December 12, 2011

Why governments must focus on leadership training for procurement managers

Procurement Perspectives | Stephen Bauld

During my three days spent talking and listening to different segments of the construction industry at “Construct Canada” this month I was energized. The leadership we have in Canada is truly amazing when it comes to expertise related to the construction industry. During my conversations with industry partners they identified several issues we should all be aware of for 2012, including working together with governments in talking a leadership role to improve relationships.

One of the concerns of deferred maintenance brings forward the need for government staff and purchasing professionals to play a greater leadership role in the overall process. This raises the further question of the extent to which leadership training should be part of budgeted costs for government staff. The question has become more important lately within the government context, because the public sector is facing a significant loss of experienced procurement professionals within the next five years. These departments will create a need for recruitment, training and certification succession planning and other critical aspects of managerial leadership. To address this rising problem in a satisfactory manner, it is doubtful that old managerial approaches, devoted primarily towards bureaucratic reporting and compliance, will suffice.

In construction, as well as government, management and leadership are not mutually exclusive. Management consists of a series of tasks, mostly related to the development of resources and monitoring their use. In my opinion, leadership requires a higher level of skill. Curiously, many people emerge as leaders who have little formal education or sophistication, and many people who never hold any managerial position demonstrate leadership on a daily basis, not by accomplishing great things, but commanding respect in the little things that they do.

Over the three-day marathon of the convention, my sense is that leadership is far more common than people realize. Leaders build winning teams in all industries by encouraging others within the organizations to become leaders themselves. Instead of managing with a view to conformity, they use their authority to provide an environment in which people can excel. One obstacle that prevents managers from doing so is the old myth that leaders are born, not made. In every organization proper leadership training is built around this kind of incremental, task-specific type of training. Managers need to identify what they can teach and pass that along. Leadership is developed by training people to communicate more effectively and to think more strategically

Purchasing managers in both the private and public sector share many areas of common concern. These include locating the purchasing function within the design of the overall organization; organizing the purchasing function; managing the portfolio of purchasing relationships that their employer has with its suppliers; the financial and control aspects of purchasing; the costing of supply; the inter-relationships between purchasing and marketing; evaluating the performance of suppliers, both in terms of fair measurement and in the assessment of comparative performance; and managing purchasing effectively in volatile markets, such as those for energy.

Looking into the longer term, the ideal purchasing manager should be working today on the changes that need to be made in the future to purchasing operations to allow the municipality to serve the needs of its larger population more effectively. Insofar as increasing demands are pushing the constraints on purchasing staff time beyond the tolerable level, the purchasing manager needs to solicit support across the municipal organization for the direction of sufficient resources to the procurement function.

Stephen Bauld, Canada’s leading expert on government procurement, is president and CEO of Purchasing Consultants International Inc. He is also the co-author of the Municipal Procurement Handbook, published by LexisNexis Canada. He can be reached at stephenbauld@bell.blackberry.net.

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