It’s pretty clear with the state of the world right now that April Fool’s Day is cancelled as it appears we are all subject to one never-ending year-long prank no matter what country we live in.
So go bake a sourdough and at least you will be able to enjoy something today …
Living on a lighted screen
Approaches the unreal
For those who do not feel
Who live in a reality beyond the gilded meme
Against that unlikely role
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers to keep oneself intact
Living on a lighted screen, the influencer’s dream
Those who wish to be seen
Those who wish to be, they put aside the alienation
Obsessed with the fascination
The false relation, the underlying theme
They live in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can’t pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend
All the world’s indeed a stage
We are merely players
Performers and portrayers
So why must they lock themselves inside the gilded cage
Living on a lighted screen, the influencer’s dream
Those who wish to be seen
Those who wish to be, they put aside the alienation
Obsessed with the fascination
The false relation, the underlying theme
Living on a lighted screen, the influencer’s dream
Those who wish to be seen
Those who wish to be, they put aside the alienation
Obsessed with the fascination
The false relation, the underlying theme
The false relation
The underlying theme
This post is inspired by THE REVELATOR‘s inquiry where he asked Do You Really Want a Successful ProcureTech Initiative?
For the vast majority of you, the answer is a clear and resounding “YES” (with the possible exception of those of you who have been treated badly by your employer and want to use your last official act to stick them with an application that will make them as miserable as you are, but as far as I can tell, you are a very small minority — you didn’t get into Procurement expecting it to be easy, or to be a way to make friends).
However, you are only one cog in the ecosystem. Let’s look at the other cogs:
Vendor: as long as you keep renewing the SaaS subscription, the C-Suite at the vendor doesn’t care if they sold you a Ferrari (at a Ferrari price tag) but delivered a 2004 Mazda RX-8 …
Analyst Firm: as long as the big research subscriptions keep rolling in from the big vendors (who always feature at the top / upper right / frontal wave of their maps), the analyst firm doesn’t care if you succeed or not, and will not only happily push the hype the vendors want pushed, but happily blame you for not doing your research and not selecting the appropriate technology when you and your counterparts take their advice en-masse and then contribute to the all-time high project failure rates of 88% (two and a half decades of project failure)
Implementor: not really, because if you don’t swap out the solution at renewal time, where is their future revenue going to come from???
Big X who pushed the platform: Hell No! … they need to sell you projects to find bolt ons, do custom additions, and tweak the process for years as they need to keep their bench empty! (And some of these shops have over 100K junior consultants they have to keep busy. Moreover, they don’t make money training them on AI, they make money deploying them as your external support force. (Remember, many of these shops are effectively the new Manpower, except they have to pay their consultants on the bench, whereas job placement agencies just had to place people to keep their government grants or get their placement fee!)
And since YOU don’t take the time to do your research and figure this out (including the fact that the Big X pushed the worst fit solution from their stable on you to keep their Gold/Platinum/Sycophant status with the solution provider), that’s why YOU keep failing. Even if the salesperson honestly wanted to sell you a win (and many don’t, and the doctor can say that confidently with over 25 years in Enterprise Software and he’s sure THE REVELATOR has some stories to tell here), that’s far from a guarantee that a win will happen.
If you truly want success, YOU have to define your processes, define your problem, find the right vendor, make the vendor contractually responsible for implementation success (whether they do it or use a third party) with delayed payment (where you don’t pay for a module until it is working and passes predefined tests) and early termination clauses, identify the gaps, identify the right niche consultancy (who doesn’t have a stadium of junior consultants) to help you identify add ons and processes to fill them, and define early out clauses in case of non-delivery! You have to do all the work the vendors, analysts, and consultants claim they do for you … because they don’t (or at least don’t do it in your best interest). And while the good ones (which may take you a while to find) will help you, YOU still have to take the lead!
And the doctor knows you don’t always have the time to do it all, which is why he keeps pushing Project Assurance where you hire a niche specialist to help you, one who is not a part of the big COGs that need never-ending projects from you to stay solvent, and only cares about helping you get everything in order for success. (After all, there are so few of these experts it is literally a case of too many companies, too little time. These people or small niche consultancies don’t have to worry about running out of work, and by the time they made it through all the current companies they could handle, it would be time for their initial clients to upgrade to next generation systems anyway — and the only way they’d be available for a future project is to ensure client success with every client they take on.)
As we indicated, in our last two rants, you can no longer afford to be led by the Clueless vendors. It’s time you take your Procurement destiny into your own hands. It’s time for the Revenge of the Nerds!
We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true Angry Bloggers
We’ll rant and we’ll roar when on-line and off
Until we strikes bottom inside the Reddit threads
When straight through the forums to /AskReddit we’ll go
I’m a son of a ‘counter, I’m a geek and a blogger
I can’t dance, I can’t sing, I just sling the web code
I can handle the WordPress and I can write with finesse
Whenever I gets in a chronic’ling mood
We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true Angry Bloggers
We’ll rant and we’ll roar when on-line and off
Until we strikes bottom inside the Reddit threads
When straight through the forums to /AskReddit we’ll go
Farewell and adieu to ye young influencers
You spin a tall tale, which should not be believed
I’m bound to disagree with the bullsh!t that you post
I can’t stay quiet or it’s yokey I’ll be
We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true Angry Bloggers
We’ll rant and we’ll roar when on-line and off
Until we strikes bottom inside the Reddit threads
When straight through the forums to /AskReddit we’ll go
We’ll rant and we’ll roar like true Angry Bloggers
We’ll rant and we’ll roar when on-line and off
Until we strikes bottom inside the Reddit threads
When straight through the forums to /AskReddit we’ll go
Confused? Check out the collected series.
And it’s not just because we don’t have enough, as the doctor pointed out in his post on how It Would Be Great If Future CEOs Were Past CPOs (which isn’t happening because we’d need 90% of companies to fail to have enough CPOs for the CEO role), it’s because without them, we are getting lost in a see of sound-bite driven, fact-free marketing, hype, and FOMO relentlessly pushed upon us by vendors, analysts, consultants, and now influencers with next to no one left to cut through the noise and no one to lead you through the land of confusion.
As THE REVELATOR commented on the doctor‘s Top 10 Ways to be a Procurement Influencer on LinkedIn!, in a perfect world,
A “true influencer” would be driven by a single purpose – to get it right versus being right.
A “true influencer” would never look to gain consensus but to stimulate meaningful dialogue, leading to greater individual and collective understanding.
A “true influencer” would build a community of active engagement beyond token gestures of likes and thumbs up.
A “true influencer” would actively look to build a diverse community that challenges them and other members to think differently and see a subject or issue through a wider lens.
A “true influencer” would be insatiably curious and always open to new ways of thinking and doing.
A “true influencer” would be someone who has been around long enough to have witnessed first-hand the events that create the needed context to understand how we are where we are today.
Finally, a “true” influencer would stimulate thoughts and ideas, leading to practical and measurable outcomes.
Of course, today’s influencers don’t measure up to any of that, and as they exist only to build their fame and fortune, they never will.
However, true Procurement Leaders, who believe in education (and not hype-based sound-bite marketing), measure up to all of this. And that’s why we need more Procurement Leaders!
True Leaders (and a return of True Educators) are what we need to take Procurement forward. Will The Real Slim Shady please stand up?