Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Forward Thinking

Strategies for filling the retirement gap

Studies show that companies could lose more than half of their senior managers in the next three years to retirement. Yet many CEOs and senior leaders may be unprepared to deal with that possibility.

When baby boomers—people born in the 1950s and 1960s—start retiring in droves, companies will find themselves facing a talent void that will be hard to fill.

Studies show that companies could lose more than half of their senior managers in the next three years to retirement. Yet many CEOs and senior leaders are unprepared to deal with that possibility, writes Eric Herzog in his new book, Future Leaders.


One of Herzog's suggested remedies is phased retirements: If Baby Boomers ease themselves out of the workforce by working part time, organizations will be better able to prepare younger workers to replace them.

Companies will also be struggling to fill technical and line-management positions, Herzog predicts. These demographics could have a troubling effect on supply chain management. COSTCO Wholesale Corporation prepared for that eventuality by creating "COSTCO University." The book details how the store chain established a structure for experienced warehouse managers to teach best practices, leadership, and problem-solving skills to other employees. As a result, COSTCO developed a pool of new managers from within its own ranks— enough to allow the company to keep up with normal attrition rates while opening 40 new locations.

Future Leaders can be purchased at www.atlasbooks.com.

Editor's Note: CSCMP's 2007 Annual Conference will feature an address by Joseph Coughlin, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AgeLab, on the business impact of an aging workforce and consumer base.

Recent

More Stories

screen shot of AI chat box

Accenture and Microsoft launch business AI unit

In a move to meet rising demand for AI transformation, Accenture and Microsoft are launching a copilot business transformation practice to help organizations reinvent their business functions with both generative and agentic AI and with Copilot technologies.


The practice consists of 5,000 professionals from Accenture and from Avanade—the consulting firm’s joint venture with Microsoft. They will be supported by Microsoft product specialists who will work closely with the Accenture Center for Advanced AI. Together, that group will collaborate on AI and Copilot agent templates, extensions, plugins, and connectors to help organizations leverage their data and gen AI to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and drive growth, they said on Thursday.

Keep ReadingShow less

Featured

holiday shopping mall

Consumer sales kept ticking in October, NRF says

Retail sales grew solidly over the past two months, demonstrating households’ capacity to spend and the strength of the economy, according to a National Retail Federation (NRF) analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Census data showed that overall retail sales in October were up 0.4% seasonally adjusted month over month and up 2.8% unadjusted year over year. That compared with increases of 0.8% month over month and 2% year over year in September.

Keep ReadingShow less
employees working together at office

Small e-com firms struggle to find enough investment cash

Even as the e-commerce sector overall continues expanding toward a forecasted 41% of all retail sales by 2027, many small to medium e-commerce companies are struggling to find the investment funding they need to increase sales, according to a sector survey from online capital platform Stenn.

Global geopolitical instability and increasing inflation are causing e-commerce firms to face a liquidity crisis, which means companies may not be able to access the funds they need to grow, Stenn’s survey of 500 senior e-commerce leaders found. The research was conducted by Opinion Matters between August 29 and September 5.

Keep ReadingShow less

CSCMP EDGE keynote sampler: best practices, stories of inspiration

With six keynote and more than 100 educational sessions, CSCMP EDGE 2024 offered a wealth of content. Here are highlights from just some of the presentations.

A great American story

Keep ReadingShow less

The uneven road we traveled in 2024

Welcome to our annual State of Logistics issue.

2024 was expected to be a bounce-back year for the logistics industry. We had the pandemic in the rearview mirror, and the economy was proving to be more resilient than expected, defying those prognosticators who believed a recession was imminent.

Keep ReadingShow less