Supply Chain Management is a "tale of two cities", Leader City and Laggard City. Residents of Leader City, according to benchmarks from APQC, outperform their median competitors with an overwhelming cost and performance advantage. As you navigate the journey to Leader City, at some point, you are going to have to obtain management commitment as evidenced by the fact that we've all been to dozens of case study presentations at conferences over the years. What do they all have in common? You have to have management commitment to be successful. What they never tell you is how to get it! Here's one of the secrets to gaining management commitment that Rich Sherman reveals in his new book. Material excerpted from Supply Chain Transformation: Practical Roadmap to Best Practice Results, by Richard Sherman, 2012. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

Supply chains are driving fundamental and transformational changes in today's organizations. More than that, supply chains challenge the very mental models and core processes that guide most of what people do at work. They challenge the prevailing organization paradigm, requiring significantly more focus on customers, horizontal relationships, integrative thinking, and dynamic and continuous adaptation. These values are difficult to consistently reinforce and support in siloed structures and can't be changed by sophisticated technology alone. Thus, all the promise of supply chain transformation hits an inevitable brick wall!