Recently I went to see the movie Batman vs Superman. I, like most movie-goers read the critics’ reviews. The majority of the opinion was “snooze fest”. As I like explosions, men in tights, pitting good against evil, etc, I thought “In the past I had read reviews of movies which were equally off-putting, but I still enjoyed the movie so, I shall go and watch this one and draw my own conclusions”. I paid for my ticket and sat back and watched the movie. Two things happened 1) there was a guy across from me who was constantly on his mobile phone, so all I could see from the corner of my eye was the glare of his phone screen and 2) the movie was a snooze fest. It received a 4/10 from me.
For us in Procurement we have to overcome the reticence of our Business stakeholders (the critics) when they say about our project proposal “we have tried this before and it didn’t work” i.e. don’t go see the movie. We have to respect the Organisational History, but need to also have the courage to stand by our proposal and say “yes, I understand that you have gone down a similar path before, but the world has moved on since the last time and situational elements (environmental, competition, technological, systems, people, etc) have changed and now we need to explore the options in this new world”.
The Business Stakeholders may still push back and kill the proposal or could accept the proposal with reticence and hinder it from progressing as smoothly as the organisation needs it to go (guy with his phone i.e. he is there, but he is not participating in the experience). The Organisation does not however want to have a process that gets a 4/10 because no one will be happy with the outcome and it will surely, from an operational/stakeholder point of view, go down in Organisational History as another failure i.e. another cautionary tale to tell the future Procurement people.
To prevent this 4/10 score, a cross-functional project needs the following: 1) buy-in from all the stakeholders, in terms of time, resources, commitment levels and support 2) clear and measurable targets/outcomes, both in terms of time (when will the project start, when will it end) and what will it deliver measured in positive outcomes (decreased costs by x%, increased savings by y%, reduction in waste (human and goods) by z%, increase in customer satisfaction by a%, etc). Being clear what a project aims to deliver is important for all parties, so that when the project obtains its goals all parties share in its success as they have a direct input and know that their contribution made it happen. So, just like Superman, Batman and Wonderwoman worked together in the end to defeat Lex Luther's creation, so too must Procurement and the Business Stakeholders band together to defeat negativity and past history and write a new chapter in the Organisational History Books.
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