“I am sure we shall all go back to our serious tasks with a clearer brain and more deeply grateful for life and this beautiful world in which we live.” John Burroughs, American Journey (p. 71) ...
“If you are going to talk business, you need to talk numbers. Avoiding this, it is like coming here to the U.S., as I did over two decades ago and not learning English.” - Scaling Supply Chains ...
“The best leaders are the ones who have the sense to surround themselves with outstanding people and have the self-restraint not to meddle in how they do their jobs.” - Your Leadership Legacy, p. 79 &...
For me, reading a book about entrepreneurship is an odd experience. I did start and run my own business, and now I am a Partner at Art of Procurement… but none of it was on purpose. I typically operat...
“Business leaders have only so many days in a year, and every action has a clock attached to it.” - Flow, p. 30 The central premise of Flow by Dr. Robert Handfield and Tom Linton is that ...
“When the CPO and procurement team participate in every critical stage of a product’s evolution – from concept development and the award of supplier contracts to the start of production and through th...
“They all believe they are sourcing strategically; therefore, management does not see the need to provide the proper people, technology, time, and training to effectively manage spend and look for cos...
“Bad best practice is a terrible thing, because it blocks real best practice from being put in place. And it’s a remarkably common phenomenon. Many times, companies truly believe they have done all th...
“Simply put, business happens. Things change, including the underlying deal covered by the contract.” - Contracting in the New Economy, p. 46 I’ve read most of the Vested books, so I came...
“The traditional procurement environment dies hard. My advice is to change everything. Job title, roles, nomenclature, even work area change helps. If you are dedicated to cross functional teams a tru...
“Technology is the easy part. It is always the people who apply the tools who make a difference.” - Jacob Gorm Larsen, A Practical Guide to E-Auctions for Procurement, p. 7 When Jacob Gor...
“In many cities of the country there’s a fear of the streets especially if there’s disorder and things are in disarray. In many organizations there is a fear of management. No small part of this is du...
“We are rarely totally engaged or present. We are digitally distracted. And, as I said earlier, on an ongoing basis we have tuned out what’s happening around us.” - Julienne B. Ryan, p. 22 ...
“The funny thing about truth is you cannot change it. When something is true, it is true.” - Dan Andrew, p. 20 First Trust: Your Guide from Rags to Riches for an Abundant Life and Career by Dani...
“No industry or country is immune from bad buying; it exists in every nation in the world, and in almost every organization.” - Peter Smith, p. xi Bad Buying: How organisations waste billions through ...
“Naturally, Industry 4.0 requires a new procurement. The factors driving the change are the hyper-competition, globalization, supply chain risks, resource scarcity and many more. But the most importan...
“Customers are the key to any business, the prime reason for a company to exist! In the current digital era, customers are no longer passive buyers of products at the end of the value chain, but activ...
“The advent of new technologies – most notably blockchain – has the potential to radically transform how transactions are recorded, stored and used throughout supply networks. The result: a transparen...
Leadership by Storytelling: The Best Way to Learn Good Leadership Skills, by Dr. Tom DePaoli, is the latest in a long line of books that are firmly based in reality and provide advice that is easy to ...
“Because however brilliant our category strategies or engagement roadmaps, relationships still do matter, and nowhere more so than in how we interact with our critical internal stakeholders.”