If you don't know the answer to a question, chances are someone in your network does?but you'll have to understand how to get them to give you the information you need so you can put it to work.
No one is expected to know everything. Fortunately, there are a lot of smart people working in supply chain management. If you don't know the answer to a question, chances are someone in your network does—but you'll have to understand how to get them to give you the information you need so you can put it to work. This may sound easy enough, but it is actually a complex transaction.
To pinpoint the sources of the information they actually need, and then draw that information out from the people who have it, successful managers follow three steps: stop, ask, and listen. "Stop" involves taking the time to figure out what information you actually need. "Ask" means posing the right question. And "listen" requires actively engaging with your source and thinking about his or her response.
Step 1: Stop
The first step can be easy if you are clearly told what knowledge you need to acquire. For example, you may be asked to provide a vetted list of potential suppliers that fulfill diversity requirements, or a cost analysis of different shipping methods. But sometimes it is not so easy to determine what information you need—especially as your career advances and your responsibilities broaden to include complex tasks like the leadership and direct management of others. For example, suppose you are tasked with opening your company's first distribution center in South America. Where do you locate it? Whom do you hire? What are the cultural and environmental sensitivities you must take into account?
In these cases, you should stop and think about what it is that you really have to know ... and be honest with yourself about what you do not know. Do you need facts? Opinions? To understand the reasoning or logic behind a situation?
But simply identifying the information required is not enough. You also must determine the right sources of that information. Who has the knowledge to fill in the gaps?
Step 2: Ask
Once you know what information you need and who might know it, think about what type of question will elicit the necessary information. Like tools, different types of questions do different types of jobs. The three types of questions are: closed-ended, open-ended, and hypothetical.
Closed-ended questions elicit an answer from among a discrete set of possibilities. For example, if you ask, "Will you make your budget this month?" the answer is either "yes" or "no." This type of question elicits a quick, black-or-white answer; it does not leave room for a nuanced response.
Open-ended questions are designed to engage a person more deeply. There are an infinite number of ways to answer an open-ended question like "Why do you think our shipping needs will outpace our supplier's ability to fulfill them?" This type of question gives the respondent an opportunity to share his or her knowledge and/or opinions in detail.
The last kind of question is the hypothetical, or "what if," type. Hypothetical questions can provide a window into how the respondent thinks and reasons. For example, "What are our delivery options if diesel fuel hits US $5.00 per gallon?"
To help you remember when these three types of questions would be most appropriate, try to think about them in the context of a job interview. The close-ended question can be used to determine basic information. "Have you managed people?" The open-ended question is used to bring out the detail. "What was your most meaningful leadership experience with your team?" The hypothetical question can bring out creativity, logic, and resourcefulness. "What would you do if someone was sabotaging your team?"
Finally, there are two more types of questions you should be aware of: the leading question and the loaded question. Leading questions suggest the answer. For example, "The shipment will arrive on time, right?" Clearly, the desired answer is "yes." The loaded question has implicit assumptions in it. For example, "When will you stop making bad forecasts?" The implication is that all your forecasts are bad. Both of these types of questions are not going to move your knowledge base forward. These are questions that are not looking for an answer; they are conveying information. Stay away from them.
Step 3: Listen
After you ask your question, make sure that you really listen to the answer. That may sound self-evident, but it's not. Listening is a skill—one you can and should improve.
Have you ever been in a meeting where people started to talk before others were done? And no one even listened to what the others were saying—they just waited for their turn to talk? This kind of "communication" is a waste of everyone's time.
Listening abilities lie along a spectrum, and it's important to honestly assess what kind of listener you are. To get the most value out of what people are saying, you may need to change your attitude.
The spectrum starts with ineffective listeners who are just waiting to talk, and progresses to reluctant listeners—people who may feel they have "heard it all before" and are unwilling participants. Next are the passive listeners. These people are sitting quietly but are not absorbing anything; their minds are somewhere else. Judgmental listeners hear what is being said but won't let the meaning sink in. They have already made up their minds, and nothing they hear will change their opinion.
And then there are the selective listeners. I've been guilty of this myself in the past. My children would call me at the office, and I would be multitasking or checking my e-mail while they told me about their day. My mind was divided, serving neither task well. Now, regardless of who calls, I stop what I am doing and focus on the caller. I expect it of others as well. When I start a meeting, I set ground rules, one of which is no phones, e-mails, or texting—nothing that takes the focus away from the business at hand. (And don't think you are fooling anyone when you say you are using your iPad for "taking notes.")
And that leads directly to why we all need to be active listeners. Active listeners focus on what the speaker is saying. They communicate their attention to the speaker both verbally and nonverbally. They make eye contact. When in agreement, they nod their heads. If the situation allows, they ask probing, open-ended, and/or clarifying questions.
Active listening means hearing what is being said and thinking about it at the same time. Keep asking yourself questions about what the speaker is saying. Does it make sense? Did I just hear something I didn't know? Should I ask follow-up questions?
Asking thoughtful, engaging questions will not only elicit valuable information from the speaker, it will also affirm to the speaker that you heard what he or she is saying and are an active participant in the conversation.
Consequences and rewards
There are consequences for failing to stop, ask, and listen. If you keep talking without asking questions, you become the "know-it-all" who is not a team player. If you stay quiet without asking questions, you can be perceived as too timid or unable to grasp the issues. Neither advances your knowledge or your career.
By stopping, asking, and listening, supply chain managers will be sure to engage in rich and mutually rewarding conversations that will give them the information they need to carry out their responsibilities effectively and professionally.
“Consumers pulled back in January, taking a breather after a stronger-than-expected holiday season,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said in the report. “Despite the monthly decline, the year-over-year increases reflect overall consumer strength as a strong job market and wage gains above the rate of inflation continue to support spending. We’re seeing a ‘choiceful’ and value-conscious consumer who is rotating spending across goods and services and essentials and non-essentials, boosting some sectors while causing challenges in others.”
Total retail sales, excluding automobiles and gasoline, were down 1.07% seasonally adjusted month over month but up 5.44% unadjusted year over year in January, according to the Retail Monitor. That compared with increases of 1.74% month over month and 7.24% year over year in December.
Likewise, the Retail Monitor calculation of core retail sales (excluding restaurants in addition to automobile dealers and gasoline stations) was down 1.27% month over month in January but up 5.72% year over year. That compared with increases of 2.19% month over month and 8.41% year over year in December.
NRF says that unlike survey-based numbers collected by the Census Bureau, its Retail Monitor uses actual, anonymized credit and debit card purchase data compiled by Affinity Solutions and does not need to be revised monthly or annually.
As U.S. businesses count down the days until the expiration of the Trump Administration’s monthlong pause of tariffs on Canada and Mexico, a report from Uber Freight says the tariffs will likely be avoided through an extended agreement, since the potential for damaging consequences would be so severe for all parties.
If the tariffs occurred, they could push U.S. inflation higher, adding $1,000 to $1,200 to the average person's cost of living. And relief from interest rates would likely not come to the rescue, since inflation is already above the Fed's target, delaying further rate cuts.
A potential impact of the tariffs in the long run might be to boost domestic freight by giving local manufacturers an edge. However, the magnitude and sudden implementation of these tariffs means we likely won't see such benefits for a while, and the immediate damage will be more significant in the meantime, Uber Freight said in its “2025 Q1 Market update & outlook.”
That market volatility comes even as tough times continue in the freight market. In the U.S. full truckload sector, the cost per loaded mile currently exceeds spot rates significantly, which will likely push rate increases.
However, in the first quarter of 2025, spot rates are now falling, as they usually do in February following the winter peak. According to Uber Freight, this situation arose after truck operating costs rose 2 cents/mile in 2023 despite a 9-cent diesel price decline, thanks to increases in insurance (+13%), truck and trailer costs (+9%), and driver wages (+8%). Costs then fell 2 cents/mile in 2024, resulting in stable costs over the past two years.
Fortunately, Uber Freight predicts that the freight cycle could soon begin to turn, as signs of a recovery are emerging despite weak current demand. A measure of manufacturing growth called the ISM PMI edged up to 50.9 in December, surpassing the expansion threshold for the first time in 26 months.
Accordingly, new orders and production increased while employment stabilized. That means the U.S. manufacturing economy appears to be expanding after a prolonged period of contraction, signaling a positive outlook for freight demand, Uber Freight said.
The surge comes as the U.S. imposed a new 10% tariff on Chinese goods as of February 4, while pausing a more aggressive 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada until March, Descartes said in its “February Global Shipping Report.”
So far, ports are handling the surge well, with overall port transit time delays not significantly lengthening at the top 10 U.S. ports, despite elevated volumes for a seventh consecutive month. But the future may look more cloudy; businesses with global supply chains are coping with heightened uncertainty as they eye the new U.S. tariffs on China, continuing trade policy tensions, and ongoing geopolitical instability in the Middle East, Descartes said.
“The impact of new and potential tariffs, coupled with a late Chinese Lunar New Year (January 29 – February 12), may have contributed to higher U.S. container imports in January,” Jackson Wood, Director, Industry Strategy at Descartes, said in a release. “These trade policy developments add significant uncertainty to global supply chains, increasing concerns about rising import costs and supply chain disruptions. As trade tensions escalate, businesses and consumers alike may face the risk of higher prices and prolonged market volatility.”
New York-based Cofactr will now integrate Factor.io’s capabilities into its unified platform, a supply chain and logistics management tool that streamlines production, processes, and policies for critical hardware manufacturers. The combined platform will give users complete visibility into the status of every part in their Bill of Materials (BOM), across the end-to-end direct material management process, the firm said.
Those capabilities are particularly crucial for Cofactr’s core customer base, which include manufacturers in high-compliance, highly regulated sectors such as defense, aerospace, robotics, and medtech.
“Whether an organization is supplying U.S. government agencies with critical hardware or working to meet ambitious product goals in an emerging space, they’re all looking for new ways to optimize old processes that stand between them and their need to iterate at breakneck speeds,” Matthew Haber, CEO and Co-founder of Cofactr, said in a release. “Through this acquisition, we’re giving them another way to do that with acute visibility into their full bill of materials across the many suppliers they work with, directly through our platform.”
“Poor data quality in the supply chain has always been a root cause of delays that create unnecessary costs and interfere with an organization’s speed to market. For manufacturers, especially those in regulated industries, manually cross-checking hundreds of supplier communications against ERP information while navigating other complex processes and policies is a recipe for disaster,” Shultz said. “With Cofactr, we’re now working with the best in the industry to scale our ability to eliminate time-consuming tasks and increase process efficiencies so manufacturers can instead focus on building their products.”
Economic activity in the logistics industry expanded in January, growing at its fastest clip in nearly two years, according to the latest Logistics Managers’ Index (LMI) report, released this week.
The LMI jumped nearly five points from December to a reading of 62, reflecting continued steady growth in the U.S. economy along with faster-than-expected inventory growth across the sector as retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers attempted to manage the uncertainty of tariffs and a changing regulatory environment. The January reading represented the fastest rate of expansion since June 2022, the LMI researchers said.
An LMI reading above 50 indicates growth across warehousing and transportation markets, and a reading below 50 indicates contraction. The LMI has remained in the mid- to high 50s range for most of the past year, indicating moderate, consistent growth in logistics markets.
Inventory levels rose 8.5 points from December, driven by downstream retailers stocking up ahead of the Trump administration’s potential tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada, and China. Those increases led to higher costs throughout the industry: inventory costs, warehousing prices, and transportation prices all expanded to readings above 70, indicating strong growth. This occurred alongside slowing growth in warehousing and transportation capacity, suggesting that prices are up due to demand rather than other factors, such as inflation, according to the LMI researchers.
The LMI is a monthly survey of logistics managers from across the country. It tracks industry growth overall and across eight areas: inventory levels and costs; warehousing capacity, utilization, and prices; and transportation capacity, utilization, and prices. The report is released monthly by researchers from Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, and the University of Nevada, Reno, in conjunction with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP).