When Volatility Increases, Method Matters
“Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.” — Simon Sinek
Author’s Note
If system flow matters to you, this work isn’t optional. Volatility grows exponentially in unstable markets and it will reveal itself whether your leadership architecture is sound or not. Designing Supervisory Authority in Unstable Systems.
Volatility is a part of life as an operations supervisor. So is vagueness. But unlike customer-driven volume forecast volatility, institutional vagueness is squarely a leadership choice. For a supervisor, the vagueness arises in practical ways.
They are expected to control labor costs without a clear understanding of shift’s throughput capacity.
They are measured against productivity targets without a universally shared understanding of the system’s natural operating range or even a defined preferred method to instruct toward.
They are told to “own their shift,” without the boundaries of that ownership defined and resourced properly.
When targets miss, they are accountable for the outcome but not always empowered to manage it deliberately.
From the senior leader’s vantage point, the supervisor role and performance can appear inconsistent or haphazard. From the supervisor’s vantage point, they often feel like they are navigating movement blindfolded and without a map. Why such a big and growing disconnect? Economic volatility is causing a change in system flow, and the front lines is where volatility outpaces organizational readiness for most in the warehouse space.
Many of today’s leaders built their early and mid careers in a more stable economic time period. Labor performance ranges remained generally steady during the past 15 years as has employment and wages. Operational imprecision on a day-to-day basis did not compound into greater volatility quickly before now. A little vagueness could be absorbed by a site at minimal cost. That is no longer the case.
When capacity is undefined and volatility unpredictable, supervisors are left to interpret weekly swings in labor need without structural clarity. This is when the system begins to oscillate toward uncontrolled variability, lower productivity and higher costs. Those oscillations are often blamed on the floor leadership, but make no mistake, they are architectural and the result of leadership decisions.
In most organizations, supervisors are thought of as reactive to problems. They are labeled firefighters. They are criticized for inconsistency. Yet firefighting is the predictable outcome when leadership tolerates and often facilitates ambiguity around what stable performance actually looks like at an enterprise level.
If supervisors do not know the true capacity of their shift at multiple staffing levels, they cannot manage flow with precision. Noise often is confused with signal. Accountability looms as a real, personal risk in places where authority is restricted. Supervisors in those environments choose the lowest-risk path. They will escalate rather than act, not because they lack judgment, but because the system does not accommodate for its lack of clarity. It adds complexity and cost without value.
Volatility did not create that condition. It exposed it.
I spent decades inside systems where vagueness was not tolerated because it was not survivable. In thin-margin 3PL environments, understanding capacity is the key to the operation. Labor mix was deliberate. Customer forecasts were viewed as directional inputs, a starting point for labor use. Rolling averages and seasonal patterns were used to calibrate staffing decisions. Voluntary time off and a clear, overtime methodology were structured tools deployed against signal, that the front line supervisors could rely upon.
Supervisors were expected to run their shift like a business because they were equipped to do so. They understood cost per unit, throughput capacity, and where the system normally operated. They adjusted deliberately within defined guardrails. That architecture absorbed volatility locally by ensuring the supervisors had the skills and authority to lead effectively.
You can tell almost everything about the health of an organization by watching its supervisors.
In strong systems, supervisors understand flow. They can describe capacity without guessing. They know what a normal day feels like and can articulate when something has actually changed or degraded. Their presence changes the outcome of a day.
In weaker systems, supervisors are present but not influential. They relay information. They manage tasks as independent actions. They attend meetings. Rarely do they alter the trajectory of their shift because the system, built by their leaders, fails to define clearly what good looks and feels like.
The difference is not personality. It is design.
I coached baseball for years, and there is a simple lesson in that wonderful sport. A player can take the field every inning and step to the plate several times during a game and never meaningfully touch the ball or impact the game. They are present, but the game would unfold the same without them. Supervisors are no different.
If your supervisors can be swapped out and the system behaves no differently, the problem is not personnel. It is system design. Leadership must stop managing symptoms and change its methods. Supervisors treated primarily as controllable expense lines will act accordingly. They will protect themselves before they protect flow. That is not character flaw. It is design outcome.
Most supervisors take their role seriously. They want to run something well. They want clarity. When leadership defaults to suspicion instead of structure, initiative naturally contracts. Decisions move upward away from their point of occurence. Volatility intensifies and challenges control. It is at moments like this, that I often see leadership conclude that supervisors cannot handle more authority.
That conclusion is convenient. It is also often wrong.
If you are cutting heads, reducing bonuses, and tightening work hours while leaving the architecture vague, you are leaving instability in your operation. Cost pressure does not justify structural ambiguity. It makes clarity more necessary and vagueness more expensive.
A practical first step does not require a transformation program. Start with your supervisor pass-down process.
Make it disciplined. Require supervisors to articulate what was planned, what actually occurred, where performance sat within the system’s natural range, and what represented true signal.
Sit in on those conversations. Listen for whether capacity is clearly understood or loosely assumed.
Listen for whether supervisors are making decisions within guardrails or asking permission to act.
You will learn quickly whether your issue is people or design. If your supervisors cannot describe shift capacity and natural variation without looking at their chart or slides from a passdown, the system isn’t properly defined for them. That is not their failure.
Volatility will continue. Whether it is absorbed at the shift level or amplified across the organization depends on leadership discipline. Supervisors can change the game. Or they can stand in position while it happens around them.
The architecture decides.
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Author’s Post Note
This is not theory for me. Supervisors can stabilize volatile operations when they are given clarity and authority. I have seen them blamed for instability when that clarity was absent; and how they bring flow when they live within it. That difference is leadership.