Late last year, I had a conversation with Connie Walters, CPO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals (pictured above), about the mindsets and capabilities of those who work in procurement and how they must evolve if the function is to prosper.
She put across the concept of needing to populate the function with business leaders with procurement skill sets. Instead of viewing the team as a support function, CPOs should cultivate a mindset where those in procurement see themselves as business leaders first, using functional expertise as a tool to drive outcomes.
We agreed that it would make an excellent topic of conversation for Procurement Leaders’ CPO community, and so it was that we came together last week to hear more about Connie’s theory and what she has been doing to implement it.
“When I think about myself and my ‘whys’,” she said, “it’s really about helping people do their best work. I think that for many of us as leaders, that’s our whole job – to unleash the best in our teams and the people that we have the privilege to interact with.”
But what does this mean and how does it translate on the ground? Given the backdrop of growing regulatory complexity, increasing risk, technology advancement and intense competition, she pointed to some areas where procurement must deliver. These include: building future-ready solutions with high-quality commercials; providing a destination for impactful supplier partnerships; and building flexible, reliable, digitally powered supply chains.
Which makes total sense. But saying it and delivering it are two very different things.
To this end, she has focused on the capabilities required, which include deep business understanding, strategic and commercial acumen, a laser focus on execution, relational intelligence and an AI-first mindset. She is tracking the team’s development across all these dimensions and has seen significant and tangible impact as a result.
But one of the most satisfying outcomes, beyond the tangible business benefits she shared on the call but which I won’t go into here, is that when a collaborative team from the business and sourcing are in front of executives, the executives can’t distinguish them – they think they’re all from the business.
And this is the very point of Connie’s vision for her procurement team: to be a collective of business leaders with procurement skill sets, inspired to do the impossible.
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