Will The Grown-Up In The Room Please Stand Up?

In the real world, partners in supply chains typically have widely varying skill, competency, experience, and maturity profiles.  That's consultant-speak for "some players are stronger, and some are weaker."  In leveraged and progressive supply chains, the stronger partners have responsibilities to lead, mentor, and teach the others how to get better, not only in raw performance but also in risk management and mitigation.

If the grown-up in the room finds that the other organizations in the overall supply chain can't or won't respond to the required leadership, perhaps they aren't the right partners.  On the flip side, if the weaker players aren't getting the leadership and instruction they need to grow and eevelop, maybe they're in the wrong supply chain altogether, and need to find new relationships.

It's sad to see the "A" players and the "B" players pointing fingers at one another like 6-year olds in the wake of a problem.  The "A" players have got to act like grown-ups, or maybe they're not really "A" players where it counts.  Size and naked power alone do not confer grown-up status on a supply chain partner.

This challenge can become mission-critical for ultimate supply chain success in the marketplace when one of the partners is a logistics service provider (LSP, or 3PL).  While it is possible that a relatively new 3PL can be manhandled by a big and savvy customer, it is frequently the case that the customer is less-experienced and less-aware than a diversified multi-customer service provider.

That's when the LSP - in a genuine supply chain business relationship - needs to be the grown-up in the room, and lead the customer to success, taking every care to not let the customer slip off the path into a dismal swamp of risk and failure.