So you are (or have) a new supply chain leader. Congratulations, opportunity abounds! And so do pitfalls. Traps. Challenges. Whether you are part of a team with a new leader, managing a new leader, or you are the new leader, today’s post is for you. I have led new supply chain leaders (at one point I had eight Directors in my direct reports), been led by new leaders (one was in his very first management job) and observed new leaders (both in my direct chain and beside it). Inspired by a LinkedIn post in August by the delightful and insightful Chandhrika Venkataraman, today is about the pitfalls of being a new supply chain leader: ego, managing up (and down), time management, and politics.
Ego
Ms. Venkataraman’s original post was all about ego for a Procurement head. She noted these four ego traps, her text is in italics and my thoughts follow. I do love these and think they are a huge risks for all procurement leaders. These are especially risks for those who were The Very Important Person when they were in the supply chain front lines, which means they may struggle more with ego than others (see my post on the ten people you meet in supply chains).
- Trying to prove value too fast
- Chasing quick wins without understanding the business. Result is wins that look good on paper but cannot be cashed in.
- I was witness to a multi-year packaging contract with tiers that were so unrealistic that the only winner was the supplier who made sure they had 100% of the volume.
Often new leaders come in and try to “move fast and break things,” which is a management philosophy that gained popularity with the rise of tech startups. However, even Facebook, who coined that phrase, dropped it in about 2018 when it simply didn’t work when they were no longer a startup. So unless your organization is a startup, don’t try to crash into quick wins without understanding the long-term implications.
- Treating suppliers as subordinates
- A common misconception from old-school Procurement – show “them” who is boss. Flexing control instead of building partnerships leads to losing out on the best ideas from your subject matter experts.
I’ve seen this one show up a lot for someone who was an ace negotiator when they were on the front lines of procurement or the supply chain team and is now in management. I wouldn’t say these leaders bully suppliers, but the line between bullying and negotiating firmly can be very fine indeed. This is also where it’s important to understand which suppliers are truly suppliers and which are vendors. A supply chain leader is the face of an organization to their suppliers, and needs to treat supplier partners as key stakeholders in their business.
- Assuming spend authority is decision rights
- Soon enough, stakeholders will find a way to bypass the function. Chasing savings at the expense of stakeholder/business needs only leads to being sidelined.
This one is a bit tricky and also shows up as politics (addressed later in this article). Most of the procurement organizations I have worked for and worked with faced some level of being bypassed by their internal customers. Clamping down on spend authority and decision rights as a first act simply turns Procurement into the Company Police Force, which might get you compliance but won’t get you long term trust or value.
- Dismissing value-driven Procurement as vague (or worse, soft)
- Influencing, collaborating, and long-term strategy are considered too fluffy. Those are the levers that actually shift margins and risk.
I get it – a new leader has been tasked with finding savings and finding it fast! Especially if they’re walking into a company looking to exercise any and all profit-building opportunities. But there is so much more to procurement than price. All of those other value-add items (lead time, service, quality, etc.) really do matter to internal stakeholders. That being said, it really does help if you can find a way to quantify and monetize those value-add items by doing things like measuring the value of the manufacturing line’s downtime, calculating the cost of quality/scrap rate, and determining the company’s cost of turnover or retraining. Not everything can be monetized, but if the leadership team is entirely focused on cost reduction (this especially tends to happen when supply chain/procurement reports to the CFO), it can be helpful to constantly be pushing numbers up into the C-Suite alongside the dollars the procurement team saves.
And now for a few more pitfalls I think belong on this list:
Managing Up and Down
- Managing up while kicking down
I see this so often, and it’s always frustrating to team members on the front lines. A manager does such a good job of kissing up to their boss and making themselves look good that they make the rest of their team look bad. A really good leader understands that the better their team looks, the better they look. This is also true at level above the leader – C-suite leaders have to see that high-performing teams are a credit to their work and also to their leader. Those who know me know one of my main philosophies is to Give Credit, Take Blame. I’m a believer that a leader is accountable, and cannot manage a team effectively without constantly giving their team credit due and taking accountability for issues.
- Not listening to their team or stakeholders
I also see this one all the time. A new leader comes in and immediately assumes they know what’s wrong with an organization. Perhaps they do, but they would also get more traction on fixing issues if they would spend the time to listen to their new team and help them feel heard. Perhaps that input changes nothing. But wrapping some of the team’s words directly into the transformation plan helps significantly with buy-in and adoption.
Time Management
- Not delegating to the team
This is the one I struggle with most as a leader. Not delegating, even and especially the more complicated tasks, does the team a disservice. Coming in to lead a new team is an ideal time to start delegating, so that the team doesn’t ever have experience with the leader doing those tasks. Especially when trying to identify and train a successor, a leader absolutely has to delegate some work, some cool projects, and some of their authority. This is also true when a leader manages a large team of more than 3-4 direct reports. A leader managing a large team simply doesn’t have the time or bandwidth to be doing the front line work, they need to be spending that energy in developing, leading, and managing their team.
- Not making time for their team (and not doing one-on-ones regularly and frequently)
Yikes. I’ve seen even CEOs never have one-on-one meetings with their team. Not having regular one-on-one meetings is a recipe for disaster with a team of any size and at any level. They don’t have to be long, they don’t even have to be formal or scheduled. I once had a manager who would “go visiting” and come visit us at our desks to check in roughly every week or two. Another leader I worked for tended to use the time on Saturday mornings when I came in for mentoring, working through issues, and a bit of an impromptu one-on-one. I know that sounds terrible to some people reading this, but I loved those Saturday mornings and he generally was booked solid between 5:45 am and 7 pm every single weekday (his own one-on-ones with his boss tended to be on Saturday morning before I got there). A new leader (or any leader, really) simply has to make time for their team.
Politics
- Thinking they don’t have to “play politics”
Most people will tell you they hate corporate politics. And most people mean it when they say it. But to become a corporate vice president, trust that politics are required. This does NOT mean manipulating, lying, or cheating (which I think is what most people think of when they say they hate corporate politics). It doesn’t even have to mean going to cocktail hour, attending pizza parties, or donating to whatever charitable organization your company favors. It DOES mean knowing which stakeholders have power (it’s not always the leader of the department or even the most senior employee), understanding what stakeholders care about, and putting yourself in a position to help them do their job better. People remember who helps them in their careers and procurement is uniquely positioned to do a LOT of favors. A new leader needs allies to survive and to accomplish their goals, and procurement has to have friends in every department who buys something (spoiler: all of them buy things!). So a new leader can “play politics” their own way, but they do have to do it.
If you or someone you know is a new supply chain leader and you want to bounce some things off me, let’s chat. If you’d like to get these articles weekly straight to your inbox and never miss one, sign up for my newsletter.
My book, Transform Procurement: The Value of E-auctions is now available in ebook, paperback and even hardcover format: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F79T6F25
