A thought exercise: What if a contract manager used the same techniques as a cult leader to deliver the contracted outcomes?
A successful cult leader does the following:
- Creation story: Writes a creation story that explains how the cult started, defines it’s ultimate aim and identifies obstacles in its path.
- Creed: Lists the values that each of the believers will need to embody to overcome the obstacles.
- Priesthood: Sets out the structure of the priesthood and believers who will work to achieve this goal.
- Ritual: Define the rituals that each of the priests and believers will perform.
- Icons and sacred texts: Draft the texts and the icons that will guide and rally the believers.
Translated for the contract manager, they should ask:
- Creation story: What is the contract attempting to accomplish? How will success be defined? What obstacles need to be overcome?
- Creed: What values or principles will the vendor and the business unit need to exhibit to overcome the obstacles e.g. cooperative approach, fairness, honesty, and transparency.
- Priesthood: Who is responsible for managing the contract on both the vendor and client side. Has a resource been assigned to all of the end-to-end activities.
- Ritual: How often will the parties need to get together to review performance under the contract? What will be discussed at these meetings? How will issues be escalated?
- Icons and sacred texts: How is the contract structured? What performance metrics will be measured and how? What will the reports look like?
No successful cult has ever left its believers wondering what they need to be doing right now. The goal is continually reinforced. The correct actions needed to achieve that goal are always at the forefront of the beleiver’s mind. This is accomplished through very simple rules: Meet with the other believers regularly, always keep your focus on the goal, and when you’re lost, mediate on the icons and sacred texts (performance reports and contract).
What an interesting concept! I never looked at it like that before. I would highlight or underscore the points about cults not leaving members wondering what to do. That’s true; they are vert structured whereas I think Purchasing can seem very unstructured, especially for new people coming into the business. Clear goals of what is expected and how to reach those goals would be very helpful for them.
Communicating a singleness of purpose is the key to leadership, sourcing or otherwise. I’ve seen poorly resourced procurement departments with inadequate tools achieving far more than they ought, simply because they were united behind a purpose. Of course, once the purpose is realised or removed, everything goes to hell … So there are other required elements to an effective sourcing department.
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