Supply-Chain Leaders: Vying to Get Noticed
Supply-chain leaders remain critical, but eight in ten of them say their efforts are treated like “cost centers.”
Seemingly every day they’re being asked to reroute shipments of products and raw materials to avoid blockades and other geopolitical hotspots. They’re recalculating costs even as governments change tariffs seemingly daily and inflation continues to climb in many parts of the world. And in many cases, they’re doing all of this after having revamped their entire way of working in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet even amid constant change in the Middle East war and the recent headline-grabbing rise in tariffs, supply-chain professionals increasingly have the sense that their work isn’t sufficiently appreciated by their organization’s top leaders. In a new survey, a whopping 88% of them say their C-suite leaders treat the supply chain as a “cost center” rather than a critical driver of value. That’s if they can get the attention of the big bosses. Many top supply-chain executives say they don’t have a seat in the C-suite, and only 25% of organizations have formal processes for discussing supply-chain issues at the board level. “Supply-chain people feel like pens to the executive leadership team. They get picked up only when they’re needed,” says Mehrab Deboo, a Korn Ferry senior client partner and member of the firm’s Global Supply Chain Center of Expertise.
To be sure, the role’s importance varies by industry. But supply-chain teams at every kind of organization report that when operations run smoothly, they rarely receive praise. When unexpected disruptions hit, on the other hand, they face intense C-suite scrutiny—which leaves their leaders feeling that the supply-chain function is only acknowledged when something breaks. It’s somewhat surprising, experts say, because supply chains, and the associated costs of the materials a company moves around, often are an organization’s second-largest expense, after labor.
To some degree, supply chain has always taken a back seat to revenue-driving roles. After all, no revenue means no business. Compensation for supply-chain professionals hasn’t necessarily been a problem, though; salaries for their top roles are often among the top ten at an organization, and sometimes even the top five.
But at a time when three-quarters of executives rank supply-chain disruption as a top risk to their business, many of the people responsible for managing those disruptions feel that their perspectives aren’t valued. Lucy Bosworth, a Korn Ferry senior client partner, recalls placing a chief procurement officer two years at a major industrial firm; the new leader was put off to discover that she didn’t report directly to a C-suite executive, but rather to a business-unit head. Even after a reorganization, she found herself reporting to someone with no supply-chain experience. It’s hardly surprising that the procurement officer left the company, Bosworth says, adding, “Even HR reports to the executive committee, but not procurement or supply chain.”
Of course, many firms did recognize the importance of supply-chain issues in the aftermath of COVID-19. At the time, Deboo says, several of his clients sought potential board directors with supply-chain experience. Since 2023, though, no client has requested this particular qualification.
While the problem isn’t something that could wreak havoc tomorrow, experts worry that a perceived lack of respect could deter top talent from taking supply-chain roles. In one 2025 survey, only 37% of supply-chain professionals felt that there was a transparent career path to the executive ranks, and only 31% that work-life balance was achievable.
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