As a supply chain professional managing key relationships, you face a challenging landscape of complexity and increasing demands. Whether you’re in procurement, logistics, or supply chain management, you have to navigate the delicate balance between cost, performance, and alignment with what really matters to your organization.
Supplier relationships are increasingly strained and unstable, disrupted by unexpected events, communication issues, and unclear expectations.
Problems you thought were solved reappear in a different form.
Frustrating to say the least!
Short-term pressures dominate, leaving little room for long-term, strategic collaboration.
These are common symptoms of the underlying complexity, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
If you’d like to explore the other symptoms of complexity (and conventional approaches to complexity) to better understand root causes or to build a business case for change – try our Symptoms of What’s Not Working Diagnostic.
C-UVA (not VUCA)
The good news is the challenges you’re facing are manifestations of an underlying pattern we’re all facing.
You probably heard of VUCA, but that’s not the right order.
It’s complexity that drives uncertainty, volatility, and ambiguity (C-UVA).
And although complexity brings its own challenges, much of the complexity we encounter today emerges from relying on outdated, conventional approaches that are increasingly ineffective.
Simplicity the other side of complexity
But there is a simple approach that works. One that engages, motivates and changes.
It’s a new paradigm, so it involves a new way of thinking about things that matter. New paradigms sometimes seem ‘obvious’ – you may even think ‘we’re already doing that’.
But, as brilliant as individuals may be, dealing with complexity, organisations are failing miserably – often tearing themselves apart struggling to maintain order.
Failure of conventional approaches
This is particularly true when it comes to the contractual relationships that drive supply chains.
Contracts themselves fail to address the full complexity of modern relationships. They excel at defining legal obligations but often miss the critical relational factors that drive success.
Contracts are often out of date, don’t cover things that matter from the outset (let alone things that emerge over time), and they limit the understanding of negotiation to mere bargaining, instead of embracing a broader vision of navigating relationships toward shared success. Contracts rarely account for the nuance of subjective value – what genuinely matters to each party – resulting in misalignment, missed opportunities, and strained partnerships that struggle to adapt to new challenges or achieve long-term resilience.
Unfortunately, much ‘corporate training’ (often heralded as the answer) tends to suffer similar complications, bringing additional problems and waste.
On the other extreme, casual (often ‘chance’) conversations are left to pick up the pieces but leave much to ‘go without saying’.
Meetings and workshops (typically reserved for when things have already gone wrong) can be wildly variable in their content and success. Strangely they can seem both ‘too much’ (a waste of time and resources) and ‘too little’ (unable to include all the right people, and typically catering only to those with the loudest voice or biggest grievance).
‘Things That Matter’ and Value
Value is inherently subjective – it’s not just a price tag or a number.
Value is a verb.
It’s the ongoing evaluation and negotiation of the “Things That Matter” to you, your team, and your partners.
You value things that matter.
Other people value things that matter to them.
Ultimately, we’re all working to help the end customer realise what they value.
‘Value’ is misunderstood.
So we use the phrase ‘things that matter’ as a proxy for ‘value’.
There’s lots of reasons why the words ‘things that matter’ engage and focus people.
Surfacing and evaluating the things that matter leads to a flow of expertise, experience, and proactive feedback, sparking actions, creative opportunities, and problem-solving ideas that contribute directly to value creation.
You can, and should, ask people ‘what are the things that matter?’. It’s likely to be extremely revealing, but simply asking about things that matter is not sufficient on its own.
Value Management – A New Productivity Paradigm
Recognizing that the real issues stem from the current information and contracting paradigm is the first step toward change.
A New Productivity Paradigm is needed – one that is complexity-aware, people-centred, and value-led.
This isn’t about throwing away what works but about augmenting approaches to focus relentlessly on the value that flows from attending to the “things that matter.”
The new paradigm is ‘Value Management’.
Value Management is a framework that helps individuals, teams, and organizations align around the things that matter to them.
It rides the wave of complexity.
It makes teams aligned, resilient and coherent.
Beyond Metrics to Meaning
Value Management shifts our focus beyond mere metrics to meaning.
Instead of centering attention solely on the contract and KPIs, it emphasizes the broader contractual relationship space – the space where real value is created or lost.
It focuses attention on what is required to achieve desired outcomes and deliver genuine results.
The Contract Relationship Diagnostic
This paradigm shift is practically implemented through our Contractual Relationship Diagnostic.
The Contractual Relationship Diagnostic incorporates and helps you evaluate the intangible things that matter – critical to any contract’s success.
If you’re curious to see how this could help transform your relationships?
Experience the Contractual Relationship Diagnostic yourself.
Implementing Value Management isn’t a one-off intervention – it’s a systematic, operational approach that is complexity-aware, people-centred, and value-led.
Value Codes are a key part of that.
Value Codes are similar to, but much smarter than, maturity matrices you may have seen. You can read more about the value of Value Codes, but there’s nothing quite like experiencing them for yourself. Try the Contractual Relationship Diagnostic now.
That’s Just Our Perception Though
Tapping in to insights from situations similar to yours and some (cross-industry) fundamental truths / patterns, it can seem like we ‘know it all’.
But ultimately, you, and particularly your front line teams, are the experts.
You intuitively sense and respond to the things that matter to you, your team and your customers.
To some extent, we simply know the right questions, how best to ask them, and how to use that to engage, embed and scale.
If a Contractual Relationship Diagnostic doesn’t seem quite right for you, or if you sense we can help in some other way, but aren’t quite sure how…
Or, if you want to undertake you’re own internal review, evaluation or change program, but aren’t quite sure where to start…
… get in touch and we’ll help you figure out where to start with no pressure to buy.
