The procurement challenge - guiding principles

Guiding principles for the forthcoming series of posts using unconventional tools to obtain a different perspective on a number of challenges faced by procurement.

The underlying principle of coaching is that change is best achieved from within - as a coach and facilitator change is therefore facilitated by asking great questions to assist coachees in discovering the answer for themselves. Answers are either unlocked directly from their own inner wisdom, or answers are uncovered via them taking action on the action plan developed during the session.

Writing posts from this perspective of coaching is obviously fraught with danger. After all I can't have a conversation with you to more fully understand your specific situation, nor would just a list of questions for you to answer be of much help. Which results in me providing more in the way of advise than would normally be appropriate in a coaching setting.

To further add to the challenge of writing coaching posts is my use of unconventional tools. Tools that by their very nature mean we don't have frames of references for how they should work, and can often move people out of their comfort zones.

It's these very unconventional tools I've offered to apply to common procurement challenges here in my blog over the next month or so. Only time will tell how easy the efficacy and power of the tools will be demonstrated in the next few weeks of posts as I do my very best to share how they work. I know they work in practice, so too procurement and business leaders and their teams, I just have share that here in writing!

The aim of the posts:

• To provide a different perspective to the conventional way of viewing the challenge. (Reading Where has convention ever got us may help position why the solutions won't contain the solutions you've already tried nor solutions you could access via books, business models, or more conventional brainstorming).
• To help you bypass the blocks to finding a solution.
• To help you tap into the part of you that knows what to do.
• To demonstrate the efficacy of using the unconventional tools.

What the posts won't do:

• Give you an answer - it's all about the questions and insights raised allowing you to develop your own answer.
• Provide the one solution that fits all situations - there may be as many solutions as there are organisations facing the challenge.

What will help to make the most from the posts:

• Remembering we won't all be viewing the challenge the same - it's what I call having a chocolate moment on workshops. These tools will always work better when applied to a real situation with the ability to discuss it with those involved.   
• Putting to one side our assumptions, judgements, and musts, oughts and shoulds about what the solution should be. That is, thinking we know the answer and others just need to agree with us hasn't thus far solved the problem. We need to be open to other solutions or ways of looking at the situation. In other words we need to put the hammer down, because otherwise all we'll see is nails.
• Staying open long enough to consider how the suggestions might provide insight of the action to take or direction to go. Rather than jumping in straight away with "this won't work". When done in real life addressing the niggles that arise is certainly easier to do. Here I'm asking you to be vigilant for yourself about your level of openness to finding a solution. 
• Accepting that not every tool will work for every situation and for every person. When coaching or facilitating others it's much easier to get a sense of what might work, or to ask permission "would you be up to try pipe cleaners to explore this a little differently". (Although I have yet to understand how I'm going to use that particular tool in this series of posts - time will tell). Here I'm forcing a particular tool on you, and on the situation - that would never happen in practice. I'll try my best to make a good match, but even if it works for most readers it may not resonate for others.
• Staying with the process - ie if one tool doesn't work wait and see if the next one might. You can always apply different tools to different challenges than those stated. 
• Have fun, accept the absurdity, laugh and play lightly with the tools and insights. (Where insight comes from can't be forced - if your brain takes you off on a tangent in response to something I write - please do allow yourself time to explore the tangent.)       

Ok, after all that scene setting, I'd best go and write the first post!

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach
Unlocking personal, procurement and organisational potential using unconventional tools

Let go of your musts,oughts & shoulds

"I didn't know we were allowed to do that in business" was someone's response when I suggested during a coaching session that they share how they were feeling as part of a negotiation with a supplier.

It's a response I often get when I'm suggesting coachees or training attendees tap into their inner potential and do something I think will be effective at shifting the current challenge they're facing, but just so happens to be a part of being human too - for example kindness, not game playing, saying it as it is, showing gratitude, not leaving their humanity at the entrance, and so on.

Yes, these are often derided as soft and fluffy, and they're also what being human is all about - unless of course this collage already represents reality.

Asked to simple be themselves at work and trust in their inner potential feels like a stretch to many people.

I know it's hard - I really do. Having asked on LinkedIn for suggestions for topics for my posts I've had a great response. I'm can also feel the expectation weighing heavy, and the need to please, succeed and be congratulated rising, and yes I also fear the negative responses I might get!

As a result I can feel a desire to make the unconventional more conventional! Despite their unconventional nature being the reason they work!

Yet it's these feelings that if I'm not careful will mean you get a very inauthentic post. Feelings that will also get in the way of you understanding what I'm writing too. Feelings that may also get in the way of the efficacy of the tools I'm using being fully demonstrated.

Which is where letting go of the musts, oughts, shoulds comes from.

That is, we can use so much energy and our heads become so full of searching for "how should I act", "what ought I to say", or "what must I do" that the idea gets lost. It's too easy to translate what's in our head into how we think it should, ought or must be communicated, and lose the essence of the message, and lose the essence of who we are at the same time.

I talk and write often about amending our communication to suit the preferences of your audience - it's essential to improve understanding. That's not the same as changing the message.

For example if I'm frustrated with a supplier I could choose to tell them using a variety of words depending on their personality and our relationship:

• I'm feeling very frustrated because of x or y
• When I hear about x or y I get very frustrated because I thought ....  
• Can I share something with you because otherwise I think it will get in the way of our relationship going forward.. 

The musts, oughts, and shoulds would be getting in the way if we avoid sharing the frustration, or assume the reason for our frustration have validity, or if we believe that sharing how we're feeling is too vulnerable resulting in:

• You need to sort x or y out
• Just do z - now
• You have a problem - sort it!

Last year when suppliers accused procurement of being like wolves that's what they were suggesting procurement were doing: walking into work and putting their wolf masks on - taping into a stereotype of how procurement should, must or ought to act and doing that. Rather than listening to that quiet voice inside that knows precisely what do if only we thought we could do it.  

Over the next few weeks, possibly months as the list increases, I'm going to be writing blogs sharing the use of unconventional tools to get a different perspective to common procurement challenges. For it to work it requires that we both let go of some musts, oughts, and shoulds:

• My oughts, shoulds and musts are about letting go of what I think you want to hear and trust in the tools I use - many for over 20 years.
• Your oughts, shoulds, and musts are about what you think would or wouldn't work in business, or within your organisation and with your team - to give the processes the benefit of the doubt and explore the options that emerge. 
• Both of us's musts, oughts and shoulds associated with assumptions and judgements about what we already think the solution is.

It also requires us both to understand what's stopping us from making the changes we say we want to make -  more here on what that might be.

If we both commit to taking the necessary actions then who knows what opportunities to resolve the challenges we're facing might emerge.

I look forward to exploring together how to unlock your personal, procurement and organisational potential using unconventional tools.

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach 
Unlocking personal, procurement and organisational potential using unconventional tools

Hypertext links take you to blogs on the subject highlighted.

Index of posts offering different perspectives to a challenge

I asked you for your most challenging procurement issues on LinkedIn, and you shared them enthusiastically. I'd said I'd apply the unconventional tools I use in coaching, facilitation and training to these challenges, and share the outcome in my posts on my blog. I also wrote some guiding principles that would help you to get the most from reading the posts.

Here's the emerging index of the post I've written so far (follow the hypertext links highlighted).

I like to see it as an index of potential insights offering different perspectives to the challenges you're facing.

The score out of 10 provides my assessment of the level of unconventionalness used when applying the tool.

1. An introduction to viewing challenges from a different perspective - insights shared can be applied to any challenge you're facing. 5/10
2. Talent 3/10
3. Getting Procurement teams to expand their thinking 2/10
4. How to release the bad cop image - but it's a 7/10 therefore please approach with an open mind
5. Why do stakeholders think they can do it better and ignore our advice 2/10 (this post would be a good place to start)
6. Procurement's challenge of  how to have a flourishing garden 3/10
7. Looking at a category metaphorically 10/10 (be warned)
8. Are procurement setback by arrogance? 2/10 
9. Finding the right key to open the door to effective communication 1/10
10. Standing in your stakeholders or suppliers shoes 4/10   
11. No one is 100% brick wall 3/10 & 8/10
12. Why all maps are wrong 2/10  

Remember we're using an unconventional tool because the conventional way of solving a problem means the solution is still eluding us, and an alternate perspective may just be the thing we need to jolt us back on track.

How your mind does that will differ every time you use one of these tools. Just stay open to the possibility of finding something you've not thought about before, that might just be the insight you need.

Other blogs I've shared in the past using an unconventional tool or two, and applied to various challenges discussed in procurement coaching or training sessions are listed below:

• No seat at the table - using sayings/metaphor to uncover different perspectives - 7/10 on level of unconventionalness of the tool
• Why Procurement isn't seen as strategic by the board - 1/10 using Kraljic to give a different perspective - a post written for one of the consultancies I'm an associate for.  
• Is it really a problem - is using 'problem' the problem - using language 2/10
• Are you looking for solutions or answers - because for one person looking for the answers and definitely not the solutions meant she found them! - using language - 3/10
• Dealing with closed bridges with others - using sayings/metaphor - 7/10 
• Doing something different every day - 1/10 such a fabulous tool to get us out of our comfort zones and being more open to saying yes rather than no to new ideas.
• Thinking about how to have even more of the problem - 2/10 
• If misunderstandings have arisen with stakeholders or suppliers are you having a chocolate moment? 1/10 - no actual chocolates involved I'm afraid.
• Do you just need to get into a different environment to get a different perspective - what about a walking meeting? 2/10

More general blogs addressing every day issues that also use these unconventional tools include:

• What's being measured is driving the wrong behaviour
• They're just not listening to us
• They don't understand us 
• We don't understand them
• We aiming for perfection
• We're stuck
• We feel like we're up a creek without a paddle
• It's as if they're talking a different language
• Yep we've given up, and have started to believe "that's just the way business is"
• Some of us are feeling lost
• We keep getting the same outcome despite trying different approaches 
• A few of us have a sense of deja vu, that we're simply going around in circles
• We've been accused of being on auto pilot (and so simple to resolve - see link for more)
• What we're doing isn't working
• We can't see the wood for the trees
• Some of us are getting more and more demotivated, or are even considering leaving the team
• But hey - no pain no gain

I'm not expecting anyone to read them all - just dip in and out (by following the hypertext links for the topic you're interested in).

I'd suggest that on days when a solution is eluding you you might want to come back, be open to the unexpected and unconventional, and pick a post that feels like it might just have the same energy to your issue, and apply the insights to your current situation.

Do get in touch if you'd be interested in coaching, facilitation or training, whether using these unconventional tools applied to challenges you're facing, or more conventional soft/people skills training. I do also provide category management and supplier management training and coaching too, directly or as an associate via other procurement consultancies (I'm always open to being an associate, partner or collaborator with others.) alison@alisonsmith.eu +44 (0)7770 538159

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach
Unlocking procurement potential often using unconventional tools

Creativity is one of the postcards included in the Purchasing Coach Soft Skills Toolkit that brings together a series of postcards written to Procurement from your soft skills - it's entitled Dear Procurement, with love from your soft skills. More here.