From Chicken Farm to the C-Suite: A Masterclass in Limitless Leadership (Part I of II)

Speaker 1[0:06]Welcome to Procurability's Procurement Pathways, a journey into the dynamic world of procurement told through the voices of its most trusted leaders. Here, every story, every lesson, and every hard-won insight reveals how personal passion fuels professional impact and how those moments taken together shape the future of our field. Today's guest is procurement consultant, former CPO Howard Richman.

Speaker 1[0:34]Howard, my dear friend, welcome to the Procurement Pathways Podcast. I am thrilled that you said yes to doing this. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2[0:43]It's my honor, Stacy.

Speaker 1[0:47]I would love to start out by inviting you to tell the audience a little bit about you. You've got such a rich background, so many years in the space. Please tell us a little bit about Howard Richman.

Speaker 3[0:57]Yeah. So I grew up on a chicken farm and perfect, perfect set of background for becoming a procurement executive. But um I uh I always uh was interested in real-world type of issues. And when I went to college, I studied economic geography, which is the study of why things are where they are, locational analysis, if you will.

Speaker 3[1:28]And I did a lot of environmental studies, like where do you put a landfill? And you know, how do you do your sanitation routes the right way, and things like that. And but all of that somehow led to me going to business school and getting a degree in finance. And somehow or another along the way, I got an internship to work for VP of procurement at Singer Company, the sewing machine people, um, to do commodity studies for them on copper and aluminum and how they could hedge those commodities so that they could do a better job of buying them.

Speaker 3[2:09]And so that was my first exposure to procurement in the finance world. And then I took a course on contracts and negotiations in business school. And so I had that introduction to what could be the basics for procurement. And then when I got out of business school, I took a job in finance and worked in finance for about a year and a half, and then had an opportunity to join a procurement function with my company.

Speaker 3[2:40]And I took that opportunity because I could actually use my MBA skills more doing procurement than any other thing I could ever do. Because when you're in procurement, you have to analyze suppliers and markets and strengths and weaknesses, and your own company's business requirements, and how all that comes together, and what are the best decisions. And then you also get to be an agent for your company.

Speaker 3[3:09]You've got to make those decisions in terms of what's the best way to contract for these goods and services to give my company a competitive advantage in the marketplace for what they do and how that aligns with their strategy. And so I saw procurement as being probably the most complete uh function for applying skills with an MBA.

Speaker 3[3:32]And that a lot of people really never think of it in that way, but that's what I saw. And so that became my motivator and 40 plus years of supply chain and procurement, and that's what I did.

Speaker 1[3:46]And that's unusual because when when we talk about to people about their procurement background, so many of the people that I've talked to at least come to procurement from something else. But you've been in the function since business school, is that right?

Speaker 3[4:01]Basically, yes. I mean, uh, I did a year and a half in both controllership and treasury uh doing capital expenditure and risk analysis, but that just added additional base for me for how to do procurement better and to understand how to analyze companies that I was dealing with and to understand their strengths and weaknesses as companies and whether or not they were the right fit to be the suppliers to the company I was working for.

Speaker 3[4:30]And so um I must admit, though, I came into procurement a lot more credentialed than most people do.

Speaker 1[4:39]Yeah.

Speaker 3[4:40]Um, and that that has been my experience. And I felt like it gave me a leg up because of that background. Um, but at the same time, it was so rewarding to get involved in it that way and to be able to use all of those analytical skills uh to apply to the job and to try and make the best decisions for my company.

Speaker 1[5:03]And your experience has been very broad and very deep. When I first met you, and I mean, we've had I've had the pleasure of knowing you in several different iterations over the years, but when we first met, you were leading IT procurement for a pharmaceutical company, right?

Speaker 3[5:19]That's true. That's true. And uh back in that day, when I knew about IT, I could fit into a thimble. Um it was uh I I had been put into the job uh by my boss because he had a lot of confidence in my ability to ramp up on my knowledge and always be on a steep learning curve, which was also something that I loved about being at procurement um because uh it's a new category all the time.

Speaker 3[5:49]And when you get into new categories, you're on this huge learning curve uh to understand the supply base, the markets, how it works, the products and what have you. And um you were brought in through free markets um to come in and help us with a global procurement transformation and to introduce reverse auctioning into that whole process.

Speaker 3[6:14]And that was something that was totally new to me as well. It was very exciting um as I got to get into that. But it was also the first global procurement transformation that I was involved in. I ended up doing six global procurement transformations in my career. Wow. Uh, but that was the first one. And uh so it was a very exciting time.

Speaker 3[6:37]Um and you opened my eyes to a whole new way of going about figuring out what's the best price in the marketplace. It didn't tell you whether or not the company you were dealing with was reliable, had assurance of supply, whether they were following regulatory requirements, their quality levels, their service levels as it related to your business requirements or how innovative the company was.

Speaker 3[7:04]But it did help you get to what's the right price in the marketplace. And so free markets, uh, from my experiences there at that at uh Galaxa Smith Klein and SmithKlein Beachum, uh, where we used it, uh during my tenure there, we probably did a thousand auctions.

Speaker 1[7:24]Wow.

Speaker 3[7:25]And only about half the time did we actually go at the lowest price because of all of those other criteria. Um it was a data point, an important data point, but not the only point in terms of making a decision. And so we used all the other criteria as sort of a weighted balance scorecard for determining what was best for our company in terms of which suppliers to use.

Speaker 3[7:53]Um so that that was a very important experience. Uh, but I always remembered what you did for me in working with me on that. And then that led to some future work.

Speaker 1[8:07]So we go, we go through the the timeline, right? So you and I, you and and again, this is pharmaceutical, but you've also worked at Eminem Mars in the the uh CPG sector. And then fast forward more years than I care to admit, I'm in Delray Beach, Florida, with my husband, who you also know from from the Glaxo days.

Speaker 1[8:27]And we see you on Atlantic Avenue. And I looked at my husband and I said, Oh, isn't that nice? Howard's retired to Florida. How awesome. Howard was not retiring to Florida. Howard was in the process of spinning up a new strategic procurement organization at Citrix. So that became a really important leadership lesson for me. And I I have several questions to ask you about that.

Speaker 1[8:56]But um, let me send it back to you. Tell me the Citrix story. How did you get involved in that and that little opportunity?

Speaker 3[9:04]Okay. How did I get involved? It um uh when I was in Atlanta consulting, um I bumped into a blind man, and this happened at the Atlantic Convention Center. I literally bumped into this man and we started talking to only find out that he was the motivational speaker for the company that I was consulting for. He had climbed the highest mountain peak in every continent in the world.

Speaker 3[9:37]Um after I talked with him, I saw that his book was on a like a table. And I took a copy of his book and I read it cover to cover, and basically it was a template for how to reinvent your life.

Speaker 1[9:54]Huh.

Speaker 3[9:55]And I put that template together and I discussed it with my wife, and we decided that I was gonna end what was called Road Warrior Consulting. I had been on the road for five years doing this, that I was going to, you know, settle in one place, which was going to be in Florida, and that I was going to find something new to do in my career.

Speaker 3[10:17]And I assumed that it was going to take about 12 months for all that to happen. Except once I started the plan and put it into motion, it happened in three months. And then as I was making the move down to Florida, I got a call from a headhunter asking me, Do you live in Florida? And I said, Yes.

Speaker 3[10:38]And it turned out that there was this opportunity to basically have a greenfield, you know, start from scratch, build a procurement function, a strategic sourcing function at a software company called Citrix Systems in Fort Lauderdale. It came down to uh they interviewed 30 people for the job, and I was finally selected for it.

unknown[11:00]Wow.

Speaker 3[11:00]Um, so I felt very fortunate that all of that came together. But it would never have happened unless I bumped into a blind man.

Speaker 1[11:08]That's incredible. Wow.

Speaker 3[11:10]And so it's um, and so I start from that premise, and then I'm trying to build and recruit a team. And I'm going through all the normal recruiting things. And it just so happened to be on a New Year's Eve, and I do other things and I get in discussions with other consultants and things. And that afternoon, I got into a very heated political discussion with your husband.

Speaker 1[11:37]Oh, geez, that's a shocker.

Speaker 3[11:39]Yeah. Thinking that you guys lived in New Jersey. And then that night, my wife and I go out to Atlantic Avenue to celebrate New Year's Eve. And who do we bump into but you? And it's like, Stacy, what are you doing here? You're in New Jersey.

Speaker[11:57]No, I wasn't. I was living, I was having a second home in Florida, which then quickly became a first home after I started to work for you.

Speaker 3[12:04]So well, I mean, Stacy, this was like Kismet. You can't make this stuff up, right? Um, and I knew right away I had to get you on my leadership team um to help build the strategic sourcing function. Uh I always looked at talent uh on a high-performing team, you need two types of talent. You need subject matter experts, SMEs, and you need what I call best athletes.

Speaker 3[12:32]And you were one of those best athletes. Somebody who could be moved from category to category to category, who would take on a very high learning curve very quickly and take with you all of your procurement knowledge and be able to apply that knowledge into that new category. And that for me is extremely valuable. And when I originally recruited you, it was to head up our North American procurement.

Speaker 3[13:01]The day you arrived, they changed you over to head up marketing procurement instead. And then after you excelled at that, I said, you know what, we need to launch a supplier diversity and risk initiative. And so I put you in charge of supplier diversity and risk. And then you started that from scratch. And then after that, you moved on to a marketing function.

Speaker 3[13:23]Um but for me, I always looked and understood that not everybody is the same. Um, some people need to wake up every day feeling that that day is going to be different from every other day that they've ever had. And those are what I could consider to be the positions where we need our best athletes to put into.

Speaker 3[13:50]Um, I learned very early on, you can't put square pegs in round holes and expect to get good results. Focus on people's strengths. Um, let them show their strengths and let them excel at their strengths. Only look at the developmental needs if it's really holding them back as opposed to trying to round them out. Um when people are allowed to really flourish in what they're good at, they really feel good about themselves.

Speaker 3[14:19]And then that reflects in their work and their attitude. And so I've always believed that that's the best way to go with people. So, you know, we'll always, you know, make sure you're putting the right pegs in the right holes. That's the way I looked at it.

Speaker 1[14:35]Howard, I think that's such an important point, what you just said. You can't fit a round peg in a square hole. And so often you see companies trying to do just that. Okay, if you are our a round peg and it's a square hole, we'll just find a square peg instead of looking at your specific set of talents.

Speaker 1[14:56]And I think that comment that you just made really points to one of the things that I have learned from you that has impacted me as I've been a people manager over the years with my own businesses. And that's that people aren't just your most important asset, they are your only asset. And that comment that you just made really shows that you're looking deeper into how a person can be beneficial to an organization, not just what the paper says they should do.

Speaker 1[15:28]I think that's huge.

Speaker 3[15:30]It's important to understand that um all kinds of people can be successful, and you need a lot of different types of people to actually have a high-performing team. Have you ever seen a high-performing team made up of great systems, great processes, great tools, and mediocre people?

Speaker 1[15:52]No.

Speaker 3[15:52]No, no. But you have seen high-performing teams made up of great people who are working with lousy systems, lousy data, lousy processes, and yet they find ways to overcome it. Because they're motivated, because they're doing the things that they love, because they're good at what they do. And so that's why, in my mind, people are your only asset.

Speaker 3[16:19]And part of it also is about getting them aligned around a mission and a vision that they believe in. But when one of the things I did, Stacy, was when the function was developing a vision and a mission statement, I let the leadership team develop it together. And it wasn't something that happened in a day. It took like four months for that to develop in many iterations.

Speaker 3[16:44]But in the end, the leadership team owned it. It belonged to them, it was theirs. And so they would instill that into all the people in their organizations. And this is how we made it organic. And it's part of a bigger philosophy that I believe in called boundaryless behavior. There was a book I read a number of years ago, once again, a chance encounter with a consultant who I hadn't seen in 30 years, who I bumped into, who ended up consulting for Jack Welsh at General Electric, GE.

Speaker 3[17:26]Jack Welsh, for people who don't know, was elected and crowned as the CEO of the 20th century. So he was consulting for the greatest CEO of the 20th century at GE. And he wrote a book called The Boundaryless Organization. His name is Ron Ashkenaz, and he had three others who wrote the book with him. And basically, Ron looked at the world as there's all these boundaries that exist in the corporate world.

Speaker 3[18:00]You've got hierarchical boundaries, vertical boundaries, where you have people from different rank and status, and it's command and control as you go up and down the ladder. And then you've got horizontal boundaries where you've got silos of different functions. It could be procurement, sales, marketing, accounting, finance, yada yada, right? And you've got all those boundaries that you have to deal with.

Speaker 3[18:27]And then you've got boundaries of geography, of time and space and time zones and cultures. You've got all those different boundaries that are within your company. And then there's a fourth boundary. There's the boundary of employees versus managers, the boundaries of managers versus customers, customers, and then there's the communities that you live in, and then there's the supply base.

Speaker 3[18:56]And all of these things, these are all boundaries that you encounter within the business world. And your ability to be able to uh transition between all those boundaries and to be able to exchange thought, to be able to share knowledge, to be able to work together for end-to-end process solutions to problems is what really defines success in today's world.

Speaker 3[19:27]And if you just stay within the silos of your, you know, of your functional boundary of procurement, you're going to be very unsuccessful. You have to develop solutions that cross all of those boundaries. And it's no different than the way the human body works. I mean, you've got organs in your body. You've got lungs, a heart, a liver, spleen, kidneys, brain, and all of those organs, they have to have boundaries to them to keep them, or else they'd become an amorphous mass, right?

Speaker 3[20:05]So they have boundaries that came together. But what makes them work is the fact that they're all transmitting chemicals and electrons and signals to one another, and that all of this is happening within the body, and none of them can be successful unless the other things work as well. If one shuts down, it shuts down all the rest of them.

Speaker 3[20:28]And you have to think about the same way that companies operate. And procurement in particular is a function that needs to transition and cross those boundaries more than virtually any other of the functions in order for it to be successful. And so that's a philosophy that I drove through my procurement teams whenever I could to understand that this is what defines success is being able to cross those boundaries and to be able to talk to people and get on the same agenda.

Speaker 3[21:05]And that's a big problem. Um I've always said that for procurement people, they spend 80% of their time negotiating internally and only 20% of their time negotiating with the supply base. And guess what? Negotiations with the supply base are easy. And the reason why is because you have the same agenda. They want to sell you something and you need to buy something.

Speaker 3[21:32]But when you're inside your own company, you don't have the same agenda. And if you walk in to somebody and say, command and control, savings are us, negotiations are us, contracts are us, we own the decision rights. We're going to tell you who to buy from and how to do it, and we're going to save you money for your budget, and then we're going to take your money away and we're going to give it to the CFO so he can put it somewhere else.

Speaker 3[22:00]Else. Are we friends?

Speaker 3[22:05]This is where procurement people fail in their roles because they're not listening. They're actually going in with an agenda, a savings agenda. And savings is the worst procurement metric in the world, with the exception of all other procurement metrics.

Speaker 1[22:27]Now you've just hit on something else very important, that art of listening. Another Howardism that I've carried with me since we worked together, which is seek to first understand and then be understood. And I think that's critical, not just in work, but in all elements of life. You don't come in there with, you know, marketing, right? Was my category.

Speaker 1[22:50]You don't sit across from your marketing stakeholder and say, okay, let's reduce cost, right? Because the conversation's over before it's begun. You know. It's listening first. And I know that's a that's a big element of your of your career and how you work as a leader. I want to ask more about that, but I have a question in my head that is a surprise question, but you know, I love those.

Speaker 1[23:16]Um for you as a seasoned procurement leader, what spells the difference between a tactical slash operational procurement organization and a truly strategic procurement organization?

Speaker 3[23:35]Well, yeah, that's a really good question, Stacy. And uh to be honest, you need both. You need there are certain things that you need to be very tactically oriented toward. And what's really important is excellence in execution, especially on a lot of the small dollar value items that you're going to buy, repeat purchases, um, things where uh people need ease to get what they need to run smoothly within the company.

Speaker 3[24:07]Uh and in the 80-20 Pareto type rule, um 20% of the things you spend men money on are 80% of the total cost. And those are the things that you need to focus your strategic sourcing on. The 80% that you buy that represents 20% of the total cost, that's where you need to have tactical excellence and execution focused on it.

Speaker 3[24:34]Um, and not you can't treat, you know, if you have only one tool in your tool shed and it's a hammer, you're going to treat everything as if it's a nail. And everything is not a nail. Okay? And that's the problem, another problem that procurement people have all the time is the hammer is the only tool that they have and they know how to use.

Speaker 3[25:01]And it's not the appropriate tool to be using in many cases, especially in strategic categories, especially indirect categories that what I call third rail type of categories. Third rail categories are marketing, legal, management consulting, um, HR benefits. There's a number of them where you need to take a very holistic end-to-end process type of thinking to them and really listen to your stakeholders to understand what they really need.

Speaker 3[25:38]And oftentimes, once again, if you come in with this agenda of savings, you're not going to hear what they have to say. But if you listen to what they say and then you ask the five whys as if you were in kindergarten, just why, why, why, why? And just drill down more and more and you question some of the basic assumptions.

Speaker 3[25:58]But you do the questions and posing those questions as being, I'm curious, I really don't know what I don't know. I just want to learn more. Let me understand your thinking. And if you do that and you have those kind of real discussions with people, sometimes they figure out that what they think they need is not what they actually need.

Speaker 3[26:22]But you have to be willing to question those basic assumptions, to ask the five whys, but be listening as you're doing so and not coming in with your own agenda. Savings will be an output of all of that. But if you do the right things in the right way, if you focus on the how as opposed to the what, then you will end up not only achieving and exceeding your savings targets, you'll actually satisfy many other KPIs that people have.

Speaker 3[26:57]And it's just a matter of more than anything else, you know, listening. One of the things I I used to do, Stacey, I think you probably remember this. When we were at Citrix Systems, we changed offices. We had to move from one office to another office. And because of the realignment, a number of people were losing their offices.

Speaker 3[27:20]A number of my managers were losing their offices, and they were upset about it. And then I thought about it too, and I said, okay, I'm going to make this right. I'm going to give up my office, and I'm going to work out in the open with everybody else. And my office will become a place where anybody can go in, do personal phone calls, negotiations, whatever, whatever kind of thing has to be done in private.

Speaker 3[27:45]You just sign up for it and the office is yours. And in doing that, I was trying to set a sort of a culture of we're all going to roll up our sleeves, we're going to take the stripes off our sleeves, we're going to work together. Um the hierarchical status disappears. Uh, and it created a sense of teamwork around our team that we were all working to the same person.

Speaker 3[28:16]The same purpose. Um, I can tell you that when I did that, I knew I was going to hit some flack from other directors that we interfaced with who said, uh-oh, he's giving up his office. Now, my people might think I should have to give up my office.

Speaker[28:36]Right.

Speaker 3[28:37]Right. And I was willing to face that because I knew how important it was for the procurement function to have a different culture, this boundaryless behavior culture. And when you take away all of these barriers to communication, because there I was, anybody could approach me at any time, and anybody could approach anybody else at any time, when those barriers disappeared, it's amazing how accelerated things happened because of that.

Speaker 3[29:08]And the acceleration of the communication created activity that could never have happened anywhere near as quickly. And so the ROI of every activity just improved drastically because of that fact that we took that barrier out of the equation. There were no walls anymore. Physical barrier.

Speaker 1[29:32]I am so glad you told that story because I had forgotten about it. And now that I'm thinking about it, I remember how impactful it really was. I remember you sitting in the rows of the open space because it was hot desk, right? It was open space there on the floor with Steve and Max and Sven and everybody with a whiteboard.

Speaker 1[29:53]And where everybody's just brainstorming. And there you were. Countless times I would come up with there's Howard sitting by the window or in the middle or wherever it was. And it really did show very strongly that team, non-hierarchical setup. I think that was fundamental to creating the culture that we wanted to. I really, really do. Um, and on a fun note, you know, my my then seven-year-old used the office for bring your kids to work day.

Speaker 1[30:21]So he loved hanging out in Mr. Howard's office and using the crayons.

Speaker 3[30:25]Um, you know what? Uh, there was a concept I learned very early on in my career. It was about getting your MBWA management by walking around.

Speaker[30:35]Oh, yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3[30:37]It was about being in touch with what people were really doing, really thinking. And if you stayed locked up in your office doing your thing on your computer, you never figured that out. And so it it was a fundamental concept in my leadership style to do management by walking around. Um, and that was probably one of the, you know, probably one of the most important things that I adopted.

Speaker 3[31:08]And I I think sometimes about um, you know, why do we do what we do? All right. And a lot of it has to do with just human nature. And it brought to mind another story. And this story was one that I heard in a movie. I don't know if you remember the actor Forrest Whitaker. He was in a movie.

Speaker 3[31:29]Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was in a movie called The Crying Game. Yep. And in that movie, he tells the story of the scorpion and the frog.

unknown[31:38]I don't remember that.

Speaker 3[31:39]The scorpion comes up to the frog and asks the frog, will you swim me across the river? And the frog says, Why would I do that? You're going to sting me and kill me. You know, I have no incentive to do that. And the scorpion says, Yeah, but if I did that, you know, we would both die.

Speaker 3[31:57]So that's no good for me, right? So the frog agrees and lets the scorpion get on his back and they're swimming across the river. And all of a sudden, the frog feels this horrible sting and realizes he's been stung by the scorpion. And the frog says, You've stung me. Why did you do that? Now we're both going to drown.

Speaker 3[32:16]And the scorpion says, I can't help myself. It's in my nature. And this is what happens with procurement people. Savings is in their nature. That's why they think that that's why they were developed as procurement people to generate, and the first instinct of anything that they do is to come up to a stakeholder and say, we need to hit a savings number.

Speaker 3[32:43]How much do you think we can save? Or I've got a savings target of 5% on your category. How are you going to help me get there? And this whole, you know, negotiations are us, contracts are us, savings are us, type of mindset is in my mind, uh, it's a command and control feature, which is poisonous to the relationship.

Speaker 3[33:09]And it doesn't actually align with the strategy of the business. The strategy of the business may not be to save money. It may be for new product development, for getting something to market faster. The strategy of the business might be to grow a different type of product line and revenue. And um, and it might be to improve operating profit too.

Speaker 3[33:33]But just because you make savings on something, that's no guarantee that you're going to improve operating profit. Because especially if the savings stay within the function, they decide, okay, now I'm going to spend the money on something else I want.

Speaker 1[33:45]Oh, 100%. Right?

Speaker 3[33:46]Because 100% because they because they say that's my budget, and I get to control my budget. And that's the way it works. Um pens.

Speaker[33:56]Promotional pens.

Speaker 3[33:57]That was a great promotional pens.

Speaker[33:59]Back in the day. Yeah.

Speaker 3[34:01]Oh, you need to have every brand's got to have its own promotional pen and it's got to be different from every other brand's promotional pen. You know, God forbid they all be, they look alike, you know.

Speaker[34:12]That's right. You got a million dollars left in the budget for the year. Let's spend it on pens because you can never have too many pens.

Speaker 3[34:19]Because you have to give those pens away. You have to, you know, and and that's going to sell more drugs if you give away more pens.

Speaker 1[34:28]But I think you're right though. Like you were talking about the synergy of the human body, and and this is the synergy of the procurement function, boundarylless behavior, deep ardent listening. And you and I both grew up with the same consulting firm. We did a lot of work with it. And procurability kind of runs things the same way when we do assessments.

Speaker 1[34:49]It's all about listening, learning facts and data, right? Like we always say, knowing what you know, knowing what you don't know, and then finding out what you don't know you don't know.

Speaker 3[34:59]Right.

Speaker 1[35:00]And putting that all together.

Speaker 3[35:02]And the other thing is also getting people to make decisions when they have 60% of the data. Usually, usually 60% is enough. It tells you, it's, it's giving you a story, but a lot of people are afraid to make mistakes. And so they get into this whole analysis paralysis, and they keep wanting more data and more data.

Speaker 3[35:27]And the culture in procurement um really can't tolerate that and be effective. You have to be able to make decisions. But the thing is, um, some companies they try to profess to their people, oh, we want you to take risk. We want you, you know, to um, you know, make these decisions faster. But then they don't back it up when those decisions don't work out for the people who took that risk.

Speaker 3[35:58]And so, and people quickly understand that. And so they know that they're talking the talk, but they're not walking the walk. And you need to do that. And that's one of the first things they did when I put the procurement team together as well, was I said to them, if you don't screw up every once in a while, you must not be doing anything.

Speaker 1[36:19]And there we go with culture again. It's that's such a freeing thing. Absolutely.

Speaker 3[36:23]And then my second rule was as long as you tell me about it first, I'm gonna back you 110% no matter what. And then I was only one month into the job of putting this procurement function together when there was a screw up. It had to do with um use of um uh contingent workforce in Turkey, country of Turkey.

Speaker 3[36:50]And HR was, you know, procurement didn't do this, and right away it blew up into this big thing. Um the first thing I did was back my people 110%. That's the first thing I did. And then they realized, oh wow, he actually means it. And then as we dug deeper into it, we realized that procurement didn't do anything wrong.

Speaker 3[37:17]This was an HR error that happened. And then but they started right away seeing that they needed, they could have the confidence to make decisions, to base it on the data that they had, that they were going to be supported in this. Nobody was going to throw them under the bus. And that it was okay also if they had made a mistake, as long as we figured out a way to correct the mistake.

Speaker 3[37:48]Because guess what? There's very few of these mistakes that can't be corrected and the damage minimized in the procurement function. There are ways out of it. But if you don't have the courage to make decisions and you're always worried about making a mistake, and you're waiting for 100% of the data all the time, and the data always changes, by the way, you'll never you'll never get anything done.

Speaker 3[38:16]And I needed to get people feeling comfortable in this uncomfortable place, because that's something that really defines the most successful of people, is how they learn to get comfortable in an uncomfortable place. And I would always tell them that when they're working in a team environment, if the team was ready to make a decision, and if they didn't have butterflies in their stomach about that decision, then they were in the wrong place because they weren't pushing the envelope.

Speaker 3[38:50]They were probably agreeing to what I would call lowest common denominator solutions that made everybody happy, but only marginally moved the needle on what needed to be done. And I had to get people to feel like that wasn't good enough. You've got to be nervous about what you're doing. You've got to be pushing the envelope. If you're not doing that, we're probably not getting anywhere.

Speaker 1[39:16]You don't get innovation, exactly.

Speaker 3[39:18]Well, you absolutely don't get innovation. Um but people are, why won't they do it? Because they're afraid of if I make a mistake, what's gonna happen to my career? What are these, you know, what's going to happen, you know, to you know, my salary, what's going to happen to my bonus, what's gonna all of all those kind of kind of things which really matter.

Speaker 1[39:42]My livelihood.

Speaker 3[39:43]Yes. And I had to move people past that to the point where they saw that those who were willing to take those risks were the people who were going to be rewarded, and the people who were going to get recognized, and the people who are going to be promoted, because those are the kind of leaders that I needed in the function.

Speaker 3[40:07]And so getting people to believe that though, is very different. You have to walk the walk, you really have to show. And I can tell you that I learned this from my days at Eminem Mars when I watched a woman who was trading foreign currencies at Eminem Mars lose $10 million in a week. And the next week she was promoted head of the function.

Speaker 3[40:40]And the Mars family said, You had the guts to take a position, and we need people for the future who are going to do that. You're the right person.

unknown[40:53]Absolutely.

Speaker 3[40:53]That was one of the very few examples, though, that I ever saw in the corporate world where that would happen. And this is the problem. You've got to you've got to show people that you're actually going to follow through on it, that you actually mean this. When you're trying to do a cultural revolution and a cultural change, you've got to get people to see that they actually mean what they say.