Transcript 0:00 Today, I want to cover one of the most expensive assumptions in procurement technology. It's not a licensing model. It's not an integration you underestimated. It doesn't even include a software vendor. 0:12 It's the assumption that everyone else can see what you see. You've done the work. You've read the case studies, sat through the demos, talked to the references, and built the business case. 0:23 And you know with total clarity that the supplier portal cuts processing time, that guided buying kills maverick spend. You can see the future state so clearly it's almost physically painful. 0:36 And then you bring it into the room, and the room says, "Ah, let's revisit it next quarter." Here's the part that nobody tells you. When that happens, your instinct is to decide that your colleagues are the problem. 0:49 They don't get it. They're resistant to change. They're comfortable with what's broken. I have news. They're not the problem. You are. 0:58 And today, I'm gonna make the case for why, because until you get this, your best procure tech ideas are gonna keep dying in committee. Let's get to it. 1:06 [on-hold music] Welcome to ProcureTech Unpacked. 1:20 This is the show for procurement professionals who want to cut through marketing and understand the technology shaping our function. I'm Joel Conne De Merce. Let me set this up because I've lived it myself. 1:32 I was talking to myself there in the intro. Early in my career, I was convinced I had all the answers. I'd configured the systems, I'd read everything, I'd built the business cases I was sure were slam dunks. 1:43 And early on, most of my best ideas died on the grapevine. It was so frustrating. The supplier portal that would have saved forty percent on processing time? Let's revisit it next quarter. 1:55 The approval workflows that everybody said they wanted? Uh, we need to think about this a little more. The contract repository that would have prevented the next compliance fire drill? That's interesting. 2:05 We'll circle back. For years, I blamed everybody else, and then I learnt the thing that reframed all of it. The problem was never my ideas. The problem was that I assumed everybody saw the world through my eyes. 2:18 Because if you listen to this podcast on your own time, you're probably a leader, an early adopter. You are not normal. [chuckles] As in, you're not near the, the average in the bell curve. 2:30 You sit in the top slice of your organization for comfort with change, and that is exactly what makes you bad at leading it. Let me give you the numbers because this is measurable. 2:42 Gartner has been tracking employees' willingness to support organizational change for years. In twenty sixteen, seventy-four percent of employees were willing to get behind a change. 2:52 By twenty twenty-two, that number had collapsed to thirty-eight percent. And in that same window, the number of major changes planned that the average employee had to absorb went from two to ten a year. 3:06 Let's sit with that. The appetite for change got roughly cut in half while the volume of change more than quadrupled. That's not resistance because people are lazy. 3:16 That's resistance because people are exhausted and can't keep up. Now, layer procurement technology on top of that. Your source-to-pay rollout is not landing on a blank slate. 3:27 It's landing on people who have already survived a restructuring, a new ERP, and two reorgs this year and is now being asked to change how they work again. To you, it's the exciting thing that you're championing. 3:39 To them, it's change number eleven. And here's what that does to your project. Without genuine buy-in, people don't tell you no. No would be easy. You can work with a no. Instead, they half agree. 3:52 They nod in the meeting, and they quietly catri- capitulate, and then they wait. They wait for the first messy moment in implementation because there's always a messy moment. 4:02 And the second it arrives, they get to say the four words that kill transformations. Well, that's five words really. "I knew this wouldn't work." This is why the failure numbers look the way they do. 4:14 In McKinsey's last survey on digital transformation in two thousand eighteen, they found that even in the digitally savvy industries like high tech, media, telecom, the success rate for digital transformation initiatives tops out at twenty-six percent. 4:29 In traditional sectors like oil and gas, pharma, it ran between four and eleven percent. 4:35 That was in two thousand eighteen, but the figures haven't changed much in the last eight years from my reading of it or any other surveys I've seen on the topic. Most transformations don't fail on technology. 4:46 They fail on the humans. And the human they most often fail on is the one who was so certain they were right that they forgot to bring everybody else with them. 4:55 So if this describes you, what do you actually do with this? Four things. Number one, accept that being right isn't enough. 5:03 I know how that sounds on a show about understanding technology where I'm giving you all the answers all the time, at least my answers. But logic is not what moves people. Being correct is your starting line. 5:14 It is not your finish line. If you can't get someone to feel right about your idea, the quality of the idea is irrelevant. Two, learn to sell. 5:24 As a procurement leader, you need to be a good seller, as good as anybody in your sales org. If you want a place to start, I would look at Robert Cialdini's Principles of Influence. 5:36 The one that comes to mind first is consistency. People want to act in line with decisions they've already made in the past. So don't frame your source to pay project as a break from the past. 5:47 Frame it as the next logical step in something your stakeholders have already committed to and are working on. You're not asking them to change their mind or to change directions. 5:58 You're helping them keep a promise they've already made to themselves and the organization. Three, shrink the ask. Stop pitching a full transformation and big scope projects. 6:09 Find the smallest pilot that produces a visible win and lets you take a step in the direction you wanna go and let that win do the arguing for you. 6:17 You want a dynamic where people get a taste and start asking for more themselves instead of you pushing a five-year roadmap uphill alone. 6:26 Four, and this is the one that people avoid, have the difficult conversations early. Meaningful procurement transformation is politics. 6:35 There are decisions that won't please everyone, there are trade-offs, and there are feelings tangled up in all of it. When you hit resistance, your job is not to defend the slide deck. 6:45 Your job is to understand the resistance. Sit down with the person and say, "Honestly, I need your help with this, and I wanna understand what you're seeing that I'm not." 6:56 Then you listen to understand it, not to rebut it. Because most people care far more about feeling heard than being right, regardless of what they tell you. 7:06 And once someone feels genuinely understood and heard, the odds they move in your direction go way up. So here's where I'll leave you. That perfect future state that you can see so clearly in your head, it's painful. 7:19 On its own, it doesn't exist. It's a fantasy until other people can see it too. And the real shortcut in procurement transformation isn't a better platform or a tighter business case. 7:30 It's your ability to meet people where they actually are, not where you wish they were. And yes, this still applies in the age of AI and AI agents. The best procurement pros I know are not the smartest ones in the room. 7:43 They're the ones who worked out that being right is just the price of admission. Getting other people to feel right about your idea, that's the actual job. 7:52 So the next time you catch yourself thinking, "Why can't they just see it?" Remember, they can't see it because they're not you. They don't have your history, your background, and all the work that you've put in. 8:03 And that right there is the problem you're actually being paid to solve. If this one landed, the full written version was published on the Pure Procurement Newsletter a while back. 8:14 I discussed all of Cialdini's influence principles in this context as well. The link is in the show notes. I'll see you next time. That's a wrap on this episode of ProcureTech Unpacked. 8:26 If this one resonated, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Pure Procurement Newsletter for weekly insights between episodes. 8:34 If something we covered sparked a question or an idea, we'd love to hear from you. All the links for the reports we discussed are in the show notes. We'll see you next time. [outro jingle] Resonate.
