Alignment of organisational values and procurement behaviours

I remember having a conversation with a supplier’s lawyer who said “we’ve never agreed to doing that” in response to something their MD had very much agreed to. The lawyer even went so far as to say “We’d be mad to agree to doing that.”

When I tell the story about the supplier and buyer taking equal ownership and responsibility for a new additional cost for delivering the service – a cost they could both impact in the future – the solution we developed is often described as fair, or acting with integrity.

When I look up the organisational values of the supplier I find integrity, and doing the right thing - is in fact one of their stated values.

That’s what organisational values are supposed to do – provide some criteria for the behaviours we demonstrate, and decisions we make every day. Not just aspirations, or when things are going well, or for the soft stuff. Values that inform every decision, every day of the year, year in and year out. (It’s certainly how our own personal values work.)

In the case of this supplier the “we’ve never done that before” behaviour was certainly demonstrating doing the right thing.

Do you understand how procurement actions align with your organisation’s values? Are procurement’s actions encompassed in the values statements? 

One company that has included procurement in their values statements is Whole Foods.

On first looking it feels little aspirational and out there, with their higher purpose statement being:

“With great courage, integrity and love – we embrace our responsibility to co-create a world where each of us, our communities and our planet can flourish. All the while, celebrating the sheer love and joy of food.”

Dig a little deeper, and they have identified a business value that addresses procurement behaviours;

“Wecreate ongoing win/win partnerships with our suppliers.”

Whole Foods say “Our supplier partners are our allies in serving the interests of our other stakeholders in bringing to market the safest highest quality products available. We treat them with respect, fairness and integrity at all times and expect the same in return.”

I could ask what happens to suppliers who are not partners, but that feels petty when they then go on to identify four behaviours Whole Foods Procurement can be expected to demonstrate:

•          Honesty and communication
•          Transparency - farm to fork
•          Education (of the supply chain)
•          Innovation and differentiation

How do your actions align with the stated values of your organisation?

If we take common values seen in many organisations, would you agree, and perhaps more importantly, would your suppliers agree that your actions are:

•          Open
•          Honest
•          Respectful
•          Fair
•          Integrous

If you used these five criteria each day to determine what you do and how you do it, and also what you choose not to do, would it change how you act?

Last year I was delivering a workshop to a room full of suppliers who said procurement were still like MrWolf. I’d like to think that that’s just the minority of procurement professionals. What do you think? Have we moved with the times, or are we still stuck with behaviours that feel a little like the dark ages, and misaligned from the rest of our organisations? It certainly might explain some of the stakeholder resistance many of us talk about when expressing frustration at the lack of support for our strategies and work.

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Unlocking procurement potential using unconventional tools

Values and Behaviours are two of the postcards included in the Purchasing Coach Soft Skills Toolkit that brings together a series of postcards from your soft skills - it's entitled Dear Procurement, with love from your soft skills. More here.

Values and Beliefs

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Flexibility

I've just posted a very short YouTube video entitled Paths. A reminder that sometimes following the paths others have taken is the best option - especially if we want to avoid the nettles!

The vlog, or perhaps my reaction to it, reminds me about what a lot of my work as a coach entails - helping others understand the patterns they run that support them, and identifying and releasing those patterns that don't.

In other words many of our sources of greatest challenge can be found in a pattern that has us doing the opposite to what makes most sense!

I use 'patterns' as a term a lot but just in case we could be at cross purposes - the best way of describing patterns is as a set of learnt behaviours we use when in certain situations ie the alarm goes off and we do X,Y and then Z every day, or the set routines we use to do the work we do everyday, or clean the house, drive the car, or the buttons that get pressed and the predeterminable reactions we have every time someone mentions A to us or does K (think mums and clothes on your bedroom floor as a great example :-)).

That is when we run a pattern we no longer choose what to do next - we just do it - because that's who we are and that's what we do. (To find out more about their hold on us I wrote a blog earlier in the year about recurring patterns)

Sometimes even having a conversation with someone about them changing such a pattern can be met with much resistance "I'm me, why should I change, no one is going to make me change how I do what I do!". The answer in this blog on that subject reminds us: we don't have to change if we're getting the outcome we want - however if we're not getting the outcome we want then we can either keep trying to open a locked door by kicking it, or we can find the key and open it!

This vlog was interesting because it turned on its head the advice I'd often be sharing here - instead of forging your own path I'm suggesting sometimes it's better to just follow everyone else!! Better because in that situation it's the most logical, and the more effective and efficient means of achieving our goal.

I don't know about you but I react to such advice, and I mean react. As I now reflect on being told to follow others I am laughing at the inevitability of me then metaphorically opting to traipse through the nettles! 

Laughing at least means that a week after videoing the blog that the insight is at least starting to land. Yes Alison if you spent less time resisting following others and exclaiming "no one's going to tell me what to do" you might have energy left to do what you want to do when it really counts!

It's as if our patterns become synonymous with our identify - that is we link 'how we do things' (our patterns) to 'who we are' (our identity). I'm only me if I do something this particular way - in fact I'm not at all me if I achieve the outcome a different way, and especially if that way is how others do it!

Our values then get involved, and start to prescribe ways we're going to get a value met. Which means suddenly a recurring pattern becomes the only way we can get a value met, and therefore helps to explain why we're so resistant to changing it. If I think the only way to achieve freedom is to head off into the nettles I'll keep on doing it! (The link is to a blog where I tried to shake off the recurring pattern around not making decisions for fear of losing freedom.)

Just repeating a recurring pattern therefore might not be the best option - unless of course you have some dock leaves handy for when you get stung!

What buttons are being pressed for you today, and in what way are you forgetting that how you do something is not linked to your identity, and that there are numerous ways your values can be met?

Decision Making: mind or heart?

I read with interest Tanveer Naseer's guest blog by Dianna Booher entitled 'Speak to the heart to lead change'. It certainly aligns with a previous post of mine entitled 'winning hearts and minds'.

The premise of both blogs is: we shouldn't leave our heart and humanity at the front door of our office - we need to take it in with us and use it. Particularly when motivating others - ie it is our values that determine what we will and wont do, and they are determined by our heart and emotions - not our mind and thoughts. If we want to motivate and engage someone therefore, we have to engage their heart to do that, and ours too.

However the assumption I made in my blog was the decision had been made logically (ie with our mind), and therefore to get support for it we now needed to use our heart/emotions.

During an exchange on twitter about the blogs with Ian Berry I was asked to consider making decisions from the heart (for those not twitter literate the conversation runs from the bottom up).

This blog is an exploration of that challenge.

When making decisions for myself I often rely on intuition/emotions to help me - for example:

• Do I accept this or that piece of work, 
• Do I go on this/or that holiday 
• Which restaurant shall I go to
• What dress(es) shall I buy :-)
• Determining which question to ask coaching clients, and when to push forward, and when to pull back and so on.
• To decide which house to buy. Although I did follow a more logical process to develop the possible options 10 years ago. So yes for me logic certainly seems to play more of a part in bigger decisions - even if the final decision was made on 'does it feel right'.

Use of my heart to make decisions therefore is something I'm very familiar with - but these are decisions I make on my own.

When I make decisions with others it feels like I need the logic to back up the intuition/emotion. I wrote a blog entitled strategies need evidence to suggest the same.

As a purchasing consultant I'm often faced with stakeholders using their heart and emotions to tell me why the current supplier is the best choice. If left to hearts alone we'd get nowhere fast - with everyone involved often preferring to stay with what they're already doing, and purchasing pushing for potentially new and shiney suppliers :-).

Often my role therefore is to help stakeholders understand why their heart's choice might not be the only option. This is achieved by uncovering the reasons (business requirements) their heart wants to stay with the current supplier, and demonstrating that alternative suppliers/options are also able to meet these business needs. (Although yes of course - sometimes it's about staying with the current supplier too).

That is Procurement follow a logical process to pull together the relevant facts and data. This in turn enables us to develop a strategy that meets the business requirements and also releases value to the organisation.

There are certainly times when heart may play a part in the decision making - with criteria for selecting options, and certainly selecting suppliers, often including - do we trust them, cultural fit etc.

Decisions are also checked against what our hearts feel. With our hearts' reservations being addressed by asking more questions and gathering more data. Because unless I can provide the evidence to support a decision how will I be able to convince the senior management of the efficacy of our strategy.

In summary our intuition and emotions can play a big part in decision making. It's generally used however to guide us to find more data to support our beliefs - in those instances where these beliefs are still counter to the current facts and data. (NB the more thorough your research and analysis the less likely you are to find a mismatch at the strategy development stage - ie all the hearts concerns and reasons are out on the table and have been addressed in the analysis undertaken)

I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject - in business can you easily use heart alone or does logic also play a part?

Alison

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out - when what you're doing isn't working

Summary: Soft Skills

This week's summary blogs continue today with soft skills. I know it's an emotive phrase and I joined that debate with my blog rant last week entitled "but I don't do soft fluffy stuff" and went on to explain that we all do soft fluffy stuff every minute of every day - ie we're not the android above but human. I also wrote the case for soft skills too.

I first dipped my toe into understanding more about these skills over 15 years ago when I attended a 4 day NLP workshop. I was so enthused about the subject I went on to attend the remaining 16 days of the practitioner, a further 20 days for the master practitioner, another 20 days for the trainer trainer and numerous assistant roles to repeat all of the above. Which in class room time alone must amount to over 200 days on the subject. So yes I was hooked and books on the subject continue to arrive weekly as I explore the subject more fully.

Further certification in other coaching tools have just added to the melting pot of all things fluffy!  (More on these tomorrow).

I suppose that's why I blog so often about the subject - my enthusiasm for the subject - but also the ability as I blog to explore the models more fully. Recent blogging on the subject certainly helped when I included a lot of this content in Future Purchasing's Category and Supplier Management workshops before Christmas.

The challenge is how to summarise the blogs on this subject because they represent over half of the blogs I write. That said if I write on communication over a number of days I'll link to the other blogs from the final one. So that's what you'll have here - a set of favourite subjects with links to the main blog with the ability when you get there to explore that subject further. Although be warned its still a long list!


Change
Personal change management is at the heart of much of soft skills.

• Why do I have to change - the answer to which is you don't if what you're doing is working
• Change Management - with links to resistance to change and strategies for change

 

Values
Values are the key to much stuckness in our lives because they motivate our every action or not, and are the basis for how we judge others.

• Values that are too big for their boots - what to do to identify and then realign your values
• Values don't inherently drive right behaviour
• Does empathy ensure we do the right thing - yes but we don't have it for everyone!
• What does respect look like?
• How are values getting in the way
• What do you put your heart and soul into - because that's meeting your values

Influencing (Also see NLP with links to load of blogs)

• The subtleties and politics of influencing with links to numerous other blogs on the subject
• Communication - links to numerous blogs on the subject
• Set aside the pedestal
• Communicate, communicate, communicate

Goals

• Well Formed Outcome - a fab process - as per graphic above
• What stops you achieving your goals
• The things that help you keep on track to achieving your goals
• Anything is possible

Personal development

• Creativity
• State Management - ie state of mind and body
• Judgements are simply assumptions
• Trust is in the eye of the beholder
• Expanding comfort zones
• Speaking with confidence
• Are you always or never late - and how do you judge others who are the opposite to you?
• Dream, believe, achieve - anything is possible
• What's winning in your world - the good the bad or the indifferent - look to your language to find out
• Looking for the worst in other people - no wonder you live in a hostile world
• Who am I - again a look at the language we use
• Have you reached a choice point in life?

Wellbeing

• My prescription for positivity and wellbeing
• How do you start the day
• We love the love the challenge but is it good for us?
• Are we on auto pilot for bad habits or good habits?
• Sleep
• In need of more bounce
• It's not about the toast - on mental well being and stress
• Don't go cold Turkey - but do let go of some of those addictions to emails, social media
• 5:1 positive to negative interactions
• Stop, Look, Listen
• The conspiracies we support - to keep doing the wrong the things
• 6 out of 7 of Disney's dwarfs are not happy
• Don't stay around miserable Mackerels
• Oh no it's Sunday - don't wish your life away
• Disconnect to reconnect
• Nameste - honour the spirit in others

My favourite quotes

• Our deepest fear - just the quote
• Can you by faithless and therefore trustworthy - exploration of its meaning 

Short stories I've written with wellbeing in mind

• The tortoise and the hare
• Forgiveness
• I phone I phone in my hand - about comparison
• There's a couple more short stories read by me on my Youtube channel 

The summary blog tomorrow will share more about what I do and how I do it.

Yesterday I provided a summary list of blogs on procurement, and the day before a summary of rants on the loss of our humanity. A useful reference for those who enjoy my blogs and more easily want to read those from the archive - ok also easier for me to find them too :-).

Alison Smith
Inspiring Change Inside and out - when what you're doing isn't working

Values that are too big for their boots

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What's motivating your actions

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Values don't inherently drive right action

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Personal and organisational survival

In an earlier blog I argued that many ethical decisions are compromised because personal survival is placed as higher importance than ethics. I can get on my soap box about integrity and doing the right thing, but we're hard wired to survive and need a huge amount of will power to override our internal programming that prioritises personal and family survival.

With thoughts of that blog still in my mind I attended the CIPS Supply Management awards. The overall winner was a team successfully raising the awareness and changing behaviours with respect to sustainable purchasing. 

Before the dinner I spoke to one of the other nominees for the award. As we spoke I realised that for that organisation the choice to support sustainability was clear cut and the right decisions were being made. Then the realisation dawned that the right doing arose because the organisation felt its survival was conditional on not doing the opposite. Brand and customer loyalty would be seriously jeopardised if they didn't get sustainability right - ROI, profit and competitive advantage would all be detrimentally impacted too. 

I wonder therefore how the internal programming to survive can, and is being used by procurement teams to inspire more businesses to do the right thing? That is how can we link sustainable action to survival of our own business and how can we link sustainable action to survival of our suppliers' businesses.

Perhaps more importantly what does that look like in terms of specifics:

• Certainly following through on not dealing with suppliers who don't take the necessary action (all talk and no action is a strategy that's bound to fail if survival is being used as the motivation).
• I also suspect culture will play a big part in how to tell the story to leaders within an organisation to enable them to accept the urgent need for changes in direction. 

Another blog last week suggested having empathy also supported right doing. I wonder how powerful a strategy that uses empathy and personal survival might be in removing the resistance to more sustainable and responsible actions in business? I suspect that's the topic for a future blog.

Alison Smith

Inspiring change inside and out

Picture courtesy of Pixabay

Does empathy ensure we do the right thing?

"To understand someone you need to walk a mile in their moccasins" 

Recent blogs I've written here and on supply management have touched on doing the right thing. On making the right decisions irrespective of the personal impact on yourself. After conversations in the last 48hrs I realise that it's really anonymity, and therefore lack of empathy, that supports the wrong decisions being made.

Earlier in the week, after a very long day that started at 0500, the travel lodge I had booked with called to tell me they were moving me to a different hotel due to an "unexpected maintenance problem" with some rooms. A euphemism I now realise for "we've over booked". Certainly if those tweeting at the time and the 2 others booking in at 0030 as I did, all from different hotels but all given the same excuse, is anything to go by. 

After a delay of an hour to get me to the substitute hotel I was still annoyed the next morning. The receptionist couldn't have been more helpful. Taking it upon herself to book a taxi this morning and arranging for payment before she'd got hold of the original hotel to approve her decision. She understood the issue, made the right decision and acted on it. Excellent customer service. Those making the decisions to over book I'd suggest do that because they don't get to see the consequences of their decisions nor get eye contact with the customers. 

As I was driven towards Kings Cross in the taxi we had occasion to need to be let into a queue of cars and then later to let others in. Eye contact, as anyone in a queue not wanting to let anyone in, is the key. Try not letting someone into a queue in front of you, having got eye contact first, and you'll know what I mean.

Which reminded me of the recent undercover boss here in the UK. In all instances, once the 'boss' experienced firsthand what was happening to those who worked for them, they immediately made changes. Contracts were changed, conditions enhanced, communication improved, opportunities discussed. Fairness and respect that had been conspicuous by their lack were once more regained. 

For me, in all the examples above, the right thing was done because empathy was experienced. 

Do you think it's empathy that triggers human nature every time, and if it is I wonder how we can use this in other situations to ensure the right things gets done? 

• Paying the living wage - I know watching a friend fail to live without help from others, working 40 hours a week, in conditions that don't meet minimum health and safety standards, has opened my eyes to the necessity for us to mandate its payment. 
• Truth telling - this blog explains more.
• Stopping murder in Syria - I know there's not a simple solution and it's not a subject I generally stray into. I can't, however, help but feel if we saw the whites of the eyes of those impacted, or even the light go out in the eyes of those murdered, we'd do something more than we are. 

How do you think we can bring more empathy into the world so 'doing the right thing' becomes the norm?

Alison Smith

inspiring change inside and out

Ethical behaviour comes with integrity

I've been thinking about business ethics in advance of a session I'm facilitating on 2nd October on 'Business values and ethics' near Perth for the Scottish Institute of Business Leaders (still places left I believe).

I wondered about waiting to share this blog until after that session. Instead I share it now and would love to hear your thoughts so that they may inform, and provide additional insight, for the session next month.

Everyone has a belief about what ethical behaviour looks like in business. It's doing this or its not doing that. I'm sure, even if as a group we started with very different opinions, we could, after some debate, identify a short list of what ethical behaviour is in business. 

The challenge is can we organisationally and personally live up to those ideals?

Our values are what determine our individual actions. That is they determine what we do, what we won't do and the choices we make. As we have a number of values the hierarchy of these will also impact our behaviours.

For example - if you have values of achievement and connection the order of these would impact the decision you make - ie whether you stay at work till 20:00 to finish a piece of work or go home to read the kids a story instead. If you also have security as a value then the decision may be different. A higher priority to having your need for security met allowing you to stay at work even if at the expense of not connecting with the kids. (I'm obviously making huge assumptions about what achievement, connection and security looks like. After all achievement might be having happy kids and nothing to do with success at work - but that's another blog.)

Maintaining ethical behaviour, whether personally or organisationally, therefore, requires a value of integrity to be top of the list. Otherwise other values may mean we end up supporting unethical behaviour and may even do it ourselves. 

Ethical behaviour means saying "no" when asked to do something we know to be wrong. Ethical behaviour might even mean leaving a job or leaving a relationship because we know what we're being asked to do is wrong. The issue is we don't - we justify our support of unethical behaviour as acceptable because, to us, the consequences are too high.

• I can't say no to my boss because I might lose my job
• I can't make the right decision because it will impact my bonus
• I can't do that because I may lose my house
• I can't whistle blow I might be thrown out of my country

In other words if I stand up for what I know to be right the situation will be worse for me and at a level that I'm not prepared to accept.

Unfortunately unless we're prepared to live with the consequences above then we'll all continue to make some decisions that support unethical behaviours! Yes seriously. 

The problem is I'm sure any political, economic, social, or environmental crisis has the seeds in the same quandary. People making decisions that ensured they weren't personally negatively impacted by the decisions being made. 

I've said no in the past that had the potential to put my house and living on the line - it wasn't because it was practically easier for me than anyone else it was because I have a value of integrity higher up my list of values than security or many other values that might have me say "yes". It not right or wrong - it just is. 

I don't know the answer - I'm not sure there is one. 

Although the belief I have is unless we each choose integrity as our highest value nothing is going to change. However, with my values hierarchy, of course that would be my solution :-) - what's yours? 

Alison Smith

Inspiring change inside and out

I realise I need to return to my blog on Maslow's hierarchy of needs to see how that informs this topic. There's also a blog on why I don't think business values exist that will provide input and I concede that sometimes decisions are being made without our knowledge. 

Business strategy development

I've attended a number of less than successful business strategy development sessions in the past and have observed a number of the following happening:

• the same people contributing
• nothing new emerging
• energy at the end of the day being very low
• limited inspiration to take action
• lack of cohesion between the leadership team
• no clear plan emerging
• cliches maintained
• nothing changes as a result

I'm sure you could add to this list.

When facilitating such sessions I often use nature as the inspiration and find, as a result, the above list to be missing. I'm sure there are many reason for this - the one I'd like to concentrate on today is the power of metaphor.

With one client, after the leadership team had spent time in small groups in nature, the above picture emerged to summarise the conversation about where the organisation was and some of the options that existed for where they wanted to be.

The beauty of using metaphor to explore the current situation, especially if you can stick with the metaphor for as long as possible, is it avoids:

• ego
• resistance
• barriers
• "if"s, "but"s and "not"s
• defensiveness
• anger
• blame

The beauty of using metaphor to explore opportunities is it avoids all of the above and in addition:

• attachment to preconceived opportunities
• the same old opportunities re-emerging time and time again
• lack of new ideas emerging

Imagine the facilitator, or CEO for that matter, saying "we need to do something different" at the start of the session. Before we've even had chance to take a breath the reasons why it's not possible start. With a metaphor the suggestion to try something different comes from:

• walking up a lane and seeing a hole in the hedge
• sunrise or sunset
• caterpillars or butterflies
• seeds - whether floating past, growing or still in their pods/shells
• the tide changing
• the sound of the wind
• harvest time 
• spring time

I can assure you the "can't"s evaporate when faced with the wisdom from nature. Once the wisdom has been harvested then, and only then, is it time to release the metaphor. Time to understand what it means in practice and identify an inspirational and innovative strategy for the organisation going forward.

How could the wisdom of nature help your leadership team today? #happytohelp

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out

You can find out more about the work I do here. There's also an Overcoming business challenges using the wisdom of nature workshop arranged in August - it's also available to be run in-house.

Caterpillar picture courtesy of Pixabay

Business values and payment of the living wage

I suspect your business values would point to you paying the living wage - so I do hope you are already paying it or have steps in place to rectify the situation internally and with your suppliers. 

It’s living wage week this week here in the UK - where organisations are being asked by the Living Wage Foundation to sign up to paying a living wage – ie a wage that enables those in receipt of it to meet the basic costs of living. In London that figure is £8.55 and outside London £7.45 (£1.26 more than the recently increased minimum wage).

I can feel the resistance already of many organisations not supporting payment of the living wage. I'm sure as living wage week progresses there will be many others who can more adequately answer some of the concerns raised. One point I'd like to make, and it would be funny if it wasn't so serious a point as I only blogged yesterday about the validity of values statements, is this:  

Values are how we determine what action to take - the same should be the same for business values. If we have a decision to make we should be able use the values statement as criteria for determining if it's a yes or a no! Let's just see how some common business values fair when asked "should I be paying the living wage?"

• Respect 
• Lead by example
• Honest
• Socially responsible
• Integrity
• Open
• Value the individual
• Dignity
• Standards of excellence

That's a yes then.

Even if an organisation has included the need for profitability in their values statement, and most don't, I'd suggest meeting all the other values would negate the extra £44 per week per person you may be needing to pay. Especially as a procurement professional I could save you that in a heart beat from somewhere else. At least you could then hold your head high and know your profitability isn't at the expense of respecting and giving dignity to those who work for you on a wage significantly less than most of us reading this blog.

What can you do to ensure your organisation signs up to pay the living wage internally and to it's suppliers?

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Sowing the seeds for the payment of the living wage by our suppliers too

Living Wage Foundation logo source: livingwage.org.uk via Alison on Pinterest

Business Values - do they exist?

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What gets them out of bed in a morning?

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