adr international Procurement consultants

Can anyone be a good procurement leader?

Knowing how to manage people is essential for the up-and-coming procurement professional. But so is knowing the skills of procurement, says Rebecca Howard

Hundreds of new heads of procurement are appointed every year. They often come from within the procurement function itself and, sometimes, from other departments such as finance or sales.

Many say that having procurement experience is a big advantage in these high-level management roles. You can’t run a procurement department unless you know what’s involved, and that means it’s good have come up through the ranks.

Others say that as long as you are a good manager, you can manage any function. Being a good manager is what counts, not which functional activity you have been involved in.

The truth is that you don’t need direct experience in procurement to be able to lead a procurement team. But, in my experience, you do need to understand what is involved in procurement. I call it procurement functional leadership.

When you become a senior procurement leader it’s very likely you will no longer expected to be involved hands-on in sourcing. But you will be expected to provide direction to your staff, internal stakeholders and suppliers. And to do this, a thorough understanding of all that is involved in procurement is essential.

·  You will probably be expected for example, to create a vision so that everyone knows what “good” looks like and where you are heading

·  You may need to identify and address capability gaps in individuals, teams and supplier relationships to enable the vision to be achieved

·  You will very likely need to make available good examples of procurement projects and behaviours for others to follow -  through your example, training, and external benchmarks

·  You need to be able to answer the tough questions. For example, when a team member needs your advice about how to interpret some supplier financial accounts while planning a negotiation

·  You will need to increase your personal profile externally to stakeholders and suppliers, by,  for example, supporting a performance improvement project for one of your top suppliers and publishing the results

Can you learn these skills and become a good procurement functional leader – even if you have never worked in procurement? Yes, you can, given the right tools.

The first step is to understand where you currently lack the right skills. The Development Needs Analysis tool developed by ADR Learning is a self-assessment questionnaire that gives you a profile of an individual’s procurement skills. Our purchasing director-level questionnaire is aimed at high-level managers so that your unique capability requirements are assessed separately from specific sourcing skills.

The resulting profile you receive tells you the areas you need to focus on to improve your procurement leadership. That way, you can quickly and effectively become an excellent procurement functional leader.

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