THE BUSINESS REVIEW FOR PROCUREMENT LEADERS
During the seven years I’ve been writing about procurement, one thing that has often struck me is just how unimpressive some of the people running it have been. It’s not that they were dislikeable on a personal level, and I’m sure they were adept at negotiating good deals – it’s just that you couldn’t quite imagine them wowing their CEOs.
In the past, when procurement was a lowly back-office function, that didn’t matter too much. But today, the fact that the profession’s top guns can command annual pay packages in excess of £250,000 – according to new research reported in this issue – shows that the stakes are now significantly higher. Technical competence is no longer enough. Personal credibility and leadership qualities, combined with the ability to deliver results, are essential.
Nevertheless, argue Jon Hughes, Sarah Lim and Gerco Rietveld, “many current procurement leaders are clearly failing to meet board expectations”. This partly explains, they say, why a number of big companies have put general managers or heads of other functions into their newly created CPO roles. To reclaim control of its destiny and position itself as “an enterprise-wide activity of strategic significance”, the procurement profession requires a new breed of leader.
The debate about whether leaders are born or can be developed has been raging in academia for many years, and has spawned a small library of business books. Author and management thinker Charles Handy knows a thing or two about this, having educated a generation of managers, first at the oil giant Shell and then at London Business School. He believes that the personal relationship management skills functional leaders need if they are to be “teachers of best practice” are ones that can be developed. But, he adds, “it helps if they [managers] start as young as possible”.
As a critic of the traditional business school model, Handy sees coaching and mentoring, rather than classroom lectures, as the way to mould the next generation of leaders – an approach that is being actively pursued at go-ahead, development-minded companies, such as Dutch baby food maker Numico. Its programme is designed, explains global purchasing director Haidé Villuendas, to develop business and leadership skills throughout the procurement team, not just at the top management level.
Like procurement, the coaching profession is undergoing rapid growth and development. In her article, executive coach Sabine Dembkowski advises anyone about to undergo coaching to choose their coach just as carefully as they would a new employee. That’s because the relationship between coach and manager plays a big part in ensuring a successful outcome – much as it does, these days, between a CPO and their senior management colleagues.
Geraint John
geraint.john@cpoagenda.com
