MRO Today - You can change your stripes

You can change your stripes

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The old saying, “tigers can’t change their stripes,” is correct. However, purchasers and supply managers aren’t tigers. You can, and must, have the ability to change.

Each of us as supply management or purchasing professionals has two significant dilemmas.

First, how to satisfy the need for increased professionalism to positively serve our organizations and customers. Second and perhaps more challenging, how to advance professionally on limited resources.

The fact that many organizations give purchasers and supply managers little opportunity to increase their strategic organizational importance and contribution compounds these dilemmas.

Can individuals build their personal responsibility and professionalism? Yes!

Are there resources out there to help individuals build their personal responsibility and professionalism to help organizations change their policies? Again, yes!

Equally important, much of this can be accomplished through existing company programs. This coaching session provides a five-step process for initiating the steps to change your professional stripes.

Step 1: Get smart and keep getting smarter — Educational programs are not hard to find. Short-term reading or study programs on a given topic are readily available at relatively low cost. NAPM’s “Video and Self-Study” programs are great examples.

On a longer-term basis, we all have access to college courses and even degree programs. More and more, we see academic and professional programs on the Web. As professionals, we have an ethical responsibility to be the best for our customers. What we need are objectives for our individual and supply management programs. Professional development puts value in your work.

Step 2: Establish metrics and objectives — A favorite general from my early military days used to say, “An outfit does well only those things the boss checks.” It still holds true. We must have standards and measure ourselves against them.

Establish standards for pro fessional education each year, such as 40 to 80 hours of accepted work toward community college degrees, undergraduate degrees, graduate work and/or NAPM or APICS certification. When new people enter your department, they must meet the acceptable standard.

Inventory the status of your people and recognize and reward progress. Being able to benchmark our status provides the basis for comparing our value to others.

Step 3: Build and expand your professional networks — We all have professional networks to some degree. We must expand our networks beyond our departments and company and include our customer and supply base. That way, we can benchmark with them.

More importantly, our networks should involve active contacts with other pros in companies bigger and better than ours. Benchmarking with such people is a challenge, but it helps us identify areas to address and correct.

Step 4: Establish strategic teams — Teams that make strategic decisions concerning new supply sources, outsourcing, consignment, consortium or co-operative buying, procurement cards or Internet usage help you gain recognition. They also reduce the tactical work consuming most of your time. Strategic teams help you get the requisite buy-in and support from others in the organization to make major changes.

Step 5: Become a strategic leader — Leadership is about making things happen and creating change. It gets other people actively involved in building and supporting the process.

Anyone can be a change leader in professional development activities. We all can inspire others to read and study, attend professional programs, contribute to professional activities, set standards and apply metrics, or reach out to others in networking and strategic teams.

If we want increased respect and recognition, we have to earn it. To earn it, we must remake ourselves.

Start changing your stripes this week by applying these five steps.

Robert Kemp is a consultant, speaker and the former president of the National Association of Purchasing Management. He can be reached at .

This article appeared in the June/July 2000 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright, 2000.