Manufacturing Today Issue - 219 December 2023 | Page 33

________________________________________________________________________________ Senior leadership for 2024
employees displaced will be redeployed into higher value roles or let go of .
Regardless of the problems in the world , sustainability is a megatrend that is still important ( in fact still of growing importance ), and not a luxury that can be put aside when ‘ something important ’ pops up .
The whole environmental piece is bigger than ‘ whether you put a bit of extra plastic in the box ’ and covers every area of the business and every stage of your processes , from energy footprint to the start and finish of your whole end-to-end supply chain . CEOs need to be ensuring their business is genuinely changing to as low an enviromental footprint as is feasible , not just greenwashing , or customers will drift away .
In conclusion , and to paraphrase a Trotsky quote on war , regardless of whether you and your team want to change or not , change is interested in you . Given its inevitability and immediacy , CEOs and their teams need to embrace change and recognize that any improved visibility that realigns plans before an issue that causes a problem hits , will reduce costs whilst optimizing service and overall business performance . True leadership that moves teams away from traditional business models is required to ensure teams can embrace these changes in 2024 and not be pulled back to the short-sighted approach of the traditional budgeting mentality . ■
For a list of the sources used in this article , please contact the editor .
Les Brookes www . oliverwight-eame . com
Les Brookes is a partner at business transformation consultants Oliver Wight EAME . Over the past 23 years he has led and advised dozens of manufacturing businesses on large transformation and Integrated Business Planning initiatives .
manufacturing-today . com 33