Around the world, supply chains are increasingly under pressure.
Geopolitical and environmental pressures like conflict in Ukraine or the intensification of the climate crisis aren’t entirely to blame. For many supply chain and procurement teams, the inherent complexity and volume of their roles is increasing. Most allarmingly, workloads are growing without the additional headcount needed to support them.
“Skills shortages are now seen across all points of the supply-chain continuum, from sourcing to production, logistics, and delivery of goods and services,” author and researcher Joe McKenrick wrote for the Harvard Business Review in September 2023. While McKendrick admits that technology has advanced sufficiently in recent years to “fill in many of the gaps resulting from skills shortages,” he stresses that technology alone cannot solve this problem.
The future of procurement and supply chain is T-shaped
One of the issues contributing to the skills shortage in the supply chain sector is an increased trend towards hyperspecialisation.
Driven by increasingly rapid tech advancement cycles, the as-a-service economy, and a rise in third-party consulting, disciplines have become increasingly refined.
Organisations today are often comprise expert professionals with high levels of competency in a single specific area. These employees work in silos that lack connectivity with other branches of the larger business. This specialisation not only makes organisations less agile, but slows the process of replacing, retraining, and upskilling workers.
These specialised workers, with a narrow knowledge base, are known as “I-shaped.” Increasingly, supply chain leaders are feeling the need for workers with a more holistic understanding of the discipline. However, generalists lack the deep, specialised knowledge that can translate into strategic wins and competitive advantage for an organisation.
The answer is the T-shaped professional. T-shaped professionals or procurement teams are individuals or groups with deep specialisations in a mixture of fields. However, unlike “I-shaped” workers, T-shaped procurement and supply chain professionals also have a broad, generalised knowledge base. This type of employee is more capable of acting outside their area of advanced specialisation. Not only this, however, but their skill makeup make sthem significantly better at collaborating with other professionals.
This is an age of procurement and supply chain staff shortages. For organisations looking to overcome these pain points, focusing on hiring people with a mixture of deep, specialised knowledge and generalist skills will allow teams to do more with less.
- People & Culture
- Sourcing & Procurement
