Why planning is important to achieving sustainability

- Today, we're talking about the link between planning and sustainability. You might not automatically see a direct link between the two, but trust me, it's there and it's vital. Over Christmas, my mom like many other parents was waiting by the window for a delivery. She saw the truck deliver to a house across the road, but then it drove off. She was confused thinking that maybe they had forgotten her. So she followed up and it turns out that her parcel was on the truck, but she wasn't scheduled for delivery until later that day or even the day after. The same truck, the same street, but not next to each other on the delivery schedule. Now imagine that happening multiple times a day in every street, across the world. It's an environmental and a business disaster, and it can all be avoided if the right people talk to each other, to create the best plan before a shipment ever hits the road. Being able to understand the wider impact of your project makes the difference between an efficient and effective supply chain and a damaging one. Now, perhaps that particular route was a pain point for some reason. Perhaps there's a change of driver or maybe a scheduled fuel stop. If effective planning is done upfront, it can really highlight those pain points and allow you to make the right alterations that prioritize an equal commitment over a quick win time or even a bottom line commitment. Use the following three techniques to engage in conversations and think outside of the box of your usual project parameters. Facilitate collaboration at the start of any new project. Take the time to brainstorm ideas and troubleshoot potential issues. And not just in a team of your own discipline, because the likelihood is that, they're going to bring very similar ideas to the table. Make sure to invite diverse perspectives to the table. We have to resist the urge to work in silos and think that a shipment is just a job for operations. Throughout the life of that shipment, it will be a job for sales, for legal, for compliance, and even for IT. So bringing those insights together at the beginning means less panic changes later on. And let's not stop at collaboration. Collaborating with other businesses is key. Sharing insights, sharing data industry-wide is going to help create efficiencies at a business level. And an efficient business is definitely a more sustainable one. Next, we need to take the time to deliberate. I don't mean take all the time in the world. I mean, be mindful, be conscious. Use collaboration to its fullest potential and consider all the areas that could present an obstacle. As supply chain professionals and logisticians, we are so busy and we need to keep things moving. I know that, but we set ourselves up to fail later down the line when we're not prepared upfront. The more you see the project as a whole, rather than as disparate pieces, the more likely you are to create the most sustainable and well connected plan that runs seamlessly through every part of the business that it touches. And finally, anticipation is about planning. And the only way to plan properly is using data. Data gives you an idea of where you can start, where you can go, where you can make the most impact. Getting the right data will inform your decisions, meaning you can reduce costs, create efficiencies, make alterations to your next job, anything and everything. But we can't reach the end of a project and extract data that we weren't set up to capture in the first place. We don't want to reach the end of a job and have missed out on so many valuable insights because we hadn't sat down and done the proper planning. For example, we didn't take the time to think about the areas of the job that have a really high environmental impact, and that data could really have helped us rethink that. So now think about your own business. Who can you rely on to collaborate, deliberate and anticipate? Find a sustainability champion who is passionate about keeping these three pillars front of mind. Then you can create a plan for success.