Have you ever had a bad day?

Have you ever had a bad day & wanted to blame someone for your day? I remember many years ago slamming down the phone & swearing very loudly & a colleague asking “Have you stopped doing Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)?”
They asked because since I’d started my journey of how my mind works I’d started to stand in others shoes, & take responsibility for my reactions. I realised how I saw the world was only one view. In the words of a stakeholder I’d become “easier to deal with”. I’d become more conscious of the impact my thinking was having on any situation & how I was feeling. On bad days when we don’t understand how others think, & everything gets on top of us it’s easy; to not want to take the time to understand our own contribution to the situation; to have a day off from personal responsibility; to blame someone else; & to slam the phone down & swear. Ultimately though, our mind is with us 24/7 365, & a conscious awareness of the impact it’s having on the outcomes we’re getting is actually the quickest way to finding a solution or resolve a frustration. It’s such a pity that’s also true on a bad day because slamming phones can certainly make us feel better - momentarily. How can you take back responsibility for the outcome you’re getting?

The 5 day Procurement Mindset Challenge starting on the 9th September will allow us to become more conscious about the mindset we're choosing in any moment, and to explore the alternate choices we have. See link to join up.

5 day Procurement Mindset challenge

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle

In the procurement mindset 5 day challenge starting on 9^th September we’ll be looking at ways of making a supportive mindset a habit.

The Word Collector

The reason I geek out about patterns in language is because our language is such a wonderful route to solving a problem, and I love solving problems so we can make progress rather than be in that frustrating no man's land of confusion and indecision.

I particularly love helping Procurement professionals find the solutions that are eluding them, to get back on the track they want to be on, rather than up a creek, in a rut, out on a limb, in deep water or going round in circles.

Caroline Myss talks about words having power, and for me that power comes in many guises:

• Power to impact our mindset (and therefore outcomes)
• Power to impact our behaviours (ditto)
• Power to hide the solution within the very words we’re using 

Which is why when coaching, training or consulting procurement teams I can often be heard saying “I notice you said the word xxx” and then we’re off to see how exploring their language may help them turn round and head for their intended destination and away from that dead end.

Next time you’re not getting the outcome you expect, look to the words you’re using - they may just be the difference that makes the difference.

What your team needs from you

When you’re being pulled in lots of different directions and everyone wants you to solve their problems, it can certainly be frustrating.

Especially when you’d like to be focussing on procurement’s relationship with senior leaders within your business and your team isn’t stepping up to support you as much as you’d like, even though you know they’re perfectly capable at doing this.

It’s particularly draining when you’re still racking your brains about how to get your team to take more responsibility and come to you with solutions not just problems.

It can certainly feel as if they or the world are out to get you.

The good news is your team isn’t out to get you, and you’re right about their capability at doing the job you need, they just need a little more self awareness.

More self awareness about:

🔎 The specific behaviours you’re seeing that are getting in the way of them achieving their objectives
🔎 How their mindset is impacting the outcomes they’re getting, and
🔎 How to develop their behavioural and mindset skills to bridge the gap between where they are now, and where you know they could be.

What can you do today to help to help your team increase their self awareness, or would you like me to help you do that?

My ideal client

Just to say, my ideal client is a procurement team I can get to know and spend a few days every month training, mentoring, and coaching individuals or small groups on ‘how’ they do what they do.
This will most likely include developing the team’s stakeholder engagement, communication, influencing, and creative thinking skills.
Other topics covered might also include mindset, confidence, values and beliefs, and other topics that increase individuals’ self awareness, which are the building blocks to having an affective and adaptable approach to ‘how’ things get done.
I’ve been a passionate procurement professional for over 30 years, and for 20 of those years I’ve been a NLP and soft skills coach and trainer, and geek on new and innovative tools for personal development and transformation.
If you’re interested in me supporting your procurement team to fully embrace their potential, do get in touch.
With capacity to only provide this to a small number of organisations it’s not something everyone will be able to get access to.

What I do for Procurement Teams

Whilst I do work in the personal development arena, I also do a lot of coaching with Procurement teams – especially for larger organisations.

In this vlog I share a little more about the soft skills coaching I can provide to Procurement teams.

A Purchasing Coach review of 2018

Happy New Year - even if it's a little belated.

As January 2018 started much quieter than in previous years I wonder if I’d drained my blogging juices with a post a day in December 2017 introducing a range of tools I use in coaching, facilitation and problem solving?

It was also a sign of a quieter blogging year here on Purchasing Coach with the publication of my book Can’t see the wood for the trees in August and all things landscaping Your Life (LYL) that accompanied that, and then the death of my father in October resulting in posts here not being as frequent as in previous years (see 2016 year in blogs). Nor perhaps as controversial as I’m starting 2019 blogs talking about changing the buyer/supplier paradigm (out on 21st).

That said, there’s a few blogging highlights I’d like to share and they cover the topics I love to talk about:

• Words having Power
• Procurement
• Soft skills and Self Awareness
• Coaching

Words have power

Interestingly I started the year with one of my favourite subjects ‘the power of words’. That is, the power for words we use to contain the kernel of a solution within them.

Interesting with how the year ended that it started with a post over on the LYL blog on solutions for when “life gets in the way” with other posts here covering:

• Being on the same page as others
• Juggling balls and spinning plates (the solutions being a personal favourite this year)
• No pain no gain over on LinkedIn about the counter productive use of these words
• Getting your head above the parapet

Procurement

In February I wrote a love letter to organisations with love from procurement. 

A letter that outlined that procurement needs to get back to delivering real value and not just the cost savings they think that organisations want that actually diminishes the relationship between the two. That is, it could be a match made in heaven and yet often feels like a one night stand or friends with benefits! One element of the letter was expanded upon over on my Landscaping Your Life blog and touched on what happens when we've exhausted the low hanging fruit.

In November my interview with Phil Ideson at The Art of Procurement aired – discussing all things procurement, soft skills and with a little Landscaping Your Life throw in for good measure.

As I do every year on metal health awareness week I invited procurement to consider mental health in procurement within our own organisations and that of our suppliers.

Other procurement posts written for Future Purchasing, a procurement consultancy I'm an active associate for covered:

• How to access your creative side
• Why rationalising suppliers is Not the strategy for reducing costs

• What do the Great British Bake Off and Category Management have in common
• Process and toolkit - and why they're not things to be avoided   

Soft skills and self awareness

As ever, soft skills was a frequent topic in training and coaching sessions and an index of soft skills posts was posted for clients to dip into topics we’d discussed.

Other posts on this subject included:

• The impact the roles we use to describe what we do has on the outcome we achieve, and the impact of simply changing the description can have. (Although wonder of this is really a words have power post :-)). After all procurement isn't just all about fire fighting!

• Taking your rose coloured spectacles off – notes from a presentation I did at a CIPS local branch meeting on self awareness being the key soft skill that would have greatest impact on personal and organisational success

Coaching

As a coach I’m often asked about the benefits of coaching and also realise there’s some myths too that stop people considering coaching as a means of them achieving more in their personal and working lives. I wrote 2 posts to help shed more light on what to expect from a coaching relationship.

• Myths about coaching
• Benefits of coaching

Although if you’d rather not have a human as a coach my recently published book Can’t see the wood for the trees provides insight on how to have nature as your coach.

The book uses a process (LYL) I first developed over 20 years ago to help managers understand why suppliers needed to be managed, and how it was the same as looking after your garden ie I discovered that gardening was a great metaphor for supplier management. The process then expanded to using landscapes as metaphors for our lives.

You’ll find more about the LYL process using #landscapingyourlife on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. There's also in index of LYL highlights for 2018 including notes from a session on planning for success in 2019.


Here's to a fabulous 2019. I can guarantee I'll be continuing to share here what excites, inspires and challenges me.

You know where I am - alison@alisonsmith.eu +44(0)7770 538159

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach

Inspiring change inside and out

Have you taken off your rose coloured spectacles?

Before my holiday I gave a talk at a local CIPS branch meeting and addressed my answer to a question posed about 'how to stand out from the crowd'. It was of course a given that the tag line to that question was 'using soft skills'.

Consider for a moment which of the following would you say was the most important soft skill?

The soft skill that would enable you to stand out from others, and enable you to get that interview, job or promotion?

Perhaps the soft skill you're thinking of isn't there.

Here's my answer to that question:

Having taken up sea swimming last year I've signed up for a Firth of Forth swim in September (eeck!).

Since swimming, and certainly since telling people about my 1.4 mile swim to come, I am constantly aware of the different temperature comfort zones we all have:

I've never liked temperatures over 20 degrees but who knew I would happily embrace swimming without a wet suit in 8 degree water with frost on the ground to watch sunrise!!

Aren't we all a little like the weather though with a range of temperaments:

Some of us able to demonstrate a different temperament every hour, and others stuck in one for months on end:

The key, is the predictability of our actions:

With the ability to flex those actions to suit the situation:

and to not get stuck in a fixed way of being:

I'll ask you again, which of these soft skills is the most important?

The accuracy of your answer depends whether you took your rose coloured spectacles off long enough about yourself to assess which of these skills you excel at, and which need a little more TLC and development?

Which was the crux of my answer - I believe self awareness is the key to standing out from the crowd.

Self awareness allows us to bring into conscious awareness the skills we're competent in (our strengths) and those we're not (areas of development).

Self awareness also allows us to understand who we are - our identity - to enable us to ensure we're not trying to be a round peg in a square hole:

On the night, using the Frameworks for Change Process I use in coaching sessions, we then explored strengths we might have:

and also the potential development areas:

One attendee said she was off to speak to her manager to ask them what soft skill she may wish to bring out of unconscious incompetence so that she may develop her competence in that area.

How can you put your self awareness to work in order that you increase the potential of you standing out from the crowd?

Always more than open to discussing how I may help you or your team increase your self awareness, and even release some of those unhelpful behaviours that are holding you back  alison@alisonsmith.eu +44 (0)7770 538159.

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach 
Using unconventional tools to get you back on track 

The FCP process, the insight, setback and mentor cards used here are from Frameworks for Change © Innerlinks - www.innerlinks.com.

I wrote a blog on that - Soft Skills

On Monday's Soft skills workshop we touched on many subjects I've written a blog on.

As promised here's an index of those posts: 

• Unconscious incompetence through to unconscious competence (how we learn)
• Why do we ignore experts
• Standing in the shoes of your stakeholders 
• What motivates your stakeholders

• We see others through our own lenses
• The subtleties of influencing
• The top 10 things to remember when communicating
• Having a chocolate moment 
• The roles we play - bad cop
• How our values impact our relationship with others
• Self confidence 
• The horror stories of procurement gone wrong because we need to remind our stakeholders of the pain we're helping them avoid not just the pleasure we're moving them towards.
• Building bridges with others cropped up when the forth road bridge was closed to traffic back in 2015, and the metaphorical exploration might add to the Lego bridge building session!

We used a number of unconventional tools for problem solving and providing a different perspective on a number of challenges with stakeholders. (Many of the following posts have a festive theme as they were part of the advent series of 25 posts sharing unconventional tools for coaching and facilitation).

• Redacted Reflection 
• Pipe cleaners /Lego
• Drawing
• Collage - there's one post on collage entitled momentum provides motivation  
• Role models 
• Books/Magazines
• Intuitive Solutions - more on use of the tool here - and you can buy your own pack here.
• Language - Maverick spend - Answers or Solutions - Problems? 

We had an "interesting" discussion on Time Management, and here's a few posts on the subject:

• Time management - this Pinterest board with links to over 100 articles on the subject
• Juggling Balls and Spinning plates - a metaphorical exploration 
• Walking the talk on handling emails  
• Metaphors for email management 
• Goal Setting
• Deadlines - are they killing you?

Well-being also cropped up, and here's a couple of posts that might resonate.

• Adrenaline junkie
• Priorities

As ever, there's so much we could have covered in such a short space of time. The post I wrote on the 7 barriers to optimal performance may shed some light on what soft skills you may want to focus on for further development.

Anyone interested in finding out more about soft skills, problem solving or creativity workshops or coaching do get in touch alison@alisonsmith.eu +44 (0) 7770 538159

I've written a blog on that part 2

I've just had one of those great months full of what I'm passionate about.

Just in case you're not sure what I do, therefore, I thought I'd summarise why I'm so enthused, and then share a few posts that I've mentioned to people recently in a "I've written a blog on that" sort of way.  

Over recent months I've been busy with:

• Category management / procurement workshops - including stakeholder engagement, value levers, and creativity. Keeping the energy up, minds open and constantly looking for new ways to bring the 'theory and process' alive.
• 1:1 Coaching - OMG - I love the diversity of challenges we explore, and real difference it can make. Always searching for those powerful questions that unlock people's potential - in procurement, business and personally.
• Vlogging - thanks Tina for reminding me how much I enjoy exploring ideas this way  - even if I'm rarely in front of the camera :-). (see my YouTube channel for more)
• Writing - more very soon on this - with great things planned for 2018. 

And if that's not enough I'm still managing to open water swim here in Scotland which all adds to the high. (This picture was taken at 0745 one November morning just before sunrise with frost on the ground and an air temperature of 3 degrees. We think the sea will have been about 8 or 9!)

 

After a busy few months of workshops I've a number of new followers for this blog, and as I've also mentioned a few posts during those workshops I thought I'd provide an index of them here.

But first, a few indexes of posts any new followers might also find helpful:

• I've written a blog on that - part 1 - an index from 2 years ago of posts covering the softer skills covered on the workshops at that time (I'll add any additional ones written since then and mentioned on the workshops below) 
• The Top 10 Purchasing Coach posts - written in February this year 
• Purchasing coach's year (2016) in posts - a great insight into what I'm passionate about
• Applying unconventional tools to some of procurement's biggest challenges (those who have attended the workshops won't be surprised where this goes.)

Posts written since the last index, and mentioned either in conversation or whilst facilitating include:

• Don't leave your humanity at the door 
• Building Confidence - which for me is one of the 7 keys for optimal performance
• 10 things to remember when communicating
• Standing in the shoes of your internal stakeholders
• We see people through our own lenses
• Are you searching for 'solutions' or 'answers' - because words have power
• Is your language getting in the way of you solving your problem?
• The language of change and transformation.
• What to do when you're going around in circles 
• Where has convention ever got us? 
• How could pipe cleaners have the answer?
• When did you last have a walking meeting?
• Do you have all the information? 
• Getting on the same page as stakeholders
• A Pinterest board of examples of procurement gone wrong - because they didn't think it would happen to them
• You may also like the advent series of posts sharing more about 25 unconventional tools used in coaching, facilitation, problem solving and innovative thinking. 

And for anyone interested in reading more about the subject of the book I'm writing then do see my Landscaping Your Life blog.

I have also written a number of more procurementy posts for Future Purchasing (even if with an Alisony twist), including:

• The critical success factors of Category Management 
• Marry in haste and repent at leisure - in life and in category management 
• The similarities between Category Management and elections
• Sustainable training - getting learning to stick 
• The similarities between parenting and category management 
• Have you taken your eye off the ball on coaching?
• Inspiring creativity and innovation in your category and supplier management 
• How you can gets the most from attending workshops
• How managers can ensure their teams get the most from attending workshops
• Do you want adaptive of generative learning from your teams?
• Communicating business requirements differently.
• Do procurement find it easy to be creative? 
• Processes that drive wrong behaviour
• Procurement's sat nav
• Relationship forecasters
• Channel hopping stakeholders

I hope something here will have had you exploring a post or two, and a nugget of insight obtained as a result.

Topics for future posts always welcome (please be kind :-)). 

Discussions about opportunities to make a difference with your team most welcome too +44 (0)7770 538159 alison@alisonsmith.eu

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Unlocking personal and procurement potential - with a smidgen of unconventional tools thrown in for good measure

Self-Confidence - the difference between success and failure

Self-Confidence is often the major differentiator between failure and success – which is why it surprises me that we so often ignore what we could be doing to increase our own, or our team’s confidence. I'd go as far as to say that, certainly in the UK, anyone expounding their confidence too loudly and saying "I believe in me" would be labelled as arrogant rather than assured. Despite confidence's positive impact on personal and organisational performance. 

When I undertook my modelling project on negotiation I discovered that the major differentiator between a successful negotiation, and an unsuccessful one was the level of confidence someone felt before entering the negotiation room.

Not so unsurprising really when you think about it.

It leads us to then consider what benefit a 5% increase in confidence delivers? Or does the benefit only get interesting when confidence increases 50% or perhaps even 100%. Or is confidence on a more digital scale where we simply do or don't have confidence?

Confidence banishes a number of emotions and thoughts that hinder success, and delivers other characteristics that support our success. In and of itself not a guarantee of success, and yet something that certainly improves the probability of success.

Why bother some ask? And that's the crux of this post – I bother because it's the single biggest outcome of the coaching sessions I provide. I know that as a result of that increase in confidence my client is able to do something that they previously wouldn't have been able to do.

Confidence can banish, reduce or negate

• Fear or dread
• Doubt
• Negativity 
• Limiting beliefs
• Comfort zones
• Resistance 
• Rigidity

Confidence can provide, enhance or support

• Clear thinking
• Clarity of communication
• Creativity & innovation
• Improved decision making
• Motivation for action
• Openness to change
• Flexibility of approach
• Ability to address or tackle issues head on
• Joy for life
• Self expression

All aspects that impact performance - on an hourly not just daily basis.

Confidence can wax and wane, and the key for anyone is therefore understanding what work's for them in getting confidence back when it's evading them.

Future posts this month will explore the processes for increasing our confidence.

What benefits does confidence provide you - please do leave your suggestions in comments below or on the LinkedIn discussion I started. More importantly what tools do you have in your toolkit for ensuring your, or your team's, confidence is available when it's needed?

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Unlocking Potential using unconventional tools 

alison@alisonsmith.eu +44 7770 538159

You may also find the postcard written to Procurement with love from confidence of interest - it's one of many postcards written from our soft skills brought together in the Purchasing Coach Soft Skills Toolkit. The toolkit provides an unconventional means of exploring soft skills and their development. 

The notes from a recent talk at a CIPS branch meeting on Soft Skills for Procurement Success, that used the toolkit as the content for the session, may also provide insight.

What should you call your soft skills?

At the CIPS East of Scotland branch meeting last week I gave a talk on Soft Skills - skills that for example include motivation, communication, influencing, change management, decision making, time management and so on (more on what I spoke about here).

One of the subjects we touched on was the use of 'soft' skills as the term used to describe these essential skills.

I've ranted before that soft skills aren't something that only those in touch with their emotions have. They're something we all have, and use daily. Soft skills are how we do what we do, and their effective use will make a huge impact on the outcome we get.

When I asked about the use of the word 'soft' last week, people suggested the term conveyed that they were unimportant or weak skills.

You only have to look at the power of water ie something seemingly very soft to realise that soft shouldn't mean weak nor unimportant.

It still raises the question about whether we should give these skills a different name? What about:

• People skills
• Emotional Intelligence 
• Behavioural skills
• Essential skills
• Social skills
• Humanity skills 

I suspect however, that we end up with the same issue. Perhaps it's not 'soft' that generates the belief that they're unimportant, it's that they're unconscious, below the surface, and linked to our emotions and our humanity that makes them scary, and something therefore to be ignored or avoided. (Perhaps time to let go of the musts, oughts and shoulds about what is and isn't appropriate in business?) 

With that in mind, we can call them what we want and people are still going to resist exploring them.

One solution might be to link the skills to the outcome they help you achieve, for example why not call them:

• The skills that get you the job
• The skills that get you through your day
• The skills that help you prepare for your retirement!
• The skills that mean you can afford to go on fabulous holidays 
• The skills that help you cope with people in your life 
• The skills that add meaning to your day
• The skills that keep the roof over your head
• The skills that get you out of bed every day
• The skills that help you decide what to to
• The skills that keep you out of danger (or try to)
• The skills that help you open your mouth and say what you want to say when you want to say it
• The skills that help you change a boring day into an exciting one
• and so on

My recommendation therefore is to find a term that makes most sense for you personally. A term for the skills that will inspire your action to review your current competency of a skill, and also inspire action to develop the skill further too.  

What will you call these very essential skills that support your humanity?

Alison Smith
Unlocking personal, procurement and organisational potential using unconventional tools
alison@alisonsmith.eu +44(0)7770 538159

I've developed a Soft Skills Toolkit. The aim of the toolkit is to provide discussion points for personal or group exploration of your soft skills, allowing you to understand what options you have, should you decide to develop a particular soft skill.

There's 2 versions of the toolkit - Dear Procurement, with love from your soft skills aimed at procurement professionals, and Dear Human Being, with love from your soft skills aimed at a wider business audience. They're only £4.99 for personal use, with pricing available on request for organisational use.

Soft Skills for Procurement Success

I spoke about Soft Skills at the CIPS East of Scotland branch meeting earlier this week. I'd like to hope that at least some of those there were inspired to come to hear more about soft skills, rather than just the CIPS/Hays salary guide 2017 that Suzanne Dillon shared with us earlier in the evening.

I used my recently developed soft skills toolkit as the basis of my talk. The toolkit uses postcards written to procurement from their soft skills.

At the start of the session I asked people to share the challenges they have with soft skills. As a result, I promised to pull an index together of posts I've written to answer the challenges, and to provide further information on subjects touched on in my talk.

This is that very index, for you to dip in and out of as needed over the coming days, weeks and months. You just need to follow the highlighted hypertext link and it will take you to the relevant post.

They won't be going anywhere so no need to read them all in one go :-). Just get a coffee, or wine for that matter, and pop along when you're in need of a different perspective, and pick a post or two to read.

Content of the Talk:

• What's in a word - Chocolate. A great reminder that when we say "procurement" and smile, our stakeholders might not be smiling so broadly!
• Is soft skills the right terminology to use for them? 
• Do your soft skills need some time in the greenhouse - link takes you to a vlog on the subject.
• There's 3 versions of a story - yours, theirs and the truth - video blog on perception

• How can you influence others - vlog with insight from those flowers that follow the sun.

• Change Management - because everything Procurement does requires that we manage change effectively. I'm certainly puzzled why we ignore it so much? 
• The top 10 things to remember when communicating - this post touches on many of the points I mentioned. 
• Stand in their shoes - my favourite tool for getting a different perspective on how to deal with someone (and I'm very sorry doing it in your head is not the same).
• Thinking about our state of mind, and theirs, before a negotiation/meeting.

Challenges you asked for additional insight on 

• "How do I avoid being seen as a bad cop all the time?" 
• "It's like talking to a brick wall - why are our stakeholders ignoring us?"
• "How do we use these skills to change the perception of procurement?" - see link above for some additions to your strategy. Other solutions might include: aligning procurement and organisational values, releasing the need to get a seat at the table, and/or understanding the impact your own preferences are having on the situation. You may even want to reflect on some belief changes too including: taking responsibility for the communication not landing, and what about letting go of Procurement's arrogance (as discussed in a procurement team's development session). 
• "How do I influence others - ie what do I need to consider"
• "How do I deal with tricky stakeholders?"

• "Why do I have to change?"
• "People think soft skills are just too soft and fluffy" - here's my rant on the subject
• "How do I build rapport?" 
• "Is there room for kindness in Procurement?" 
• "Our Stakeholders hate us!"
• "How do I get more Confidence - when speaking and personally?"

I'll have to come back to and write posts to address the following challenges: 

• "When do we use our soft skills?" I'll do a soft skills diary at some point, and for now will just say - I think soft skills are responsible for 'how' we do everything every minute of every day.
• "How do we develop our soft skills?" The same as any other skill - it's simply a case of taking it out of unconscious awareness into conscious awareness. You'll find more here. It's why I've developed the Soft Skill Toolkit, and you'll find more about how to use that here.

• "How do we measure the impact of soft skills?" I suspect it's in people achieving their objectives better.
• "How do I get my team to take soft skills seriously?" Hmm what gets measure gets done - so the answer may lie in the measures of success used in the organisation.  
• "How do I increase peoples level of self awareness?" Whilst it is very personal I do think the culture within an organisation can help - vulnerability and asking for help need to be accepted and encouraged in order for people to lower their defences long enough to hear the feedback. Which starts with the manager being a role model for this too. This post, asking if we have our head in the sand about our own level of self awareness, might also help. 

Unconventional Tools that I use in Coaching and Training

• Pipe cleaners 

• Metaphor
• Gardening as a metaphor for purchasing and supplier management - with this pinterest board, and youtube playlist too. I'll be using the RHS Chelsea flower show as a metaphor for purchasing here and over on LI this week. 
• Watch your language - over on another blog you'll find a number of posts addressing how to resolve situations when you're stuck in a rut, can't see the wood for the trees, or feel like you're going around in circles. 
• You may also like this index of posts using these and other unconventional tools to address common procurement challenges as provided to me in a LinkedIn discussion.

My Passions

• This index of top 10 Purchasing coach posts might explain more about what I get passionate about - the main ingredient not mentioned already is about taking our humanity with us to work every day, and inviting procurement to be Enlightened and not to fall back on being Mr Wolf (descriptions used by some suppliers I trained last year)!

The Sales Pitch - ie what I could do for you

• Coaching
• Organisational soft skills training
• Team facilitation - unlocking the potential of procurement teams
• Open workshops - I'm going to be offering some 1 day soft skills workshops here in Fife over the summer - do drop me a line if you'd like me to send you details once they're sorted. I can promise they won't involve sitting in a hotel conference room all day. 
• I also deliver procurement and supplier management workshops - direct and as an associate. Here's an index of posts linked to the content and discussions during a 3 day category management workshop, and updated after each session. 

Email alison@alisonsmith.eu or even call me +44 (0)7770 538159 

Hopefully you'll have found at least one post that adds to your insight on soft skills, and has inspired you to do something different. Which reminds me of something I forgot to say, and that's that the quickest way to learn new things is to get your 'doing new things' muscle working by doing something different everyday - here's how I fared when I did it for 28 days last year.

Do keep in touch - here in comments, over on LinkedIn, or email.

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach
Unlocking individual and procurement potential using unconventional tools
(with some conventional tools thrown in for good measure)