What makes a chief procurement officer an effective procurement leader? A new study of practitioners identifies a set of behaviours that distinguishes the best, write Gerard Chick and Michael Lewis.

What – if anything – differentiates leadership in procurement from other forms of business or, for that matter, social or political leadership?

Our attempts to answer this question are based on work to identify the particular attributes or ‘habits’ that mark out today’s most effective procurement leaders. We’re not talking about finance or operations or marketing leaders but specifically procurement leaders. Those individuals responsible for what can go under a range of names – buying, purchasing, supply management, procurement, acquisition and so on; the activities that connect an organisation to the rest of its value system.

In an article in 2007, we reported that many organisations lacked clarity on the strategic contribution they sought from their procurement teams and many senior purchasing and supply professionals neither saw themselves in, nor aspired to, a strategic leadership role.

Well, the world has changed a lot since 2007. A more recent CIPS Leaders’ Network (CLN) study explored how senior purchasing and supply professionals were dealing with the rapidly changing economic context for their work. This context has, for many, fundamentally changed the strategic expectations of procurement and correspondingly introduced a range of undeniably strategic leadership challenges. MORE>>

Read the full report: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective CPOs [PDF]