Procurement Insights · Jon W. Hansen, FCIPS
Most case teaching hands you a story with the ending already attached. Someone decided what went wrong, wrote it up, and you spend the session finding the clues that were pointed out to you. It feels like analysis. It is recall.
Starting this autumn, I am running something different.
The Hansen Case Labs put you inside a real organization’s real decision, as of a fixed date, with only the documents that existed at the time. You work the decision. You commit to a course of action — the one you would have signed off on, with what was known then. Then the date advances, the record opens as it actually opened, and you find out whether your call matched what happened.
I am not the answer key. The outcome is.
The cases
Santa Clara County, 2001 to 2024 — a $44 million procure-to-pay program, an award submission, and a $3.36 million consulting engagement to re-examine the practice, all in the same year. The case turns on a decision made in 2003, described in eight words, with no reasons given.
Thomas Cook, 2010 — a transformation deck presented publicly by the group procurement director, nine years before the company filed for compulsory liquidation. You get it as of 2010 and decide what you would want to know before signing off. Then the boundary advances.
Virginia eVA — three platform generations, three governors, twenty-five years, one methodology.
North Carolina, 2004 — sound strategy, sound platform, a contractual design for the real operating condition that I called brilliant at the time. It did not execute.
Bay Pines and the VHA. I-35W. And a sixteen-year public argument between competent practitioners that has never settled.
I was inside several of these. That is why the labs can show what an organization believed at each stage, in its own words, before the outcome was known — an insider’s look that few, if any, case studies can provide.
And again, every document used is public record, published work, or material explicitly cleared for use. Board agendas. A Civil Grand Jury report. Management audits. Contract amendments approved in open session. A recorded interview the subject agreed to give. You can check everything I say against a source you can open yourself.
Why by invitation
The labs run by invitation because of how they work, not as a launch phase. Three reasons, and none of them is scarcity.
The room is part of the material. You are not only working the case; you are watching how other people reason through it, and debating with them when and why they reach a different call. That only works if the people in the room have actually been accountable for decisions. A mixed room of public and private sector practitioners surfaces disagreements neither group has internally. A room assembled by whoever clicked first does not.
The structure is small by design. Each seat includes a private monthly call — 45 minutes, for up to three people from your organization, applying the same reasoning to a live situation of your own. That is nine hours of direct time per seat, per year. The arithmetic sets the ceiling.
And it is not for everyone. You commit to a decision in front of peers, and then the record tells you what actually happened. Sometimes it agrees with you. Being wrong in that setting is uncomfortable, and the discomfort is the design, not a side effect. I would rather say so plainly than have someone discover it in session two.
It is a screen in both directions. I am deciding whether someone belongs in a particular room. They are deciding whether they want a session where the record can agree or disagree with them. Both of those are real decisions and both deserve to be made with the facts on the table, which is why I would rather have a conversation than a checkout page.
There is a fourth reason, and I will state it as well: I run every lab and every private call myself. That is deliberate. The work depends on knowing who is in the room, what they are carrying, and where their organization actually is — and that kind of attention is not conducive to scale.
What happens next
Nothing you need to do.
Invitations go out over the coming weeks. I am not building a waiting list, and there is no form.
If any of the above describes a problem you recognize, that is the reason to read it — not the reason to enquire.
Truth Is Believing. Accuracy Is Knowing. Outcome Is Proof.™
Hansen Models™ · Procurement Insights
-30-
Related
The Hansen Case Labs: A New Course, By Invitation Only
Posted on August 22, 2026
0
Procurement Insights · Jon W. Hansen, FCIPS
Most case teaching hands you a story with the ending already attached. Someone decided what went wrong, wrote it up, and you spend the session finding the clues that were pointed out to you. It feels like analysis. It is recall.
Starting this autumn, I am running something different.
The Hansen Case Labs put you inside a real organization’s real decision, as of a fixed date, with only the documents that existed at the time. You work the decision. You commit to a course of action — the one you would have signed off on, with what was known then. Then the date advances, the record opens as it actually opened, and you find out whether your call matched what happened.
I am not the answer key. The outcome is.
The cases
Santa Clara County, 2001 to 2024 — a $44 million procure-to-pay program, an award submission, and a $3.36 million consulting engagement to re-examine the practice, all in the same year. The case turns on a decision made in 2003, described in eight words, with no reasons given.
Thomas Cook, 2010 — a transformation deck presented publicly by the group procurement director, nine years before the company filed for compulsory liquidation. You get it as of 2010 and decide what you would want to know before signing off. Then the boundary advances.
Virginia eVA — three platform generations, three governors, twenty-five years, one methodology.
North Carolina, 2004 — sound strategy, sound platform, a contractual design for the real operating condition that I called brilliant at the time. It did not execute.
Bay Pines and the VHA. I-35W. And a sixteen-year public argument between competent practitioners that has never settled.
I was inside several of these. That is why the labs can show what an organization believed at each stage, in its own words, before the outcome was known — an insider’s look that few, if any, case studies can provide.
And again, every document used is public record, published work, or material explicitly cleared for use. Board agendas. A Civil Grand Jury report. Management audits. Contract amendments approved in open session. A recorded interview the subject agreed to give. You can check everything I say against a source you can open yourself.
Why by invitation
The labs run by invitation because of how they work, not as a launch phase. Three reasons, and none of them is scarcity.
The room is part of the material. You are not only working the case; you are watching how other people reason through it, and debating with them when and why they reach a different call. That only works if the people in the room have actually been accountable for decisions. A mixed room of public and private sector practitioners surfaces disagreements neither group has internally. A room assembled by whoever clicked first does not.
The structure is small by design. Each seat includes a private monthly call — 45 minutes, for up to three people from your organization, applying the same reasoning to a live situation of your own. That is nine hours of direct time per seat, per year. The arithmetic sets the ceiling.
And it is not for everyone. You commit to a decision in front of peers, and then the record tells you what actually happened. Sometimes it agrees with you. Being wrong in that setting is uncomfortable, and the discomfort is the design, not a side effect. I would rather say so plainly than have someone discover it in session two.
It is a screen in both directions. I am deciding whether someone belongs in a particular room. They are deciding whether they want a session where the record can agree or disagree with them. Both of those are real decisions and both deserve to be made with the facts on the table, which is why I would rather have a conversation than a checkout page.
There is a fourth reason, and I will state it as well: I run every lab and every private call myself. That is deliberate. The work depends on knowing who is in the room, what they are carrying, and where their organization actually is — and that kind of attention is not conducive to scale.
What happens next
Nothing you need to do.
Invitations go out over the coming weeks. I am not building a waiting list, and there is no form.
If any of the above describes a problem you recognize, that is the reason to read it — not the reason to enquire.
Truth Is Believing. Accuracy Is Knowing. Outcome Is Proof.™
Hansen Models™ · Procurement Insights
-30-
Share this:
Like this:
Related