What Does Expert Leadership in Procurement Look Like in the Digital Age?

“When the anomalies or unexpected come along—kids, customers, coconuts, then efficiency is no longer your friend.” – Margaret Heffernan, TEDSummit2019

Automation is wonderful.

The above is an absolute statement supported by the technological advances that are transforming the way we work and live in our daily lives. From the utilization of complex algorithms to advanced analytics, we are positioning ourselves not only to anticipate and predict the future but actually control the circumstances within a volatile and unpredictable world.

Anyone reading the above would be hard-pressed to argue with its assertion, yet arguing the point is the focus of this article.

Anomalies

Within the first couple of minutes of her Ted Talks presentation, Margaret Heffernan stated that while technology is impressive, its inability to respond to the unexpected is palpable. In other words, technology, no matter how advanced, lacks the agility to recognize real-time changes in the real world and therefore cannot adapt to the unpredictable events of everyday living.

Think about this last point: technology is neither agile nor adaptable—at least not to dynamic changes in circumstances.

Expert Agility and Adaptability

“Expertise is becoming harder and harder to achieve—the world is simply changing too fast!” – Margaret Heffernan, TEDSummit2019

In a past Procurement Foundry post, we referred to a study indicating that only a handful of companies on the Fortune 500 list in 1955 are still on the list today.

Why are we telling you this?

Because the lack of agility and the ability to adapt to changing market conditions were the primary reasons, these companies fell.

True expertise (and leadership) in any era is based on people having the agility to recognize and adapt to changing realities.?

To reiterate: true and lasting expertise is agile and adaptable, and “true and lasting expertise” is about people and not technology!

People and Technology Expertise

Today’s digital capability is impressive. However, and like self-driving cars, procurement leaders need to be behind the wheel of their organizations’ digital transformation initiatives. In other words, you can’t step into procurement technology and fall asleep at the wheel, which is the very thing that many CPOs might be doing, given the poor results of their digital transformation efforts.

Somehow the promise of new technology to free us humans from the mundane tasks to better focus on strategic imperatives has been lost in translation. The reason for the disconnect? Technology is not as agile or adaptable as these are human traits or skills.

Technology can streamline processes and provide us with access to the possibility of more extraordinary accomplishment, but it cannot do it on its own.

For example, can you argue the premise that technology creates opportunities to analyze and use data like never before? Of course not. But, can you explain why organizations are only analyzing 5% of their information today, with 55% being classified as “dark data?” Is that a technology problem or a people problem?

The above revelation brings us back to the Heffernan talk and why agility and adaptability have been and will always be the expertise humans must bring to the table in the digital age. Until we recognize this fundamental truth, technology will always disappoint.