The co-founders of LavenirAI, Clive R Heal and Bill Michels, team up with Sam Achampong, the Regional Managing Director at CIPS, to bring you a dynamic discussion titled ‘Strategies for Developing Exceptional Procurement Teams.’

Our esteemed panelists will delve into practical strategies to foster talent, enhance efficiency, and nurture innovative mindsets within procurement teams. Learn from their vast experience as they share their insights, tips, and the blueprint for success in today’s competitive procurement landscape.

Get ready to unlock your team’s full potential and accelerate your procurement function’s journey towards excellence. Attendees can expect robust discussion, real-world examples, and actionable insights that can be applied immediately to their teams and organizations.

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Bill Michels: Welcome to our panel discussion strategies for developing exceptional teams. I have researched the life cycle of the Cpo. And all the surveys say the same thing. The life cycle of the Cpo. Is between 3.5 and 4.5 years.

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Bill Michels: Expectations on procurement have never been higher. We’ve experienced natural disasters, trade wars, political instability, and a major major pandemic and a war. let’s set new expectations for procurement and a renewed vision of what procurement has to be. Today. We’ve assembled a distinguished panel of experts which each of which will provide expertise that expertise on team on strategies for team development.

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Bill Michels: We’ll explore these strategies, and as we embark on our journey, one of the things that we really encourage is that the audience ask questions and feel free to ask questions at any time. We will take the questions as they come in, and I’d like to thank you and and commence with our discussion. I’m Bill Michaels. I’m the chief revenue officer for 11 year. AI. And you’ll moderate it, for today’s panel. I’ll have the other panelists introduce themselves. Starting with Sam.

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Sam Achampong: Hi, good evening to everyone. Great to be here. My name’s Sam, a champion. I’m the regional manager director for the Charleston issue of Procurement spiceips for the Middle East and North Africa. yeah, I’ve been in procurement for for a few years And now my role covers managing capability development strategies and helping organizations make the best of the procurement and supply chain teams around the region. which I’ve

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Sam Achampong: thank you. 5.

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Clive R Heal: Hey? Thanks, Sam, thanks, Bill. So I’m Clive Hill. I’m CEO of Levin here, hey? I initially. I was

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Clive R Heal: started work at racket racket, Ben Kaiser reckon, and Carmen racket now in Qc. Sales and marketing and procurement. I was in sales and marketing for 4 years, and then moved into procurement.

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Clive R Heal: then move to Pwc. As a consultant working for about 25 clients across Europe.

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Clive R Heal: I then worked at Glacier Smithline. It was Smithline Beach him at the time

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Clive R Heal: in procurement roles, then on to credential in the Uk Cpr. Potential. Then I move to Genetic and Roche, and then for the last for the last

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Clive R Heal: well, 1015 years my focus has been on procurement and innovation, and working with my own businesses for the last 5 years, focused on procurement and innovation. Thank you.

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Bill Michels: So I like to start off with 1 one question, which is, what are the key attributes or skills for that exceptional procurement team should should possess. And how can leaders develop those skills? anybody want to answer that one?

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Sam Achampong: So yeah, that in Bill, assuming, I guess, the best way to answer that is assuming where

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Sam Achampong: we’re saying, the technical skills are given. So you know the the technical skills that you know, the the ability to negotiate the analytical skills. Let let’s assume that there is a

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Sam Achampong: given the skills for performance professionals. you know. I I guess back in the day say that negotiation was essential. But I say it’s a given. So we’ll forget about the technical skills. I think the differentiator these days really are those non technical skills, the ability to influence your stakeholders internally and externally. up and down your stakeholder matrix an absolutely key skill.

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Sam Achampong: You have to be able to articulate your your, your stress, your point. You need to get your point across the need to be able to get those stakeholders to buy into it. Because if you can’t do that, then any kind of technical skills. You have a pretty much worthless right? So so I’ll say.

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Sam Achampong: you know, there’s non technical skills as far as stakeholder management skills, and influence skills are absolutely key. in 2,02324, that where we are procurement, that that’s what differentiates ourselves with other people you also got to be. I mean, now, you gotta be digital digitally savvy. You need to understand, the pick applicability of technology.

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Sam Achampong: how it interface is with your on the supply chain tasks. you know, technology has to enable you to understand how you that are translating your process requirements to the system requirements as people move

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Sam Achampong: on to sourcing platforms, the Rp platforms. because if you don’t understand your source of requirements, then then really, you’re not gonna be able to make use of technology to. It’s full capacity. If you can’t make use of technology, it’s full capacity. then, really, you’ll be, you’ll be plagging behind it what? What the efficiency?

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Sam Achampong: Sufficiently as you can do. But I think the final, the skill that you need to have is the ability to manage risk, and that’s an overriding skill that’s always been there for your best. I guess we just have to have more tools to to be able to do that effectively.

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Clive R Heal: Hey, thanks. I might certainly agree with everything, Sam said. I would be talking about collaboration, trust, courage, openness in the team.

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Clive R Heal: But to develop an an exceptional team. You need team players as well. It’s not about having a one break player on your team, or one sole person on your team who does everything. It’s about a a we mindset in terms of like we as a team. What are we gonna do together. How do we support each other? And really it comes down to, I think, does the team gel together? I mean, it’s it’s a team

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Clive R Heal: ideally is greater than the some of the individuals you know in the way that they collaborate and support each other and grow together. To

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Clive R Heal: that, for me is real, exceptional procurement. Success, when everybody is, you know, is there for themselves and for everybody else. And and it’s the team that the team ultimately that when that said, of course you need great, great, great players on your

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Clive R Heal: on your team as well.

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Bill Michels: and and from from my own experience I I’ve I’ve seen the fact that a a lot of CEO’s also consult will come to me and say that they’re disappointed in their team because their team speaks this procurement language of Rfp’s. But they don’t speak the language of business like finance and roi, and and you know, investment and you know, we return on investment, and and

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Bill Michels: that that’s important. And I think 2 other skills they need to have is that they really have to have emotional intelligence. And and they really have to have supplier relationship skills as well or influencing skills on on both sides.

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Bill Michels: So yeah, so what what strategies have you guys found that are most effective, and and finding first off the talent we want, and then developing that talent.

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Clive R Heal: All right, can I jump on this one, Sam? Sorry. I mean.

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Clive R Heal: I think one of the biggest things is diversity in your team. But you’ve got to have people with different experiences, different backgrounds, different types of people int for extrover. It comes from that diversity. And one of the things that I’ve talked about before is about T shaped people. People who’ve got some breadth across some different areas, and I’ve got, you know, a good depth in a particular part of procurement in terms of either the categories they run or the

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Clive R Heal: processes that they run as well.

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Clive R Heal: And so one of the things that you can look for there is recruiting people from other functions. If you can attract people into procurement from other functions in your same company that brings in knowledge about that business area. But it also gives credibility to procurement as well. If wow! If somebody from marketing is willing to move into procurement, I mean, that isn’t. That is a great success. Because, you know, you bring in that knowledge that network, and it gives credibility outside of

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Clive R Heal: outside of procurement. So I think my answer Bill, is, how do you grow diversity in your team? How do you get a diversity of thinking of people, a background, and so on.

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Clive R Heal: and and that really helps. Another thing I would say is, actually, you know, I may be a bit biased here, but having worked in consulting, if you’ve got some consulting experience, and you’ve worked in different industries that helps as well. So it’s it’s not about recruiting. People are exactly like you. It’s about recruiting people that really will build the

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Clive R Heal: the the dynamics of the whole team

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Sam Achampong: on the head. I think that that diversity piece is the key. and it it’s not just about it’s diverse backgrounds. It’s diversity in all. It shapes the size of gender background experiences. but ultimately, what you need to be aiming to get is this diversity of thoughts. You want different people around the table, you. And and if you’re a leader, you definitely don’t. Everyone who agrees with you, in fact, only one

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Sam Achampong: people who don’t agree with you, because, you know, you’re being challenged. it goes that saying that you want to have people that are smarter than you. But you can mold into the specific tasks of procure. I think, what what does attract people and and retains people is is a a an overarching willingness to, to, to show you interested in them in their journey, their career to investing them. It it it’s it’s invest in them to invest in their capabilities development.

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Sam Achampong: I think if if if individuals know that we’re okay to keep investing in them so that they can build their skills. And they don’t remain stagnant. Then I think that’s very attractive.

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Sam Achampong: the team as well. So yeah, continued professional development, it’s very important. but I guess that there is a bit of a caveat to that. I think. you know you can through training, you can throw capability development at people, but these also make sure that your own organization, and how you work is adapting and adaptive enough to reflect

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Sam Achampong: the new innovative way of thinking that you’ll teach your your team to adopt. Otherwise they may just think well right. We you learn all this stuff will now leave this archaic organization. We work in a specific way. So you, you do need to either row your organization or you need to make it agile enough so that those individuals

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Sam Achampong: can make the change. It needs to empower them so that you know, as they’re building their own skills. They they have the. They have the confidence to be able to affect change within your organization for the better

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Bill Michels: that that leads us into our next next question, which is, how do you foster a culture of continuous learning people that want to learn? You know I you I every now and then I right across these teams, and people say, Well, I don’t have time. I’m too busy doing what I’m doing. I don’t. You know. I don’t want to be part of it. And I’ve worked with some of the high tech companies, and and they tend to say they won’t force people to learn. But they want, they want you to. They want them to

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Bill Michels: take it on their own. So how do you foster that continuous improvement, culture, continuous learning, culture, and ensure that they’re really getting the getting their industry knowledge in their and their best practices.

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Sam Achampong: I I mean, I I would always within any organization. I would encourage, the all the encouragement of the Cpd as a. As a subject, continuous professional development of challenging people to to be learning something new on the side. specifically, from sips. We, we, we lead with the what we call the applied learning concept at all time. So we work with a number of organizations. when we’re working with the teams, we.

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Sam Achampong: we we take them through what we call the applied learning concept to. what if we, whatever we’re going to teach you in relation to the supply chain today, you should be able to implement it in what you in your office tomorrow.

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Sam Achampong: So nothing academic, no far flung case studies, nothing theoretical to that extent. But, you know, applied learning. Learning, which means that what we teach you is relevant today, and and you can actually take it into the into the office tomorrow. And also I think I think

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Sam Achampong: what once you get a team. into that mindset. What you’re doing is you’re breeding your own internal consultants. So you’re taking people through continuous learning. You. You given them the confidence

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Sam Achampong: to think that they can come back to the office, suggest things in actually take the responsibility for implementing whatever these are you crazy your own internal consult, and there are, say, Clive, at some point it will mean that, you know there’ll be less of a need for external, some extent that might not be a bad thing.

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Clive R Heal: so so, Bill, when I moved into procurement at record, I was only there for about 3 weeks, maybe 4,

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Clive R Heal: and the Svp of procurement came to me and said, We’re sending you away for 10 weeks.

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Clive R Heal: I thought, oh, what’s that? He said. What you’re gonna do 6 weeks of professional 6 weeks of foundation stage for sips and forwards the professional stage is a 10 week residential. You’re gone. Come back in 10 weeks. And, by the way, if you don’t pass your exams up all the coming back, which I think it was sort of tongue in cheap. But

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Clive R Heal: give me a bit of a give me a bit of a focus. I mean the opportunity, though, for me to spend 10 weeks, you know, at at a hotel with with procurement trainers talking about procurement. I

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Clive R Heal: fan was absolutely invaluable. I mean, sometimes we expect people to pick up procurement just by doing the job, and you’ll learn. And you know you learn what category management is. Supplier match, or whatever you learn about contracts, but without any formal training. And I’m a real strong believer in sips or Sig, for example, in terms of going through and doing formal training. I I don’t think you can beat it. I think you have to teach people the fundamentals. You can’t expect them just to pick it up over over over time. They have to go through some sort of

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Clive R Heal: or more training. The other thing I would say to your question, Bill, is.

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Clive R Heal: don’t always put the best people on the project or on the task in hand or the particular activity, because that is self fulfilling. If you always put the you know, the best girl or the best guy onto a onto a project that’s most suitable for them. They’re gonna do a great job, but then nobody else has the chance to.

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Clive R Heal: As a chance to learn. So you have to give other people a chance to try something different. Stretch them. They may not particularly like it, or you want to do it, but it’s an opportunity for them to learn and to grow. And I you know I don’t think you can get away from that as an opportunity, and you have to. You have to support them as well, and you know, makes help them along the way. And you know they might make some mistakes. And that’s okay.

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Clive R Heal: You know everybody makes mistakes, you know. I’m a I’m a a formula, one flat fan, right? I mean, Lewis Hamilton goes off the track sometimes right, sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidentally. He can’t help it, but he rejoins the track, and he’s still used to, when of course, he doesn’t anymore. But he still used to win. So you gotta you gotta accept that. Sometimes they’re gonna go off the track slightly, and you know you gotta you gotta help them and encourage them so things up. And I think the other thing I’d say, Bill, is.

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Clive R Heal: some people have like a self development mentality, right? They’re constantly learning. They’re they’re seeking new ideas. They’re seeking new opportunities. They’re seeking learning, and that is exactly the sort of person you want. If the person is just sat there doing their job and has no interest in developing the trains gone, and they’re going to get left behind in a year from now. They, you know they’ll be. They’ll be out of it. So you you want to look at, look for people who actually are self motivated.

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Clive R Heal: So it’s a sort of a balance between what’s the leadership role in developing somebody? But what’s the individual’s role in developing themselves

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Bill Michels: there? There? There were 2 assignments that I went into. And and we were really interesting. One of them was a big automotive company. It was an automotive. It was tier, one automotive supplier, and we went, and I was working with another consultant, and what he had set up is that these people would go into the plant like it was a supplier plant. It was their own plant, and they would do v a. Ve and come up with ideas. The plant managers like, I’m the best plant in this thing we’ve done here

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Bill Michels: everything we can possibly do, these people you’re bringing in for this class on, forced to do it because headquarters said so. But you’re not going to do anything, and these guys went around, and then, when it came time to give their their report to the general man, he came in

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Bill Michels: like this, and he’s waiting, and and what they what they had was 2 or or 2 or 3 million dollars worth of ideas. One idea was a guy from excellence. Hey? We make that part out of. We grind. Why are you making that out of virtual plastic? And and the guy just he went ballistic every time he heard one of these things. Well, you can pack, you know 10 more of these if you just reconfigured the packaging, and you’re afraid to go down. So he he went ballistic on that. That that was an amazing

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Bill Michels: experience, and it was applied learning on the job they left motivated to go out and and really work with suppliers, and and they felt good. The second client I had they. They

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Bill Michels: did a a class, but they at the students had 6 months to complete a project using all the tools in the class, and they couldn’t get credit for the the class unless they did it. And they did a paper they had to do a paper show, some savings, and they what they they got was They got statistics that said, for every dollar they invested in training that $40 back in the cost setting. So you know, apply. Learning is great. It’s motivational, all right.

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Bill Michels: Moving on to The next question is, what, how? How do you if you’re a leader, how do you mentor A and kind of coach these players to get the best out of them. And do you believe there’s a role for mentoring and coaching in in our profession?

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Clive R Heal: I I’ll pick that one up, Sam. I think mentorship is

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Clive R Heal: so it’s sometimes underrated in terms of the value that it has and it it mentorship is definitely a 2 way process, I can tell you. So I I mean, I was in the situation at Smithkine Beach, and we’re flexible myth time now, where you know every 3 years there’ll be a review in the review and a reorg, and then it’s gone, and another one comes along. 3 years later they do another one right, and I remember sitting there one time thinking, Oh, this is not good, right? Because we, you know, you know.

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Clive R Heal: people are connect. People are gonna go and I actually had a mentor at the time, and he said to me, he said, Well. if you lose your job, what would you do? Well, I said, well.

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Clive R Heal: I kept my Cv. Out and apply for some new jobs, he said deep. Well, do you think you’d get some of of yeah, of course I I could pick up a job. And so he said, Well, there you go. And and that actually was just a really simple conversation that gave me so much confidence, you know, going forwards. And in fact, I was actually put on the Reor team then, which is always always a good move. Right? So So I survive. I survive that one, and but

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Clive R Heal: that was a great opportunity for me to to get some confidence. And then in later years, I did a lot of mentorship for the Richter Foundation

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Clive R Heal: in the in the Us. And just interviewing and talking to people and then acting as a mentor for a year, was really amazing. I mean.

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Clive R Heal: as a mentor, the chance to

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Clive R Heal: to talk to, you know, younger people, people moving into procurement about what’s their expectations, helping guide them for for a year, or in some cases more, actually was really valuable for me.

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Clive R Heal: maybe more than the individual in terms of what I learned about expectations. And what what are people thinking now when they’re coming into procurement? Particularly younger people? So I I think it’s somewhat underrated. And and it, you know, it should almost be mandatory for everyone.

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Sam Achampong: I’d agree with that mandatory absolutely. I think I I think it goes down that road. If you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think when you start mentoring somebody, and you know they ask you certain questions that you probably don’t. Wouldn’t have thought anyone would ask you, because you feel

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Sam Achampong: everyone knows and and they can have challenge you. And then you realize the breadth of knowledge that you do have. that’s great it’s it’s you don’t know what you don’t know. But I’ll go back to, I said. Reverse mentorship is is so interesting. And I think, as we go into this. We’re going to this kind of change, I guess, in in the emphasis, all, all, all the hand over, from technology to human beings, almost that reverse mentorship becomes more, more important, because, of course, it is the younger generation

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Sam Achampong: who look at things very, very differently. so so there is that re reverse mentorship where they’ve got an open minded approach to how things should be done. they’ve got a better hand handle on how technology works. So you do learn those conversations? I mean, I was given an example of when we had a bring your child to

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Sam Achampong: work day some time ago, and one of my my staff on his team. asked me the question after our team meeting. you very simple question, said, I’ve understood everything you guys have said but I’ve only got one question. The question is, what is an invoice?

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Sam Achampong: So so I could have you know, being, you know.

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Sam Achampong: experience, you know, in business, started to lecture this young guy about what an invoice is. What happens is, you know, somebody does work with you, but you have a contract. Then you know the purchase order, and then they want the money. They will send you the invoice, not gonna pay them unless the invoice matches the. And when I start, when I was verbalizing this, I realized how ridiculous and invoices

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Sam Achampong: it’s just you know it, and and why we policing the minds of the young up and telling people what invoices, because absolutely, it’s absolutely not needed. He’s absolutely right.

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Bill Michels: You’re not gonna see them.

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Sam Achampong: You have a, you have a smart contract. And yeah, you you know, it’s it’s, you know, it’s evidence that somebody’s done the job. They got a contract with you finance to release the payment. There’s no need to be matching. Invoice to do this rubbish stuff so so actually that

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Sam Achampong: he he’s, you know, this person this 13 year old is thinking about perspective. Well, yeah, well, why don’t you? Why are you guys sending invoice to this? This is done. The jobs you’ll satisfaction. You verified that online or in the future on the block

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Sam Achampong: on the blockchain, you verify that release the payment. All these piece of paper going around. So so I think, reverse mental shopping ship is yeah, it. It’s fundamental. And I think the final thing about mentorship is that

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Sam Achampong: it validates the importance of human relationships. And I think when when you talk about having a senior mentor in your organization, that that that relationship could be the difference between, you know you staying in it or leaving an organization if you want to. or

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Sam Achampong: you know, not necessarily based on your immediate capabilities, because at certain levels. Everyone has the capability. The the difference could be that human relationship. And that’s always going to be what differentiates ourselves from from automation. Digital evolution of the how we do business. you can. You can never replicate the human relationships which exist. And a mentorship is a central part of that.

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Bill Michels: Yeah, I I think I’ve had mentors that have have created but actually my, my my foundation. And and you know what I think and how I I think. And I can remember going back to those mentors. So it’s a critical thing. What in your experience, what challenges can hinder the development of exceptional procurement teams. How how do you? How do you address over and overcome those things?

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Clive R Heal: I have a pet pee on this one right? So the people on this one is

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Clive R Heal: corporate bonus schemes. I have to tell you this. I’ve I’ve seen this twice in 2 different organizations. Now, right?

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Clive R Heal: You can spend all your time developing a great team.

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Clive R Heal: and then ultimately the the bonus pool is fixed. There’s limited, right? You’ve got X X dollars for your people.

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Clive R Heal: and is, and it it can can even be absurd, like you kind of a great high performing team. But you can only pay everybody 95% of the bonus, because, even though it says, you know, you can earn a bonus up to 120, or whatever, because the policy forces you to have some sort of distribution Gaussian distribution whatever across your your people. There isn’t physically enough money in the Pop that you’re given

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Clive R Heal: to actually pay people more. Everybody in your team more than 100. If you have a great team, and that, fundamentally for me, is is totally wrong. I mean, you’re you’re you’re asking leaders to develop high performing teams, and then you don’t give them the bonus pot to be able to pay them if they’re doing a a great job on that. So peas me off that you know it. It really needs to be it to be addressed. And the only way I think around that is, you know, the procurement leader has to go and fight for

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Clive R Heal: is, or her team to get a bigger share of the part, so that you can actually, you know, ultimately give the bonuses that that the people are due it it it it

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Clive R Heal: it it’s not right. It’s fundamentally not right.

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Sam Achampong: No, I I mean I I’ll I’ll agree, I think, that reward motivation thing is especially pointing in to kill them, because

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Sam Achampong: it’s already that function where you need to maintain a certain balance, you know you can’t be openly going out and getting engaged in things that may see to give you favor, especially with supplies you’re actively engaging with soon. You you already can’t take advantage of some of the that that other departments take advantage of, and and then you get stuck in the bonus part as well. But I I think, going back to what I’ve said before,

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Sam Achampong: areas can be If you if you’re really going to suffocating your procurement team with clients. I’ve seen people who sort of

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Sam Achampong: organizations that have procurement structures with your processes, your policies. But it’s so stringent. around. Okay, 3 supplies have the bid stamps all that good stuff. You know the mainly around government for any select certain supply you have to prove that it’s always price. And really things that got nothing to do with whatsoever. that that really frustrates

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Sam Achampong: Because if you want freshness, you have talent want to to go out there. They want to be innovative in the sourcing strategies. that they want to be looking at only one efforts around procurement, which is, we’re out here to say you good to services. The lowest total possibilities. Sh! How we do it is, it’s you know it’s up is is actively dependent. and if you put anything that constrains that, then you’re taking it, then you’re pushing innovation out the window. And the second thing is again investing in that talent.

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Sam Achampong: You don’t know what you don’t know. So you could be a fantastic procurement supply chain operator for for for a large organization, working you in the way that that organization works and could do that very, very successfully. If you’ve never had I’ll say core procurement skills training outside of the thinking of your organization. Then then that’s a red flag.

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Sam Achampong: because again, you don’t know, you don’t know. you know, if we rounded. If you’ in the supply chain. Professional has to be totally cognizant in supply relation management as to how you know what I mean all about as a minimum

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Sam Achampong: away from the organization. because if economic circumstances change such as a pandemic and your organization has to change strategies you’re unable to that. If you if you’re if you’re only a good procurement operative for your specific organization

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Sam Achampong: you, you need to be able to be agile enough to think right. Our our organization used to focus on costs. But now we’re focused on the ability to to obtain supply. how to do that.

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Sam Achampong: Actually, you’ve been working one specific way. for the last, you know, number of years. But the economic circumstances change. But you’re still a. So I think it’s absolutely fundamental that that the the concept of of I always call it licensing. Your

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Sam Achampong: taking the same concept of that to the finance professional or legal professionals have that you have to have a a certain call based knowledge to be acknowledged as a professional in that that area, so that you’re agile enough to change when your organization changes, or if you go to different organizations.

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Clive R Heal: hey, Bill, I’d like to go back to to a an earlier point as well that we would that we talked about in terms of nurturing the team. I think it’s really important that the leader provides air cover to accept that sometimes people might go off the track or

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Clive R Heal: might do something that is in a pro, my inappropriate one. Where that that is, you know, different. We say, you’re innovative, and I’ll give you a really powerful example from my own learning. I when I started in procurement, I was actually

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Clive R Heal: buying laboratory equipment lab equipment, scientific equipment for the R. And D and the Qc. Group. And my background is a chemist. Okay? So at least I knew you what I was buying, and and the guy in charge of procurement

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Clive R Heal: told me, like, you know, the the the the people in the business tell you what they want. But ultimately you decide where it comes from, who the supplier is. Right? So

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Clive R Heal: yeah.

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Clive R Heal: pretty soon after he told me that in came a requisition to buy a a balance, you know a laboratory balance right? 2 or $300 or something, right, you know, just to weigh out powders and things.

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Clive R Heal: And so the the requisition came in, and the and the person in the lab had said, You know.

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Clive R Heal: please buy it from this particular distributor. and I looked up the price, and then we had a contract with that distributor, and what discounts we got, and we had the second distributor, and we had a much better price from the second distributor.

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Clive R Heal: So I bought it, of course, from the second company, and that’s when the you know what hit the fan right in terms of like, who are you in procurement to to go and change my requisition and order from Company B, when I wanted to order it from my mating company A,

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Clive R Heal: and so pretty quickly this thing escalated. And so

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Clive R Heal: the my Svp. It was like an in levels above me at the time, because I was just moving into. I had to then go and have a conversation with the head of R. And D. Who was on the executive Committee because he was head of R&D right. They had to have a head to head in terms of you know what they Clive do here is he allowed to do this or not. Right?

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Clive R Heal: And I’m sorry my desk, knowing that the meetings going on thinking, well, this is gonna be pretty interesting. What happens here, and the Svp. Came back, said.

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Clive R Heal: Don’t worry, carry on. We won that one. Just keep doing what you’re doing so. But it was really important for me that at that time that the Svp. Was willing to go in and have a discussion

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Clive R Heal: with the ahead of R. And D. About procurement’s role. Surprisingly.

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Clive R Heal: the whole

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Clive R Heal: attitude of the people in R. And D changed. I thought they’d be totally against me after that, in terms of like, we’re never talking to this guy again, and it was completely the opposite. The people in R&D after would come to me and say, You know, I want to buy a microscope. I want to buy this piece of equipment. 5. Who should I get it from? Who’s going to give us the best deal for it? And I was actually totally shocked at that. The not only the the guy given me the air cover and protected me, and stood up for what he told me to do in the first place.

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Clive R Heal: but it actually worked in our favor, and the R. And D people then became much more engaged with procurement. Up to that point. They just sent in requisitions and expected us to get the order in.

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Bill Michels: I I had a couple of those 2 with leaders given given cover, and you know, makes makes a big difference, especially when you’re you first starting. And you’re naive, and you know you sound getting the best price, or in my case I was actually selling the company scrap, and I got the best price for the scrap. But unfortunately, one of the suppliers was running for a high political office, and they wanted me to change it.

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Bill Michels: So I’m like, Yeah, I’m not changing it. This is the best deal. And it came. Only it went all the way up to our headquarters, and people flew in to see me to make me change, and I didn’t change.

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Bill Michels: and I I got the cover that I needed to. what? What investments can leaders make to support high performing teams? What? What investments do they need to make

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Clive R Heal: some.

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Sam Achampong: Yeah, I I think I think the main investment, I think, as I mentioned as I alluded to before.

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Sam Achampong: If if people, then you’ll see, feel that you’re willing to invest in them, whether it’s went to them in the right direction of mentors, that, providing them with capability, development, opportunities to grow. Go out to the conferences go out to to network with other people, and and to some extent you know, and it’s only given that air cover that you mentioned before. I think that that’s more important to to members of staff than anything people like to have the opportunity to grow. And they. They like to have the feeling that you’re gonna invest.

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Sam Achampong: even if you you’re unable to increase the bonus pop thing, if they can see that you’re willing to invest in the development, then that’s a great motivated to stay. So I think you certainly invest in that that time and building the capability, confidence, and and of brexit and organization, and also investing in the time that which is through the mentorship and and and sharing an interest, and then, as individuals grow

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Sam Achampong: to be those the most important things. People don’t typically want to jump from one organization to another for for a quick bucket. But it’s a lot more than that. the people rather stay in the circumstances, right? And they’re able to to add value to the organization.

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Bill Michels: how can leaders recognize the reward? Exceptional performance? It goes back to you, Clive, when you bonus, and how? How? How can that be? Did I just build on Sam’s last point. Sorry to.

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Clive R Heal: I think training opportunities and technology are the 3 things for me. Right? We talked about training, giving people the opportunity to to participate in different

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Clive R Heal: or more training. But opportunities as well. And technology, you’ve got to give people the tools right. And particularly now, with all the you know the digital wave that’s upon us. Right? Don’t expect people to do the job without the tools, but give them the opportunities to to to perform and to deliver and to to create value, and to try new things as well. And so the more the more people have those opportunities I think it gives that them time to an opportunity to grow.

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Clive R Heal: So so I would say, just the last question, training, opportunity and technology got it. All right, Bill.

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Bill Michels: okay, reward and recognition for you as you guys have a view on that, because this is one of my passions.

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Bill Michels: Well, you go, then, Phil, I I it was really interesting because I was working in the food company and the and the margins really, really small. It actually happened to be a bakery, a big one, a billion dollar bakery, and they had set themselves a target of 15 million dollars. And they achieve 40 million

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Bill Michels: right? So big change, 40 million margins won’t weigh up. And and I called the CEO, and I said.

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Bill Michels: What are you gonna do for them?

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Bill Michels: And he said, What do you mean? I said, what are you gonna do for them? He says. Well, I don’t know. What do you want me to do with them? I said, well, listen. You know they spent the time on their own. They did their regular job. They did this project, they exceeded it by 4 or 5 times what you ever thought they could do. You need to do something.

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Bill Michels: And then about about a month later I got a call from the guy saying, Oh, we have this great thing, he, the the CEO, took us out our sales and our significant other, brought us to the best restaurant it was. It was in Toronto water. So the best restaurant we we got a gold alarm clock we could order anything we want. We saved in the hotel, and we have little in them all out

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Bill Michels: and and and I I call him, and he said I wouldn’t do it for everything. But you’re right sometimes you need to have exceptional recognition. So you know, I think I think you know, people have to be recognizing. It doesn’t have to be bonus or salary. It just has to be something that says, I appreciate what you’ve done, and you guys are having an an exceptional time may have their own newsletter and everything else, but I think that was really one of the lessons I learned was.

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Bill Michels: you know, the sometimes that the top management doesn’t think about what’s going on in the in, in the teams, and and how how you can. They never forgot it. They still haven’t forgotten it to this day.

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Sam Achampong: you know. I I think you hit the middle of the head. There, there’s a myriad of ways. It’s not always financial. I mean, it’s it’s what what is important to people. I mean. They they want to have the the closest car parking space, the office, whatever they they. There, there, there! There’s a number of ways, but but I guess you have to

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Sam Achampong: your staff to do that, and there’s

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Sam Achampong: for the taking them out for dinner, or whatever you don’t need to go as far as I remember. I mean. I think it’s last year amorous airlines had they had the biggest year in history.

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Sam Achampong: they gave every single member of staff from tapping through to to management between 6 months of 30 months salary as a bonus. Right so. But now not every organization is to be able to do that. But but again, I mean what what what they say is, that’s exceptional. Performance is the biggest every year in the history. They they they they they cannot just report that, and then, not do something

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Sam Achampong: exceptional for Staff. But by the same token, you know that there are more tangible things that do just

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Sam Achampong: that we got for Staff Day an extra day off, or or whatever it, the a well-being day, or or whatever things that that are more practical. But but I think it’s it’s important because the motivation for Staff to achieve that exceptional performance again is going to be blunted. if you don’t at least acknowledge, except for

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Clive R Heal: I suggest, get winning external awards gets

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Clive R Heal: record. Recognition internally is great for the procurement team. It gets recognition in other parts of your own business, and

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Clive R Heal: I think it really helps with attracting new talent as well, and I I don’t think we should understate the importance of

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Clive R Heal: the recruitment. Part of the process is a way to help build a high performing team. I mean, if you’re going in and you’ve already got people in place every time you recruit somebody in. That is a great opportunity to change the dynamics of the of the of the team. So how do you go about recruiting those people in another suggestion is, if you can get procurement mentioned in the annual report.

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Clive R Heal: I think that is really really powerful. I mean, I’ve had that a couple of times, and you know some guy from corporate calls me up and says I write the annual. So 15 chapters of the annual report and the CEO told me to write a bit about what you did. What did you do? And you write it? You know you spend half an hour with the Guy, and tell him a whole lot of stuff, and you get 3 lines in the annual report. They said, procurement delivered. Xyz. But that actually is really really powerful to, if you think about it, that you know the the the chief executive

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Clive R Heal: mentioned it, or somewhere in the report. This there, there’s a recognition of what you did. I mean, you know that that’s there for his history. It’s it’s it’s in the annual report forever.

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Bill Michels: I want to. I can encourage you. We’re coming to the end of the program. If anybody in the audience has a question why, I encourage you to put it in now, and we’ll be happy to answer it. so so I think. no. But can I just jump in on another point? I think it’s worth mentioning. I think that leaders should be held accountable

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Clive R Heal: for the development and the of their team, not just the performance of their team, but the development of their team. But I’m not talking about, you know. Make sure all your people have attended this class on health and safety, or something right, which could be a measure. I’m actually talking about? What can you show as a leader that you did to develop

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Clive R Heal: every one of your team and the team as a whole? Right, and it should be part of the leaders, goals, and and you know, recognition, remuneration in terms of what they actually doing, because ultimately we’re there to deliver value. But we’re there to create a team that can, you know, take over and be better than we are, you know, when we move to a different role and move on.

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Bill Michels: Yeah, I know. I agree with that. I think it’s a It’s one of the things where you want to put people on challenging projects. You want to give them opportunity to be in cross functional groups. You want to do a lot with them. I think I think as we move forward, and we start to see the changes in transactional, tactical purchasing. You know, people really need to change their skill sets. They need to be on different teams. They need to get more strategic because those tactical jobs won’t be there.

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I predict it won’t be there in 5 years. and so you know we’re seeing that transformation happens so quickly. So people really need to upscale. But also the leaders need to get to people upskilled

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Bill Michels: and put them in the right places, because if they don’t, then then we’re gonna they’re gonna they’re gonna lose the people. And the people are gonna be really out there and and and need need support. So okay,

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Bill Michels: let’s see. Given the procurement had a bad perception in the past, all right. with business alignment with alignment stakeholders. Collaboration, what can leaders do to promote their team and get their team up there

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Sam Achampong: interesting one is that it’s an internal struggle isn’t it? I I think really, we we mentioned before speaking the business language we really need to get. Have the mindset in embedding our our teams within functions where where it’s where it’s. But it’s relevant that I marketing is a great one where it

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Sam Achampong: serves us well to have someone sitting within market and passing them den out of it. But essentially, I look at the you know, the, the, the famous book, the the 5 love languages in the. If if anyone’s read it, if they haven’t, really, I encourage you to read it for many reasons of the procurement, but I think the way you look at it is, you can almost adopt what you call the 5 love languages of stakeholder management.

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Sam Achampong: because the way procurement works is

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Sam Achampong: our state. Each stakehold is very, very different, and they have different prices that there is no broad brush when we’re serving our stakeholders. And so you you go to your and maybe if finance team home, the system. Yeah, that they they’re looking for maybe set up expertise. But also they want you to be saving a lot of money. But your your marketing stakeholder. The first priority is

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Sam Achampong: speed to market, for example, that you know they want to go on the marketing campaign. They they want to have a supply fully qualified supply in front of them in a short amount of time, and you’re not going to get to add value to your marks and stakeholder. If you’re focused on saving money, they do want to save money, but maybe it’s the number 2 sort of priority. But if you don’t. So number one.

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Sam Achampong: then you’re not going to get to number 2. The the the values diminished. So it’s really understanding each stakeholder, realizing that it’s going to be that the priorities are going to be different for each stakeholder in your stakeholder matrix understanding that and and and having a a relationship that is appropriate to to their love language. Let’s say to be most effective. That’s the only way, really, that procurement adds value

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Sam Achampong: as well as speaking the language of the business that we mentioned before. you know no one wants to hear about Catherine management fly relation management that the stuff we do, but we’re in. Let’s say we’re in a close shop. Once we come out of the procurement of supply chain bubble, we want to be speaking the language of business.

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Sam Achampong: and we certainly don’t want to be talking about how much money be saved. because that’s that’s almost like a given. If you do want to talk about savings you want to talk about in the business language. If you work for a if you work for a telecom company, you will be talking about the value that put you on the sport which is equivalent to another 100,000 extra subscribers, or you work for an all company. You want to talk about value which is equivalent to the production of

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Sam Achampong: additional 100,000 barrels of what you want. You want to talk the business language and not make you know the the C suite executive eyes close over and wonder what they he talking about. So it’s all about speaking that business language and understanding what the priorities are of each function. See? Any way, we could be effective?

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Bill Michels: That that’s a perfect point. I always talk when I talk to people indirect savings. I always talk about the vanish vanishing savings. Right? So if I do, and save a million dollars for a maintenance manager and what’s he gonna do with it? He’s gonna do more maintenance, right? So so so the Cfo is coming down. They’re saying the 1 million dollars. Where is it? It’s already been used that marketing I would never see marketing ever want to say, Buddy, they want to. They want to extend the market and get more value for the money they spend. So you know, you, you make a perfect point.

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Bill Michels: Okay, the last thing we’re gonna do. I we haven’t had any questions. I I was hoping we would, but we don’t. is as we come to the end of our time. What suggests that you have for our webinars as we exit the the webinar.

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Clive R Heal: Them go 1 min.

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Sam Achampong: Sorry. Do you want me to go ahead, Clive? Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So suggestions to our audience, to to what what they could do, I think. you know. Always let’s improve yourself. look at how you can add values to business, not necessarily to procurement. It’s all about the business possible line speak the language of the business and and practice those those

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Sam Achampong: those non-technical skills, you know, Ei ei versus AI. You know what people are worried about technology taking over procurement? Well, you know, there’s AI which we can’t touch. Because, you know.

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Sam Achampong: technologies can could be more analytical and cost us. But something that can’t be duplicated by the digital world is AI. So we need to focus on both the intelligence. That’s the differentiation. That’s what we have values, individuals within organizations.

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Bill Michels: Good. Thank you. 5,

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Clive R Heal: the people opportunities.

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Bill Michels: Yeah. I say, mentoring coach. But As we end to end the program, this program has been sponsored by 11 near AI. I would encourage you to go look at our negotiation training program. go to a Lebanon ai.com and take a look at our a a we have a conversational AI bot that will work with you and teach you negotiation e learning program, and I’d encourage everybody to take a look.

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Bill Michels: Thank you all for your for your conversation. It’s been great.

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Clive R Heal: Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Bill. Look forward to next month.

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Sam Achampong: Awesome.