Strategic Sourcing And The Road To Transformational Leadership

In his recent post titled Who Are Procurement’s New Leaders, Jon Hansen referenced a reader comment that “business strategy and traditional procurement strategy are often misaligned.” As a result, “necessary leadership talent must synthesize the best . . . and discard the obsolete to create something new.”

In my experience the “new” to which the reader referred must be centered more on mindset or rather organizational culture, and the related change in approach it can bring about in terms of strategic relationships.

Let’s look at the purported transition to a strategic procurement practice.

Being strategic has taken on an added new dimension of importance. However, most people who have made or are making the transition to “strategic procurement,” have done so within the framework of the very same adversarial models that have undermined supplier relationships in the past. So, just because there is a new awareness of importance, does not…