I’ve never met a supply chain team that didn’t already know some things were broken. I’ve started asking in most of my initial assessment interviews, “Is there anything else you wish your COO/CEO/Supply Chain Leader knew?” Most leaders I know think their team will say, “we need more resources.” Yet this is seldom the answer I get. Instead, people talk about wanting clarity of the big picture. They want a better understanding of what their boss cares about, and they want everyone on the team to rally around it. They wish their leaders (especially non-supply chain leaders) understood how important it is to involve procurement early and prevent problems later. I’ve learned in these assessments I’m often there to serve the role of impartial third party, without politics. I want my clients to succeed. I want what they want: supply chains to run smoothly and well with well-aligned priorities. So if they already know what’s wrong, why call me at all? Today’s article is about why internal teams find it hard to see the whole picture and how an outside perspective can help.
Why Internal Teams Can’t See
It’s hard to see clearly when you’re in something. This also happens with toxic workplaces or toxic bosses, as I learned in one of my very first roles. I wanted out of that team because I could see that I was blocked from moving up, so I started applying to my same role in other teams. Only later I learned my boss would then go talk to any of his peers for roles I was applying to and tell them not to hire me, that I was terrible, and that it would be a mistake. This is actually how I found procurement. I applied for an Engineering Buyer role and the hiring manager was the kind of guy who when you told him not to do something, his response was, “Oh yeah? Watch me.” You know the type. Total bulldog. (He later told me he never regretted hiring me, and it turns out I’m pretty good at procurement.)
The point is that only on looking back at that previous team could I see why it was such a poor fit for me. I got a little lucky, but there are some clear reasons a team can’t always see the big picture because they’re too deep in the weeds:
- The day-to-day takes everything. One of the hardest things to do in a corporate procurement role is rise above the daily firefighting to set some strategic goals, clean up processes, and just generally do things that make your future self grateful. There will always be a late shipment, an angry internal customer, and a contract that needs to be renewed yesterday. The only way I’ve seen out of that cycle is to change something: new staff, major transformation, or getting some outside help.
- The workarounds are now normal. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve mapped a PO process where there’s a step that looks like, “We open up this window, type a 1 in this box for tax code, and then close the window.” Three clicks and one type. For something that is never anything but a 1. People get so used to these little inefficiencies they can’t even tell they’re inefficient. And then they program AI to open that window up, type a 1 in, and close it, but faster, never asking if this part of the process adds value.
- People own their own process. This is the way it’s done because Sharon set it up this way when we set up the system. Oh, this is Dave’s process and he’s the one who knows how it works. I don’t want to change this process, it’s job security. (I HATE that phrase, “job security.” Ugh. First, it’s never true. Second, it’s like saying, “I have inefficiency but I’m getting paid for it so it’s fine.” The Lean/Kaizen professional in me always cringes. Every time I’ve cleaned up a role to get rid of these inefficiencies, the result is I’ve been promoted.) I’ve even made process maps where when we get to a certain step, the team wants to just name the subprocess “Sylvia” because everyone knows it’s Sylvia’s process and doesn’t question it.
- Management by exception. Oh, how bloated procurement policies get because something happened one time ten years ago. I had a boss who used to call this management by exception and it’s a common trap. Everyone remembers COVID vividly and now sets their inventory based on all their suppliers shutting down factories for three months. Or one time a VP overrode procurement when it wasn’t an emergency, so now all POs require three approvals. When I work with teams I often have to remind them that we’re mapping the main process, not the exceptions. The Pareto Principle always applies.
- Every problem lives in a bubble. Today’s delivery is late and procurement has to find it before the line goes down. We have to investigate the safety near miss where someone almost tripped over full pallets stacked up by the receiving desk. Paper packlists are falling out of the box we put them in, we need a bigger box. Each of these problems comes in by itself and seems like an isolated incident. Yet all of them point to one thing: warehouse flow. That late delivery is probably somewhere in the receiving area. The pallets are stacked up because there’s three days’ worth of shipments there. And the packlists are falling out of the box because no one has entered the receiving in days while they hunt for packages (don’t get me started on the lack of barcodes or electronic receiving, that’s a whole other thing). Each problem gets solved, but not the bigger issue causing them all.
I’ve seen some of these things solved by hiring a new supply chain leader, who brings a new outside perspective. That’s a great way to deal with it, but sometimes it isn’t possible for a variety of reasons. Or the company is too small to even be hiring a full-time supply chain leader. If the above symptoms are something you’re seeing, you might need an outside perspective.
What an Outside Perspective Helps With
A well-placed expert has an outside view, unencumbered by company politics. They don’t necessarily care that Bob has been here forever and everyone tiptoes around him. (Although a good outside expert also listens to Bob’s wisdom and treats him with the respect he’s earned through years at the company.) Someone outside can see:
- Patterns across departments. I’ve repeatedly seen that bringing in someone from outside is an “excuse” to get multiple departments in a room. Suddenly procurement is learning what sales is dealing with and operations is seeing the impact of constant engineering changes in a new way. I’ve often been hired to come map a process and clean it up, and I’ve left with the biggest benefit being cross-functional understanding.
- Extra process steps. Like my “enter a 1” example above, we get used to all the process steps. Teams get so deep in the “we’ve always done it this way” space that they don’t even realize it. It takes someone outside the organization to challenge those inefficiencies.
- Organizational gaps. When I first started working with companies of all sizes, it surprised me how many have no formal contracts. Many CEOs/COOs don’t even think about formalizing the supplier relationship with their biggest supplier because “the relationship has always been good.” Until it isn’t. I’ve seen what happens when a supplier gets a new CEO or even account rep and suddenly everything changes, from pricing to delivery. Contracts are a common organizational gap teams can’t even see when they’re in it.
- Hidden spend opportunities. I’ve run into companies who don’t know Aramark spun off Vestis and now both of them compete in the uniform space. Or they don’t know their vendor-managed inventory supplier is quietly charging them $40 per month per vending machine. (If your machines are blue, chances are good you’re getting charged this too!) Someone coming in might have found things at other companies that can benefit you and you don’t even know to look for.
- Normalized problems. I once had a boss that the first thing he asked me when I joined the company was, “What do we do well, what do we do poorly, and what do we do that’s crazy?” If every new hire remarks on the fact that you print out and file a copy of every PO because that’s just the way you do it, you have a normalized problem. Sometimes when it’s the new buyer right out of college, their “what’s crazy” gets dismissed as someone who just doesn’t know differently. And sometimes that’s true. But sometimes they’re right and no one will listen. Listen to your interns, not as gospel truth but as someone who sees things differently. If those interns need backup to be heard, pull in an outside expert.
One important thing to remember about all of this is that simply pulling in anyone doesn’t always offer the outside perspective you need. Just like you can’t hire just any new supply chain leader and have them excel at running procurement, you need an outside expert who’s run things themselves and understands procurement deeply to fix procurement problems. Or understands logistics deeply to fix logistics problems. (Side note: I’m not a logistics expert, but I do know people. If this is your struggle, let me know and I’ll point you their way!)
I also recommend you be clear on what you need and expect. Do you want outside ideas that you then have to go execute (using your already-overstretched team)? Do you want someone who makes the recommendations and then helps you do them? Do you need clarity on what kind of supply chain leader to hire so you prioritize the right skills? Decide what you need before you pull in some help and you’ll be much happier with your result. The purpose of an outside perspective is not to tell your team what they already know. It’s to elevate their voice, sift through the noise for what’s actually causing the problems, and connect the dots into a cohesive picture both inside and outside the supply chain team.
If you’d like to talk about your daily problems that keep stacking up or getting an outside supply chain perspective, 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 available in ebook, paperback and even hardcover format: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F79T6F25. My chapter in the powerful anthology Femme Led: Hard-Learned Lessons from Women in Leadership is now available in ebook and paperback format: https://a.co/d/0bOzma8F
This post was written entirely by me and not by AI. The article summaries, title, and graphic may all have used AI to assist/generate ideas/edit, but the article content is fully human.
