Procurement Skills #1: Why Procurement needs to learn to “Steelman”

This post is for the true Procurement Nerds out there. You know if this is you. You care about your work and want to make a difference.

So this new series, Procurement Skills, will take us through various skills from different disciplines that could be applied to your Procurement work.

And this might be one of my favourites.

Effective communication and critical thinking are essential for building strong relationships and making well-informed decisions in procurement. I’d say these are some of the “critical” skills you need to develop and mature to have a place in the profession as we digitalise…and turn to AI.

One valuable technique that procurement professionals can adopt is the “steelmanning” approach, which involves presenting an opposing view or argument in its most potent possible form before engaging in a discussion or negotiation.

Steelmanning is a term that originates from the concept of the “straw man” fallacy, where an individual misrepresents an opposing argument in its weakest form to refute it easily.

Steelmanning, on the other hand, is the opposite approach: it involves presenting an opposing argument in its strongest possible form before engaging in a discussion or debate.