Last week, I was asked to be a guest of the local chamber of commerce at their board of directors retreat. While there, I experienced something that reminded me of a common situation faced by procurement managers (or, really, any middle manager).<\/p>\n
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This chamber\u2019s board of directors has several different committees, each involving different directors. After lunch, there were to be breakout sessions for the committees to each work on their committee goals. Being a guest and not a director, I offered to sit in with the committee with the smallest number of members.<\/p>\n
The assignment was simple. Take the four strategic goals of the chamber, develop a committee goal that would support each strategic goal, and document milestones for each committee goal for each of the four quarters of 2010.<\/p>\n
Pretty straightforward, right?<\/p>\n
Well, not to the \u201cleader\u201d of this committee. First, he talked about what the committee was currently working on. He didn\u2019t take a breath. The first 20 minutes of the meeting were comprised of this guy doing all the talking and none of the listening. And, quite frankly, neither I nor two of the three other people on the committee who were new, had any idea what the heck he was talking about!<\/p>\n
Then, when one of us tried to restore focus on the task at hand, all this leader did was rant and rave about the format that was imposed upon him and how it didn\u2019t jive with the work the committee had in progress! After a while, many of the committee members saw the futility of making suggestions and just shut down.<\/p>\n
When the facilitator came over, she asked to see what the committee had documented and was shocked to see that it was\u2026nothing! The leader of this committee passionately complained to her that the format of this exercise was irrelevant and useless. She was unsuccessful at convincing him to get with the program before she went to check on another committee.<\/p>\n
The rest of this breakout discussion was tense, but some of us on the committee were able to get the leader to \u201cplay the game\u201d and document a few things. We didn\u2019t finish, but we got a few things done before we ran out of time \u2013 two hours of time, to be exact. All of the other committees finished early enough to enjoy the fresh cookies that were being served. And they had quality results.<\/p>\n
After the session, the facilitator and the chamber president privately sought my feedback about how the committee worked and I was brutally honest, using one of my favorite axioms: \u201cIn all of the parks and cities, there are no statues of committees.\u201d Needless to say, I will not be volunteering for that committee!<\/p>\n
So what does this mean from a procurement perspective?<\/p>\n
Well, in procurement, you\u2019re usually not aligned at the top of the organization. Usually, procurement is somewhere in the middle.<\/p>\n
This means that you have certain objectives imposed upon you by top management. Some of them you\u2019ll agree with, some of them you won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Your job as a true leader is to motivate your team. If you:<\/p>\n
you will not motivate your team. Your results will suffer. You may even fail to attract talent that could help you succeed. You will be a manager, not a leader.<\/p>\n
Leaders do not complain about unchangeable circumstances. They accept, if not embrace, them. Great leaders succeed within constraints placed upon them.<\/p>\n
I always think back to a quote that was attributed to Christopher Reeves when he first suffered his terminal injuries (and before he went on to surprisingly live several more years). This probably isn\u2019t word-for-word \u2013 I can\u2019t find it online \u2013 but the point is what matters:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis appears to be very challenging, but let\u2019s see what can be done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you think this to yourself? Or do you complain like the so-called \u201cleader\u201d in this story?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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