A comprehensive and admirably unconventional guide to corporate procurement.
A manual explains how business leaders can positively transform an organization’s procurement strategy.
According to Hustwick, a well-functioning procurement team can have a major impact on the overall operations of a company: “The leverage and impact a high-performing procurement team can have on an organisation are huge if the team has the right processes, technology and custody of its external spend.” In fact, successful procurement can increase a business’s overall competitiveness as well as its shareholder value. But procurement is often an undervalued part of a company, demoted to the third or fourth tier in a management structure and often considered a service provider rather than a fully integrated part of an organization’s priorities. The author furnishes a remarkably detailed plan for the transformation of a procurement team that begins with gaining the endorsement of the CEO and includes establishing an overarching strategy. Hustwick manages to condense a complex set of recommendations into an accessible plan, one represented by a “transformation wheel” that is subdivided into the six main target areas of procurement, including strategy, resources, executive sponsorship, process, technical skills and technology, and communication and reporting. The author’s analysis of procurement and its potential for transformation is impressively straightforward—his counsel is thorough but is presented in under 100 pages, often helpfully illustrated with various graphics. He covers an astonishing expanse of ground with great clarity—sourcing processes, cost reduction, and personnel, among many other subjects, and some issues are centrally significant today, like supply chain assurance. Hustwick’s expertise is never in doubt—his 25 years of experience at a major global corporation are evident on every page. This book will primarily be of interest to procurement specialists. But given the significance the author convincingly assigns to procurement, it should also be helpful to a general audience of business leaders.
A comprehensive and admirably unconventional guide to corporate procurement.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-228-86270-3
Page Count: 94
Publisher: Tellwell Talent
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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