- 11
- AUG
- 2010
Procurement GPS - If you're not winning the game, then change the rules
Author: Ian George - Categories: Procurement Strategy
If I'm serious about improving the performance of my organisation, then I need to get the experts in - but remember the word 'expert' is formed from the conjunction of two roots, which phonetically can be represented as 'x' and 'spurt'. Everyone knows that 'x' is an unknown quantity. A 'spurt' is what one gets from squeezing a drop of water. Therefore, an expert is an unknown drip under pressure.
If I'm serious about improving the performance of my organisation, then I need to . . . find a different solution.
But before we do that, let's think about why we keep going to the big consultancies. Well, they have done this stuff before, they have a wealth of solutions at their finger tips, they have good people and, if it goes wrong, it's their fault not yours.
What the improvement experts do is bring their way of doing things into your organisation and expect your culture to flex to meet their understanding of the world. Tail wagging the dog springs to mind. Their solutions can only ever be generic and therefore will still need to be adapted to fit your situation.
Ever been plagued by people saying "Yes, but we're different." Unfortunately they are right, they just use the argument for the wrong reasons. As for their people? Yes, they are good, but so are yours (unless you have a policy of recruiting idiots). They just have skills where yours have gaps and gaps where yours have skills. As for the last point, it's your name in the frame whatever happens.
Now, before you go and jump off a bridge, hop in the bath cuddling an electric fire or just gently weep at your desk, read the rest of this blog. Things are never as bad as they seem, not quite anyway.
When you sit down and really think about the problem, yes, you get a headache, but you also realise that the two key questions are "What do I need to do?" and "How will I do it?" In the past, these have been the preserve of the academics and consultancies, to whom we pay lots of money to be enlightened. If that knowledge could be shared in an accessible and intuitive resource, then the rules of the game change and the procurement leadership takes control.
For the last fifteen years, the different tools that form the Procurement GPS have been developed and refined into a coherent system that has been proven to support autonomously led step-changes in procurement performance. Clever thinking and some subtle solutions have balanced the need for generic definitions that make it logistically applicable whilst providing enough detail to enable the creation of implementable improvement programmes.
It doesn't mean you can leave your brain at home each morning, but it does mean that one of the biggest problems you're going to face is deciding how ambitious you want to be. Go on, live a little.
Click here for the Procurement GPS website.
Comments
Abdul via LinkedIn
Thu 12 Aug 2010 14:28
if you're not winning the game, then change the strategy!! as you can not change the rules
Miriam via LinkedIn
Fri 13 Aug 2010 14:17
does that then mean expert "ex" as in "has been" and "spurt" "a drip under pressure"
Miriam via LinkedIn
Fri 13 Aug 2010 14:17
does that then mean expert "ex" as in "has been" and "spurt" "a drip under pressure"
Ian George
Wed 25 Aug 2010 17:00
Changing the rules or changing the strategy both point toward the phenomena of people acting as if improisoned by thier own experiences and knowledge. Breakthrough comes from thinking and acting differently. GPS is doing that by making explicit the knowledge that a few organisations have coveted and seen as their competitive advantage for many years. So, by offering the material to the world we have broken the rule that says 'knowledge is power', but we have also adopted a new strategy that says our business model is to enable organisations to learn from each other and therefore accelerate their learning and improvement efforts. Now the challenge becomes one of improving (at least) as fast as the competition just to maintain position. Those that improve in the right areas and deliver true business benefit will become the market leaders. The new rule thus becomes 'Knowledge is power - but only if you use it wisely and demonstrate a benefit.'