Improving the Odds of Logistics Transformation Success

Planning a logistics transformation? Three in four don’t fully succeed, according to research from Stamford, Connecticut-based research consultancy Gartner. But leaders can improve the odds of success by being responsive to team resistance and feedback, rather than ignoring them and increasing the urgency of the project.

According to the Gartner study, 81 percent of logistics leaders believe that transformation is critical, but find overcoming team resistance one of biggest drawbacks, says Snigdha Dewal, senior principal, research, in Gartner’s supply chain practice. All too often, they adopt a directive or urgency approach, which involves little if any stakeholder engagement and can be counterproductive, she says. Nearly three in four of the 306 respondents said this was their approach, the study found.

But a lesser-used approach — leveraging collective wisdom or effectively responding to team resistance and incorporating feedback, which was cited by 20 percent of the respondents — increases the odds of achieving success by 62 percent.

“This means the regression analysis showed a significant positive causal relationship between leveraging collective wisdom and transformations success,” Dewal says. “Success here means the transformation was completed within its proposed budget and time and met its KPI metrics.”

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Dewal offers other thoughts on the study and strategies for managing resistance and building successful transformations:

Question: What are the components of a successful approach to logistics transformation?

Answer: Our study shows that there are three key drivers behind a successful leadership approach to transformation — leaders demonstrate listening, resistant stakeholders are involved, and leaders maintain an adaptable mindset.

We profiled a couple of companies that were doing a good job on these drivers as case studies. Some of the actions they were taking include providing teams with early and continued visibility into the transformation, from the problem-scoping stage to ideation, implementation planning and initiative rollout. This can be done through early pain-point detection focus group sessions with teams. Including front-line staff reps here will ensure incorporating valuable on-ground perspectives.

Providing staff with clear goals and prompts centered around forward-thinking solutions will help. The goal should be to create a safe space and have staff speak candidly, generating productive feedback.​​ Use what is applicable and give teams clear reasons for not acting on some of their other inputs.

In terms of tools, one of the companies we profiled developed detailed process maps and then simulated different versions of the transformation on these process maps. They used these maps as tools to get specific actionable feedback from their teams. Providing clear and easily understandable inputs and information to your team members makes it easier for them to give better feedback.

Q: Lack of access to technology is listed by 29 percent of the study’s respondents as a challenge to implementation. Lack of budget and lack of skilled workers also were listed as challenges. How can companies improve all three areas?

A: A transformative change will mean some trade-offs between scope and complexity. Something big in scope will need to be broken down into much simpler steps. And a procedurally or technologically complex change will need to start small, often tested and piloted before being scaled.

Coming to the specific challenges, if a technology doesn’t exist, there is not much that logistics leaders can often do. However, some of the bigger, more mature companies we spoke with have taken a more experimental approach by internally incubating start-ups to develop customized tech solutions in-house. Learning and upskilling is a great way to leverage your existing workforce and have them grow professionally while contributing to functional changes.

A: In the study, what topic or statistic surprised you?

Q: We were surprised at the sharp negative impact of the establishing urgency approach. We expected it to have a much lower impact on success as compared to leveraging collective wisdom, but even we may have underestimated how much this kind of leadership approach (which is often the knee-jerk action we all take) can affect team morale and buy-in and eventually impact success. 

Q: What else can leaders do regarding change management and to increase buy-in from other impacted functions or departments?

A: Cross-functional cooperation and buy-in is undoubtedly important. However, in this study, we specifically wanted to focus on some of the internal challenges logistics leaders face, resistance from their staff/team members to change being among the biggest. So, in the context of this study, we don’t have any precise data to share on other impacted functions or departments.

Qualitatively, however, increasing buy-in from other impacted functions does need some dedicated attention and leading initiative from logistics. Among other things, logistics leaders need to focus on governance structure for transformation management that includes representatives from other functions, clear communication channels at different role hierarchies, and articulating the expectations and responsibilities as well as potential gains for their functional counterparts.

(Image credit: Getty Images/Metamorworks)