… since that would at least shift the focus from “Sell as much as possible” to “Save as much as possible” and replace psychopaths with short-term profit mindsets with penny-pinchers with long term corporate survival mindsets (which is is going to be critical in the future with declining birth rates in the first world — and, FYI, this is why so many old white males are pretending to be faithful Christians as they want to get rid of birth control and working women, assuming that will lead to a higher birth rates and more future consumers to rip off … but we digress).
And while this doesn’t necessarily mean that this hypothetical future generation of CPOs would do the right thing (and not do massive layoffs when sales drop [like the former Nintendo CEO who was probably the last great, human, Mega-Corp CEO on the planet], not blame the customer when a multi-million dollar implementation fails, and not completely ignore sustainability), it does mean that they will at least consider all decisions from a longer term cost viewpoint and make better decisions.
1. Former CPOs would know that the cost to replace talent is almost always greater than the cost to retain talent and would not only ensure top talent is paid market rates, but given good raises every year based on performance which would NEVER be less than a cost of living increase. Thus, if the workforce reduction is expected to be only temporary, they wouldn’t layoff anyone they’d need to replace ASAP at a higher price tag when the market bounced back. They’d only reduce their workforce by the amount they would expect to be semi-permanent (3 years or more). Thus, they’d treat their true, top tier workforce, as real, somewhat valuable, human beings. (And not cattle to be bought and sold on a whim or indentured servants, if they use the H1-B in the latter case.)
2. Former CPOs would understand the pain and hardship of NOT having their problems solved, being lied to on a daily basis by vendor reps, and paying a lot of money for very little of the promised ROI and despise those people with a passion. They would at least instill a culture of honesty in their sales and services organization as a result. They wouldn’t promise what they knew they couldn’t deliver, and would quickly fire any rep who knowingly made false claims.
Now, whatever you do, don’t confuse this with a customer value mindset! They know that the value you get out of something is relative to the effort you put in and that the customer is as much on the hook for the ROI as they are. And, frankly, they know that the best you get is what you pay for. While they wouldn’t tolerate outright dishonesty in the sales organization, they’d have no problem with the sales person selling you sh!tty service package C and then gladly pointing out when you complain about the lack of support in service package C that all the Ts and Cs were presented to you before you signed, clearly laid out in a 47 page addendum at the link provided, and that while “priority one issues will be fixed within two code cycles”, that’s from the date the issue is confirmed, which means you need to work with them in the chosen confirmation windows that are from 9:01 pm to 11:59 pm Mon, Tues, and Weds during normal operating hours of the Tier 3 issue support centre half way around the world. I.E. they’ll sell you crap service if that’s all you want to pay for, but they’d be totally open about it if you remembered to ask.
3. We’d actually start to see some big sustainability initiatives in corporate. Not because they gave a flying f6ck about it, as we pointed out in our recent article about how No One Cares about sustainability, but because they would look at 5+ year horizons again (for the first time in over three decades) and realize that there are some investments that begin to pay off in 5 years and pay off big after 5 to 7 years when certain raw material, energy, or freshwater cost keeps going up year after year after year. They’d see that the right sustainability initiative is actually a mid-to-long term corporate sustainability initiative and just do it, no regulation or incentive needed.
But alas, as we have implied and said before, when it comes to CPOs holding the top CEO spot in big corpo, THIS WON’T HAPPEN! And, like the bullsh!t sustainability push, we get very upset when we see these grand proclamations every year by Procurement “influencers” who either don’t get it or are just trying to get noticed, liked, and subscribed to.
It’s California Dreaming, and it’s very easy to explain why this will NOT happen.
Right now, roughly 15% of F1000 companies have CPOs, and the stats get worse as you go down to the G3000 and the mid-market. But 100% of companies need, and have, a CEO! That means we’re either going to lose 90% of companies in a great purge to allow this dream to become reality or it’s not going to become reality as at most 1 in 10 big corporates could have a former CPO as CEO.
Now, I like the dream, especially when you consider that the two most important roles in any organization are CRO and CPO (NOT CEO and CFO), and that the key to bottom line success in tough economies (which are about to become the norm … the golden age of pretend infinite growth is over … made clear by the fact that we are in an age of rapid decline in population growth rate in most first world economies) is the CPO, which means every G3000 should have a CPO, but that’s not the case. Thus, the dream is just a dream and, as long as we live in a capitalistic age focussed on short term profits, it’s not going to happen.
The best we can hope for is that, over the next decade, the percentage of organizations with CPOs doubles. We need more than that, but it would be a start!