Is it really strategic?

As author & speaker Caroline Myss would say “words have power” because, whilst often used unconsciously, the words we use can be the source of the problem or the hint of the solution. Over the years of facilitating procurement workshops it would seem for example that everyone wants to be working with a ‘strategic’ category or ‘strategic’ supplier. This mystical word conjures up something more important, of value & of higher status than those other seemingly lesser or lower categories or suppliers. It’s as if we lose connection with the detail of the model, the strategy, that suggests different priorities & activities for different segments of the categories we buy or suppliers we contract with. We want our category or supplier to have the prized nomenclature, without connecting it to the set of actions that accompany that segmentation, & differentiate it from other segments. We ignore THE strategy that ensures we maximise value for each unique segment; and use our time, & the time of our stakeholders, wisely. No one shoe fits all. Next time you suggest you’ve a coveted ‘strategic’ supplier or category on your hands think about what strategy you really need for dealing with them. hashtag#strategy hashtag#procurement hashtag#strategicsourcing hashtag#wordshavepower

What's your strategy for action?

What’s your strategy for refuelling your car?

Or more precisely, what’s your trigger for action?

• Seeing the fuel indicator get to 1/2 full or perhaps a 1/4?
• Maybe it's reframing the dial and seeing that it's 3/4 empty?
• Hearing the alarm tell you the tank is approaching empty?
• Filling up every Saturday morning?
• Heading for fuel when you’ve a long journey ahead?
• When you notice a cheap price?
• Only when you start to feel the panic about running out of petrol?
• When you pass your favourite petrol station (for a while I frequented one such location due to the M&S food shop on site)
• When you stop for a comfort break
• When waiting to pick up the kids from a class
• Or something else entirely?
• Perhaps it's about exploring other options instead of a petrol fuelled car - electric? taxi and/or car hire.

Are you aware of the decision making criteria that you're using to support this trigger?

• Lowest price
• Lowest total annual cost
• Lowest total lifetime cost
• Retain maximum resale value for the car
• Managing cashflow
• Engine friendly - which I believe supports not leaving it till the alarm has gone off as we stir the bottom of the tank!
• Minimising disruption to your day
• Minimising detours
• Efficient use of time
• Access to car 100% of time with 150 miles capacity
• Reducing stress
• Predictability of your schedule

Criteria that each result in a very different trigger for refuelling.

The reason I ask, is that shortly I’m headed to refuel my car using a different strategy than the one I’ve used for years. A new strategy that will I believe will reduce my stress, use my spare time efficiently, minimise detours and I understand improve the performance of the engine.
You see, I’ve always resisted refuelling the car and my strategy for years, ok decades, has been the sound of the indicator telling me I have x miles till I run out!! Little did I know, whilst using this example on a recent supplier management workshop, that in addition to helping expand delegates’ thinking about the triggers suppliers might have for taking action to avoid problems, it would help me solve my own resistance to refuelling.

Understanding the decision making criteria and arising trigger people use for action can be a very useful tool for problem solving.

For example, in the supplier relationship management workshop we were discussing complaints being received about the service provided by a supplier. A supplier who believed their service was 5* worthy, and yet user feedback suggested it was *2. Once we started to explore the criteria both parties might have for taking action, it wasn't hard to see how problems might have arisen.

Even in the LikedIn post on the subject of refuelling the car it's easy to understand how the different criteria people are using could lead to heated debates if we were needing to find one optimal strategy for fuelling the car:

• One fueller discounting the criteria for minimising stress (ie avoid the alarm strategy),
• Another calculating the annual saving of always buying at the lowest price, and
• Another getting annoyed at the frequency of arriving late for meetings having had to refuel to get to their destination.

What triggers for action might be fuelling ineffective practice in your life?

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach

You might also find the post about using nature as our coach for supplier relationship management interesting.

Are you feeling festive?

My social media feed is full of people saying that they're now feeling festive. Generally this feeling has been preceded by seeing or doing something - whether that's receiving their first Christmas card, wrapping the presents, singing the first carol or, as in my case, decorating the tree. 

In other words we're attributing a feeling we're having to an external stimulus. 

It's interesting that we often forget this wonderful strategy when we're in need of changing how we're feeling. I'm sure we can all recall times when for example being more confident, positive, calm, or focused is eluding us, and yet is just what we do need for the task in hand.

We have a choice in that moment about staying with the state of mind we're in, or doing something to change it.  

It's a bit like the song that's just started playing on my ipad - we have a choice what style we sing Hark the Herald angels in. We don't have to end as we started. In any moment we're free to turn the dial up or down, to find just the right emotion we need. 

   

I've written before about my prescription for positivity. It's a checklist I have for things I know shift my state to a more positive one. A list that includes listening to songs that help, and will now have another Pentatonix song added to it "Mary did you know" - which gives me goosebumps and a sense of connection with all that is, and of hope for the future. A sense of hope that I take into my work after listening to it. (Or perhaps I'm just in a Pentatonix sort of mood :-) - they were recently on The Voice over in the US singing Jolene with Dolly and Miley!)

The prescriptions we have to achieve any emotion will be unique, and will also include things to stop doing as much as things to start doing as I wrote about in posts about happiness, not spending time with miserable mackerels, or sitting at my desk and trying to be creative!

Other posts I've written have explored the strategies we may employ to achieve states of mind such as creativity, more bounce, and presence. 

Using external triggers to shift our state of mind is also a frequent theme I explore over on Landscaping your Life where I use nature to inspire change - posts have included confidence, and speaking with confidence.       

What state of mind do you need to achieve your goals today, and what do you need to do to be fully present in that state?   

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Inspiring change inside and out

and sometimes feeling festive may just require waiting for a different time of day!

Follow the hypertext links in the text to other posts I've written on the subjects highlighted.

Winning together, or are your suppliers the losers?

The Olympics, whilst being about doing your best, is also about winning. Whether that winning is by being faster, stronger, higher, longer, or by being more precise, creative or strategic. I suspect that won't cover every event, but you get my point.

Winning is something that often crops up in procurement workshops - particularly when discussing negotiations. 

Winning is great if, just like the Olympics, you're opposition is on another team. That is, all participants have the same but mutually exclusive aim - doing their best, and if at all possible coming first, and beating the opposition. No holes barred, and no negative impact as a result of doing so. No relationships to maintain, nor alliances to covert. 

Winning isn't appropriate if it's against those in the same team - the aim then is about working together to achieve a common goal, against a common opposition. Each participant collaborating to achieve the agreed objective. Each bringing their own expertise to bare on achieving that outcome. Sharing the work load, and sharing the benefits.

I'd contend that tactical negotiation is more like the former, and strategic negotiation is like the later. 

Problems arise when we treat suppliers we'd like a relationship with as if they're the opposition in the 100 meters hurdles or the heptathlon, rather than one of our fellow runners in the relay, or part of the same synchronised swimming team. 

What will you choose?

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Inspiring change inside and out

Blogs with insight from the London 2012 Olympics include:

• Let actions provide the inspiration
• Do your suppliers have passion 
• Success is more than gold
• Are your suppliers like Olympic athletes
• We get what we focus on
• Anything is possible
• Acceptance not comparison  

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

Business Values - do they exist?

See my new website for this post that has been moved there.