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Soft Skills, Hard Skills
In talking about the professionalization of supply management and professional accreditation, I’m reminded by supply managers that professional study and training, while important, are really only the price of entry into the field. More important, I’m told again and again, is how quickly you pick up career skills in the day-to-day handling of crises, conflicts and complications. And just as important is how you deal with other people - a theme especially relevant in the purchasing profession according to at least one of the practitioners interviewed for this issue’s cover story.
Not that accreditation is anything to sneeze at, of course, especially in Canada, where the C.P.P./a.p.a. furnished by the PMAC is acknowledged to be tougher to win than its U.S. counterpart, the CPM. We’re well served when it comes to those professional letters.
What even the most staunch defenders of accreditation are the first to tell you, however, is that you have to prove yourself on the job regardless of what - or how many - letters come after your name. A good deal of what makes a top-notch supply management professional simply can’t be taught in a classroom or read in a book.
That’s why Jacob Stoller consulted a panel of several purchasing professionals to find out what kinds of ‘unteachable’ skills and knowledge they feel are most important to the success of a supply management career. See page 19 for what he found out.
Not surprisingly, the people side won out, big-time. The advice of our experienced panelists included recommendations to turn off your PC from time to time and go talk to real live people, to spend more time managing long-term relationships with suppliers and to rely more on interpersonal networks as a source of valuable information.
Above all, communication is the essence of the advice we got. Understanding your suppliers, understanding your customers inside the four walls, and networking with peers: it’s all about establishing good, enduring relationships,and the essence of a good relationship is communication.
Full Circle
It might seem like a bit of a jump to go from there to a discussion of the challenges facing Bob Dye as he struggles to bring a new governance model to the PMAC. After all, Dye takes a hard-headed view of the PMAC’s role in providing education and accreditation. For more on the challenges he faces, see the “Profile” story on page 30.
Dye adopts a supply-chain metaphor for the PMAC’s educating mission. He refers to accredited purchasing professionals as “product” and sees his role as setting the PMAC on-track to produce more of it, ‘engineered’ to a higher standard.
Dye believes that part of the perception problem supply management professionals face arises because the supply chain covers way more than can possibly be conveyed by the word “purchasing” that still looms so large in PMAC’s name and that of its accreditation. The gulf between the old-school “purchasing” discipline and the management of the modern supply chain imposes a duty on supply managers and their organization to do a better job of explaining who they are and what they do, he says.
In other words, it comes full circle to good communication. And the ‘soft’ skills win again.
Andrew Brooks
Editor
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