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The Incredible Shrinking Pizza

By Art van Bodegraven | 06/21/2012 | 11:38 AM

Despite all the hand-wringing over a looming and enormous driver shortage in the world of supply chain management, the reality is that we are short of projected - and current - talent needs in just about all dimensions.  We need more leaders, more managers, more analysts, more supervisors, more planners, more DC staff, and, yes, more drivers of all types.

That we also need them to be stronger, faster, smarter, and more business-savvy is an issue for another day.

Many companies are making strong moves to attract and retain talent at all levels.  SiriusXM radio is overlaoded with commercials from trucking companies touting higher pay, more benefits, elevated quality of work life, and a measure of R-E-S-P-E- C-T that would satisfy even Aretha Franklin.

Forward-looking enterprises are investing unparalleled resources in efforts to develop and reward employees at all levels and in all functions.  The impetus is, fundamentally, to attract the best and then fight like steers to keep them from defecting to competitors.  Frankly, the companies that choose to not make such investments are going to see crippling talent run-off as recovery from the Great Recession continues.

At the end of the day, though, these initiatives are all attempts to get a bigger slice of a pie that, while perhaps not getting smaller, is certainly not getting big enough to meet the needs of our collective national supply chain.  As my neighborhood pie-maker might say, "It don't matter if you cut it into six pieces or eight, it's still a fourteen inch pepperoni."

And, what we really need is an eighteeen inch meat-lover's special.

So, my question is, "What are we doing to create the eighteen inch pie that will feed us all?"  How long before we realize that the zero-sum get-my-fair-share initiatives must be replaced with a playing field that supports multiple winners?

Randy Lewis and Walgreens have led a magnificent development that has discovered and leveraged a heretofore unknown workforce that can fill many roles in supply chain execution and management.  The realization that we have a vast population of people with disabilities who can be highly productive pieces in a bigger pie is a huge awakening.

But, it's not enough.  We need comprehensive and broad initiatives in education, training, retraining, retention of talent from other lands, and leveraging other non-traditional talent sources to build a sustaining solution to the problem.

When we get that figured out, I'll be ready to go for a sausage, pepperoni, green pepper, black olive, extra cheese eighteen inch thin crust piece of heaven with onion on only one half.

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