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‘Fear of Success’ is often an obstacle in Supply Chain improvements!
Many supply chain improvement initiatives don’t live up to their promised benefits. For example, the direction of solution itself could be wrong. What if the initiative is correctly designed but the benefits are far short of expectations?
Experts have analysed various reasons why this happens and suggested ways to improve the change management process. However, an important reason for this underperformance often gets missed… the ‘Fear of Success’. Sounds counter-intuitive, isn’t it?
Let me explain it with an example. Imagine a company operating with OTIF of 50-60% and struggling to improve it by even 1-2%. When we observe the process, we find that there are several problems (Undesirable Effects… UDEs) surfacing from time to time. Further analysis reveals that these UDEs are caused by just one root cause… supply chain execution is based on monthly forecast instead of actual consumer demand. The solution lies in implementing a Demand Driven Supply Chain for supply execution. This solution would eliminate all the major UDEs and lead to OTIF in the range of 95%+. Do you think the solution will be lapped up by the team?
When the teams realize that their performance could go up so substantially, one of the common reactions is ‘Freeze’, like a deer in front of headlights. What would the management think? Were we not performing our role properly? How come we didn’t see such a huge opportunity?
There are specific ways to deal with such an unusual but common obstacle. More on it later…