Art of Procurement BTW EP 23: The Phil-Ins: The Procurement Performance Paradox
After nearly a year of exploring procurement's incentive paradox from every angle, Philip Ideson, Rich Ham, and Kelly Barner reconvene to connect the dots between three of the series' most thought-provoking guests: Jason Brown, David Loseby, and Omid Ghamami.
Each offered a distinct lens on the same fundamental question: What does performance really mean in procurement today?
Jason Brown framed incentives as an operating system: a structure that shapes behavior and defines what purpose looks like in practice. David Loseby reminded us that real change starts with understanding people, not just systems. And Omid Ghamami challenged procurement to stop claiming victory at contract signature and start measuring success by real-world outcomes actually achieved.
As the co-hosts unpack these different takes on procurement performance, they uncover a unifying truth: procurement's metrics may have been right for their time, but the time has changed. Savings-driven scorecards and transactional incentives no longer fit a function expected to deliver innovation, resilience, and strategic value.
The discussion also looks ahead to what comes next as the co-hosts think about how AI reshapes the function, causing headcounts to shrink and expectations to rise. Can procurement redefine its purpose before automation defines it for them?
The answer, they argue, lies in alignment: between incentives and impact, between humans and technology, and between what we buy and what we're genuinely trying to achieve.