BTW EP 22: Challenging Procurement’s Most Comfortable (Bad) Habits

Procurement’s problem isn’t speed. It’s form. 

They’ve gotten great at automating and accelerating weak processes while quietly rewarding the “good contract, bad deal” mentality that ultimately undercuts their own efforts.

In this podcast episode of “Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement,” Omid Ghamami, president of the Procurement and Supply Chain Management Institute and former Intel purchasing operations leader, joins co-hosts Philip Ideson and Rich Ham to challenge procurement’s most comfortable (bad) habits. 

He argues that the function claims victory at signature, books “savings” that never actually hit the P&L, and then moves on to the next thing while suppliers are left to harvest margin in the years that follow.

Omid also goes after the most likely root causes of all these bad habits: procurement lets business units fixate on what they want to buy instead of what they need to accomplish. That framing hardwires cost into scopes through custom specs, gold-plating, and activity-based requirements. 

The cure is outcome design and total cost discipline up front, informed by external references, public contracts, internal history, and supplier knowledge. Pay now or pay later… and most teams pay later.

Procurement needs to stop rewarding the ‘heroes’ who rush in to fix broken deals instead of the leaders who design processes that prevent fires in the first place. As Omid puts it, “We don’t reward Smokey the Bear. We reward the firefighters.” 

If incentives continue to glorify this kind of firefighting, the flames will keep coming. But when procurement starts recognizing prevention as performance, they will finally become the quiet force that keeps value – and trust – intact.