Signature talk & workshop
Find the Friction
Every procurement team knows something is slow. Very few can name the specific place, in order, with a number attached. That is the whole job.
The argument
The three places friction hides.
Procurement functions do not fail loudly. They lose hours in three specific places, and every one of them is invisible on an org chart.
Retrieval
Senior people spending their day finding numbers rather than deciding with them: pulling reports, reconciling exports, chasing a status someone already knows. It looks like diligence. It is the most expensive clerical work in the building, and it is almost always the largest of the three.
The wait
Work that is finished but not yet allowed to move, because the approval lives in an inbox or a spreadsheet only one person updates. Nobody is idle and nothing is progressing. Every day lost here is a day of buying from the supplier you were trying to leave.
The re-argument
The same decision made from scratch every time it comes up, because nobody wrote down the rule. Who buys the raw material. When an exception goes upstairs. What threshold changes the answer. Teams mistake this for judgment; it is usually an undocumented policy costing a meeting a month.
The method
Find it. Rank it. Route it.
Most procurement improvement programs start with a tool and then look for a problem. This starts the other way round.
Find it
Where the time actually goes. We walk the real process as the team performs it, not as the process document describes it, and record every handoff, wait, and re-key.
Rank it
Not all friction is worth removing. We sort by cost, frequency, and whether the pain is a symptom or the cause, then argue about the order until the team agrees.
Route it
Each item gets a destination: fix the process, fix the data, automate it, or leave it alone. Most organisations are surprised by how much lands in the last two.
It is deliberately unglamorous. The output is a short document, not a transformation roadmap. But it is the document that makes every later automation, AI, or headcount decision defensible.
Who this is for
- Procurement and supply chain leadership teams that agree something is broken and disagree on what.
- Manufacturers about to buy procurement software, who want to know what they are actually buying it for.
- PE operating partners assessing a portfolio company’s procurement function before committing to a plan.
- Conference programmers and podcast producers who want a working operator rather than a consultant describing operators.
Two paths
Take the argument, or put it to work.
The same material scales from a conference stage down to a working session with eleven people and a whiteboard. Pick the room you actually have.
Path one: media & engagement
For programmers, producers and associations who need a voice on the stage, in the feed, or steering the room.
Keynote or conference talk
The three places, the current numbers, and a question the audience can take back to their own process on Monday morning. Not a framework they have to buy.
I bring: this quarter’s figures with sources, and slides your AV team gets a week ahead.Podcast guest
I still carry a category, so the examples are current and the constraints are real. I would rather be specific and wrong on air than vague and safe, and I will disagree with a host if the data says so.
- The 2026 tariff whiplash and what a buyer actually does about it
- What reshoring costs, told from inside the transition rather than after it
- Why AI keeps stalling in procurement, and the unglamorous work that comes first
- The cost model nobody updates
Panel discussion
Most procurement panels agree too quickly and say nothing anyone can act on. I am useful on one because I hold a position and will defend it against a vendor on the same stage, without making it personal.
- Best opposite a software vendor, an analyst, or a CFO, where the tension is real
- Comfortable being the dissenting seat when the premise deserves it
- Will name what I do not know rather than fill the gap
Industry moderator
Moderating is a different job from speaking, and the failure mode is a host who does not know enough to interrupt. I prepare each panellist’s actual position beforehand and hold them to it, keep vendors off their pitch, and get the room out on time.
- Pre-briefs with every panellist, and a question map you approve
- Follow-up questions from domain knowledge, not from a card
- Audience Q&A run so the last question is as good as the first
Path two: inside your team
For leaders who do not need convincing, and want the friction in their own function found and ranked.
In-house workshop
The full Find it, Rank it, Route it session with the people who actually do the work. We map where the hours go, rank the friction by cost and frequency, and route each item: fix the process, fix the data, automate it, or leave it alone.
- Bring the people who do the job, plus their leader
- No preparation required from participants
- You leave with a ranked list your team wrote, and therefore believes
Course
A longer-form version for teams that want to run the method themselves rather than have me run it once. Same structure, taught across several sessions, so the next friction audit does not need me in the room.
You get: the method, the templates, and a team that can repeat it.Where this leads
Some engagements stop at the ranked list, which is a fine place to stop. Others turn into fractional leadership or AI-readiness work, because the list makes obvious what needs an operator rather than a vendor.
What people said
Testimonials
Testimonial slot: awaiting a real quote and attribution.
Testimonial slot: awaiting a real quote and attribution.
Testimonial slot: awaiting a real quote and attribution.
Nothing is quoted here until a real participant has said it and agreed to be named.
Enquiries
What are you here for?
Tell me the event, the date, and who else is on the stage. If it is a moderator slot, tell me the panellists and I will tell you where the disagreement is.
Send the detailsPodcast, panel, quote, or background for a piece you are writing. I answer producers and journalists the same day where I can.
Media inquiry One-pager PDFIf it is your own function rather than your stage, the range runs from a single half-day session to owning the operating model.
How I workI take a small number of these each quarter, so the follow-up work stays real.
Bring Find the Friction to your room.
Thirty minutes, no deck. Tell me the format, the audience, and the date. Stage, studio, or conference room, the material travels.