In today’s corporate logistics and shipping world, many leaders continue to employ human resources (HR) metrics, performance evaluation models, and talent programs established during the 2000s. This article advocates for updating these frameworks by integrating new business models and incorporating resources such as artificial intelligence (AI) to maximize benefits for both leaders and employees in the logistics industry.
The existing landscape for logistics teams and how they are evaluated
The legacy of the 2000s workforce model was built on a seductive logic: define excellence, measure it, reward it, scale it, apply it with SMART goals, KPIs, 9-box grids — all tools for optimizing human output like a production system. However, humans are not optimizing machines. When you build a logistics team entirely around performance metrics, you inadvertently select for people who are good at being evaluated — not necessarily good at building something meaningful together.
A misconception is that high engagement and high performance are often treated as the same thing. However, they’re not. You can have a team that is high performing on measured KPIs, while quietly burning out, internally competitive, highly politicized and highly frustrated and if they are not engaged enough, one day a recruiter calls and moves all these talented individuals to another organization.
To me, the conclusion is clear that the 2000s setup of a purely high measured performance culture is not working out for an engaged logistics or shipping organization. Ideally delivering high performance and high engagement together should be the goal. But we kind of concluded that high performers are not always the highly engaged ones.
So, can’t AI take over the metric based, measurable tasks, which are KPI driven, 9-box grids and SMART driven? And deliver the high performance while your genuine talents are busy using their brain to create something more meaningful, more sustainable?
Values-driven leadership in logistics is harder — and sustainable.
Values-driven culture is not softer than performance culture. It’s more demanding, because it requires the leader to go first, consistently, visibly, and without exception. For example, you can’t declare psychological safety while punishing someone for speaking an uncomfortable truth.
Because the team watches everything, when a leader genuinely models values-driven leadership, the following happens:
- People stop performing only for the metrics and start also caring about the work
- Retention improves not because you’ve locked people in, but because they don’t want to leave something they believe in
- Accountability deepens — peer accountability often becomes stronger than top-down accountability
- Diverse voices get heard, because inclusion becomes a behavioural norm, not a checkbox.
At the end of the day, a leader who asks her or himself: “For which values did I stand up?”, or “What is my contribution to light other’s path” will behave differently in meetings, in promotions, in difficult conversations, than the one who asks “Did my team hit the numbers?”
As the logistics world, and general business community, moves towards the integration of AI into our daily business, the more measurable tasks will be increasingly executed through automation. The real difference will be made by leaders and employees who connect and are able to drive strategic change.
The shift I am recommending is essentially this: Cease treating people as performance assets and start treating performance as a natural byproduct of people who feel seen, recognized, purposeful, and safe. It will be much more important to create a highly engaged values driven culture then just a high performing culture. This is especially true in the fast-paced and ever-changing logistics and shipping environment.
A mental reframe
This is not an argument to throw out KPIs or not to incorporate AI into your logistics or shipping business model. These are critical elements of doing business: progressing and measuring results.
Just add a second axis into your performance evaluation culture: how results were achieved. Was it through collaboration or at someone else’s expense? Was it with honesty or with spin? Did it include others or sideline them? Does it drive overall values or your value?
The leader who rewards both what and how — and is willing to have a hard conversation with a high performer who gets results the wrong way — that’s where right culture gets built in the logistics industry and beyond.
This article was written by a values driven human!
Ozlem Nolet
Career Coach and seasoned HR Leader
