Perhaps it may be time to write some positive words about your personal ego in the supply chain. I have watched Donald Trump attract a lot of media attention by being flamboyant and telling off everyone who is not agreement with him. It seems to work as a strategy to attract media attention, but it is just the opposite what your ego should be like as a supply chain leader.
Your job as a supply chain leader (and you can be a leader even in the bottom most rung) is to get everyone to work together to complete the tasks that need to be done to make the organizations successful. It may mean working with the company CEO. I may mean working with the truck driver who is hauling your product. It may mean working with people at the facility shipping the product. It may mean your boss. A particularly poor strategy to do this is telling people off if you want them to work together.
So where does that leave your ego. There are lot of non-ego thoughts in getting the supply chain to work together, but let us focus on ego for the moment. Ego is expressed in confidence in yourself. But it is a confidence that open and empowering to others, not a confidence that says I’m good and you’re not.
The opposite of confidence is running scared and panicked. Just as people can sense the strength of confidence, they will turn off people who they sense only care for own personal fears. If you are confident, they can use your confidence to gain confidence in themselves to complete the tasks at hand.
So how do you reach a place where your confidence is empowering to the supply chain and those around it? Learning is the place to start. If you come into a situation knowledgeable, it will give you the ability to be confident. Listening is the other key. Listening to the issues and knowledge of others will allow you to know what is going and having a sense of situation yourself. Some of this might be called emotional intelligence.
Confidence also means you will survive your mistakes and those from others. There will be focus on learning from them, rather than a search for blame.
The supply change is a process that is in constant change. Change management requires confident leaders, ready to learn about change, learning how those changes affect others in organization. Frankly, you need a confident ego to ride out the waves not only for yourself but for others