Stop Begging for a "Seat at the Table" (This Fortune 500 CPO Says It's Fake)

Welcome back to the Proc n Roll blog! In Episode 56, Zachary and Conrad sit down with procurement legend John Dickson. With 40 years of experience leading global teams at powerhouses like GSK, Diageo, Rolls-Royce, British Petroleum, and AstraZeneca, John has seen it all. He led procurement through the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, and he firmly believes we are currently standing at a massive inflection point.  

Today, the function is facing a "perfect storm"—a rapid convergence of cost pressures, risk, resilience demands, sustainability goals, and the explosive disruption of AI. If we rely on the same tactics that got us through the last three decades, we simply won't survive the next one.  

Here are the hard-hitting takeaways from John's masterclass on modern procurement leadership.

The Myth of the "Seat at the Table"

If there is one phrase John wishes the industry would permanently retire, it's asking for a "seat at the table".  

According to John, this imaginary table doesn't exist; in business, you simply get what you deserve based on the credibility you deliver. He shared a sobering reality check from a conversation with a CFO on a flight. When asked why procurement rarely sits at the executive board level, the CFO replied:  

"When procurement come to talk about procurement, they're very good at talking about procurement. But the holistic business awareness and insight is something that procurement don't necessarily have the breadth or the depth to contribute to and add value to."   

To earn true credibility, procurement must stop looking inward and focus deeply on understanding what the business actually needs to be successful.  

Re-Evaluating Value and the Hierarchy of Needs

Procurement teams frequently clash with finance leaders over what constitutes a "real" cost saving. John’s advice for avoiding this annual tug-of-war? Keep it simple. Define the baselines and the rules of the game with finance right from the start.

Category Strategy: Your Ultimate Business Integration Tool

You cannot write a category strategy in a silo. John views the category strategy as the single best vehicle for a procurement professional to intimately learn their organization.  

• Speak Their Language: When John led R&D procurement at SmithKline Beecham, he hired chemists to buy test tubes. Mixing procurement pros with scientific experts built massive credibility and allowed them to tackle complex clinical studies successfully.  
• Keep it Concise: Borrowing from Amazon's philosophy, John pushed his teams to summarize complex strategies into 2-to-4-page documents. If you can't articulate it concisely, it's probably not the right strategy.  
• Live Reviews: Have the category manager present these strategies live to the procurement leadership team (PLT) to ensure the right questions are asked and proper guidance is given.  

The AI Tech Leapfrog and Discretionary Learning

Finally, John addresses the elephant in the room: AI and the saturated landscape of procurement technology.  

With CFOs holding the purse strings tight, a failed digital investment will send you to the back of the funding line. John’s core rules for navigating this tech landscape:  

• Know what you are solving for: If you don't know the problem, you don't know what you're buying.  
• Leapfrog, don't step: Move past incremental improvements and use this moment to entirely rethink your procurement operating model.  
• Do not abdicate understanding: Leaders must engage in "discretionary learning" outside of their normal day jobs to truly grasp AI. You cannot successfully pitch a platform to your CFO if you only understand the headlines.

Transcript: Proc-N-Roll | Stop Begging for a "Seat at the Table" (This Fortune 500 CPO Says It's Fake)

Zachary: John, you have a 40-year career leading procurement across large global teams like GSK, Diageo, and AstraZeneca. You've lived through the financial crisis and COVID, and now you've called this AI era an inflection point. Is this moment different?   

John: I see where we are today very much as a perfect storm. We have cost, risk, and sustainability converging at the same time. If we continue to do the things that we've done over the last 30 or 40 years, I'm not sure that's going to take us forward. AI is bringing opportunity for the procurement function if managed in an appropriate way.  

Zachary: People talk a lot about procurement getting a "seat at the table." How do you see procurement evolving to make the most of these opportunities?   

John: I never use that phrase, because in business you get what you deserve and you have credibility for delivering for the business. A CFO once told me that procurement doesn't sit at the executive board level because we only talk about procurement and lack holistic business awareness and insight. The raison d'etre for procurement has always been cost savings, but in an age where risk and resilience are more to the fore, the best deal in the world is immaterial if you can't get the product.  

Conrad: Have we pigeonholed ourselves by always talking about procurement stuff, and how do we measure value without just falling back on cost savings?   

John: You have to establish the rules of the game with finance early. If you define baselines simply, you avoid the resource intensity that goes into arguing what's real and what's not. I view procurement through Maslow's hierarchy of needs: assurance of supply, quality, and service are the three tiers at the bottom. Cost and innovation are differentiators at the top. It's ironic that we position ourselves with that hierarchy, yet we are measured on cost, which isn't at the base.  

Zachary: How do you build those relationships across the business to move from transactional to strategic?   

John: When I was head of R&D procurement at SmithKline Beecham, I employed chemists in my team because it was easier to turn a chemist into a procurement professional than vice versa. We offered a blended solution of capability to the business. Today, the category strategy is the best vehicle to learn the organization, because you can't write one in isolation. Following the Amazon theory, we had people bring a 2- or 4-page synopsis of their strategy to the leadership team. If you can articulate it in a 2 or 4 pager, you can avoid repetitive questions.  

Zachary: What is your view on AI's impact on procurement, especially with this new suite of vendors?   

John: The landscape of technology for procurement is saturated. If you don't know what you're solving for, you don't know what you're buying. CFOs hold the purse strings, and if you fail, you'll be at the back of a very long queue for digital investment. We tend to take an incremental approach, whereas right now there's a great opportunity to actually leapfrog forward. Source-to-pay is highly manual, and technology will concertina that process and remove that resource burden. We shouldn't fight that because that's progress.  

Conrad: How can leaders understand these AI agents when change is happening so quickly?   

John: It requires discretionary learning—going outside the boundaries of your normal day job to learn. You cannot abdicate understanding of technology to those below you. You have to convince somebody that you believe in it, and it's very hard to believe in something if you just read the headlines. You must be the ambassador for that project.  

Conrad: If you could go in a time machine to a pivotal point in your 40 years, what would it be?   

John: My first opportunity to be a CPO at Diageo in 2006. It was an opportunity to bring together splintered procurement teams across finance, marketing, and manufacturing. I sat in the CPO seat, molded the organization, built an identity, and proved to myself that I could actually do this.  

Conrad: Thank you. It really is a privilege to get to know you a little bit.   

Zachary: Thank you so much.

This transcript has been edited for clarity while maintaining all substantive content