The Supply Times

Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Supply Times. From my time as a supply management practitioner to an executive search leader and everything in between, it feels like I’ve seen it all. And yet, the job landscape continues to shift under our feet every day. I’ve started this newsletter to share my musings on what I hope you’ll find to be informative and enjoyable. 

Twice a month, I’ll be sharing industry highlights capturing my attention; some thoughts on the future of work, from what hiring and managers and clients alike are looking for to the struggles plaguing today’s workforce; and all the other stuff that piques my interest on a daily basis—things I’m reading, watching, listening to, and thinking about regarding supply chain, jobs, and the world at large. 

Industry Highlights: A Fractured Supply Chain

Right now, we’re struggling with a very broken supply chain. From Nike’s struggle to stock enough shoes, to Costco’s recent decision to limit how much toilet paper you can buy, the evidence is everywhere: companies are bearing the brunt of delays, disruption, and shortages.

A recent Wall Street Journal article paints a grim picture of just how big a bottleneck U.S. ports have become as they struggle to keep up. 

Los Angeles and Long Beach, California—the West Coast gateways—move more than 25 percent of all American imports. Today, thousands of containers are stuck on the shore and tens of ships are lined up to dock, with unloading lead times stretching to three weeks. Worse, the perennial worker shortage is exacerbating the situation—all as key players, from shipping lines to port workers and retailers, point fingers at each other.

Shipping and port executives complain that truck drivers don’t show up on time to pick up boxes, causing the pileup to grow. The truck drivers blame terminal congestion, claiming one miss has a domino effect as they fall further behind, and lament how the shipping lines aren’t carrying their weight by clearing out the towers of empty containers, which is eating up space at the docks.

The gridlock would almost be comical, if it weren’t so grave. 

Whenever stakeholders try to increase shifts and add more days, they again run into the blame game. All this would be plenty aggravating in normal times, but things are even more dire given the lack of workers today. 

Port leaders say that moving the volume of goods is simply impossible if we don’t run things on a 24/7 schedule, but with our labor shortage in mind, round and round we go. Until, that is, Amazon introduces RPA to our port operations. 

Of course, the issues we’re facing today aren’t just about what we don’t have to get the job done: functional systems and people to do the work. They’re also about the struggles those of us in these roles are facing, and one of those is extreme burnout. 

The Future of Work: The Great Workforce Burnout?

According to Jonathan Malesic, author of the forthcoming book The End of Burnout, “the future of work should mean working less. In a recent opinion piece for the New York Times, Malesic posits that, thanks to all the thinking time at home that the pandemic provided—and the creativity it required, especially when it came to working conditions—we now have the space to reimagine how work fits into a good life. 

As millions of workers transitioned from mass unemployment or to a hybrid environment, the 40-hour workweek, logged in the sanctity of an office in pursuit of upward mobility, was exposed for all its weaknesses. No longer will the conventional approach to work hold sway for most employers and employees.

The numbers demonstrate the extent of this issue: as of September, the U.S. had 10 million job openings and more than 8.4 million people looking for work. A recent Washington Post article explains that “there is a massive reallocation underway in the economy that’s triggering a ‘Great Reassessment’ of work in America.” Workers are reevaluating where and how they work, considering their location, their priorities (including those outside their jobs), and the meaning behind what they do. As the article’s authors explain, “It’s the ‘you only live once’ mentality on steroids.” As a result, we’re seeing surges in resignations, retirements, and entrepreneurship. In short, people want to take the future of their work lives into their own hands. 

Of course, many people do find their work meaningful. What they’re pushing back against is the self-serving corporate narrative that preaches about finding our life’s purpose at work. I found the following lines most compelling: "Dignity, compassion, leisure: These are pillars of a more humane ethos, one that acknowledges that work is essential to a functioning society but often hinders individual workers' flourishing." A solid ethos to live by, indeed. 

And with that in mind, we must consider the broader implications of people wanting more out of their work and lives, and what that will mean for tomorrow.

The Supply Aside: What I’m Reading, Watching, Listening to, and Thinking About 

RE: Supply Chain, Work, and Beyond 

• Read: I just read The Future of the Office: Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face by Peter Capelli, and appreciated the breakdown of the workplace changes coming our way—from onboarding new talent to preventing discrimination and who we’ll find in those office chairs in the years to come. 

• Watch: I’m watching for numbers, like the ISM Manufacturing PMI, which expanded to 60.1 percent. It serves as a good gauge on many of the supply chain challenges covered in this issue, and shows: 

  • A slight softening in new orders

  • That production levels are still underperforming

  • That employment is grappling with turnover and retirement 

  • That suppliers are struggling harder for the second month in a row

  • That inventories are expanding due to WIP, and prices are increasing

• Listen: After reading Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou, which tells the story of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’s fall from grace, I was compelled to start his podcast, Bad Blood: The Final Chapter. The podcast follows her ongoing court case and is well worth the listen if mystery, scandal, and the downfall of entrepreneurial icons are your thing. 

• Think: I’ve been thinking about onboarding since the beginning of the pandemic. With so many people being remote, companies are facing a new challenge as they attempt to integrate new employees into their workflow and culture. At MRA Global, most of our candidates have been remotely onboarded over the past 18 months. If you’re an employer onboarding remotely, think about what you can do to make new recruits feel as welcome as possible in the absence of in-person meetings and lunch with colleagues. Send welcome materials and gifts via mail, allocate funds to help them set up their home office—from laptops to comfortable chairs, and consider ways to incorporate them into the team environment virtually. They’ll appreciate it, and—especially in our current hyper-competitive landscape—that makes it time well spent.

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