It's YOUR fault

Yes YOUR fault - Your fault we had a financial crisis, your fault that the UK ran out of fuel at the pump this week, your fault many of our children are over weight and yes your fault that many adults are equally unhealthy. It's certainly not the fault of just one banker, one politician or one food manufacturer.

Yes I know it's my fault too - but isn't that the problem so long as we use words that either take collective responsibility or put blame on one person we have a get out? It's no longer something we have to do anything about because someone else is responsible. Don't believe me..... just read the next paragraph and compare it with the first.

Yes OUR fault - our fault we had a financial crisis, our fault that the UK ran out of fuel at the pump this week, our fault many of our children are over weight and yes our fault that many adults are equally unhealthy.

Which paragraph has you even considering you might be to blame or be able to do something to change it?

Two news items today illustrate expects of this:

Earth Hour: Today many monuments and cities will be turning off their power to encourage us all to rethink our energy consumption. How many of us however will applaud those monuments and believe that they've done it on our behalf. In reality they're trying to inspire us to take action.

Neutrino Scientist quits: Putting our head above the parapet, however many provisos we include in our statements, can seem very risky.

Forth coming blogs will consider further aspects of this lack of responsibility we all seem to take and look at how we make decisions - because those living on credit, filling jam jars with petrol, joining the mile long queues at petrol stations and eating those cakes all have made a decision to do so.

And remember it's always others who do these things and not us! (That's certainly what we all believe - if our actions and words are anything to go on)

Alison

Alison Smith
Helping Procurement teams take responsibility
alison@alisonsmith.eu 07770 538159

What we can learn from Eurovision and Engelbert

The shock announcement that the 76 year old crooner Engelbert Humperdinck would be representing the UK in the Eurovision song contest has certainly inspired me to review my business strategy.

The odds apparently are against the UK because of the voting process. Yet we have proved it is possible to come in the top 10. Even if we have only managed that three times since we last won back in 1997 with Kartina and the Waves with Love shine a light.

Over the years different processes for selecting the singer have been chosen. I don’t think, however, we’ve ever been so surprised with the decision as we were last night. Twitter reverberated with the incredulity and disbelief of our representative. I’m sure many like me where checking the calendar wondering whether April 1st had come early.

Time will tell whether the strategy has been successful. Yet it’s a great example that if the last time you achieved your goal was 15 years ago and only mildly successful 21% of the time since then that it’s time for a change in strategy. And not just a slight change in strategy but time to consider an ‘off the wall’ ‘out there’ ‘we can go to the moon with this technology’ type of strategy.

What’s only been successful 21% of the time in your team? It might be time for some creative thinking on what ‘different’ might look like. We won’t know if we don’t at least try. After all the only thing we have to lose is mediocrity?

Create a great day

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach
Sowing the seeds for procurement teams to think outside the box
Alison@thepurchasingcoach +44(0)7770 538159