“You can be a technical expert in any function you want to be, but if you can’t talk the language of the wider business and take people on the journey with you, it is too easy to be siloed or avoided.”
A lot of things have changed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, not the least of which has been procurement and supply chain teams being thrust into the spotlight in very challenging conditions. As an Executive Search Consultant, Tom Graham has naturally been focused on how this increased exposure has impacted leaders, individual contributors, and entire teams.
Since the lockdowns began, Tom has been holding regular, virtual roundtables with Chief Procurement Officers and Chief Supply Chain Officers to discuss everything from crisis management to planning for the new normal. Their observations and perspectives on next steps have evolved with the status of the crisis, and as businesses begin to open back up, the time is drawing near to start acting on those ideas.
In this interview, Tom shares what he has seen and heard and what he expects to see next as the world continues to adapt to the new normal:
- Why he expects the initial transition period to be so difficult for companies that are in the process of bringing their operations back online
- Why natural leaders have been less impacted by our current virtual ‘working from home’ situation than people might have expected
- One of the best techniques he has seen in practice for finding a solution to a highly complex problem and making it very easy and straightforward for others in the enterprise to support
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