Preaching to the Converted

Sidonia Michoux

Emeryst Ltd

Business Consultant, Cost Reduction Consultant

Today I met Jennifer Donoghue. Jennifer is in Supply Chain Recruitment and her company helps organizations source hard to find talent who have a passion for Supply Chain.

You know when you meet someone and they are so on the same page as you that you can finish each other’s thoughts and sentences. Well, that is exactly what happened today. Jennifer, like myself, believe that delivering quality service, being strategic in our interactions and adding value to clients are critical to building long-term mutually beneficial relationships.

The main issue I find with this type of meeting is that the other person is so on the same page as you that the interaction is like preaching to the converted. I was also thinking the same about the groups and people who (thank you all!) read and comment on our posts. We are preaching to the converted as all the people who sign up to the different groups are either from our world or have to interact with our world and therefore get where we are coming from and where the discussions are going. Sadly however, the issue that we all face is that our interlocutors i.e. the nay-saying stakeholders who want to keep us in our place, those who do not recognize nor believe that Procurement has an important role to play in the life of the organization, those who believe that we are a waste of space and resources, etc are not tuned in to these discussion groups and so do not hear and learn the “Message”.

The challenge for Jennifer, myself and all of our colleagues in these groups is to go out daily into our organizations and proselytize the message that Procurement can be the silver bullet of the organization because of the wealth of services and value that we bring to the table. Instead of just saying we are the silver bullet, we need to prove this claim day in and day out and by doing this well and consistently, I believe we will get the non-converted to accept our presence at the organization. Saying + Doing = Making Converts. Let's go out and preach, preach, preach and do, do , do! Winning hearts and minds should be 60% of the Procurement professional's job.

Sidonia Michoux

Emeryst Ltd

Business Consultant, Cost Reduction Consultant

We are a Global Procurement, Supply Chain and Business Consultancy specialising in Supplier Vetting and Management, Business Analytics, Business Interpretation and Translations, Contracts Management,…