In our recent Lead & Succeed Workshop with Meri Stevens, Worldwide Vice President Supply Chain – Consumer Health & Deliver at Johnson & Johnson, we discussed how to leverage what we learned in the pandemic to create more agile, resilient, and successful teams. To kick off the workshop, Meri shared some of her personal insights from the last 18 months:
- Demands on global supply chains are changing rapidly and driving our decisions
- To survive, we need to ignite the power of our people
- Leaders should shift away from rigid plans and preparation, instead focusing on ways to be flexible, agile, and responsive
Following Meri’s valuable insights, the discussion opened up so our women leaders could discuss what they’re seeing in their own networks. The biggest takeaways were:
- We need to prioritize mental health
- Checking in on your teams and being empathetic and flexible when it comes to their mental health is a requirement moving forward
- We need to acknowledge the difference between “glass balls” vs. “plastic balls”
- Of the responsibilities your teams are juggling, what is “glass” and what is “plastic”? What can be “bounced” for later? We need to work with our teams on prioritization to avoid burnout.
- We need to promote progress, not perfection
- We need to reframe “failure” as a valuable learning experience.
- We need to learn to unlearn
- “This is how it’s always been done” doesn’t cut it anymore. How can we lead our teams to be agile and responsive so they’re ready for the next disruption?