“You’re Only as Good as Your Last Failure” : Former Meta S2P Leader Talks Credibility

Stop Speaking “Procurement”: Lessons from the Former Head of Source-to-Pay at Meta

Why do stakeholders roll their eyes when you walk into the room? According to Ted Baumuller, former Global Leader of Source-to-Pay at Meta, it’s probably because you are talking about “savings” instead of “value.”

In this week’s episode of Proc & Roll, Ted joined hosts Zachary Bachir and Natasha Gurevich for a masterclass on stakeholder alignment, modern leadership, and the future of the procurement workforce.

Ted’s career path is anything but traditional. He started in supply chain but left because he hated the constant cycle of having “too many parts or not enough parts”. After a successful stint in IT infrastructure and running Cisco.com, he moved into procurement leadership with a unique superpower: he knew exactly how the business actually worked.

Here are four major takeaways from our “Jam Session” with Ted.

1. Stop Leading with “Savings.”

If you start a conversation with a stakeholder by talking about cost savings, you immediately position yourself as a “back office cost center”. To get a seat at the table, you have to translate your goals into their language.

Ted shared two perfect examples of how to flip the script:

• Engineering: Don’t talk about purchase order lead times. Talk about “Capacity”—guaranteeing that 30 resources will be ready in Bangalore on Monday morning so their development team can scale.
• Marketing: Don’t tell the CMO you want to consolidate suppliers to save money on shipping. Tell them you want to ensure “Brand Integrity” by reducing the number of vendors printing the wrong logo font.

2. The “Video Game” Career Path

One of the most fascinating parts of the conversation was Ted’s perspective on Gen Z talent. He notes that the next generation often views their career like a video game: they expect to master a task (“beat the level”) and immediately “level up” (get promoted).

Instead of fighting this or using the old “pay your dues” mentality, Ted suggests leaders need to adapt. Transparency is key—show them the levels, explain the criteria, and don’t just “push” them the way previous generations were pushed.

3. You Are Only as Good as Your Last Failure

At a high-speed company like Meta, credibility is currency. Ted’s rule for building trust is simple: Deliver exactly what you promised.

He shared a story about the AI/R&D team at Meta. They were frustrated with onboarding speeds, so Ted’s team set up weekly meetings to track progress. By hitting their deliverables consistently for four weeks, they earned the credibility to operate with autonomy. But he warns: “You’re only as good as your last failure.”

4. Let AI Do the “Crap Work.”

Is AI coming for procurement jobs? Yes and no. Ted argues that we should welcome automation because it eliminates the “crap work that nobody wants to do anyway” (the transactional, repeatable tasks).

By handing that work over to AI, procurement professionals can focus on what technology can’t replace: human relationships. As Ted puts it, “I will take that to my grave… the most important thing is the relationship.”

Watch now or read the transcript below.

Transcript: Proc-N-Roll | “You’re Only as Good as Your Last Failure”: Former Meta S2P Leader Talks Credibility

Zachary Bachir: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Proc and Roll, your guide to practical procurement, where we make procurement rock and roll. I’m Zach, your expert on all things procurement. With me today is Natasha, the founder and CEO of Candor Procurement. And today, ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special guest, Ted Baumuller, formerly the global leader of Source2Pay at Meta, but with prior leadership roles at Cisco and other organizations across supply chain, IT, and procurement.

Natasha Gurevich: Ted, I am very grateful that I did not have to twist your arms to come to the podcast. You and I have been old colleagues… I remember when I was at Nike and we were designing our scenarios and the model for our P2P solution. You were very instrumental in helping us shape up our thinking. Can you give our viewers and listeners a little bit more about your professional experience?

Ted Baumuller: Absolutely. I got a degree in supply chain from Michigan State… and joined Cisco and had a 23-year career at Cisco, which was absolutely fantastic. My first nine years were in supply chain. I realized that on the direct side of procurement or the supply chain side… no matter what job I had, I either had too many parts or not enough parts. I spent all my time getting rid of the parts that I didn’t want and paying too much money for the parts that I didn’t have.

Ted Baumuller: So I moved into IT… I spent time working with customer service and product sales and service sales and marketing and finance and engineering. After 11 years in IT, the head of procurement at Cisco asked me to come take the job. She said, “Why is the IT guy right for this?” And I said, “Because I know everybody within the company… I knew why marketing did this. I knew why engineering did this. I knew why finance did this”.

Ted Baumuller: I was in that role for three years and this opportunity at Facebook at the time came up to come be their head of global source to pay. I was there for five years where we scaled the organization significantly.

Natasha Gurevich: You touched on a very important point that procurement kept talking savings to IT or marketing… and the stakeholders just needed the PO because they wanted to get their stuff done. Do you think that underlines the main disconnect?

Ted Baumuller: I think that’s part of it. If you lead with savings, the business is going to say, “You’re just a back office cost center function. You’re not adding value”. You have to translate your message into their language.

Ted Baumuller: If you talk to engineering about cost, they don’t care. But if you talk to engineering about how you’re going to set up capabilities to have resources at the ready… so they call you at six o’clock on a Friday saying, “I need 30 resources in Bangalore on Monday,” and you have capacity ready for them to scale… that’s when they start to listen.

Natasha Gurevich: And what if the resistance persists?

Ted Baumuller: At the end of the day, you’ve got to deliver on what you promised. You’re only as good as your last failure. We had this conversation with the R&D/AI lab team… we had weekly meetings… and we hit it week after week after week. We said, “In the next four weeks, we’re going to deliver these things.” And four weeks later, we delivered it. That’s when we finally got that credibility.

Natasha Gurevich: From your experience, when you mentor students, what skills do you suggest them to build?

Ted Baumuller: I think building personal relationships is the most important thing. I also think having an expertise and understanding how to use data and transform it… “What is the next best action that I can take?”

Zachary Bachir: Your views on intake and orchestration… and do you see a world where procurement is just fully automated and you’ve just got agents running?

Ted Baumuller: I think any way you can use technology to simplify and automate anything, I think is value added. But I don’t think it eliminates the need for the function. Relationships take time. And that is the important thing that people are going to lose sight of… I will take that to my grave that I think that [face-to-face interaction] is the most important thing.

Ted Baumuller: I think technology… automating the back-end transactional piece, absolutely. But nobody wants to do that work. That’s the crap work that nobody wants to do anyway.

Natasha Gurevich: Speaking of careers, how does the young generation view career progression?

Ted Baumuller: There was a sales executive who talked about how the majority of these people grew up playing video games… And once they pass one level, they expect to go to that next level. “I do my job. I get promoted.” Providing that transparency, providing that visibility… they just want visibility: “What do I do next?”

Zachary Bachir: Ted, thank you so much. We covered such a broad set of topics here… It’s been absolutely great having you.

Ted Baumuller: It’s been fun. Thank you both.

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