The Only Constant Is Tomorrow’s Curveball

It’s 6:47 a.m. on Thursday. You’re walking into the distribution center (DC) with your coffee when your phone lights up: the warehouse management system (WMS) is down. Hard down. Your information technology (IT) team estimates two hours minimum before it’s back online. You’ve got 487 orders that need to ship by 2 p.m. to catch the last carrier pickup. Your best picker just texted: his kid is sick, he’s not coming in. And the receiving dock already has three inbound trucks waiting because last night’s second shift left early when the system crashed.

This is not a worst-case scenario. This is a Tuesday. Or a Thursday. Or any other day in distribution when the universe decides your perfect plan needs revising.

Over the last six parts of this series, we’ve covered the foundation of front-line leadership: knowing your operation, leading people fairly, communicating clearly, staying calm under pressure, managing your time, and protecting your team through safety and compliance. Together, those skills form a steady base. But now we hit the skill that ties them all together, adaptability. Because in distribution, the plan is only perfect until the first truck hits the dock.

Every Day Is a New Variable

In a warehouse, no two days are the same. Late trucks. Port congestion. Rail delays. People calling off. Weather spikes driving panic orders. Machines that break down right when you need them most. Parts on backorder. A carrier that suddenly caps your daily volume. A customer who moves up their delivery window by six hours.

Each one can derail your day if you let it.

Adaptable leaders don’t panic; they pivot. They slow the situation down long enough to see what’s real, plan, and communicate it. Sometimes that means sacrificing one customer’s order to protect three others. Sometimes it means switching carriers or re-sequencing your dock plan. The point isn’t perfection, it’s control through clarity.

When the WMS Goes Dark but the ERP Stays Live

It was one of those mornings where everything looked normal until it didn’t. The enterprise resource planning (ERP) was up and running, but the WMS wasn’t talking to it. Orders were available in the ERP, but they weren’t feeding into the warehouse management system. That meant we could see what needed to ship, but the WMS wasn’t generating pick tasks, labels, or bin sequences.

In plain terms, we were flying manual. No batch picking, no optimized pick paths, no real-time validation. And every pick we made risked creating mismatches between the ERP and WMS once it came back online.

Here’s what we did.

First 15 minutes: Assess and prioritize

I pulled my supervisors together in the office. No panic, just questions:
What orders are time-critical? Which customers have penalties for late delivery? What’s already staged or partially picked? What can we print from yesterday’s batch before the system went down?

We identified about 180 orders that absolutely had to ship based on service agreements. Everything else could wait until the system came back online.

Next 30 minutes: Build the manual process

The ERP showed the order details, so we printed pick tickets directly from it. Since the WMS wasn’t generating bin sequences, picks had to be done manually by experienced associates who knew the layout cold.

To protect accuracy, we added extra quality checkpoints. I personally verified the first several orders off the floor, and other supervisors rotated between lanes double-checking quantities, SKUs, and labels before packing. Even a few of our sales leaders who happened to be in the building jumped in to help with order verification and final checks.

Every picked order was logged on a handwritten tally sheet noting SKU, quantity, picker, and time completed. That paperwork became our control record for reconciling inventory later.

Hour 2–5: Execute and communicate

We picked, checked, and packed those 180 orders by hand. Without batch picking or optimized routes, it wasn’t efficient, but it was controlled. The rule was simple: no order leaves the dock without another set of eyes confirming accuracy.

I kept communication constant, updates every 30 minutes to operations, customer service, and transportation. Everyone knew exactly what was going out and what would be delayed. That visibility kept people calm and confident.

The aftermath: Reconciling systems without creating chaos

The WMS came back online at 1:40 p.m. By then, the orders were staged or already shipped, but now we had to bring two systems back into alignment.

Here’s the best-practice playbook we followed:

• Lock out new receiving and putaway tasks until reconciliation was done. This prevented new transactions from muddying the data.
• Manually enter the shipped orders into the WMS using ERP shipment confirmations and our tally sheets as source-of-truth validation.
• Run cycle counts on every location touched during the outage to verify physical inventory.
• Adjust inventory in the WMS to match the physical count and ERP, always favoring what’s on the floor: not what the system thinks is there.
• Document everything who verified what, when, and how.

By 6:00 p.m. the systems were back in sync, orders were confirmed, and inventory was accurate.

What I learned:
Adaptability isn’t about heroics. It’s about structure, clarity, and communication when the systems stop cooperating. When everyone understands the plan, from the floor leads to the sales team, the chaos stays contained.

Adaptability Is Built on the Floor, Not in the Office

Flexibility doesn’t mean chaos. It’s knowing how to adjust without throwing the whole plan away.

Early in my career, I learned that staying calm isn’t optional. Your crew mirrors your energy. If you panic, they panic. If you stay composed and make clear calls, they’ll follow your lead even through uncertainty. I’ve watched supervisors lose their teams by broadcasting stress instead of confidence. The words you say matter less than the steadiness in your voice.

Adaptability is also built through preparation. Leaders who know their operation inside and out, who can visualize how freight moves, where bottlenecks live, and what backups exist, recover faster than those who lead from reports. You can’t adapt to what you don’t understand.

Walk your warehouse during different shifts. Watch how your night crew handles receiving versus your day crew. Know which employees can operate which equipment. Understand where your inventory buffers are and which SKUs move fastest. This isn’t theoretical knowledge, it’s the database you’ll query in your head when systems fail.

Communicate the Pivot

Once you make the call, your next job is communication. Don’t assume everyone “gets it.” Spell it out: what changed, why it changed, and what happens next.

When you’re forced to adjust priorities like pausing lower-value orders to protect same-day shipments, let every stakeholder know. That includes customer service, procurement, transportation, and, most importantly, your floor team.

Your message doesn’t need to be fancy. It needs to be clear, consistent, and confident. Good communication during change keeps rumors from spreading faster than facts. It also shows the team that the situation is under control.

Here’s a template I use:
“Here’s what happened. Here’s what it means for us. Here’s what we’re doing about it. Here’s what I need from you. Here’s when I’ll update you next.”

Five sentences. Delivered in person when possible, over radio or text when necessary. Repeat it. People absorb information differently under stress.

Technology and the Pace of Change

Adaptability isn’t about daily curveballs it’s about staying relevant as the industry evolves. Automation, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and new software platforms are reshaping the landscape. Technology will not replace good leaders, but good leaders who fail to adapt will replace themselves.

Let’s get specific. Here are three technology shifts happening right now that front-line leaders need to understand:

1. Collaborative robots (cobots) in picking and packing
2. AI-powered labor scheduling
3. User friendly labor management systems with real-time performance dashboards

The warehouses that thrive aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets, they’re the ones where leadership treats technology as an opportunity, not an interruption.

Adaptability in Leadership, Not Just Operations

Change doesn’t just hit systems. It hits people. New generations enter the workforce with different expectations. Experienced employees retire. Customer demands shift. You’ll have to adapt your leadership style as much as your floor strategy.

You can’t lead everyone the same way. That’s not weakness; it’s awareness.

Practical Playbook for Staying Adaptable

• Schedule learning time: actually block it.
• Cross-train aggressively and track it.
• Run “what if” drills with your supervisors.
• Build a “break glass” emergency binder and review it quarterly.
• Communicate changes immediately up, down, and sideways.
• Debrief after every major disruption.

Your Challenge This Week

Adaptability separates good leaders from great ones. You can’t control the weather, the freight, or the market but you can control your response. Every time the unexpected happens, your reaction teaches your team how to handle the next one.

Here’s what I want you to do this week:
Pick one thing you’ve been avoiding a technology discussion, a difficult staffing decision, or a “what if” scenario and lean into it. Spend one hour on it. Ask questions. Build a draft plan. Start the conversation.

Adaptability isn’t built in crisis. It’s built in small choices to do hard things before you have to.

Because in distribution, the curveballs don’t stop. But the best leaders? They learn to hit them.

Coming Next: Data Literacy and Performance Tracking

In Part 8, we’ll move from adaptability to accountability how to turn raw numbers into real leadership tools. We’ll break down what data matters on the floor, how to interpret it, and how to use it to improve performance without drowning your team in metrics.