Category Archives: Collaboration

Collaboration, Talent

I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here

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For those Brits in the UK and aboard, we cannot help getting hooked into this reality TV classic. Throwing a whole load of celebrities into the jungle, restricting creature comforts and keeping them hungry is not only an entertaining formula, but surprisingly, a great insight into talent management and team dynamics.

On reflection, there are seemingly a set of lessons arising from life in jungle that can be learnt and applied in your organization:

1. Setting a common goal

Winning stars that are linked directly to the amount of food the camp receives creates a unifying goal that motivates all individuals in the same way.

2. Team membership

Individuals earn stars for the camp. Each individual knows how important their contribution is to maintain camp accord. They have accountability combined with a sense of duty to do their upmost for the team. As the individual wins, the team wins, and over time, the camp understands sustained success and longevity is dependent on overall team performance. Individuals identify themselves as a team member.

3. Sticking to your swimlane

Whilst bush tucker trials are allocated randomly by public vote, individuals naturally adopt and manage roles and tasks inside the camp that they perform well and are comfortable with. Leveraging members strengths and staying within a swimlane, actually maintains stability within the camp and earns recognition from other team members. Discord arises from individuals moving into other member swimlanes, or being tasked to move outside their own comfort zone. Similarly in business, where individuals fail to respect functions and process, and step on toes that others consider their responsibility; this invariably leads to friction.

Lessons

For those advocates for off-site or on-site team bonding courses – I would agree these are fun, but often when the team gets back to the day job, the core alignment elements are missing.

Team dynamics are delicate and good leaders understand the need to allocate and delegate in an inclusive way. Understanding swimlanes, defining common goals and building teams that perform together is a winning recipe.

Motivating and moving forward in business is of course more complex; and maintaining accord is challenging. As in the camp, regular discussion, feedback and praise is needed to ensure that team members feel valued. Conversely, offering creature comforts that are not valued or creating barriers to isolate team members is proven to be a poor strategy.

Keep your team talent and avoid the alternative “Get Me Out of Here” discussion!!

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Collaboration, KPI, Strategy, Talent

10x Impact

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I was asked the other day to articulate the secret recipe to become a successful procurement individual. A great question!

My on-the-spot response was that procurement offered a service and by placing the customer (our stakeholders) at the center, engaging to understand needs, and collaborating with the customer to develop solutions, procurement would deliver value add that the customer actually values.

Together with this positional change, and to ensure procurement understands the business, procurement needs to act as a ‘business manager’ to appreciate the cost, quality and time factor interlock. Too often functions operate in silos and lack appreciation of what happens upstream and downstream.

A win in one function which leads to a failure in another part of the organization is not a success for the business. The challenge is finding a way forward that respects each contribution and gives individuals the opportunity to play their part within the time constraints. Moving from a reactive to proactive way of working pulls effort forward and essentially delivers more time for collaboration, but needs a level of business maturity.

Unfortunately many organizational success measures are not consistent; they can conflict and sometimes force a short sighted and short term approach within the respective function. Establishing common goals will enable individuals to work together as a team, and focus on a shared objective. The sum of the whole is greater than the parts!

My favored recipe:

  • Customer centric mindset
  • Business acumen and value creation skills
  • Team work
  • Focus

Successful procurement individuals that enact and advocate these attributes will deliver 10x impact compared to their counter parts.

Have a better and or improved recipe ? Alternatives welcome. Please share and comment.

Collaboration, Sourcing, Strategy, Supplier Management

Navigating Stormy Waters – What’s your strategy?

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The global economy remains in a state of flux. Are we heading for a global recession? Who really knows, however uncertainty is our biggest enemy in predicting and steadying the supply chain. The result is a reluctance to make a commitment as all organizations want to nullify risk.

For Buyers, there is a drive towards fixing costs. For Suppliers, they fear losing money because they cannot pass on inflationary increases. These conflictory positions place additional pressure on already strained relationships. The dilemma is that maintaining a fixed price could force supply organizations into bankruptcy, evidenced in the construction and retail industry. For customers insisting on fixed price, suppliers either add overly cautious premiums making the arrangement untenable, or walk away and no-bid. This serves nobody.

To avoid the zero-sum game, organizations need to determine how arrangements can be structured to create a shared risk/ shared reward. Central to this approach is creating transparency to move the relationship from away from transaction to collaboration. Transparency equals trust, and whilst full ‘open book’ may be a bridge too far, there are different overlays that can be applied to help formularize the demand, cost and value drivers.

Defining and structuring appropriate parameters, as well as changing the bid by bid transaction mindset, will encourage relationships to be developed that buffer and stabilize the supply chain. We call that a win/win.

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