When Procurement Smells Fishy

Grrr … argh! I could feel a slight annoyance welling up. Maybe it was because I needed another coffee to really get in my groove for the day. Or perhaps it was due to the lingering peevishness I still carried from the earlier conversation with my mistress, when she...

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Be a Great Dancer with Your Product Stakeholders

Stakeholder management is at the heart of product managers’ jobs. Yet many product managers struggle with it tirelessly. In fact, “difficult stakeholders” is one of the biggest frustrations for most product managers. Sometimes, it feels like you just can’t strike the...

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The Supply Chain Soul at the Brink of Death

Poor Boeing. Last year was an annus horribilis for the aircraft manufacturer, with the company making headlines for all the wrong reasons. I sympathize with the employees. I know from personal experience how awful it can be when a business is facing tough times like...

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The Chefs in Your Organizational Kitchen

A lot of effort, dollars and leadership attention expended on improving organizational capability is often targeted at technology and process enhancements. That’s not a bad thing per se. Technology can provide powerful advancements in how we do the work. For example,...

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Procurement Processes Should be Enablers, Not Inhibitors

I’ve frequently expounded the importance of the softer elements of organizational success—the intangible factors like culture, leadership, attitudes, and behaviours which typically differentiate top-notch Procurement functions from the mediocre. But this in no way...

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