Trucking executive outlook: Derek Koza, Wellington Group of Companies

As 2022 comes to an end, TruckNews.com reached out to several trucking industry executives to ask about the biggest challenge their fleets will face in the coming year, and how they plan to address these issues.

In this installment, Wellington Group of Companies president and CEO Derek Koza offers his insights.

Q1: What is the single greatest challenge that your business will face in 2023?

Wellington Group of Companies’ single greatest challenge that we will face in 2023 is further developing our contingency and succession planning as an organization. Our group has grown considerably over the past few years and received additional growth trajectory due to the pandemic, which saw many companies within the transportation industry accelerate growth due to record-setting demand.

With record-setting demand, we became less strategic about the sustainability of our leadership growth and we will be using the cooling off period in 2023 to address those items.

That’s not to say that strategy and sustainability was not present in our growth over the past few years, but we are committed to being the very best that we can be and have identified there is still work to be done. What we will be addressing in 2023 will allow Wellington Group of Companies to be well positioned for the bullish growth we are preparing for in the next boom cycle.  

Q2: What steps are you taking to address that challenge? 

In early November we asked our leadership group the following questions: If something were to happen to you and you were unable to perform your duties and communicate with anyone at the company for 30 days, would your department know what to do? And would there be enough capacity within your department to absorb the workload?

The next question was: If you were to be promoted within the next 12 months, do you have a succession plan and if so, what is it?

An organizational chart and highlighted responses are being put together through the month of December. Meetings will be held throughout January with the leadership group to address a strategy in regards to contingency, any possible capacity shortages, along with succession planning discussions.

Goals and tasks will be assigned, there will be a lot of collaboration amongst group leaders to help build the most robust leadership group that walks the talk when we talk about being a sustainable organization that has deep roots of career advancement and succession planning.

It is our mandate that by the end of 2023 when the same questions are asked, that the whole organization can answer with certainty and conviction that our contingency plans are in place, all leadership and staff are aware of the contingency and that each layer of our leadership group has a succession plan mapped out.