Voice of Supply Chain – Jul. 2022

Featuring: Purvee Kondal

See All Episodes of Manufacturing Supply Chain Woes

Welcome to Voice of Supply Chain brought to you by ISM New Jersey and SourceDay.

The purpose of our show is to tell stories of people in procurement and supply chain doing extraordinary things. I’m your host, Sarah Scudder. I oversee marketing for SourceDay. We automate purchase order changes and enable supplier collaboration for manufacturers, distributors, consumer packaged goods, brands, and retailers. If you want to talk more about Women in ERP or what’s happening in the manufacturing world, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and follow my hashtags #WomeninERP and #manufacturingmaven.

Today, our guest is Purvee. Her and I are actually semi-San Francisco Bay Area neighbors. Before I moved to Austin at the end of last year, we both lived in the same community, so I’ve had the pleasure of knowing her for the last few years. So we’re going to start off today as we normally do and go way back in time, and we’re going to talk a little bit about your childhood.

So, I want to start with your favorite childhood memory.

First of all, thanks for having me here. I think this is gonna be very interesting. Let’s see where we can go with this, and I always appreciate your sense of humor and wittiness. I think it’s gonna be good.

You know, my favorite childhood memory, honestly, I was born in India, so my favorite childhood memory is eating mangoes on a hot Indian summer day. I mean, it just, it’s one of the things that I still miss, and it’s probably the only reason I’m willing to deal with a hot Indian summer, is the mangoes.

What in your childhood shaped you to be the person that you are today?

You know, I would honestly say that’s really been my parents. My parents were really just huge advocates of diversity, and they both were married from different religions, so as a result, in India, they saw the lack of the diversity or the sort of acceptance, if you will. So, they grew up with that mindset, right? So, I think they’ve shaped my whatever I do. It’s been that they’ve always said, “Go push yourself. Don’t take no for an answer, and keep pushing yourself forward.” And I think they are my foundation and what I’ve done.

What’s the tradition that you learned from your parents that you’ve continued on today with your own family?

I would say, be fearless, right? Don’t let anybody or anyone tell you you can’t do something, and go try it, right? Go get into the details of things, go learn and understand, and don’t be afraid. I think that’s the biggest thing that stays with me. I teach my daughter the same thing, like just go try it. You don’t know until you try, and don’t be afraid of failure. I think, in fact, if you learn from what you deem as failure or someone deems as failure, you actually become more successful because you’re learning from it, and you know, you’re not letting your fears basically just ground you.

What’s the one thing you learned as an adult that you wish you knew as a kid?

Oh, that’s a tough one. One thing I wish I knew… but I wish I knew.

I think, as a kid, and I think just having coming from India, you know, that time when I was younger, we didn’t have a lot of resources and access to resources, quite frankly, right at that time. And traveling, like we do today, globetrotting and all that, right? I think that was one thing, as a kid, I wish I could have done. But if we couldn’t, and as an adult, I’d do it. And what I learned is just the differences in culture beyond what I knew, right? It opened up my eyes and my horizons as an adult as I traveled. And for that reason, I’ve sort of really gravitated towards helping my daughter become more of a global citizen than sort of just a country citizen.

So, you and I share something in common, and that we both majored in marketing in college. I was actually a double major in business and econ. I just picked up econ because I could easily tie it into my business degree, but marketing was my focus and emphasis, and that was yours as well. So, why did you choose to major in marketing?

You know, it’s interesting. I will say, one of my first jobs was you know, really just doing some sales activities, and in that, the sales rep I supported, it was a part-time job. It’s just something I enjoyed doing on the side. And one of the things he had said to me, he said, “Purvee, you can sell life to the Eskimo. You need to go into sales and marketing.” And so, so that’s how I ended up, to be honest, right? That’s how I ended up in that. And, of course, my parents had a dream of me becoming an engineer, and being an Indian background, we only had options of you can be a lawyer, a doctor, or you know, an engineer. And my first major actually was computer science and engineering. And while I really liked it, um, what I realized is I’m such a people person, and in the sales and marketing world, I learned that that’s just really about people, right? You get to interact with people. I’m an extrovert, so as a result, it just really naturally fit for me. So that’s how I ended up in marketing.

What’s the most important thing you learned during your undergraduate program?

Most important thing I learned. You know I would say. I learned.

So, so there’s obviously there’s a few things that you learn, right? But one of the most important things that I think I learned on that was being strategic.

How to be strategic. It’s not something that they teach you really, right? I, I was you know grateful enough to have fantastic teachers and mentors in my life. That kind of helped me through that and there were some coursework that I realized, you know, this really helps me to be strategic, to think differently. And I think that’s the biggest thing I learned, and I think being a marketing major too, that also helped because marketers are, you know, you’re you’re brought up to think outside the box, right? You need to come up with creative ways of solving the problem, right, etcetera. And so I think it helped me to be more strategic and really think more broadly than just sort of in my little supplement.

What was the perceived worse advice you received in college? That has actually turned into useful advice.

I would say the worst advice I had was after you finish college, right? Like you never have to learn, and you know, so so, but the thing so sorry, so the thing was that, right? There are two schools of camp. One, you know, one camp was saying you’re done learning, you get graduated, you’re done. You just, you know, you go work and you live your life, and then the other one was, you need to keep learning. And at that time, I thought that was the worst advice because, you know, look at how many years we spend learning and studying.

And I’m like, what? You want me to learn more? Learn more? And it turned out to be the best advice, right? Just because it’s that learning that’s helped me to continue to do what I do, and I just enjoy it. I do think that after years of learning, you do get to a place especially in college, you’re like, I don’t want to learn anymore. I don’t want to go to a class. I don’t want to do that, and I’m just so glad I didn’t listen to myself and actually continue learning.

What did you think you wanted to do after graduation?

After graduation, I, you know, to be honest, I… For me, after graduation, I just, I really wanted to do, to really just excel. If you were to ask me what my dream was, I would say I wanted to be the CEO of Pepsi at the time. And then I knew you did it, and I said, okay, great, I can’t do that anymore. But honestly, I just wanted to continue helping to grow business. That was my intention, and so I really wanted to do something where I did something that was impactful and meaningful. I didn’t want just a job. I didn’t want to check the box job. It just was not me, my thing, and I wanted to make sure that I was in a role or in an environment where I can continue to contribute and I feel valued and I can give value back.

So you decided to go back to school at some point and get a master’s degree. Why?

That, I, to be honest, I’ve been blessed enough to be around, you know, just some amazing people. And you know, the beginning of my career, I was around really smart people. And to be honest, I kind of felt like I’m really not smart enough, right? And I just felt I felt that in order for me to continue to learn and grow and, you know, to be able to have the level of confidence and be able to have those conversations with super smart people and be able to be strategic, that I needed to continue learning. And that’s of course Kellogg, my alma mater, right? Going back to MBA, there, it’s the number one marketing school in the world too, so it just fit. They taught me a lot more things around how to hone my skills. So, that was great.

Was going back and getting a master’s worth it?

100%. I would advocate. In fact, I’ve told my daughter, you can’t do anything until you finish master’s. Just, I’ve learned so much. You know, it wasn’t easy. It was definitely difficult. There were times I wanted to quit. There were times I’m just like, I don’t want to do this. Why do I need to do this? But I’m so glad I did it, and it was super worth it. I think we are we have seen it now as global citizens and we interact with so many people around the globe, you know, we’ve got to show up differently, right? What I can’t rely on is what I knew 20 years ago, right? I need to make sure that I’ve got the skill set and the knowledge of what’s available today and what’s happening today. And for that, for us to do that, to be good leaders, we’ve got to continue to learn, and we’ve got to continue to innovate. So, I would tell anybody interested to go do it. You’re going to learn a lot. You’re going to make friendships, you know, that are going to stay with you for life long, which is another important aspect of it.

What was your first paying job after college?

My first paying job, so for me, was a little bit different. So when I did my um, you know, when I when I did my master’s, I was still working. So I was working and going to school. So I was grateful that they gave me, you know, they gave me the opportunity to do that. I will say my first job really was at the UC. My first real job, before that, it was just all you know, just fun and games. You’re young, you know, you’re a young adult and do what you want to do. And I did a bunch of sales and my first real job was in sales, right? Just being a sales assistant. I did great at that, but my first real pain full-time job, you know, I was starting at UC and I was grateful for that again super smart people, and I think my work there is what got me to thinking that I need to, I need to be smarter. I need to go learn. And that’s why I went back to do my MBA, and then, you know, so just and I was so grateful to be at JJ at the time who supported me to, to not only continue working but then also, you know, you know, go finish my college, my master’s.

So why’d you leave your first job?

I left it. It was interesting because I ended up over there because I got asked to say, well, you do great sales with technology and all of that, why don’t you come and work on the other side, which was the procurement side? And I thought, that’s interesting to me. No quotas. I can go and do the same thing. It’s just, I don’t have to worry about my quotas going up and then my comp going down, right, or it’s being consistent. So I did that, but one of the things that I realized, having dealt with a lot of different customers, that you know, to enterprise customers, you know, at the time, is that what I did was fully transferable across industries, right? So for me, it was it was something that was in my mind, and when I got the opportunity, it was in a completely different industry, and I said, oh, this is interesting, right? So I ended up actually going to go work for J&J, and also, there was another personal reason. My daughter was born at the time. She was so when I was at UC, she was born, and she was a preemie. She was one pound, eleven ounces, when she was born. And as a result, I got to know just the doctors and nurses and everything, you know, that the hospitals and everybody does. I really wanted to go and work for a company that was, you know, helping to improve lives of the patients and the doctors and the nurses, and there’s no better company than J&J. So at that time, I said, all right, I’m gonna. Those is a personal reason why I left. I still have great friends at UC. We still talk, and you know, I think in under different circumstances, perhaps I may not have left, so

So what did you do at J&J?

So I was brought in to help manage a servant of management studying vendor management function over there. And really just to help at that time, nobody was really outsourcing fully, if you will. There was no sort of me in a services model. So it was really to, like, hey, we’re gonna go do this. We’re gonna go do some work. Come and help us. And I thought it was an interesting opportunity because I did understand the space. I think the other piece of it was just, coming being of Indian descent, right? I certainly understood the language. A lot of the initial phase of outsourcing was happening in India, so it made a lot of sense. And so sort of, you know, one thing led to another, and there I was.

What is the most? Let’s actually, before I get into some IT-specific sourcing and tech-specific questions, walk me through your career journey. So you were, you left the UC, you went to J&J. What next? You know, then I ended up, I had an opportunity. J&J was a phenomenal company, and it was, again, when I thought, hey, I’ll retire from it, and then I got an opportunity at GE, where I had an opportunity to learn more stuff. So, for example, like purchase order process and things like that, which is fairly well defined at J&J. And I realized that this is my opportunity to kind of learn and implement something. And so, for me, it ended up being what I learned and realized is I’m actually more valuable, having more knowledge across multiple components in the industry than just one company. And so, for me, it was really just that journey and just said, let’s, I want to learn. So if this will be a new thing, I’ll learn and a new thing I can execute on. And so, there was so. And it’s been, and if you look at my career, that’s exactly what I’ve done, right? I will go into organizations. I typically do get brought in to because there’s something more difficult that they’ve done or they’ve attempted and they just haven’t been able to somehow. And so, they needed sort of another perspective, another fresh eye, sort of set of eyes if you will. And you know, my approach has always been being very creative and thinking outside the box. I’m not your typical procurement person, right? And so, it’s been, it’s been great because, you know, I’ve been able to see things that others may not have been able to see, even though it was right in the noses, right? So, bring that perspective, help execute, and help companies transform difficult areas. So, walk me through you transitioned as you progress your career to several different brands in many industries. Walk me through how you got to where you are today.

Yeah, it’s… To be honest, it was exactly the transformational nature and thinking out of the box. That’s what right procurement is facing. It’s a little bit of an archaic function or deemed to be okay for many many organizations. Right, it’s like in the back office. And I think that there just hasn’t been great attention paid to how much this function can do, what value can drive, and each company is in a different place, right? And so, it really has been that for me. It’s been that notion to say, how can I, how can I show you value about what we do? Whether it’s in procurement, sourcing side, vendor management side, right? There’s such a value that that function in the holistic way, even portion way, brings that many companies just aren’t aware, right? So, for me, it became, and I think at that point I was aware, the beginning of my career, that this the work I do is very transferable across the multiple industries, and that’s kind of how it went. I got from one another opportunity to another, and again, I kind of said when I go into organizations, if I can do what you ask me to do, if I get it done right, and I can show you the value, I can show you I could show the transformation really fast, you know, what else is there for me, right? If you don’t, you know, and it just so happens, right, not every company is doing transformation all the time across the board, right? So it is something different, but then other opportunities pop up where the companies are, you know, they’re like, hey, we want to do this. So that’s been my journey, and it’s been great, right? I get to learn every single time, right, even though I know a bunch of stuff, there’s new stuff I work every single time, and I just enjoy and appreciate that.

What’s the most difficult part of being in IT sourcing in 2022?

I think in IT sourcing, to be honest, it’s the subject matter knowledge and expertise, right? They, I would say, technology is everywhere, look around us, right? It’s going to continue to get integrated, it’s going to continue to be more prevalent, and when you think about it, the toughest thing is that you just, again, there’s not that many people in this area because it’s so complicated, because it’s so complex. People fear it, and they don’t want to be there, you know? So I think for that reason, right, getting great talent is always challenging for IT sourcing. The other piece of it, just in 2022, when I think about it, when you look at the cycle of how technology is going to continue to be integrated and is already integrated, how much of an importance it plays, you know, just, I think trying to trying to keep up with it, to be honest, right? Because it changes so rapidly and that means you’ve got to be on your feet, you’ve got to be learning. What you can’t say is, I did this for the last 20 years and of course I know, I’m an expert, even if you’re a tech sourcing expert, right? It doesn’t work, you’ve got to do that. So constantly learning isn’t is probably incredibly hard. And that means, like for me, myself included, I look at it this, I don’t expect just my team to know, I, you know, as a leader, I need to know, right? I can’t just say, hey, go do that, and I have no idea what I’m doing, right? And so, for me, it’s, it is one of those things, like I do take my classes at nighttime, right, when I want to learn something. I’m constantly looking at webinars on my weekend. I spend my personal time so that I’m well educated so that I can be the most effective leader, right? Whether I’m doing a deal transaction because it’s large enough and high visibility, or I’m helping coach the team to kind of get there.

How should supply chain professionals better leverage technology at their companies?

You know, so it’s sort of, I would say, going back to, again, this area has been very, very heavily underinvested, right? For longest time, I think that technology professionals, two things that they need to continue, sorry, so supply chain professionals, two things they need to do. One is they need to advocate that we need proper tooling, right? Tools and systems matter because it’s not that we don’t win, that we’re not great at doing what we do, but how are we going to replicate ourselves, right? One of the challenges, the biggest challenges for our function is when you do a great job, you get stuck in that job for 10 years, and like, how boring is that, right? The only way we can evolve further is if we can gain agility and velocity to what we do, and that means we have to embrace technology. So I think that’s the number one thing, right? Number two is really, really kind of advocate for it, like don’t shy away from it, right? It’s show and demonstrate that technology, this is how it’s going to help, this is how it’s going to continue to bring that agility, velocity. And I think we don’t just, again, because the functions have been so heavily underinvested over time, we don’t focus on training, we don’t you know, we hearten to carve out budgets that we don’t have the budget, let’s just take out training for procurement teams or how are we elevating our team, right? So when you think about all of that gamut, at the end of the day, technology, like you can only go after all these other things we really want to do if we have technology at play. We’re doing things manually in our process cycle, okay, everybody’s just, you know, getting sucked into that, right? So I’d say be an advocate of technology, embrace it, don’t be afraid of it, and be on the front forefront to say, sign up and say hey, I’m willing to, I’m willing to go down the journey to, you know, to get tech enabled. I think that’s going to be super important.

So one of the things that I know that you’re personally really passionate about is AI. How do you define AI? What does that mean to you? Yeah.

Yeah. It’s a term kind of around different ways, and people have a different understanding of it, right? Uh, I’ll tell you, for me, having worked for a startup company that focused on AI and improving our process using, yeah, I actually learned a lot. So for me, AI is really it’s an artificial intelligence, but a lot of people are doing right, machine learning right now, but it’s a starting point, right? It’s a baby step. So to me, I look at what AI should be able to do is to give us insight. It should be able to give us insights that we do not see or that we can see, but it would take us a whole lot of data crunching, not crunching information, right? Give us better insights, and those insights cannot be you know, they can’t be just static inside. They need to be constantly evolving, right? So AI, true AI in its form, should be learning, right? It’s learning from the different training scenarios, learning from the different data sets that it’s ingesting, and it’s giving us better insight. The better the insides, the better you get, right? Yeah, I guess so. I think there’s a lot of different flavor of AI today, and again, not a none of that thing actually, it’s a good thing because you know that area does need investment, right? We need to continue embracing that, and so, but depending on product or process, there are two different stages of journey. At the end of the day, I look at AI, it should be able to help us take away all of our mundane tasks, which it can, we just need to make sure that we have properly trained data and insights, you know, relevancy for the insights and the context is there, so it can give us that better insight.

What are the benefits of AI? You know, take away all these mundane mundane tasks that it’s just like I think it is, it was, it’s mind-boggling, right? It’s mind-boggling to me how much time we spend on mundane small stuff that can be easily done by AI. I think that’s one, the other thing is, it gives us insights that we didn’t think about. It allows us to actually ask different set of questions that we didn’t think about, right? It also helps to expose some of our own biases, quite frankly, right? I learned that when I went to the AI company, and I didn’t realize that, and that I had a bias, you know, on some things. But, but again, if you’ve done it for a long time, you do think that you know it all, but you realize that, no, you really don’t know it all, right? So, so I do think that AI, first and foremost, capabilities can take mundane things away, the research, the basic insights, and help us help us make decisions faster because the insights are available.

How have you personally used AI in business? So I did work for a neon company, so you know I got it, you know, got a very good understanding of that and how it’s working in our own function, right? It’s kind of, you know, from a business perspective, AI is all in all areas, right? Yeah, I stay huge, right? From a sales perspective, data analytics perspective, right? Marketing is using autonomy at HR’s using kind of AI right now. What we could argue, whether it’s all good AI about it, you know, is the data training data correct, you know, is there a lot of bias, how do we sort of correct all that, right? So each function is using that. In IT, right? AI is being used to, you know, do management of help test tickets that come, right? Like instead of doing manual analysis or all of that, it’s able to do some drives and inside. So lots of great use cases have been out there. I would say, before COVID, in fact, we used to have these conversations before COVID that, you know, people thought AI’s probably 10-year journey before it’s really an enterprise world and it’s really in business environment context that not all the lab or POCs and as a result of COVID, just companies have just really gone after it. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, what size you are. Companies are looking at AI in every function where it’s deemed possible, right?

So change management is really hard, using new software and technology is scary. What are the biggest risks right now for companies rolling out or considering AI? You know, I think the biggest one is not having the business, the knowledge, the people, the knowledge workers. You know, the ex subject matter experts not being having them involved in the journey, right? AI is not just a bunch of AI engineers, you know, connecting, you know, writing code and then, you know, hey, here’s, here’s a fancy thing that both, no. It needs business context and business knowledge, right?

It can throw out data but if you, as a business owner, a business person, if it doesn’t understand the context, it’s going to throw junk data, right? So it’s really for change management.

In order to have effective solutions, anybody doing AI or considering you has got to have the business involved, right? The business or subject matter experts, I would say, right?

If you think about it, right? If just, if you don’t involve them, one, the teams are not going to embrace any of it. Second, your AI is probably learning stuff that maybe it really doesn’t even need to work, right? It’s not asking questions which, again, different questions, but they really have. It doesn’t really give the business context to how to solve the business’s problem, right? So I think that’s one of the biggest things. The second one I find is it’s really training and awareness. So what AI is to your point, what is the AI to you? AI to me may be different to me than to you, than to somebody else, and so I think really just focusing on there’s a personal responsibility and an organizational responsibility.

Organizational responsibility, responsibility might be then, here we’re going to deploy AI, so how do we make sure that we have our people involved in it? And then how do we train the people on the tool adequately and help them understand all of that and how it will change their jobs? If you will, and that takes away their job but rather changes, right? The mundane stuff they do. So I think that’s an organizational responsibility when you’re deploying solutions, but a personal and individual responsibility is to go learn about it, right? So right the first time you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t be hearing about it is when your organization has decided to go ahead and implement it or introduce AI in your area, right? So that’s a personal learning responsibility, and I think those are probably areas of focus for a change manager or better change management. Perfect, but you know, it’s a good starting point.

What’s the biggest impact that AI is going to have in transforming procurement? It’s going to take, so we, we have never, as a procurement function, I don’t care what company you’re in, right? We’ve never had enough manpower to do the job we need, right? The things that we’re being asked upon, we just, we’ve just never had it nor will we ever, right? So I think that’s one issue. The in the tooling because there’s been such a heavy underinvestment in training and in tooling and people and processes that we just, we can’t effectively get everywhere. So I think the biggest thing AI can do is take away all the mundane tasks and mundane things that the teams have to do today, using AI, right? So they can actually be focused on doing high-value stuff. So it’s really that taking away the low-value stuff that everybody hates anyway, right? Nobody wants to go do this, that in the other country, you know, just they just don’t, right? And so it’ll just take away all those mundane tasks so our people who really are good at the higher value strategic work they can focus on, and that’s what excites me right in procurement. There are so many places, right? You think about the entire life cycle of procurement. You can manage RFPs, you know, selection processes, running RFPs. You’re going to be eyeing the AP side of the house, right? So there’s so many, like even, you know, I’m starting to see AI being applied in some potential category management area, which is traditionally deemed to be difficult to do. And it’s, it’s not. It’s difficult, right? So just again, the solutions are continuing to evolve, and I’m excited to have it be integrated across all aspects of what we do, right? Because that’s just going to free up our people to do great, you know, strategic and high-value work.

So you made a pretty big change in your career. You went from working for some very large companies to joining a startup. Why the change? I actually did, to learn, to be honest. When I got the opportunity, one of the things I thought about, I said, you know, I, how will I know and learn about AI except for me in it? So I saw it as a learning opportunity. I realized that the organization I was with at the time, I mean, they weren’t really open to moving into the cloud, so they were probably 10 plus years away, maybe perhaps 15 away from even being able to look at AI and, and again, as a tech sourcing aider, I’m always constantly looking at what’s happening in technology, right? I need to be able to know what’s happening so I can support my stakeholders, right, and be better equipped for that. And so, yeah, it was opportunistic, and I really just wanted to learn, and I thought it was a great way to, for me to get integrated. So it’s all about learning, right? Oh, yeah, it was great.

So you’re no longer in startup land. You’re back in what I would consider to be, you know, corporate America, big company, yeah. Why did you decide to leave a startup, and then how did you transition from there to becoming a chief procurement officer? See, you know, I’ll see it’s a couple of thoughts, right? One is my perspective was always about learning. I wanted to learn about AI. The other thing I also wanted to learn about, you know, just startups tend to operate differently, right? They’re very entrepreneurial nature, how they think about things is very different. And one of the things I had realized was working in large organizations for so long that I had forgotten how to be entrepreneurial and how to think. I was worried that I’m going to forget how to think out of the box, to be honest, right? And so that was kind of my way to do that. But I always knew I’d go back into the enterprises, right? I never went into the startup world thinking that I’m going to stay in the startup world. I always knew I’d come back to it because it kind of goes back to when you learn, you want to apply, right? You want to be able to apply the principles and things you learn. So it’s really and again where I can make the most amount of change was in large enterprises, right? And so, yeah, that’s good. Otherwise, right?
“Learning, it’s kind of like you learn how to ride a bike but then you never ride it, and what’s the point, right? I don’t want to check the box, right? What advice do you have for people that want to progress their career, potentially whether that’s, you know, director, VP, or even CPO? It’s something that you’ve done pretty successfully and pretty quickly, but it’s not very easy to do. You know, I would say, first and foremost, be, learn, right? Be open to learning. I think the minute that we say that I’ve been doing, you know, I’ve done this for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and that’s what makes me an expert and therefore I want, I can’t want to rise up, it doesn’t work, right? You’ve got it, especially in procurement and our sourcing in our functions, right? People are looking for leaders that actually know what they’re doing because we’ve been underinvested, we’ve had a lot of leadership that really don’t know or function, therefore they haven’t been advocates, right? So you want to be able to make sure that you understand things, right? You know, gone are the days where it’s just about people management. It’s not just about people management, you actually need to have expertise and knowledge because if you have that, you’re able to elevate your function, you’re able to, you know, have a seat at the table, etcetera, right? You’re not turning around and asking, you know, somebody, you know, junior to you and say, hey, tell me that so I could do that, it doesn’t really work, right? So one, be open to learning. I’ll constantly be learning. If you, the day you stop learning, it’s probably the day we shouldn’t be working. It’s my perspective, right? So I think that’s one. The other piece of it is, you know, be bold and be willing to take risks. Our function, because I think kind of because it hasn’t had the elevation, there’s not too many people who are going to, you know, they’re willing to see what they really think. I mean, they are willing to allow things to happen even though they know it’s not the right thing for the enterprise, for the organization. So be boldly willing to say, make sure you have a voice, right? Having a voice is something I think, and I’ve seen it and I experienced in my, my career at times too, where you’re not allowed a voice, right? So make sure you know you have a voice, you have expertise you bring to the table, make sure that that expertise is understood and also appreciated, and you know, be your own advocate, right? And that’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned, and while I have been just so grateful for them, I realize, you know, I am my best salesperson. And so right, as an individual, you have to, if you don’t believe in yourself and you don’t believe in your own capabilities, and you can’t just, you’ve got to talk the talk, you’ve got to be able to execute, you can’t just talk about it and not be able to execute, right? But you can do that. You know, just go for it. Like don’t, don’t limit yourself. Bring your knowledge and expertise. Show the company, show the organization, say, look, if you do it this way, you can actually transform, you can bring a ton of value that and it just makes people think differently. You mentioned leadership. Tell me about your worst boss. Oh my gosh. I would say my worst boss had the element of, so there was a, you know, procurement. I think Gardner came out with a study a few months ago. I believe Morris’s procurement is not diverse, and that’s actually true, right? So I think my worst boss, from my personal perspective, would be the one that was very biased, right? So I’ve had a biased boss, and it was just something I never wanted to ever deal with again, but professionally I would say my version of the worst boss was the one who didn’t know my function, didn’t know what we were doing and why we were doing it, and just couldn’t support, wouldn’t support, didn’t have enough time and didn’t have the energy nor the desire to elevate the function, right? So I would say that that’s been a, you know, so therefore there’s no fight for you, there’s no fight for your team, there’s no fight for things you need, and I would constitute that to be the worst boss. Tell me about your best boss. My best boss was the one that actually let me run things on my own, and you know, when I needed help, I was able to go to them and say, I need help, I’m getting stuck in this thing, I don’t know what to do, and they were truly there to support me. He, you know, he was just, he’s, you know, he’s a great mentor even today, like every, you know, just again, somebody I value their opinion, and they always give me great advice, and they always give me, you know, good perspective, and they also were the ones that told me, don’t let any kind of, similar to my parents, like, don’t, don’t let people tell you what you can and cannot do, right? And that I think was the best thing. You know, a lot of people would say, well, why didn’t you just stay in that one company? I was just, I’m such a big company, why would you ever leave? And, and I think that that disconnect of people thinking that you have to earn your entire life in one company, I’d like to, but those days are gone, right? But I actually, I don’t know that I could have done a great job at that, to be honest, right? I would have been born miserable, right? I just like to learn, and I like to do newer things, and I want to make sure that I’m adding value. So I never, so I appreciated my best boss, you know, recognized that and also encouraged me and told me that, no, don’t follow everybody else, you know, carve your own path, and I’m grateful for that. What makes you a good boss? Oh, you know, I think I’m a good boss when I, when I don’t have to micromanage. I hate micromanagement, and I mean, I have to get into that, I kind of say, ah. So I think, I think what makes me a great boss is I do, I understand the pains because I grew up in the function. I understand the plight of fatigue that my teams have, so I’m very, I’m very supportive. I see when things are happening, things where they need help. I do see that, and I also like to let people run with stuff. I really do because like, because I grew up, right? And I flourish because of that. So I’m a big believer in that, no. It’s, you know, some people, they need structure, they need, tell me 20 things exactly, and I’m going to go check the box, and there’s a place for that. And then there’s people, you know, but I also recognize it that you still have part of it because they do that because they’ve perhaps not been allowed over their career, right? They always have to check in, and they always have to do things. So I, I don’t let the teams run, and you know, if you run into trouble, come into this office and let’s figure it out, and this helps solve the problem. But, but I think that’s kind of the value in the differentiation I bring to the table. I have the knowledge, so I can help support when they walk me through a problem. I understand it very well, and I’m able to quickly translate to potential solutions, right? Then an informed uninformed boss, we just wouldn’t be able to.
So, you’re a very busy woman. You’ve got a full career, a family, and a pretty impressive hobby list. What tips do you have for procurement professionals struggling with time management?

Like I will say, occasionally I do get where I don’t know how to do it but I will say, to be honest, first of all, be realistic with your goals and your aspirations, and allocate adequate time to it, right? There are times when I really want to do a lot of things, and then I realize, okay, I have to say no. So, learn to say no, it’s not a bad thing, right? Also, learn to say, ‘I need help,’ is also not a bad thing. I’ve had, I have to do that a few times over my career. And I think time management, to me, it’s really just, you know, if you love what you’re doing, you’re gonna find time, right? That’s what I’ve found about myself. But it’s the stuff that I don’t like, that’s where I don’t want to spend the time, right? So, if I find myself that I’m spending 70% of my time doing stuff I don’t like, I find an active way to shift it. I used to say, I, you know, because I want to, you know, I want to do what I do and then, and the effective way to do it is knowing where you need to be, knowing when you need to be, and don’t just show up to meetings just because people invite you, you know? Just be very intentional about how you spend your time, and make sure it’s focused on things that actually help you get to where you need to get to, or your organization, or your goals and objectives, right? We spend too much time going from meeting to meeting without really even knowing whether we need to be there, right? And I think that’s, we have to self-reflect to self-time manage, self-reflect and say, ‘Do I need to be there? Can I delegate it to someone else on the team who can do a better job at this than me?’ Right? What value am I adding? And I think, I think if we start asking ourselves that, we can get a lot of our time back.

Most important career lesson you’ve learned?

Oh my goodness, most important career lesson. Oh, that’s a tough one. You know, I, so I go back to strategic thinking, right? I think the most important career lesson for me has been knowing how to be strategic and where, you know, where your opportunities are. And I don’t mean an opportunity for you personally, but in the role that you’re in, right? In the organization that you’re in. Being able to, being strategic, I think, allows us to think differently and really focus on honing what we want to do. Yeah, that’s the biggest thing. I tell people that if we’re not strategic, we’re transactional, and I don’t want to be a transactional person, and I don’t want any of, you know, my high-skilled people to be transactional, right? I know it’s part of the job, don’t get me wrong. There are times I’ve got to do things I’m going, ‘Really, I’m doing this?’ But that’s okay, right? So, I’m okay with that. But knowing that my path is on a strategic, that I do spend adequate time on it, right? And that means I’ve got to do it, you know, at nine o’clock at night. I’ll do it because I love it, and that demonstrates me to be different than a transactional person, right? So, I think, I think that would be my guidance, yeah.

What’s the biggest impact you’ve made in your career?

Biggest impact, you know, I would say, I would say being able to show the value in our function. Partly because of the, the transformation work I’ve done. I’ve gone into organizations, not all of them, you know, but I have gone into organizations where there really was this notion that our function has no value, it’s just to check the box and, you know, what do we do with this? I’ve gone in and just said, ‘Let me show you, let me show you the transformation this function can do,’ and that’s what I’m most proud of. Right, for me it’s not about, right, yeah, have I done, you know, massive deals and saved a ton of money? Of course, right, that’s part of our job, that’s what we do, right? That’s what we’re expected to do. But I go in more with, ‘I want to show that our function has value,’ let the eyes be opened up so that people can see it differently and they can help support it and elevate it and give it the attention and the investments that it needs, and the support that people need in order to get there, right? So they can be their best selves. But yeah, so a lot of discussions that I’ve heard from leaders in our industry this year, talking about, you know, talent and skills. What do you think are the most important skills for somebody to have to be really solid and strong in IT sourcing? And I’m talking about skills today, not skills five years ago, three years ago, right now, in July 2022.

Yeah, so if you want to be in IT sourcing, you’ve got to know AI, you’ve got to know machine learning, you’ve got to know the differentiation between, you’ve got to know the cloud, you’ve got to know the new business models. You’ve got to understand all of that, right? You do have to, you know, I kind of call it, you have to know enough knowledge to be able to have conversation, and, you know, really be a subject matter expert. Because even tech people I teach, well, they’re really, really good at what they do. Right, they’re just, they’re just amazing at what they do and what they want. They want to know is, when you talk to them, they want to know that you can help them, right? So how do you help them? If you go in with a deer caught in the headlights look, it’s never going to work, right? They’re not going to trust you, and you know, you’re not going to be able to get anything done, right? So it’s really just about having enough knowledge, knowing the right questions to ask. On the tech side of the house, right, the other side of the house is, bring your market expertise, right? When you start talking, here’s where the benchmarks are, here’s where the information is, right? They start to listen, they know that you understand, they know that you are thinking differently, and you understand their pain, and they’re going to go more in with you, right? And they’re going to partner with you and say, ‘Let’s go do this.’ And I think that’s true not just for IT. I think that portion of it’s true for any category.

So, you’re a very busy woman. You’ve got a full career, a family, and a pretty impressive hobby list. What tips do you have for procurement professionals struggling with time management?

Most important career lesson you’ve learned?

What’s the biggest impact you’ve made in your career?

Favorite play you’ve written?

Oh, I think, you know, so, so for me, it’s, oh, that’s interesting. Oh, it depends on who you ask. For me personally, my own, I don’t know that I would say, like, I would say all of my work probably needs to continue to be about evolution and improvement. I will tell you that, you know, my very different mind, he’s my producer, and he still is. He reminds me every other day, ‘You are wasting your life away in corporate America. You need to go back to the creative side.’ And, you know, I will say, I think, so I’m going to tell you his favorite. It’s a story around, you know, it’s like a sort of semi-horror, but not really. It was kind of a suspense kind of a story. And, in fact, he pinged me a couple of days ago and said, ‘We need to go do that. Let’s go make this a new movie.’ So, I don’t know. I think I’ve written in different genres. I’ve written in sort of a horror-slash-sci-fi kind of a genre. I have a drama, a comedy, right? So, I can write in different genres. And, you know, so I kind of enjoyed. I do it for my enjoyment. My, oh, my daughter’s the other one that reminds me. So, that’s also her favorite story, is a family drama. So, she reminds me I should go do that.

So, your daughter also has a very unique hobby. Would you mind sharing a little bit about that?

She is. So, she just turned 15, and she wants to learn how to fly planes. And we had, part of this comes from, she’s, we’ve traveled a lot as a family, ever since she was a little. She’s just constantly on the plane, and she enjoys it. And when she was nine, we were able to take her. There was a, there was a gentleman, you know, who was basically giving flying lessons to girls, because he was passionate about helping girls get involved in aviation. And so, that was his way of saying, ‘Let me expose you to something and see if you like it.’ And she really liked it. So, she wanted to do it, but she was too young to really kind of start anything. And so, now that she’s 15, she is looking forward to, you know, getting her, getting her license. One day she can’t get it yet, but she’s got her lessons. And, you know, she’s learning how to fly in glider planes and eventually show us the power planes. So, she’s learning both. So, I told her, go, go have fun with it, you know, don’t, if it doesn’t turn into a career, that’s okay. Just go have fun with it. And as long as you love what you do, you never know what it turns into, right?

We’re at that time where I do a spitfire round. I’m going to ask you a few questions, and you’re going to respond with an answer, the word or phrase that first comes to mind.

Accomplishment you are most proud of? I think helping evolve our function, like just that across the board. That’s my, I’m really proud of that.

Quality you admire most in yourself? Constantly learning. It’s a lot of effort, but I find a way.

What’s your dream? My dream is really to continue to elevate our function and our people, just across the board, doing everything I can to get it there.

Biggest pet peeve? Biggest pet peeve, not paying attention to details. Sometimes that happens, yeah, like, no, I think you’ve got to be detailed so that you understand, yeah.

Favorite thing to do in your downtime? Watch movies.

Favorite movie of all time? Favorite movie of all time, I will say, it’s my favorite movie, is an Indian movie. It’s a movie called “Hero.” And it’s still one of my favorite movies of all time.

Favorite binge of 2022? See a lot of ice cream, you know, like, natural ice cream.

What about TV shows? Favorite show you’re binging? Oh my goodness, that is 90 Day Fiancé, every day, all day. My guilty pleasure.

Well, Purvee, I want to thank you very much for coming on our show. For those who would like to further connect with you, what’s the best way for people to reach out?

Absolutely, connect with me on LinkedIn. And, you know, I’m happy to help answer questions and just, you know, you know, we’re in it together, so there’s anything I can ever do to help, then don’t hesitate to reach out.

Join me August 17th at 2 pm Eastern Time for our next show as I dive into another interview and help somebody in our industry tell their personal story.