This week I was in Charlotte, N.C., attending ProcureCon Indirect, a conference for executives who manage procurement of indirect spend, such as travel and meetings services. It was a great opportunity to meet and network with these folks (About 100 procurement executives came from over 44 companies!) and learn what kinds of challenges they face in reaping system-wide efficiencies and savings from procurement.I sat on a panel, "Driving Change from the Bottom Up Towards Strategic Indirect Sourcing," along with Brett Mauser, Director Sourcing Strategy & Best Practices for Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., and Jason Kwan, CPO, VP Global Strategic Sourcing, Manpower, Inc. Judging from the
questions the audience posed to the three of us, I'm certain attendees picked up some great best practices for change management -- what works, what doesn't and the landmines to avoid along the way.
At ProcureCon, I did a lot of thinking about my days at Hewlett-Packard, where as a Global Category Manager for Corporate Card, Hotels and Meetings, I worked with HP’s management across the world negotiating travel contracts and creating and implementing worldwide purchasing and supplier strategies. One of the significant best practices I could share was to be aware of the myth of the "M" word, that is, "mandate." A lot of procurement folks get a false sense of security that once they get an executive mandate that directs employees to comply with a new strategic initiative, such as using preferred suppliers only or following a designated process, then everything has fallen into place. All is and will be golden.
WRONG! In my experience, even with a mandate, people still operate like there is none. Even if you have CEO-, CPO- or CFO-level support for your project or initiative, it doesn’t guarantee that your offices overseas will comply -- and that's due to a lot of reasons. It might be due to laws or regulations in place in a particular country or region. Or, it could come down to a simple case of who's got more authority; a lot of times a country's general manager or highest level executive has more influence over employees there than a C-level
executive back in the U.S. -- home to headquarters. Bottom line is, you can’t assume everyone will fall in line and comply without any resistance or change management plan in place.
In Germany, for example, nothing can move forward without approval of employee representative bodies called Works Councils, present in nearly all companies larger than 250 employees. So, even if you're armed with the "M" word from headquarters, you're still required to get local-level sponsorship and support. Bottom line: there’s no magic and immediate panacea for change management -- with or without the "M" word supporting you. You still have to do targeted communications regularly, as well as engage and enlist support from various countries and regions around the world.
Going beyond the issue of a mandate, remember that every company, based on their own corporate culture, has varying degrees of acceptance when it comes to change management. The most successful makers of change pro-actively survey the landscape for points of pain, potential pushback areas, managers and others who may offer resistance. Successful change-makers seek critical feedback and information from stakeholders and internal customers, and then they carefully craft project plans, timelines, milestones and deliverables -- along with appropriate communication -- to ensure that all stakeholders on whatever level of authority are aware of both the benefits and progress of the project or change management process.
At the conference, someone asked if it was better to carry
a stick or carrot to drive change. Actually, the answer is both! At HP, I always positioned senior management as the stick bearers, while my team and I positioned ourselves as carrot bearers -- actually it was more donuts, bagels and Starbucks coffee (When meeting with stakeholders, food goes a long way towards establishing a collaborative environment and an atmosphere of trust.).
If more procurement professionals accepted the reality that they also have to be sales people in order to get optimum adoption and maximize change management, the process itself would be less laborious and definitely more successful.
To read about some other procurement best practices, click on this whitepaper link that covers integrating corporate travel, procurement and meetings management strategies.
nt me and others in the industry a note to say she's decided to go solo and open her own consulting practice. Debi is someone that I have tremendous respect for and admiration. At PwC, Debi became a sought-after industry expert on both SMM and virtual meetings, and she emphasized the difference between SMM and meeting planning management (SMM takes an enterprise-wide approach to managing meetings). Many of you know her as an industry thought leader, and she was recently recognized by
eetings in the last six months -- as I've been seeing a lot of anecdotal evidence of more activity at companies I talk to. Our
Out of a discouraging new story on Purchasing.com, comes a bit of good silver-lining-type news for 2010 -- in terms of business and meetings travel.
If you're a meetings manager at a drug company or medical device manufacturer, it would be a smart move to get up to speed on just how the so-called Sunshine Act, a bill sponsored by Senators Charles Grassley (Republican-Iowa) and Herbert Kohl (Democrat-Wisconsin), is going to affect your strategic meetings management program...and what you should do to prepare if it passes and becomes the law.
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Wake up Mr. Executive! It’s time to realize that these hard-working professionals and their management programs are significant contributors to the bottom line at their firms. (The average return for every $1 spent on business travel is $15, another
I was at the front table for an excellent panel discussion on "Strategic Meetings," which featured industry veteran, Lynn Ridzon, Director, Global Strategic Sourcing - Travel, Meetings & Events at Amgen (at right in the picture) and Shirley Kuhloie, Global Meetings Program Leader at Hewlett-Packard (on the left). Forgive the quality of the photo, as I used my Blackberry to snap this shot. I want to commend them both for their advice (and they used layman's terms) on the how and why of putting together a SMMP. They were candid enough, too, to articulate that, yes, there'll be some pain points over the life of developing, winning support, communicating and implementing an SMMP, but the 
I just endured a long journey to/from Bangkok, Thailand, where I moderated a panel of experts on the rewards of face-to-face meetings. I was there attending the Incentive Travel & Conventions, Meetings Asia & Corporate Travel World (IT&CMA & CTW) show, and I had an opportunity to continue my global evangelization of the benefits of SMMP. The Asia-Pacific marketplace is vibrant, and there's a real demand and thirst for knowledge and new technologies. My colleague, Colin Knell (VP Asia-Pacific) and I, spoke to the regional media as well as a lot of customers while we were there, and it never ceases to amaze me how different the Asia-Pacific market is. Their regional needs and level of acceptance for new technology and ideologies remain a curious mix of quick change management adoption, but they move slowly to ensure that acceptance of anything new is solid, tried and true.
Core Week #1 is set to take place November 2-6 at Emory University in Atlanta (pictured at right); here's a short description of what will be covered:
I’m getting ready to leave for the largest Corporate Travel and MICE conference in Asia Pacific: 

