THE RACE CAR ANALOGY
The race car analogy: in the early 2000s, Virginia’s driver skill levels were far superior to those of most drivers of the era, and thus they got far more out of the technology, e.g., cars despite their limitations. Conversely, today’s technologies, e.g., cars, are far superior to those of the early 2000s. Unfortunately, the skill level of the drivers still lags, making the Virginia team an exception rather than the rule.
The Driver Skill Differential
Your racecar analogy precisely captures the fundamental dynamic at play, and it explains why Hansen’s framework scoring may be more revealing about organizational capability gaps than technology limitations.
Virginia’s “Driver Team” (Early 2000s): Virginia demonstrated exceptional “driver skills” through genuine stakeholder collaboration, understanding that government comprised “many different lines of business,” and maintaining “steadfast nonpartisan support of three separate Governors”. They maximized performance from limited technology (Ariba platform) through superior methodology execution.
Most Organizations (Early 2000s & Today): The evidence suggests most procurement teams lack Virginia’s collaborative sophistication, change management expertise, and sustained executive commitment – essentially operating with “average driver skills” regardless of technology platform sophistication.
Technology vs. Capability Gap Analysis
2025 “Cars” (Technology Platforms): Modern agentic AI platforms provide capabilities that match or exceed Hansen’s 1998 custom RAM system:
- Autonomous decision-making
- Real-time learning and adaptation
- Multi-stakeholder orchestration
- Comprehensive audit trails
2025 “Drivers” (Organizational Teams): Hansen’s own data suggests that “~50–70% fail to fully deliver intended outcomes” in current ProcureTech programs, indicating that organizational execution capabilities haven’t improved proportionally with technology advancement.
Critical Validation of Your Theory
Supporting Evidence:
- Institutional Inertia: Major procurement organizations (ISM, SIG, NIGP, NASPO) took 27 years to acknowledge agent-based approaches, suggesting systemic resistance to advanced methodologies
- Implementation Patterns: The Novartis document showed that even with superior 2025 technology, success still depended heavily on partnership approaches, stakeholder management, and implementation methodology
- Failure Rate Consistency: Despite dramatic technology improvements since 2000, procurement transformation failure rates remain stubbornly high, indicating the bottleneck is organizational rather than technological
Implications for Hansen Fit Scoring
Scoring Reinterpretation: The 16-point gap between DND (92/100) and Virginia (76/100) may actually reflect:
- DND: Superior technology + Hansen’s elite driver skills = 92/100
- Virginia: Limited technology + exceptional driver skills = 76/100
- Most Organizations Today: Superior technology + average driver skills = 50-65/100
This suggests Virginia’s score of 76/100 using inferior technology may actually represent more impressive organizational capability than organizations achieving similar scores with modern platforms.
Race Car Analogy Extensions
Qualifying vs. Racing Performance: Virginia’s team proved they could “qualify” for elite performance given better technology. Most modern procurement teams haven’t demonstrated they can handle the organizational complexity required for elite scores, regardless of platform sophistication.
Track Conditions (Organizational Context): Virginia succeeded in challenging “track conditions” (government bureaucracy, political changes, diverse stakeholders). Most organizations operate in less complex environments but still struggle with implementation.
Pit Crew (Vendor Support): Modern platforms provide better “pit crew” support, but success still depends on the driver team’s ability to execute race strategy and adapt to changing conditions.
Strategic Implications
For Procurement Leaders: The bottleneck isn’t technology availability—it’s developing the organizational “driver skills” to maximize platform capabilities. Investment in change management and stakeholder collaboration may yield higher returns than focusing solely on platform selection.
For Hansen’s Framework: The scoring system may need to weight organizational execution capability more heavily than technology sophistication, since superior “drivers” can extract elite performance from moderate technology while poor “drivers” waste superior platforms.
For Vendors: Success depends less on platform features and more on implementation methodology and change management support—essentially providing “driving lessons” alongside technology.
Bottom Line Assessment
Your analogy accurately identifies why Hansen’s models remain relevant despite being developed decades ago. The fundamental challenge isn’t technological capability—it’s organizational maturity and execution sophistication. Virginia’s exceptional performance with limited 2000s technology demonstrates that the right “drivers” can achieve elite results regardless of platform limitations.
Today’s superior “cars” (agentic AI platforms) could enable multiple organizations to achieve 90+ Hansen Fit Scores, but only if they develop Virginia-level “driving skills”—collaborative stakeholder engagement, sustained executive commitment, and sophisticated change management capabilities.
The persistent high failure rates in procurement transformation suggest most organizations are still operating with inadequate “driver skills,” making Virginia’s early 2000s performance an exception that validates Hansen’s emphasis on methodology over technology.
30
IMPORTANT BONUS COVERAGE – ARE YOU READY TO ASK THE TOUGH QUESTIONS?
“This creates a systematic market failure where the organizations best positioned to develop practitioner capabilities have economic incentives to avoid doing so. The result is persistent high failure rates in procurement transformation despite continuous technology advancement.”
QUESTION 1: How does this speak to the strength and uniqueness of the Hansen Fit Score?
The Hansen Fit Score’s strength lies in identifying what the industry consistently misses: organizational execution capability matters more than technology features. However, this same insight reveals significant limitations in the framework’s practical application.
Unique Strengths Revealed
1. Methodology Over Technology Focus: The Virginia vs. DND analysis demonstrates that Hansen’s framework correctly identifies that superior “drivers” (organizational capability) can extract elite performance from inferior “cars” (technology platforms). This contradicts the industry’s persistent technology-first approach that has maintained 50-70% failure rates for decades.
2. Execution Gap Detection: The framework’s ability to score Virginia at 76/100 despite exceptional results reveals its sensitivity to implementation sophistication rather than just outcomes. This distinguishes genuinely sustainable success from temporary improvements that might regress.
3. Predictive Value: By emphasizing organizational capabilities that most teams lack, the framework correctly predicts why most implementations fail even with superior modern technology. The scoring implicitly forecasts sustainability better than outcome-only metrics.
Critical Framework Limitations
1. Practical Inaccessibility: If achieving 90+ scores requires Virginia-level organizational sophistication (which appears rare), the framework may be more diagnostic than prescriptive. Most organizations cannot rapidly develop the collaborative capabilities Virginia demonstrated over years.
2. Circular Validation: Hansen’s own implementations score highest on criteria he developed, while successful programs using different approaches (like Virginia) score lower. This raises questions about whether the framework measures universal success factors or Hansen-specific methodologies.
3. Technology Bias Despite Claims: The 16-point gap between identical methodologies on different platforms contradicts Hansen’s stated technology-agnostic principles. Organizations using COTS solutions face inherent scoring disadvantages regardless of results achieved.
Market Reality Check
Industry Adoption Challenges: Major procurement organizations took 27 years to acknowledge Hansen’s approaches, suggesting the framework identifies capabilities that the market systematically undervalues or cannot develop. This could indicate either profound industry dysfunction or framework impracticality.
Resource Requirements: Virginia’s success required sustained executive commitment across multiple governors, exceptional change management, and sophisticated stakeholder engagement. Few organizations possess or can develop these capabilities within practical timeframes.
Competitive Framework Analysis
Traditional Vendor Assessments: Most evaluation frameworks focus on features, pricing, and references—exactly what Hansen argues creates failures. The Hansen Fit Score’s emphasis on organizational readiness and methodology execution addresses real gaps in conventional evaluation approaches.
Implementation Complexity: While other frameworks are easier to apply, they consistently fail to predict success. Hansen’s framework may be more accurate but requires evaluation sophistication that most procurement teams lack.
Strategic Framework Value
For Sophisticated Organizations: Organizations with Virginia-level capabilities could use the framework to identify which modern platforms would enable elite performance. The framework provides actionable guidance for teams ready to implement advanced methodologies.
For Average Organizations: The framework serves as a diagnostic tool revealing capability gaps that must be addressed before technology selection. However, it provides limited guidance on developing those capabilities.
For Vendors: The framework correctly identifies that success depends more on implementation support and methodology transfer than platform features. Vendors focusing on organizational capability development rather than technology sophistication align with framework insights.
Bottom Line Assessment
The Hansen Fit Score’s uniqueness lies in correctly identifying that procurement transformation failures stem from organizational execution gaps rather than technology limitations. This insight has proven prescient over 25+ years as failure rates remain high despite dramatic technology improvements.
However, the framework’s strength—requiring exceptional organizational sophistication—also limits its practical applicability. Most organizations cannot rapidly develop Virginia-level capabilities, making the framework more valuable as a diagnostic tool than an implementation guide.
The framework succeeds in explaining why the industry struggles but may not provide accessible pathways for most organizations to achieve elite performance. This creates a paradox: the framework correctly identifies success factors that are systematically underdeveloped across the industry, but offers limited guidance on developing those factors within practical constraints.
The Hansen Fit Score’s lasting value may be in forcing organizations to confront the uncomfortable reality that their failures stem from internal capability gaps rather than vendor limitations—even if developing those capabilities remains challenging.
QUESTION 2: Is the lack of development of needed capabilities a reflection of organizations like Gartner, ISM, NASPO, NIGP, SIG, McKinsey, DPW, and Deloitte’s vendor/technology-first focus, e.g., equation-based approach, versus championing an agent-based approach, which resulted in their failure to provide the proper certification training that would have improved “driver skills?”
Your analysis identifies a systemic institutional failure, but the causation is more complex than a simple vendor-first focus creating inadequate training. The evidence suggests these organizations’ approach reflects deeper structural incentives that actively discourage the “driver skills” development needed for procurement success.
Evidence of Institutional Misdirection
Technology-First Educational Content: These organizations only began covering agentic AI concepts in 2025, showing “a 27-year gap between practitioner innovation and mainstream organizational recognition” of Hansen’s work. Their educational focus has consistently emphasized vendor solutions over capability development.
Commercial Alignment Issues: The research reveals these organizations depend heavily on vendor sponsorships, conference fees, and consulting relationships that create inherent conflicts. Teaching practitioners to develop internal capabilities threatens vendor revenue streams that fund these organizations.
Skills Gap Perpetuation: The evidence shows “50% of CPOs felt that their current teams lack the ability to enable them to achieve their strategic objectives”, yet these organizations continue promoting technology selection over capability building.
Critical Assessment of Your Theory
Partial Validation: The institutional focus on equation-based approaches has demonstrably failed to develop the organizational sophistication that Virginia exhibited. However, several complicating factors emerge:
1. Market Demand Reality: Most procurement professionals seek quick, vendor-provided solutions rather than the complex organizational development Virginia’s success required. These organizations may be responding to practitioner preferences rather than shaping them.
2. Business Model Constraints: Organizations like Gartner, McKinsey, and Deloitte generate revenue from vendor relationships and consulting engagements. Training practitioners to develop internal capabilities could undermine their business models.
3. Complexity Resistance: Virginia’s approach required sustained executive commitment across multiple political administrations and sophisticated change management. Most organizations prefer simpler, technology-focused solutions even when they consistently fail.
Alternative Causation Analysis
Chicken-and-Egg Problem:
- Do these organizations promote vendor-first approaches because practitioners demand simple solutions?
- Or do practitioners lack sophistication because these organizations fail to provide proper education?
The evidence suggests both dynamics reinforce each other in a destructive cycle.
Structural Incentive Misalignment: These organizations’ business models depend on “vendor alignment” and “institutional priorities” that conflict with practitioner capability development. They cannot simultaneously serve vendor interests and develop procurement teams that reduce vendor dependence.
Training Gap Analysis
Missing Curriculum Elements: The organizations have systematically failed to provide education on:
- Collaborative stakeholder engagement (Virginia’s core strength)
- Change management for complex procurement transformations
- Organizational capability assessment and development
- Agent-based thinking and implementation
Focus on Wrong Skills: Instead, they emphasize:
- Vendor evaluation frameworks
- Contract negotiation tactics
- Technology feature comparisons
- Cost reduction methodologies
Counterarguments to Consider
Resource Constraints: Developing Virginia-level organizational capabilities requires sustained investment and executive commitment that many organizations cannot provide. These institutions may focus on technology solutions because they’re more immediately actionable.
Market Evolution: The 27-year lag in recognizing Hansen’s approaches might reflect natural institutional conservatism rather than deliberate misdirection. Organizations may reasonably avoid promoting unproven methodologies until they achieve broader validation.
Practitioner Responsibility: Virginia’s success ultimately depended on internal leadership and commitment. Even perfect training cannot overcome organizational dysfunction or lack of executive support.
Bottom Line Assessment
Your theory correctly identifies that these organizations’ vendor-first focus has contributed to inadequate “driver skills” development across the procurement profession. However, the causation involves complex feedback loops rather than simple institutional failure.
The evidence suggests these organizations have become trapped in a business model that depends on perpetuating practitioner dependence on external solutions. Teaching procurement teams to develop Virginia-level internal capabilities would threaten the vendor relationships and consulting opportunities that fund these institutions.
This creates a systematic market failure where the organizations best positioned to develop practitioner capabilities have economic incentives to avoid doing so. The result is persistent high failure rates in procurement transformation despite continuous technology advancement.
The institutional failure is real, but addressing it requires confronting fundamental business model conflicts rather than simply changing educational content. Until these organizations can develop sustainable funding models that don’t depend on vendor relationships, they’re unlikely to provide the capability-building education that practitioners actually need.
“Most associations are being pulled forward by their membership, instead of the other way around – that is a significant issue that we must address.” – Tim Cummins, Executive Director, Commerce & Contract Management Institute; President at World Commerce & Contracting; Professor (retd), Leeds University School of Law
IN MY NEXT POST: Why Spreadsheets Are Procurement’s Enduring Universal Taxonomy
Sneak Peek Ecerpt: Bottom Line Assessment
Your thesis captures an important reality about capability-constrained adoption patterns, but may overstate spreadsheet uniqueness. The broader insight is that procurement technology adoption correlates with organizational capability ceilings rather than technology sophistication.
The uncomfortable truth is that most procurement “technology” implementations end up functioning like sophisticated spreadsheets because that matches team execution capabilities. This suggests the industry needs to focus on raising capability floors rather than creating higher technology ceilings.
However, declaring spreadsheets the “only” enduring taxonomy may be premature. The more accurate observation might be that simple, individually-controllable tools persist while collaborative, transformation-requiring platforms struggle – regardless of their specific form factor.
The challenge isn’t spreadsheet dominance per se, but the systematic failure to develop organizational capabilities that would enable more sophisticated tool adoption.
Procurement Insights
What made Virginia’s eVA 2000 success amazing by 2025 standards, or why the industry needs to focus on raising capability floors rather than creating higher technology ceilings.
Posted on September 12, 2025
0
THE RACE CAR ANALOGY
The race car analogy: in the early 2000s, Virginia’s driver skill levels were far superior to those of most drivers of the era, and thus they got far more out of the technology, e.g., cars despite their limitations. Conversely, today’s technologies, e.g., cars, are far superior to those of the early 2000s. Unfortunately, the skill level of the drivers still lags, making the Virginia team an exception rather than the rule.
The Driver Skill Differential
Your racecar analogy precisely captures the fundamental dynamic at play, and it explains why Hansen’s framework scoring may be more revealing about organizational capability gaps than technology limitations.
Virginia’s “Driver Team” (Early 2000s): Virginia demonstrated exceptional “driver skills” through genuine stakeholder collaboration, understanding that government comprised “many different lines of business,” and maintaining “steadfast nonpartisan support of three separate Governors”. They maximized performance from limited technology (Ariba platform) through superior methodology execution.
Most Organizations (Early 2000s & Today): The evidence suggests most procurement teams lack Virginia’s collaborative sophistication, change management expertise, and sustained executive commitment – essentially operating with “average driver skills” regardless of technology platform sophistication.
Technology vs. Capability Gap Analysis
2025 “Cars” (Technology Platforms): Modern agentic AI platforms provide capabilities that match or exceed Hansen’s 1998 custom RAM system:
2025 “Drivers” (Organizational Teams): Hansen’s own data suggests that “~50–70% fail to fully deliver intended outcomes” in current ProcureTech programs, indicating that organizational execution capabilities haven’t improved proportionally with technology advancement.
Critical Validation of Your Theory
Supporting Evidence:
Implications for Hansen Fit Scoring
Scoring Reinterpretation: The 16-point gap between DND (92/100) and Virginia (76/100) may actually reflect:
This suggests Virginia’s score of 76/100 using inferior technology may actually represent more impressive organizational capability than organizations achieving similar scores with modern platforms.
Race Car Analogy Extensions
Qualifying vs. Racing Performance: Virginia’s team proved they could “qualify” for elite performance given better technology. Most modern procurement teams haven’t demonstrated they can handle the organizational complexity required for elite scores, regardless of platform sophistication.
Track Conditions (Organizational Context): Virginia succeeded in challenging “track conditions” (government bureaucracy, political changes, diverse stakeholders). Most organizations operate in less complex environments but still struggle with implementation.
Pit Crew (Vendor Support): Modern platforms provide better “pit crew” support, but success still depends on the driver team’s ability to execute race strategy and adapt to changing conditions.
Strategic Implications
For Procurement Leaders: The bottleneck isn’t technology availability—it’s developing the organizational “driver skills” to maximize platform capabilities. Investment in change management and stakeholder collaboration may yield higher returns than focusing solely on platform selection.
For Hansen’s Framework: The scoring system may need to weight organizational execution capability more heavily than technology sophistication, since superior “drivers” can extract elite performance from moderate technology while poor “drivers” waste superior platforms.
For Vendors: Success depends less on platform features and more on implementation methodology and change management support—essentially providing “driving lessons” alongside technology.
Bottom Line Assessment
Your analogy accurately identifies why Hansen’s models remain relevant despite being developed decades ago. The fundamental challenge isn’t technological capability—it’s organizational maturity and execution sophistication. Virginia’s exceptional performance with limited 2000s technology demonstrates that the right “drivers” can achieve elite results regardless of platform limitations.
Today’s superior “cars” (agentic AI platforms) could enable multiple organizations to achieve 90+ Hansen Fit Scores, but only if they develop Virginia-level “driving skills”—collaborative stakeholder engagement, sustained executive commitment, and sophisticated change management capabilities.
The persistent high failure rates in procurement transformation suggest most organizations are still operating with inadequate “driver skills,” making Virginia’s early 2000s performance an exception that validates Hansen’s emphasis on methodology over technology.
30
IMPORTANT BONUS COVERAGE – ARE YOU READY TO ASK THE TOUGH QUESTIONS?
“This creates a systematic market failure where the organizations best positioned to develop practitioner capabilities have economic incentives to avoid doing so. The result is persistent high failure rates in procurement transformation despite continuous technology advancement.”
QUESTION 1: How does this speak to the strength and uniqueness of the Hansen Fit Score?
The Hansen Fit Score’s strength lies in identifying what the industry consistently misses: organizational execution capability matters more than technology features. However, this same insight reveals significant limitations in the framework’s practical application.
Unique Strengths Revealed
1. Methodology Over Technology Focus: The Virginia vs. DND analysis demonstrates that Hansen’s framework correctly identifies that superior “drivers” (organizational capability) can extract elite performance from inferior “cars” (technology platforms). This contradicts the industry’s persistent technology-first approach that has maintained 50-70% failure rates for decades.
2. Execution Gap Detection: The framework’s ability to score Virginia at 76/100 despite exceptional results reveals its sensitivity to implementation sophistication rather than just outcomes. This distinguishes genuinely sustainable success from temporary improvements that might regress.
3. Predictive Value: By emphasizing organizational capabilities that most teams lack, the framework correctly predicts why most implementations fail even with superior modern technology. The scoring implicitly forecasts sustainability better than outcome-only metrics.
Critical Framework Limitations
1. Practical Inaccessibility: If achieving 90+ scores requires Virginia-level organizational sophistication (which appears rare), the framework may be more diagnostic than prescriptive. Most organizations cannot rapidly develop the collaborative capabilities Virginia demonstrated over years.
2. Circular Validation: Hansen’s own implementations score highest on criteria he developed, while successful programs using different approaches (like Virginia) score lower. This raises questions about whether the framework measures universal success factors or Hansen-specific methodologies.
3. Technology Bias Despite Claims: The 16-point gap between identical methodologies on different platforms contradicts Hansen’s stated technology-agnostic principles. Organizations using COTS solutions face inherent scoring disadvantages regardless of results achieved.
Market Reality Check
Industry Adoption Challenges: Major procurement organizations took 27 years to acknowledge Hansen’s approaches, suggesting the framework identifies capabilities that the market systematically undervalues or cannot develop. This could indicate either profound industry dysfunction or framework impracticality.
Resource Requirements: Virginia’s success required sustained executive commitment across multiple governors, exceptional change management, and sophisticated stakeholder engagement. Few organizations possess or can develop these capabilities within practical timeframes.
Competitive Framework Analysis
Traditional Vendor Assessments: Most evaluation frameworks focus on features, pricing, and references—exactly what Hansen argues creates failures. The Hansen Fit Score’s emphasis on organizational readiness and methodology execution addresses real gaps in conventional evaluation approaches.
Implementation Complexity: While other frameworks are easier to apply, they consistently fail to predict success. Hansen’s framework may be more accurate but requires evaluation sophistication that most procurement teams lack.
Strategic Framework Value
For Sophisticated Organizations: Organizations with Virginia-level capabilities could use the framework to identify which modern platforms would enable elite performance. The framework provides actionable guidance for teams ready to implement advanced methodologies.
For Average Organizations: The framework serves as a diagnostic tool revealing capability gaps that must be addressed before technology selection. However, it provides limited guidance on developing those capabilities.
For Vendors: The framework correctly identifies that success depends more on implementation support and methodology transfer than platform features. Vendors focusing on organizational capability development rather than technology sophistication align with framework insights.
Bottom Line Assessment
The Hansen Fit Score’s uniqueness lies in correctly identifying that procurement transformation failures stem from organizational execution gaps rather than technology limitations. This insight has proven prescient over 25+ years as failure rates remain high despite dramatic technology improvements.
However, the framework’s strength—requiring exceptional organizational sophistication—also limits its practical applicability. Most organizations cannot rapidly develop Virginia-level capabilities, making the framework more valuable as a diagnostic tool than an implementation guide.
The framework succeeds in explaining why the industry struggles but may not provide accessible pathways for most organizations to achieve elite performance. This creates a paradox: the framework correctly identifies success factors that are systematically underdeveloped across the industry, but offers limited guidance on developing those factors within practical constraints.
The Hansen Fit Score’s lasting value may be in forcing organizations to confront the uncomfortable reality that their failures stem from internal capability gaps rather than vendor limitations—even if developing those capabilities remains challenging.
QUESTION 2: Is the lack of development of needed capabilities a reflection of organizations like Gartner, ISM, NASPO, NIGP, SIG, McKinsey, DPW, and Deloitte’s vendor/technology-first focus, e.g., equation-based approach, versus championing an agent-based approach, which resulted in their failure to provide the proper certification training that would have improved “driver skills?”
Your analysis identifies a systemic institutional failure, but the causation is more complex than a simple vendor-first focus creating inadequate training. The evidence suggests these organizations’ approach reflects deeper structural incentives that actively discourage the “driver skills” development needed for procurement success.
Evidence of Institutional Misdirection
Technology-First Educational Content: These organizations only began covering agentic AI concepts in 2025, showing “a 27-year gap between practitioner innovation and mainstream organizational recognition” of Hansen’s work. Their educational focus has consistently emphasized vendor solutions over capability development.
Commercial Alignment Issues: The research reveals these organizations depend heavily on vendor sponsorships, conference fees, and consulting relationships that create inherent conflicts. Teaching practitioners to develop internal capabilities threatens vendor revenue streams that fund these organizations.
Skills Gap Perpetuation: The evidence shows “50% of CPOs felt that their current teams lack the ability to enable them to achieve their strategic objectives”, yet these organizations continue promoting technology selection over capability building.
Critical Assessment of Your Theory
Partial Validation: The institutional focus on equation-based approaches has demonstrably failed to develop the organizational sophistication that Virginia exhibited. However, several complicating factors emerge:
1. Market Demand Reality: Most procurement professionals seek quick, vendor-provided solutions rather than the complex organizational development Virginia’s success required. These organizations may be responding to practitioner preferences rather than shaping them.
2. Business Model Constraints: Organizations like Gartner, McKinsey, and Deloitte generate revenue from vendor relationships and consulting engagements. Training practitioners to develop internal capabilities could undermine their business models.
3. Complexity Resistance: Virginia’s approach required sustained executive commitment across multiple political administrations and sophisticated change management. Most organizations prefer simpler, technology-focused solutions even when they consistently fail.
Alternative Causation Analysis
Chicken-and-Egg Problem:
The evidence suggests both dynamics reinforce each other in a destructive cycle.
Structural Incentive Misalignment: These organizations’ business models depend on “vendor alignment” and “institutional priorities” that conflict with practitioner capability development. They cannot simultaneously serve vendor interests and develop procurement teams that reduce vendor dependence.
Training Gap Analysis
Missing Curriculum Elements: The organizations have systematically failed to provide education on:
Focus on Wrong Skills: Instead, they emphasize:
Counterarguments to Consider
Resource Constraints: Developing Virginia-level organizational capabilities requires sustained investment and executive commitment that many organizations cannot provide. These institutions may focus on technology solutions because they’re more immediately actionable.
Market Evolution: The 27-year lag in recognizing Hansen’s approaches might reflect natural institutional conservatism rather than deliberate misdirection. Organizations may reasonably avoid promoting unproven methodologies until they achieve broader validation.
Practitioner Responsibility: Virginia’s success ultimately depended on internal leadership and commitment. Even perfect training cannot overcome organizational dysfunction or lack of executive support.
Bottom Line Assessment
Your theory correctly identifies that these organizations’ vendor-first focus has contributed to inadequate “driver skills” development across the procurement profession. However, the causation involves complex feedback loops rather than simple institutional failure.
The evidence suggests these organizations have become trapped in a business model that depends on perpetuating practitioner dependence on external solutions. Teaching procurement teams to develop Virginia-level internal capabilities would threaten the vendor relationships and consulting opportunities that fund these institutions.
This creates a systematic market failure where the organizations best positioned to develop practitioner capabilities have economic incentives to avoid doing so. The result is persistent high failure rates in procurement transformation despite continuous technology advancement.
The institutional failure is real, but addressing it requires confronting fundamental business model conflicts rather than simply changing educational content. Until these organizations can develop sustainable funding models that don’t depend on vendor relationships, they’re unlikely to provide the capability-building education that practitioners actually need.
“Most associations are being pulled forward by their membership, instead of the other way around – that is a significant issue that we must address.” – Tim Cummins, Executive Director, Commerce & Contract Management Institute; President at World Commerce & Contracting; Professor (retd), Leeds University School of Law
IN MY NEXT POST: Why Spreadsheets Are Procurement’s Enduring Universal Taxonomy
Sneak Peek Ecerpt: Bottom Line Assessment
Your thesis captures an important reality about capability-constrained adoption patterns, but may overstate spreadsheet uniqueness. The broader insight is that procurement technology adoption correlates with organizational capability ceilings rather than technology sophistication.
The uncomfortable truth is that most procurement “technology” implementations end up functioning like sophisticated spreadsheets because that matches team execution capabilities. This suggests the industry needs to focus on raising capability floors rather than creating higher technology ceilings.
However, declaring spreadsheets the “only” enduring taxonomy may be premature. The more accurate observation might be that simple, individually-controllable tools persist while collaborative, transformation-requiring platforms struggle – regardless of their specific form factor.
The challenge isn’t spreadsheet dominance per se, but the systematic failure to develop organizational capabilities that would enable more sophisticated tool adoption.
Share this:
Related