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Highly skilled and trained people working in effective cross functional teams.
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Our Learning Programmes have been shaped and informed by over two decades of Supply Chain consulting experience. They are renowned for their innovative style, thought-provoking content and practical application. We focus on Capability Building; supporting client Supply Chain teams and those who interact with the Supply Chain function with both the technical and communication skills to fulfil their role effectively.
Supply Chain executives are becoming further integrated into strategic decision-making forums, playing an essential part of the cross-functional team that steers the business. This means that Supply Chain managers need to gain a better understanding of the business and that other business managers need a better understanding of Supply Chain. We call this Supply Chain Literacy.
Effective, profitable management of Supply Chains involves grappling with trade-offs in the face of great uncertainty. This requires managers to be comfortable with statistics and economics to communicate, influence and compromise with other core functions such as Production, Marketing, Purchasing and Finance. They need to have communication and sometimes conflict management skills.
The underlying message of our training is that Supply Chain professionals need to:
- understand uncertainty;
- calculate economic trade-offs;
- be highly effective communicators
In other words, they need to be:
Our team have filled operational roles within our clients and have a thorough understanding of the day-to-day issues faced by you and your people, as well as the bigger picture.
We feel very strongly that it’s important for people to be happy in their work, feeling fulfilled and satisfied by what they do. When this is true, individuals perform better as a result. We believe that individuals can only gain this satisfaction when they’re confident in their own technical skills, as well as in their ability to communicate effectively with other team members and functions.
That’s why we are so passionate about building and embedding capability – supporting your team and your organisation to be the best they possibly can be.
As with our other deliverables, at Sequoia we tailor our learning programmes to the client situation and business environment. Below you can read about some of the things we have done. If it sparks your interest, or if you have other requirements – a graduate training programme, a requirement for cross-functional Supply Chain enlightenment or targeted training in a specific technical area, do get in touch with us to discuss the options.
A PowerPoint-free training course? Experiential learning delivers results.
At various points in Sequoia’s lifetime we have been asked to do some challenging things. It must be said this was one of the more memorable ones, and a great learning experience for us too! We created a half day of experiential Supply Chain learning, without the comfort or backup of any slides. We had an audience of over 50 Supply Chain professionals running around in circles to demonstrate Supply Chain lags, competing on our proprietary Kinect forecasting game and of course (anyone who has been to our courses will recognise this) throwing enormous dice and creatively deploying Lego bricks. The delegates captured their learnings, and these were fed back afterwards as reference material.
How do we leverage investment in Supply Chain Capability Development?
Many businesses want to ensure that their investment in learning and development within Supply Chain is both effective and pays back. For many of our multi-national clients, we offer a "train the trainer" model. This builds on our understanding of learning styles and ensures the facilitators are fully supported throughout the process of taking on the responsibility for the course. This starts right from the course development stage – often the facilitators will be chosen because they are Subject Matter experts within the business and so their input into the course is vital to ensure the relevance and applicability of the messages that are delivered. From there facilitators go through the process of observing the delivery of the course, coaching in delivery and a gradual transfer of delivery, fully supported by Sequoia. It is a successful model that ensures the maximum exposure to our approach and materials, whilst also empowering individuals to develop their skills too.
Why choose Sequoia for a Learning Programme?
We believe that leading Supply Chain professionals needs to exhibit both technical prowess and skilled interaction with others, so we often interweave the two within our learning programmes. We incorporate different techniques to ensure that no matter what your learning style, you are accommodated.
We bring our Supply Chain consulting and operational experience across numerous clients to enrich the training and ensure that delegates think beyond the boundaries or practices of their current business.
Underpinning the technical knowledge and skills with an understanding of one’s own and others’ communication styles is one of the unique aspects of our offering.
This focus on development of the individual, from both a technical and an interpersonal perspective means we don’t "sheep-dip" delegates. Instead we design and build programmes that address client-specific issues, making content relevant to the delegates’ world.
Sequoia are accredited trainers in the powerful Management Drives™ approach which provides a real, accessible language for describing the differences between us all; why we think, act, react and communicate as we do. The true value of these insights comes when we share them as a team, revealing how to improve communication skills and understanding of colleagues.
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