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Thought leadership series

Redesigning the Chain

A practical series on procurement, supply chain, governance, and the hidden behaviours that decide whether transformation actually delivers.

Core premise

Modern organisations lose control in the gaps between strategy, suppliers, systems, ownership, and execution.

The series explores those gaps through practical, experience-based observations for leaders operating under pressure.

Recurring themes

The Execution Gap

Why strong strategies often break down when ownership, decisions, and delivery accountability are not aligned.

Procurement as a Control System

How procurement is becoming a strategic mechanism for resilience, risk visibility, and decision quality.

Supplier Governance Under Pressure

What happens when supplier sprawl, weak data, and unclear decision rights begin to erode performance.

The Behaviour Behind the Model

Why transformation depends as much on organisational behaviour, incentives, and safety as it does on process design.

What readers can expect

  • Clear, practical observations rather than generic transformation theory
  • Short executive reflections on governance, control, supplier complexity, and execution
  • Human, experience-based commentary on how organisations really behave under pressure
  • A sharper way to discuss procurement beyond savings and process compliance

Best suited for

  • Procurement, supply chain, and operations leaders
  • Transformation and operating model teams
  • Consulting, advisory, and interim leadership communities
  • Organisations facing supplier complexity, execution drift, or governance weakness
Read the series on LinkedIn

Ideas from the series

Short ideas that change the question.

The point where a problem becomes visible is rarely where it began.

What you seeWhat caused it
  • Contracts signed lateLate involvement
  • Urgent renewalsDecisions already shaped
  • Missing visibilityNo early challenge
  • Reactive decisionsNo system control

Symptoms appear at the edge. Causes begin at the centre.

Go-live is not the finish line.

Software installationBusiness transformation
  • Starts with the platformStarts with the business outcome
  • Owns the project planOwns the operational change
  • Celebrates go-liveTreats go-live as the beginning
  • Measures adoptionMeasures what improved

Strategic sourcing doesn't need more process. It needs earlier intervention.

What we addWhat actually works
  • More processEarlier intervention
  • More governanceClear trade-offs
  • More checkpointsChallenged assumptions
  • More controlRedesigned demand

Procurement didn't become strategic. The world became riskier.

Old procurementModern procurement
  • Manages suppliersManages exposure
  • Optimises costProtects continuity
  • Negotiates contractsDesigns resilience
  • Reports savingsProtects revenue

AI can make the decision. Who owns the consequence?

Capability is a technology question. Accountability is an operating-model decision.

Early 1990s · Moscow

Technology can accelerate a transaction. It cannot accelerate trust.

More than thirty years ago, I travelled to Moscow expecting to negotiate a contract. Before I could present it, my interpreter quietly stopped me. “Mark… put your contract away.” I looked at her, confused. She smiled. “They do not trust you yet.”

That sentence has guided my approach to business ever since. Contracts now travel in the cloud and negotiations happen on screens, but the first negotiation is still about trust, not price.

Recent posts

From the series on LinkedIn.

Executive second opinion: what are you missing?

Before making a major business decision, sometimes the most valuable input is an experienced, independent perspective. Bring me one difficult business problem.

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Why I see business problems differently

Four decades across buying, selling, operations, commercial leadership, general management, consulting and transformation have changed the questions I ask, and what I look for before reaching a conclusion.

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When the problem doesn’t fit in one box

When strategy looks right and capable people are in place, but performance is still drifting, the real problem is often the one nobody quite owns.

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Bring me into the conversation

For leadership teams, panels, podcasts and executive sessions where another presentation isn’t the answer: an operator’s perspective to challenge assumptions and connect the dots.

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Private introductory discussion

Book 30 minutesTake the Drift Check