How to Lead Like a Boss, Even If You’re Not!
Read about how to lead your team’s procurement transformation, even if you’re not the one in charge.
You’re overwhelmed, the work is piling up and there is zero budget to increase headcount.
Management’s answer seems like a one-way ticket to burnout.
But this isn’t the time to lose hope, far from it! The path to positive change and procurement transformation is right here.
Meet our unlikely heroes
Picture a team suffering from complete overwhelm. Chaotic workloads, and stressed employees. You and your team are on the brink of procurement burnout.
Sound all-too-real? That’s because it is!
We spoke to one particular team (unnamed in this article) whose only tools were a spreadsheet and some patchy data held together by sticky tape and prayers. We spoke to them about their journey and how they managed to climb themselves out of a big black hole.
The vision
The team’s vision was simple: to move from transactional procurement to proactive commercial leadership. Forget nabbing a seat at the executive table – this procurement team wants to run the meeting, and choose who is invited.
The start line
As a baseline, here’s where our unlikely heroes were sitting:
- 90% reactive to customer demands
- Limited visibility on what’s coming up on the pipeline
- Transactional mindset for contract and supplier relationship management
- Limited strategic value-add projects and limited time
- Heavily focused on tasks / processes relating to sourcing only
- Traditional approaches to procurement
- Under-staffed and stagnant hiring processes
The recipe for change
Despite the problems emerging from their transaction approach, this team had some vital ingredients they could work with, and they recognised that these factors could help them build a transformation program.
The tricks up their sleeve:
- A new CPO with a fresh outlook and supportive
- High-performing and high-achieving team members
- Internal customers willing to try new strategies
- Suppliers eager to build better partnerships and diversify
- Energy and momentum to give things a go
The culture revolution begins!
This team carved out some time for some focused strategy work. They came up with a plan and realised all they needed to do was to break things down into bite size pieces. Small shifts built up over time created a radical shift overall.
We’ve all heard this story before – small changes today create our future operating environments. In procurement it’s no different, and we need to adopt these changes to become the leaders and heroes we aspire to be!
So, without further ado…
Top 5 tips to move procurement from zero to hero
- Define your value
Start with this question: what value does your team provide to your business? Then… And what do your internal customers want from you? What does value look like? What does your team look like in 3-5 years?
Sitting down to brainstorm with the team is the next all-important step. Trust us, you’ll find nuggets of gold by capturing all the strategic value-add and improvement projects you have in place – no matter how big or small.
- Time and task assessment
Take a scan of where your team is spending their time and figure out if there are any immediate strategies to help alleviate the burden.
Example: for our unlikely heroes, much of the high-churn but low-value-add activities was happening at the $100k+ mark, but the internal thresholds hadn’t been reviewed in decades. They established supply panels and raised their internal thresholds, enabling their customers to undertake self-guided buying through pre-vetted suppliers.
- Data talks, find it
Take time to fully investigate what data sources are available, and the existing processes and systems that aren’t being utilised to their full potential. Check out the PICK Matrix strategising method, which you can adopt to help identify and clear away flaws in your management systems.
Example: this team noticed that their P2P system had the functionality for recording supplier performance data, but the function was located in a hard-to-access tab. They moved the system to the first screen, and data capturing increased immediately!
- Leadership
What does commercial leadership look like? And what does the data tell you? We know, there are a lot of questions to ask of yourself and your team. But they are all necessary, and they all relate – by analysing your spend data and determining its capabilities, in turn you’ll be determining the skill sets you’ll need from your team as you move forward.
Example: our heroes determined that internal customers were begging for market scans, category reviews and help with supply and value chains. But the time assessment task showed that most of the procurement team resource was taken up with low value transactional processes. The data showed the biggest spend categories and top suppliers and indicated the direction of effort for the team.
- Give things a go
Trial small improvement projects with a customer team that is willing to do things differently. Then, it becomes easier to build case studies and turn the project collateral into new generic tools and ready templates for wide deployment. Creating a fail-safe environment helped the team to develop on the fly where live testing provided the most efficient means of feedback.
‘Sprints’ are your friend!
‘What is a ‘sprint’?’, you might be wondering. A sprint is a short, time-boxed period in which a team works to complete a project or series of tasks. The concept grew from agile methodology originating in the IT sector.
So, introduce this agility approach to your team by breaking your projects into ‘sprints’ and managing them in smaller groups of team members.
Try having your sprint groups chip away at these change initiatives in six-week time blocks. You’ll start to see the effects: the sprint groups will create gradual improvements in order to steadily redefine the BAU environment.
Be bold and make change
Follow these tips for radical procurement transformation; trust us, you’ll skyrocket your team’s influence as the leading example of internal business operations, and a force to be reckoned with among your competitors. Above all, ensure your team is driving a big-picture, growth agenda and impacting the top line of your business – not just protecting the bottom line through savings.
You can start creating smarter business outcomes by leading the rest of the organisation instead of responding to it.
What are you waiting for? Start creating better business outcomes by implementing smart team strategies and processes. For more tips on building up your high-performing team, read this!
