Dolan leads Dick’s Sporting Goods by helping create future of logistics

As senior director of logistics for the largest full-line U.S. sporting goods retailer, Joshua J. Dolan believes, as a mentor once told him, that the best way to predict the future is to help create it.

At Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc., based in the Pittsburgh suburb of Coraopolis, Pa., the transplanted New Englander is applying his industry expertise to a dynamic company with 2013 sales of $6.2 billion and plans to double its already impressive footprint to 1,100 stores. Dolan, in an exclusive interview with the American Journal of Transportation, shares his thoughts on quarterbacking the Dick’s logistics team and his longtime passions for sports as well as supply chains. Leading the transportation efforts for such a fast-growing retailer must be both exciting and challenging. How are you innovatively responding to the challenges? Partnering is critical, on multiple fronts. We’re actively engaged in understanding the needs of our internal customers, creating alignment within the organization to attain our clearly established goals. By further understanding the challenges we internally face, we’re able to leverage not only the solutions that exist in the marketplace, but work with our external business partners to develop new solutions. The logistics team within Dick’s Sporting Goods is not only passionate, but they’re incredibly smart and focused on enabling the aggressive growth of this organization. What role has your experience with Pep Boys, IKEA, Reebok and Fritz Companies [part of UPS Supply Chain Solutions], including in Foreign-Trade Zone operations, before joining Dick’s two years ago, helped you in developing strategies and achieving goals at Dick’s Sporting Goods? I have both a broad and deep understanding of the many facets of multimodal global logistics operations that include trade compliance and technology. Understanding the interconnectivity of how logistics can enable the supply chain, visualize and mitigate risk and create differentiation in our retail space is critical. Through this understanding, we’re also able to help shape and build leaders who also are able to take a macro-environmental perspective and apply that to their tactical execution. You mention partnering. Just how important are partnerships and communications in providing sustainable operations? Both are incredibly critical to the long-term success of our organization. We’re well-positioned in an environment where capacity challenges are projected to grow domestically based on a number of factors – such as increased regulations, aging driver population and so on – in the short to medium term. This comes at a time when we anticipate significant volume growth through both our brick-and-mortar stores, as well as our eCommerce platform. We’re also actively engaged in understanding and leveraging the complexities of an international logistics arena where further consolidation of carrier alliances is altering the ocean freight spectrum from a service, cost and capacity perspective. Further cementing our logistics provider partnerships across the spectrum of technology, capacity, support services and so on will continue to allow us to deliver on the promise of our internal mission statement: To provide innovative logistics solutions and services that exceed our customers’ expectations. Our vision is to be recognized by our internal and external partners as logistics leaders through strategic vision, innovation and collaboration. From a broader perspective, what are you engaged in through your involvement with organizations such as the Retail Industry Leaders Association and its Transportation and Infrastructure and International Trade committees from public policy and industry best practices standpoints? It’s important to stay abreast of the changes in our industry. Whether it’s the volatility of pricing and capacity, technology and best practices evolution, or the development of new regulations and requirements of our industry, we truly operate in a dynamic environment. Our teams rely on our ability to bridge the medium- and long-term gaps and challenges to execution through strategic foresight. It’s also critical to be able to set expectations and help executive leadership within the organization to mitigate risk where appropriate through an understanding of challenges and opportunities on the horizon. I am engaged in both committees mentioned within RILA, SMC3’s educational council, Chainalytics’ advisory board and a few logistics service providers’ customer advisory boards. In each of these groups, I’m also able to help provide input into those things that are most useful to our organization that will assist in our ability to strategically plan and execute. A mentor gave me this guidance: The best way to predict the future is to help create it. You do some mentoring yourself. In your role as a member of the Executive MBA Student Advisory Committee at the Pennsylvania State University – where you earned your MBA from the Smeal College of Business – how are you helping to promote interest in logistics careers, and how critical is it that the industry attract top young professionals? I’m passionate about logistics and how powerful it is in terms of enabling a more efficient world. I’m engaged in our corporate recruiting program as we actively pursue top talent in supply chain and logistics. I think that our youth today deeply care about the impact of things like depletion of raw materials and pollution. What better way to become more efficient with inventory, matching supply with demand and reducing our carbon footprint through efficiency and utilization gains than through supply chain and logistics career paths? Increasingly, this is being more widely used as a way to not only impact business, but also, through business, impact the world. Clearly, you’re passionate about logistics. Do you also personally have a passion for sports, and, if so, which ones? I love football, baseball and basketball. Being from Boston, we’ve been a little spoiled over the last 13 years. It’s well understood that Sundays are holy in the Dolan household though… I’m a diehard Patriots fan. Our team internally at Dick’s Sporting Goods is a lot like a football team. We play both sides of the ball hard every day, with every play and player being important to the overall outcome of our performance. We have a game plan, but we’re also aware of the in-game adjustments that must be made from time to time in order to succeed. The team is committed to mission and knows that every inch adds up to yards, which equates to progress. We’re in this to win. With acting – having Nancy Kulp, bank secretary Jane Hathaway from the Beverly Hillbillies, as a great aunt – and screenwriting – having James Lee Barnett, who wrote such films as Smokey and the Bandit and The Greatest Story Ever Told – in your bloodline, did you ever consider getting into movies? Growing up, we heard a lot about the different movies and shows that Uncle James was working on. He was close friends with John Wayne among many actors and did quite a few movies for him specifically, including Green Berets. He also wrote the screenplay for In the Heat of the Night and Our House as well, which I very much enjoyed watching growing up. This was all very exciting stuff. However, I also had another uncle, Uncle Bob, with whom I was closer, who was very decorated, having served in both the Army and Navy respectively. His career in logistics post military service – and the passion he displayed for it – were what drew me to logistics initially while earning my undergraduate degree in international business [from Bridgewater (Mass.) State University]. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked!