Business Services
Driving change
How Ann Drake built a culture that gives DSC Logistics maximum flexibility
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business Chicago | March 2009
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Ann M. Drake knows your pain.
The more technology comes into play, the more the business world gets itself into a big hurry, and now, you’re paying the price. Even in a tightened economy, people still expect products and services to be better and faster.
Drake’s empathy for that situation comes very honestly. She came into her role as CEO of DSC Logistics Inc. in 1994 and has watched the transformation. The logistics and supply chain industry has picked up speed in the last 10 to 15 years and so has the rate of change and adaptation she and her company have had to make.
“It’s unpredictable change,” Drake says. “When companies started saying, ‘We need a warehouse, and we need it to be up and running in 45 days,’ it was like, ‘Whoa,’ and it was hard to predict exactly what they were going to ask for, so it wasn’t just like it was faster but more of the same; it would be different.”
DSC had plenty of solutions, but the changing environment helped Drake come to a realization.
“We had to learn to be very responsive,” she says. “In other words, people weren’t just going to call you up and say, ‘Let’s talk about a long-term plan.’ They would say, ‘Hey, we just came out of a meeting, and we need this,’ so you had to learn how to be responsive. ... You had to realize that was the environment you’re going to live in, and once you realize that, that causes you to think differently, so then you say, ‘OK, how do I stay close to customers; how do I put mini-processes in place that can be put together in multiple ways?’
Here are some of the things Drake and her leadership team have implemented with the 2,000 employees at DSC to keep the company running ahead of the curve.
