S9-Ep15: Supply Chain Innovation: Orders Can’t Be Filled with Stagnation

Innovating Leadership: Co-Creating Our Future

Apr 5 2023 • 39 mins

Guest: Mike McLellan

Supply chain disruptions: they’ve been at the top of the list for leaders’ anxiety in nearly every sector for years. Will it ever get better?

Yes – if you’ve learned lessons from COVID and other supply chain disrupters. That’s the advice Mike McLellan has for leaders. A vice president of operations for DHL Supply Chain, Mike discusses the innovations DHL and others are implementing: from rapid responses to exoskeletons for warehouse workers. If your organization relies on supplies – and few organizations don’t – this is a must-listen episode!

Here's what Mike and host Maureen Metcalf cover:

How COVID-19 exposed weaknesses that had been brewing in the supply chain for years;
Why having a single-source supplier looks great on the balance sheet, but is quite costly in reality; and
The critical role of resilience for companies’ future survival.

Other episodes you'll enjoy:

Evolving Leadership to Navigate Disruption with Greg Moran
Leading in Circles: The Inevitable Circular Economy with Christoph Hinske
Are You Disrupting, or Being Disrupted? with Mark Kvamme

For daily wisdom from our guests, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and Twitter, too!

RESOURCES:

Details on tech innovations, sustainability, and other programs Mike mentions are on DHL’s website at https://www.dhl.com/global-en/delivered.html. To dig even deeper, read DHL: Three Letters that Shrank the World by Jane Chung for Kindle at https://amzn.to/3MgwHIa.

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

She’s also written several award-winning books on leadership development. You can peruse and purchase them here. Most relevant for today’s interview is the Innovative Leaders Guide to Transforming Organizations. The Guide is available now on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3KufXMg, and the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/3U7MzyK.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include: