Hey Procurement Legends,

I’m keeping this week’s Newsletter short as an experiment. As always, thank you so much for blessing me with a few minutes of your time today.

We’ve got a new article coming out about Procurement Teams and their Team Structures. This was an emotive topic when I posted about it on LinkedIn Two weeks ago.

My Biggest takeaway - Standardisation doesn’t exist here

Make sure you upgrade to paid to get sight of this one.

I’ve been bringing new learnings I come across to you. Last week it was Skimpflation. This time it’s…err…Mental Masturbation.

“Mental masturbation is the act of following intellectual ideas that are borne out of excitement and/or novelty, but offer little value to you and your real-life goals”.

I’m incredibly conscious of this - and I wonder how many conversations Procurement Teams have that fit this description. A few - definitely. I was thinking about this in the context of talking but not aligning with the businesses we operate in.

I was reading a marketing article and they said:

“Most Marketers Don’t Believe in Their Work; They Just Don’t Want to Get Fired”.

And it got me thinking. Are we doing enough in Procurement to work on things we believe in. As we welcome Gen-Z workers into Procurement, we run the risk of struggling to hire unless we push agendas around Sustainability, ESG, Modern Slavery and a focus on People as opposed to Profit.

I’ve been there with Procurement Roles in the past. It leaves you deflated. We should all focus on finding a role that brings us fulfilment and not dread.

See you next week,

Daniel

PS. My kid gave me pink eye - I’ve not read much this week hence the lack of links to awesome content I’ve found. My eyes are almost better :D