacDonald’s farm, his pigs or hens or any of that … it’s about E-I-E-I-O! Now what do vowels have to dowith Sourcing and Supply Chain Management you might be wondering? Well, as it turns out … everything! …

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In my last post, we discussed how transformation is necessary for high procurement performance and gave you some advice on how to get started. But transformation is not easy, and there are many pitfalls you can encounter along the way. In this post, we’ll addres some of those.As a supply chain leader, you are probably in the midst of a process to redesign your supply chain to be more fault tolerant, more secure, and more safe to avoid the fiascos that your brethren (Huntington Meat Packing, Mattel, Toyota) have recently faced in the media. If you want the …

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Before you answer, think about it. Carefully. Because you’re probably not. That’s right, there’s a good chance that you’re not relevant. And the worst part? Most likely, it’s not your fault. The business landscape is changing, the old normal is coming back, and it’s no longer about better, faster, cheaper (or lean and six sigma) or closed systems. As noted in this HBR post about The New Paradigm of Advantage, we’re …

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After reading a recent article on Boeing’s Innovative Approach to Leadership, I have to ask. Boeing found that engaging the workforce in innovation requires positional leaders and managers to abandon the command-and-control style of management that is so prevalent in business today. Instead, leaders must employ a more participative approach and solicit collective ideas from the workforce rather than imposing initiatives on them.Senior managers in Boeing’s C-17 program took a bold first step toward establishing this new leadership paradigm by gathering all 10,000 C-17 employees in a hangar and communicating their philosophy directly to the front-line employees and the …

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Any company that competes on the global stage must, in light of today’s changing workforce, rethink the way it manages people.Too many companies are wasting their resources — their people and their financial leverage — by perpetuating outdated approaches to talent management. They structure jobs rigidly, forcing many people to work a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, workweek. They focus their training on functional skills, not on aligning employees’ capabilities with the strategic objectives of the business. For leadership development and career advancement, they rely on long-standing training courses that don’t reflect the contributions …

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While reading The Talent Game (membership required) Panel Discussion transcript, I was horrified to read that one participant said that many employees are being told they are lucky to have a job — that is one form of retention. Simply put, it’s disgusting. Not only does it show an utter lack of respect for the employee, but it also shows an utter lack of competence in talent management. Even if you recently went through a layoff, presumably the employees you retained are those employees who were best at the …

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A recent article over on Discovery News that headlined that Employees With Flex Time Put In More Hours is a must-read. Consider the headline findings: working the usual nine to five may not be the ideal schedule for employees or employers workers with flexible hours are not only more satisfied with their jobs, they also work more intensely the findings also apply to remote workers and employees with reduced office hours Basically, as those of us who work flex, or who have worked in flex environments know, it’s a boon to …

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Besides the fact that you’re probably as fed up as I am at the ridiculous compensation packages that many Executives are getting these days despite the fact that they are on their way out the door having just tanked the company, there’s also the fact that their focus on short term gain is hurting the company and your ability to do your job. You want to switch to sustainable sources of supply, because you know that the long term savings (as energy, water, and carbon costs are all poised to go through the roof) will dwarf any short term …

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Don’t be fooled by the current economic environment, there’s still a global talent shortage and we’re headed towards an impending crunch because the talent war is going to heat up again along with the recovery. And chances are that you’re going to be on the losing end according to some recent research from TopGrading Solutions. (Tip-of-the-hat to Kevin Cornish.)According to the research, 67% of currently employed personnel surveyed will be looking for new opportunities once the economy picks up. That’s right, if you’re an average company, when the economy recovers, you can expect that two thirds …

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post is from Dick Locke, Sourcing Innovation’s resident expert on International Sourcing and Procurement. (His previous guest posts are still archived.) The US Census Bureau recently announced that one out of six people in the US workforce is foreign born. In four states it’s more than one in four and in one state it’s more than one in three.Here’s an excerpt from the NYTimes article Census Finds Rise in Foreign Workers:Nearly one in six American workers is foreign-born, the highest proportion since the 1920s, according to a census analysis released Monday. Because of government barriers to …

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