This interview is part of the Leading Asia series, which features in-depth conversations with the region’s most influential leaders on what it takes to lead in Asia today.

In this Leading Asia interview, Mukund Sridhar, a senior partner at McKinsey, talks to Alan Beacham, the managing director of Toll Group, who is based in Singapore. Beacham joined the 137-year-old global logistics company in 2018 and has overseen Toll Group’s expansion across Asia. With 20 years’ experience in senior management and executive roles, primarily in the transportation, logistics, and engineering sectors, he is well-placed to advise on what it takes to be a leader. He is also a member of the Australian Climate Leaders Coalition, a group of cross-sectoral Australian CEOs.

Logistics challenges—such as the diversification of supply chains, the pressure for visibility around sustainability, and ever-increasing technological change—are some of the hurdles that leaders face in the region. Beacham discusses what it is like to lead a foremost pan-Asian organization, build a values-driven company culture, and shape the future of logistics across Asia, particularly in a constantly evolving geopolitical environment.

Mukund Sridhar: Toll is celebrating its quarter-century in Asia this year, and ambition has been a cornerstone along the journey. What did it take to act on that ambition?

Alan Beacham: Twenty-five years ago, Toll started with inorganic growth into Asia. In the early years, the cornerstone was around big, bold, ambitious investments. In the past two years, however, we’ve seen a compound annual growth rate of over 14 percent in our core markets of China, India, and Singapore, beating GDP. We expect over 20 percent growth in 2026.

I think it’s people who define ambitious moves—people who are prepared to take risks; people who are prepared to differentiate. That’s very much the narrative we focus on as a leadership team.

Mukund Sridhar: Pivoting a brand that is over 130 years old into Asia couldn’t have been easy. What did it take for you to achieve that?

Alan Beacham: It definitely was not easy. One of the major pivots that helped us move toward an organic growth engine has been a shift in policy of making sure that we have local leadership in the local markets. Local teams understand their customers and their needs in these markets. That move has been key to building momentum. We are competing against local heroes—it’s their home market, home culture, home team. They have the right properties and assets. Or, we’re competing against global giants that have the strength and leverage to muscle through.

We see ourselves as being “big enough to matter, small enough to care.” But that means we have to play to our strengths. The big unlock for us in growth has been collaboration among our own teams, using Toll’s 137-year-old brand in Australia and our global client base to pick through all the work, saying, “Let’s think about the vertical market and solutions for our customers. What does our collective knowledge bring, and how do we channel that into a solution for a specific country?”

We have had to rewire ourselves, our thinking, our team, and bring in diversity. We have had to change our policies to be relevant in local markets, as well as change our solutions and practices. As a result, we’re now trying not only to build domain expertise in a vertical market, but also build that expertise to ensure that we don’t have a singular, carbon copy approach everywhere. We need to have a base of consistency and strength, with a nuance of locality. The essence of it for me is reflected in our purpose statement: “We move the businesses that move the world.”

Mukund Sridhar: Where do you see Toll, and you personally as a leader, investing time and energy to shape the industry for the future?

Alan Beacham: My drive is to focus on the three Rs of the supply chain: resilience, responsiveness, and responsibility. We need to start with a resilient supply chain. The COVID-19 pandemic was the first time that people realized that supply chains can be broken. We’re now in a challenging geopolitical environment with questions arising around tariffs. This means we have to think about optionality and solutions for how we will move goods across the world.

The next R is responsiveness because there’s an increasing drive globally for things to be quicker; we want them now. This also involves visibility—we want to know where something is from and how it’s coming to us.

The obvious change agent in this environment is AI: How do we capture and use digitization and AI to make better decisions? This will help solve a whole range of problems, from resilience to responsiveness, through to the next R, which is responsibility. We have to have a responsible supply chain. This is not just from a sustainability and carbon-reduction point of view, but also from where goods are sourced and how we manage the supply chain. That points to global compliance from a sanctions point of view all the way through to labor and being good employers.

Mukund Sridhar: Can you give an example of unique solutions that you’ve developed for Asian markets?

Alan Beacham: Singapore presents a unique environment because it is a country with a very tight geography and small population, which allows us to operate much like we would in a city, in some respects. E-commerce has been interesting for retailers in Singapore: How do they evolve in a multiplatform world with so many of the big platform retailers—Shopee, Lazada, Shopify, Amazon—in a very tight location and with a population of six million people?

Singapore is an example of where we’ve been able to bring a “solution-ing” mindset and our global knowledge to solve a very local problem. We took what was a commercial off-the-shelf solution that we had for a global customer and made it work for the local market. This has let us host their inventory in a multilevel location for various platforms. We then devised a carrier management model, which gave the customer a choice of the different carriers that operate in Singapore—all in a seamless, visible solution that is live and continually being updated.

Mukund Sridhar: Your shareholder is also Asian. How has that shaped the way you navigate Asia, and how have you benefited from the wisdom of its experience and in accessing new markets?

Alan Beacham: Japan Post Holdings is our shareholder. It is a trusted and recognized brand, which is also on a learning journey within its own organization. Its reason for acquiring Toll was very much to access an international growth opportunity and a learning opportunity.

We have two roles with our shareholder. One is a training and development role, where we take Japan Post trainees at different levels who have only spent time in Japan, and give them international, real-world experience in multifunctional aspects—whether that be in frontline sales, operational delivery, or customer service. We’re also building a Japan desk sales capability, using Japan Post assignees who speak fluent Japanese and have a cultural understanding of Japanese companies that are doing business in Asia.

We intentionally think about how to rotate people around the company, not just in Asia but also around the world. We have a number of accelerated talent programs, where we pick people who are young and early enough in their careers that they’re able to be mobile and move into new roles. We give them different, challenging assignments that are outside their comfort zones. It has been very successful so far.

Similarly, we have a talent policy that, in key positions, particularly country leadership, we hire somebody who is from that country, where possible. Even at the city level, we try to hire someone from that city for us to create a granular local understanding. In this way, we try to blend both policies: moving people around the organization for them to gain global and multidisciplinary exposure, but also to create local teams with local knowledge.

Mukund Sridhar: Asia is very inspiring in terms of innovation and prospects for growth. What do you see happening in the future of logistics?

Alan Beacham: Asia is an evolving global force in terms of population growth and infrastructure growth, and infrastructure development and economic development. Logistics tends to follow all of those drivers. The current geopolitical environment is also shaping logistics, globally and in Asia. Sustainability is another factor that will shape the future of supply chains. As soon as we start to think about handling and moving goods less and traveling fewer kilometers, we will see a shift in the evolution of supply chains.

Mukund Sridhar: You’re passionate about sustainability. Do you see sustainability and growth in Asia as a trade-off, or as helping each other?

Alan Beacham: Referring to “Asia” can be ambiguous in this context, because there are aspects of sustainability in which certain countries in Asia are accelerating, more so than other countries where you perhaps would expect more to be happening.

Take China, for example: The electric vehicle revolution in China is phenomenal with its progression in quality and performance. Hydrogen has been powering buses in metro cities in China for many years. We’re in our second year of running a hydrogen truck on a 300-kilometer loop in the country.

I see a fragmented picture when I look at different countries in Asia that are investing in sustainability. I would expect that—as is no different than the rest of the world—some countries will accelerate in the sustainability context and some will lag behind. That is where our role comes in to some extent—to try to navigate through that while providing a consistent overall product, service, and solution to global customers. Toll has a clear commitment to move toward net zero by 2050 and will try to achieve that on a linear pathway.

Mukund Sridhar: Diversity, health, and wellness matter a lot to you personally. What have you done to role model this at Toll in Asia?

Alan Beacham: I firmly believe that Toll, as a company, should look like the communities in which it lives, works, and serves. For example, we have started with the basic premise that society is based on a 50:50 male–female gender basis. That’s the kind of narrative that we have begun to take.

One of the personal examples that I’ve taken in my leadership is to question, “How do I think; how do I look?” My natural bias is toward having people who think in the same way. But I actively try to bring different thinkers into the leadership team to help balance out problems. You can’t solve every problem you face, but you can make sure you’re moving diversity forward to help fix the problem.

Mukund Sridhar: There’s a notion of CEOs being, in a way, like professional athletes. How does an athlete’s mindset of growth, development, and struggle influence your leadership style?

Alan Beacham: Fitness is how I manage my own work–life balance, stress, and mental health. That’s what works for me. I don’t think you have to be an athlete to be a CEO and a leader, but you do need something that disconnects you from the workplace.

Q: What are some key challenges facing leaders in the logistics industry in Asia?

A: Some challenges include diversification of supply chains, pressure for sustainability, and technological advancements.

In conclusion, Alan Beacham’s insights into leading Toll Group’s expansion in Asia provide valuable lessons for leaders in the logistics industry. By focusing on resilience, responsiveness, and responsibility in supply chain management, Toll Group is poised for continued growth and success in the region. With a commitment to sustainability and diversity, Toll Group is not only shaping the future of logistics in Asia but also setting a benchmark for industry best practices.