From supply-chain manager to CEO

By Mitchell E MacDonald -- Logistics Management, 6/1/1998

Heads up, all you ambitious corporate mariners. There's been a recent and rather drastic course correction in your planned route to the boardroom.

For the first time in more than 50 years, the most direct route to the top doesn't run through manufacturing, finance, sales, or even marketing. No, the path to the top now is via the supply chain. Yes, the supply chain!

This finding comes from the man who has been monitoring the rungs of America's corporate ladders for nearly half a century. Eugene Jennings, professor emeritus at Michigan State University, has been studying the career paths most likely to lead to president or CEO positions in U.S. companies since 1947. The results of his ongoing study have been the focus of innumerable books and reports. He made a name for himself through detailed research on corporate leaders to determine their personal and professional traits and their career paths.

When he first began his study, employees who "grew up" in manufacturing operations typically had the inside track to the top spot. Sales began to emerge in the late '50s and early '60s as the most direct route to the coveted corner office. Finance professionals challenged the sales types in the 1970s. And then, in the 1980s, marketing pros took the inside position as companies scrambled to establish themselves globally.

Now, in what Jennings himself refers to as the most momentous change in career trends since he began his work, professionals who design, integrate, and manage their companies' supply-chain operations have moved into the passing lane. "It's a change that will forever reshape business and careers," he says.

Jennings, in fact, sees this development as so profound in nature that he is shifting the entire focus of his five-decade study to concentrate on supply-chain professionals. These professionals are emerging from what Jennings calls the new corporate power centers of logistics, purchasing, and distribution. In the past, Jennings notes, these functions were run by departmental vice presidents who focused on success within their own operations, sometimes at the expense of other company initiatives. He now expects that more and more large companies will begin to bring these functions together under one high-level manager with "supply chain" (or "supply") in his or her title. A recent high-profile example of this trend: Tom Stallkamp, now president of Chrysler Corp., was for many years the automaker's executive vice president of procurement and supply.

Because Jennings and others are increasingly recognizing the direct correlation between the success of a company's supply-chain integration strategy and its overall success as a profitable concern, companies are quickly tapping their best and brightest to take charge of the function. These top guns, should they achieve the supply-chain successes the current and future business worlds demand, will ultimately find themselves running the whole show.

I guess this means "supply chain" is more than just another buzzword.