The Pursuit of Procurement's Meaning
Lessons Learned from one of the Best
Seth Godin is one of those people I madly respect. Yes, he’s known as a marketer, but the guy gets business. But he gets life more. At times, throughout my procurement career, I’ve felt like a cog in a machine turning for no reason.
It left me feeling burned out last year, and that’s partly why I decided to move into ProcureTech.
So here are some of my observations from Seth Godin, from his latest podcast appearance on the Tim Ferriss podcast.
Serve the World
Godin's criticism of the belief that the purpose of humanity and culture is to serve business and his emphasis on enabling culture and humanity through business could pose a challenge for you as procurement professionals, who are often driven by the ideology of cost reduction as the premise of your existence.
I know not all of you think like that but it is a notion that procurement cannot shake.
This ideology can be seen as an inherent fallacy because procurement is in place to enable value generation for customers from the supply chain.
If you are solely focused on cost reduction, you may neglect other important factors such as fair treatment of employees and ethical sourcing, which are essential for enabling culture and humanity.
Therefore, as procurement professionals, you should rethink your approach to cost reduction and place a greater emphasis on adding value to the customer and society as a whole.
By considering the societal impact of your business practices and ensuring fair treatment of all parties involved, you can contribute to the overall goal of enabling culture and humanity through business.
If you want this and you know you cannot achieve it where you work currently, then it might be time to consider a career move.
Workplace Treatment and the Machine
Godin's criticism of Amazon's treatment of its warehouse workers highlights the issue of reducing workers to mere cogs in the machine, which can lead to a lack of meaning in work.
This can be particularly relevant for you, as a procurement professional, who may be focused on cost reduction and hard-hitting negotiations, which can lead to mundane work.
The mundane work piece is particularly relevant for those of you who are still using spreadsheets and tracker docs to manage your supply chain.
I saw a comment on LinkedIn from someone fairly senior who noted that it’s this crappy work that gets you exposure and familiarity with procurement.
I call this BS and protection a status-quo (and their position).
Consider this:
Business 1 has all of its entry level procurement roles (including manager level roles), completing spreadsheets with data, and sending out chasers to suppliers for sourcing activities. They spend more time in outlook and excel than talking with suppliers
and post-signature contract management activities don’t happen as there are not enough people to do the work.
Business 2 has created automations that enable it to start up a sourcing exercise with little effort, they’ve got a best-of-breed tech stack that brings in multiple streams of data to risk review the suppliers, they track all tasks in their software, they collaborate there, they don’t chase suppliers, and their time is spent working on relationships, risk management, renewals, post-signature activities, ESG, and making their supply chain more resilient.
Who is going to learn more?
The entry level roles in Business 2 as they will be carrying out more meaningful work from the outset.
Procurement for Good?
To attract new talent and improve the lives of people across global supply chains, there needs to be a focus on procurement for good, for humanity, and on adding value to society.
Our Suppliers and the Supply Chain is the key to unlocking this.
But too many organisations are running away from their problems and not thinking digitally first. They’re caught up in the traditionalist maelstrom.
The Sustainable Procurement Pledge is a wonderful community committed to making this happen and could be a good start for you.
So yeah - I like what Seth has to say about Business and Life. We could all be a little more like Seth.