The Future Belongs to Predictive Leaders: What Every Top Manager Should Take Away from the Executiv
50 ǀ POSITIV 4/2025
LÍDR
The Future Belongs to Predicve Leaders:
What Every Top Manager Should
Take Away from the Execuve
Meeng at Škoda Vagonka
As President of the Leaders Club, I have the opportunity to meet leaders who are looking for
new ways to manage the complexies of the industrial world. Yet few gatherings have delivered
as such intense insights as the one held on 23 October at Škoda Vagonka. The company, sll in the
midst of its transformaon and not yet fully stabilised, is already building strategic steps to beer
ancipate the behaviour of its supply chains, manage their risks and strengthen resilience through
knowledge, digitalisaon and synergisc tools. All of this is to support the company’s growth
and the challenges ahead.
The Leaders Club meeting sparked an exceptionally
candid discussion between Škoda Vagonka’s
leadership and our members, complemented by the
expert perspective of Professor Radim Lenort, one
of the leading authorities in logistics and supply chain
management. Three fundamental ideas that emerged
from this discussion are so pivotal that I feel compelled
to pass them on— to every leader who wants to be
prepared for a world where stability is becoming
a luxury and prediction a necessity.
1. Real Competitive Advantage: Predicting
the Supplier System End to End
The discussion between our members, Škoda
Vagonka’s managers and Professor Lenort made one
thing absolutely clear: the greatest strategic advantage
of the future will not be price or capacity, but the
depth of knowledge a company has of its own supplier
system.
Most firms know their Tier-1 suppliers perfectly well—
their quality, finances, deadlines and processes. Yet
the real weaknesses often lie much deeper, among
Tier-2, Tier-3 and further sub-suppliers who sit at the
very beginning of the chain but ultimately determine
the success of the entire project.
What modern industrial companies need is a full
mapping of the entire network. They must be able
to see risks, dependencies and capacity limits exactly
where most firms remain blind today. Predicting
the behaviour of the entire chain—not just its top
layer—will become the competitive edge that separates
resilient organisations from those merely surviving
from project to project.
2. Predictive Supply Chain Management: A Backup
Supplier Is Not a Solution — It Is Only the Beginning
The second key theme emerged the moment
we opened the discussion on alternative suppliers.
The reality is simple:
Everyone has them in a database — but almost no one
has a functional backup.
Predictive supply chain management stands on two
pillars:
A) Truly existing alternatives, not theoretical ones
on paper.
B) Regular verification — through test enquiries, pilot
deliveries, checks of quality, lead-time capability
and the supplier’s genuine interest.
Professor Lenort repeatedly stressed that most
companies find out their supplier has failed only at the
moment when there is no longer time or space to react.
Those who believe they have backup options often