Welcome to the next edition of Leadership Matters where we ask leaders around the Pacific Zone for their insights and advice about leadership matters to support our continuing journey of personal and professional development.
In this edition, we hear from Vice President Global Supply Chain and Customer Experience (GSC and CX) Tina Hu, who joined Schneider Electric in September 2022. Prior to her current role, Tina was the Director of Supply Chain and Manufacturing for Kimberly-Clark Australia and New Zealand.
Tina has been a senior executive leader in supply chain for over 18 years, working for some of the world’s largest companies including Gartner, Unilever, and Goodyear. She has led large teams in manufacturing, safety, E2E planning, customer supply chain, transformation, logistic, and warehouse operations.
She is a performance-driven and people-centric leader who is passionate about supply chain transformation and people development.
What motivates and excites you about your role at Schneider Electric?
What motivates me is working for a company making a huge difference in all areas of sustainability all over the world. I’m passionate about empowering my team, and developing future industry leaders really excites me.
What also excites me about my role is being a part of our digital supply chain journey, where we are already regarded as one of the best supply chains in the world. We continue to strive for the best and bring our supply chain partners along the way with us.
What makes you most proud of your team?
I look after the Global Supply Chain and Customer Satisfaction & Quality teams. I am really proud to lead teams where customer-centricity, digitisation, sustainability, and innovation remain at the core of their strategies across the board. I’m proud to lead diverse teams, where they bring their curiosity and ideas to work everyday, which shows our amazing culture.
I am also inspired by the teams I lead. They are an incredibly talented group of individuals who are resilient, passionate, and committed to be the best and make a difference to our customers every day.
How do you see GSC and CX evolving in the next 5 years?
I think the first thing is looking ahead to the new normal in supply chain as a priority, and planning for it, is critical. Our biggest customer pain point is delivery reliability and we must overcome our challenges in all aspects quicker than the market.
A quality focused mindset is my priority across manufacturing, distribution, customer support, customer experience elements – proactiveness, digitisation, and innovation are key success factors.
Importantly, sustainability factors of supply chains, upstream and downstream, will be accelerated to reduce Scope 3 emissions and drive net zero targets. This aspect of sustainability action is difficult to identify and implement and more organisations are realising the importance of seeking advice and collaborating to achieve outcomes together.
We’re one of the leading companies in the world when it comes to sustainability. How is your part of the business contributing to this leadership?
This is what we at Schneider like to call ‘drinking our own champagne’ – using the strategies, products, and solutions that we sell to our customers in our own business to meet our own sustainability goals.
Our local Health, Safety, & Environment team sits within our global supply chain business to provide the leadership, solutions, and services for environmental challenges and opportunities across the Pacific. This includes identifying and implementing global best practice options.
My broader team is accountable for driving environmental programs and solutions across manufacturing, logistics, fleet procurement, and real estate. This includes key initiatives like sustainable packaging, circular economy, and our path to net zero.
Describe a ‘customer first’ moment that you’ll never forget.
I think about a very recent – and my first – customer experience moment in Schneider Electric, where I visited Tradezone, a large online electrical wholesaler in QLD. Hearing about our customer’s journey, what they value the most and all the amazing work we have and can do together has truly inspired me. In particular, the work we have done together over the past years has been tremendous, requiring collaboration at all fronts to deliver a good customer experience.
Which of our other values resonates with you most and why?
‘Learn every day’ is the core value that resonates with me the most. We are living in a time of accelerating disruptive change as our organisation and everything around us continues to evolve. Supply chain is playing the most critical role today – not only dealing with current and new disruptions, but constantly looking at new ways to brining value to our business and customers. ‘Learn every day’ reminds us to stay curious and stay humble and hungry. It challenges us to reimage the future then build the skills and develop the talent required.
What makes someone a leader?
I believe that to navigate today’s world with its volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity =requires different skills than before the pandemic his. Great leaders shape the future. Leaders today need to act with courage and clear intent – in an authentic and engaging way. They also need to be a good storytellers and great listeners to help people reimagine the future. I truly believe there is a leader within all of us. While a leadership position is a role, a leadership mindset and skills are a responsibility that is important for all of us.
Who has influenced you most during your career and how?
I always consider myself very lucky to have worked for some great leaders who trusted me, guided me, and developed me. The one that influenced me the most would be my first manager from Unilever in my first leadership role in a factory environment. I was young and ambitious, but also fragile and often lacked confidence. He constantly pushed me out of my comfort zone by giving me and my team the ‘impossible’ tasks, and then celebrated our successes as we learnt from our failures. I learnt at an early stage of my career to be fearless, to always give it my best shot, and to celebrate each milestone. I am still that lucky person today to work with and for many amazing leaders here in Schneider who continue to influence and inspire me to be a better leader.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice I ever received is from my first supply chain director at Heinz. Many years ago, when I was just a planner, he asked me my dream and ambition and my response was “I am not sure, my English is not very good. What could I be beyond this?”. He told me, “Life is a matter of choice, not a matter of chance”. Because of this advice, I no longer let opportunities, conditions, situations, etc, constrain my thinking and actions, and I continue to remind myself to make the choice today that creates the opportunity for tomorrow.
