“Another comment that caught my attention was the position taken by one panel member that out of his organization’s 20,000 suppliers, only a few (i.e., 100) will merit engagement from a strategic perspective.  As a result, there is going to be a continuing need for what was referred to as “low-level” buyers.  However, the same individual concluded that “one strategic business thinker with the right skills and capabilities is worth 10 or 12 of your normal, run-of-the-mill purchasing people.”  This “class distinction,” as I will call it, is certainly not new to the industry.  It is, however, a potentially detrimental viewpoint in that it can increase the risk of a serious disconnect with and between key stakeholders.  Particularly if you are of the opinion that there will be a continuing need for traditional purchasing personnel.” – Procurement’s expanding role and the executive of the future, Procurement Insights, August 3, 2007

Before reading today’s post, which answers a question asked by Miroslav Pitlanic, I want you to reread the above paragraph and ask yourself this question instead: If procurement professionals haven’t developed the crucial “core” skills in the past, how will we develop the new skills needed going forward? Please keep this in mind as you read today’s post.

QUESTION

MY RESPONSE

What new skills – both known and unknown- will procurement professionals need to develop between 2025 and 2050?

If we frame this through the Hansen Fit Score (HFS) lens, skills will evolve alongside procurement’s maturity from strategic function (HFS ~8.3 in 2025) to a fully adaptive, ecosystem-aligned discipline (HFS ~9.9–10 by 2050).

1. Known Skills (Deepening & Expanding)

These are already recognized today, but will require higher sophistication and broader application.

Point 2 — Emerging Skills (Mainstream by 2035)

These are being piloted now but will be essential for mid-term success.

3. Unknown / Future-Frontier Skills (Projected 2040–2050)

These will emerge as entirely new disciplines as procurement integrates into adaptive, self-healing ecosystems.

4. HFS-Linked Skill Evolution Timeline

What The Procurement Insights Archives Have To Say

The following is a graphic from the November 12, 2019, post What is your organization’s digital readiness and what it means to your future employment?

Here are the real questions we should be asking in 2025 about talent and skills:

• Based on the above 2019 graphic, and referencing the following links from the Procurement Insights’ archives, what skills transcend both time and technology, and how well have those skills been developed?

• Also referencing the statistic that 62% of CPOs do not feel that their existing teams had the necessary skills to achieve their strategic objectives in the years leading up to the pandemic, how confident are CPOs in their teams’ ability in 2025?

• Finally, what impact does this past trend have on future skills development?

Here’s what the Procurement Insights archives say—pulled straight from their posts—about the skills that outlast tools and hype, how well those skills are developed, and what the skill-gap trend means going forward.

What skills transcend both time and technology?

Across the archive, the “always-on” skills are human, not tool-centric:

• Critical thinking & asking better questions (problem framing, judgment, interpretation). PI explicitly calls this out as the core capability for getting value from AI—“it’s not the instrument, but the music you write,” i.e., the quality of questions and reasoning remains decisive.
• Proactive professional development & adaptability (moving from reactive → proactive). This thread has been present in PI since at least 2012, stressing the need to shift behavior and capabilities, not just systems.
• Stakeholder influence & supplier relationship leadership (human-at-the-center, collaboration over mere compliance). Recent HFS/RAM posts emphasize a “human-at-the-center” approach and ecosystem orchestration—again, human skills steering the technology, not the other way around.

How well have those skills been developed?

The archive shows persistent gaps:

• In a 2022 retrospective, PI cites a pre-pandemic survey that “62% of CPOs believe their team lacks the necessary skills to deliver on their procurement strategy.”
• Confidence remained muted into the 2020s: a January 2025 post notes that only 32% of CPOs felt confident their teams could maximize the benefits of technology (based on 2023 data), signaling that foundational human and digital skills weren’t yet embedded.

How confident are CPOs in 2025?

Confidence is still cautious:

• A 2025 analysis on AI’s impact reports only 14% of procurement leaders were confident in their talent’s future readiness for AI-driven work—evidence that the human capability build is lagging the technology curve.

So what does this trend mean for future skills development?

PI’s 1980→2050 evolution (and the HFS framing it references) argues that technology will keep accelerating, but success hinges on institutionalizing timeless skills—and measuring them:

• Make the “timeless” skills programmatic: critical thinking, stakeholder influence, change leadership, and supplier relationship orchestration should be formal capabilities in hiring, learning paths, and performance reviews—not soft add-ons. (Context from the 1980–2050 evolution/HFS posts.)
• Pair human skills with fit-based capability assessments: PI recommends HFS-style diagnostics (including change-fatigue modules) to baseline where teams stand and to tailor enablement to real constraints—so transformations don’t stall.
• Expect confidence to improve only when teams practice “human-at-the-center” with AI—i.e., leaders coach people to frame problems, interrogate outputs, and orchestrate suppliers/stakeholders while tools automate the mechanics.

Bottom line

The archives are consistent: critical thinking, influence, adaptive learning, and relationship leadership are the durable edge. However, readiness is not yet where it needs to be (62% concern pre-pandemic; 32% tech confidence in 2023; 14% future readiness in 2025). Expect CPO confidence to remain guarded until organizations elevate these timeless skills to first-class, measured capabilities—and use fit-based frameworks to target development where it matters most.

TODAY’S TAKEAWAY

Stop focusing or worrying about developing “new talents and capabilities” when the core foundational talents are still underdeveloped. In short, don’t train for technological advancement because, based on my 40-plus years in high-tech, technology, like automobiles, is constantly changing; however, the core principles of driving are still essentially the same for both.

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