No new year’s resolutions for me again this year. How can you improve the unimprovable? I’m joking of course, but there is a more serious point here. As we all know, those seemingly earnest commitments we make in the first week of January do tend to unravel by… well, by the third week of January. (more…)
I don’t know about you, but whenever a new and exciting opportunity comes my way, I am awash with anxiety. I feel excited and nervous – then the fear factor strikes.
In 2011, I made the leap from the comfort of an industry I had spent my whole procurement career in to new and unchartered (by me) grounds. (more…)
As this is my last column, I’ve decided to offer advice on a couple of things I believe will be important in the future.
First – seize the day. This is our showcase opportunity. With the global economy in turmoil, most companies are focusing onoptimising spend and getting more for every dollar, pound and euro. This is where we can demonstrate our subject matter expertise, our knowledge of the market and our change management skills. (more…)
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that now the obituaries have all been printed following the death of Steve Jobs, co-founder of
tech giant Apple, it will mean the end of all the hero-worshipping articles. A new biography also explores his genius.
Buyers, though, will not be surprised to learn that beneath all the Jobs-worship was a real business story that has probably received too little attention. (more…)
It appears that rogue is the new shorthand for scapegoat. We’ve seen a couple of recent events where a large institution has suffered a blow, sometimes fatally, due to what is attributed to the actions of a rogue individual.
In both cases, the rogue activity seemed to have been going on over several years, so not a one-off moment of madness. (more…)
Some fads can do quite a lot of harm before they fade away again into the background. Talk of “engaging” colleagues might sound like another of those crazy little ideas that gets picked up by the MD at a fancy conference and then inflicted on everybody back at HQ. But ignore if you can the clunky nature of the word “engagement”. In the context of the workplace, it refers to something that matters a great deal.
What is engagement? You know it when you see it. You find it in offices where there is a positive buzz of energy, where there are quite a lot of smiles and laughter, where people come in on time. (more…)
The recent decision by the British government to award the £1.4 billion Thameslink contract to Siemens rather than to Bombardier, its UK-based rival, has far-reaching consequences for the 1,400 Derby-based workers facing redundancy.
Two aspects of the news coverage of the event stood out for me. First, there was the apparent lack of emphasis placed by the government on the resulting job losses at a time when most large corporates are expanding their approach to responsible procurement beyond the staples of environmental impact and worker welfare. The government, however, chose not to reflect that trend in its decision-making process at all. (more…)
Hooray – my daughter’s sun hat cost just £5 from the supermarket. Boo – what are the chances of people in this country being employed to churn out hats for big retailers? Hooray – manufactured goods keep getting cheaper and offering more value for money. Boo – not many are made in Britain.
Purchasers find themselves in the middle of what is perhaps the biggest trend in global business today: the extraordinary growth in the supply of low-cost goods. But this is a rather paradoxical phenomenon. (more…)
I’ve just returned from a trip to the US, where one of the hot topics floating around was the End of the World or more specifically, the Rapture.
One of the things I found amusing, but admired as an example of spotting a market need, was the After Rapture pet care company. This was set up to care for your pets in the event of your heavenly ascent and charged a single non-refundable premium for 10 years’ cover. (more…)
The killing of Osama bin Laden, almost 10 years after 9/11, demonstrates that deeply desired outcomes require determination and patience.
We live in a curious age, in which the dreams of science fiction writers are becoming true – video calls on your shiny new iPhone, anyone? Truth and fiction are hard to disentangle, as rumours and “news” spread around the world at the speed of light. (more…)
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