Procurement leader Insights from Tim Snow at Inmarsat
We’re delighted to introduce Tim Snow. In cycling terms, you call someone’s track record a palmares. So your palmares is wide and varied and one.
You are currently Vice President, CPO of Inmarsat, and we’re delighted to have you here with us today to talk about your journey.
What makes the difference in your mind between a good CPO and an epic one?
Thanks very much for having me appreciate it. The difference between a good CPO and an epic one is, somebody who sets a clear strategy, clear mission, clear vision and uses it on a regular basis as their compass.
It’s not uncommon for a CPO to put in place a strategy when they first join an organisation. Loads of effort, time and thought goes into it. It gets signed off with whoever is relevant, they share it with their team and then it goes in a draw and it isn’t referred to again.
In my opinion, a strategy, vision, mission and the objectives and even remuneration that flows from that should be a living document. That doesn’t mean we change it all the time, that merely means that we use it as our compass to be epic. That’s my first thing. Second thing is making time to listen.
It’s really important you don’t book your diary up from 9 to 5, working back-to-back meetings.
You should make time to listen to the stakeholders that you’re working with and therefore you want to be able to have time to bump into them in the at the coffee machine or make an effort to call them if you know to talk about stuff or visit them as you need to.
Don’t book your diary up 9 to 5…make time to listen to the stakeholders that you’re working with
Listen to your stakeholders, the same for the suppliers that we that we have. Make time to go and listen to them go and see their premises, meet some of the people who are doing the work for you. Meet some of the people who could innovate and listen and learn that kind of goes broader to the marketplace, not just existing suppliers. And then thirdly, your people, I think it’s really important to create an energetic, inspiring environment where people want to follow you because they believe in you.
They believe in the strategy and they believe they’ve got the opportunity to grow with you in the environment that you create. So, listening to your people, their ideas, how they evolve things, how they want to evolve things – really important to keep people on the journey with you. And then 4th and finally, I think it’s really important to give back. I think an epic CPO talks it like this kind of thing or at procurement leaders or sits or you know is available for your previous employees to give them coaching and guidance. I think that’s really, really important.
Your third point I think is the one that really resonates with me. And I know this is something that you’re incredibly passionate about. So, what would be your top three tips for leading people?
The first thing I’ll come back to is just the strategy, set the strategy, vision, mission, etc. So they know where we’re going, why we’re going there, how it’s going to feel when you get there, what’s in it for them, for their career journey and probably personal remuneration along the way because people work for money, right? They work to be happy, but they work for money too.
That’s the first thing kind of communicate it regularly so they know the guard rails and where they go. Second thing is be genuine and very transparent, I believe it’s better to share good or bad news. You might alter your tone and style and approach, but be transparent and genuine so people know that they’re going to get results.
Top tip is helping people join up the dots. So, there’s a lot as a leader. There’s lots going on in the company and each person’s lens on the company’s going to be different. Generally, the more senior you are, the more you see things and you can join up the dots.
For me joining up the dots for people to help them understand what they’re doing and how what they’re doing fits into a bigger goal and a bigger kind of aspiration. I think it’s really, really important.
The power of recognition
Recognise people – doesn’t always have to be financially it can be a simple thank you or a handwritten note, or a buying them a coffee. Or saying something really lovely in front of suppliers, stakeholders, your own boss, so that people realise that you really, really appreciate them and then finally have some fun. At Inmarsat I choose to invest some of my budget in team events every quarter.
To exemplify this, in March we’re going laser clay pigeon shooting. We’re going to have an afternoon of fun! Now to some people that may be perceived as skiving off, not in my book. I think it’s really important that we make time for each other. We keep close to each other. We’ll talk about work stuff, we’ll talk about personal stuff, you know, on a one-to-one basis and have fun in a group. Having fun, I think is really important to create strong teams and lead people.
Over the course of the years we’ve known each other, you’ve taught us something. There’s a theme that goes through everything that you talk about and that’s about getting the basics right. What do you principally mean when you talk about that, Tim?
I think it’s very easy to get distracted by the latest fad. The latest fad might be AI, and we all run after that and kind of try and find out loads of things about that. But actually, our stakeholders want a cost base that’s well managed, structured, efficient at the right level. Stakeholders want suppliers who deliver on time, deliver quality at the right price under the right contractual terms with limited to no surprises. They want us to understand what’s going on in the marketplace, the geopolitical situations and how we can mitigate some of those risks. We’ve got contract databases that allow us to avoid having surprises of contracts expiring without us knowing or not allowing good time to have that happened.
We have tools for analysing costs and should be costs, etc. We’ve got negotiation strategies and plan tools that we can use. So, I think it’s really important to utilise the tools that we have to get those basics right, so that people know when they come to you as a team to help develop their strategies and they get you involved really early on. They stay confident that you’re going to run a fair auditable rounded procurement in whatever way makes sense for the task and the business at that point in time and maybe even rules of regulatory or you know procurement directives or something, whatever’s relevant. So that they know they’re going to get a quality outcome and in IT world they often talk about silent running and silent running really means that everything just works. You turn on your laptop, the systems work, your phone connects. It all syncs up. That’s kind of silent running. In a procurement world just utilising those tools so that everything is well managed, structured and under control is silent running and that’s a really good place to be because then you can focus on the big, exciting stuff because you just get the basics right.
There’s a lot of a lot of priorities there, and modern businesses are complex beasts, but how do you maintain your focus when you have so many often-conflicting priorities at the same time and avoid being distracted?
Great question. So first of all, I take it back to the strategy, vision, mission that is a living thing. We use it all the time. So, as a team, we understand what our priorities are and we also flow that through to objectives, so and then remuneration too. So, it’s all linked. But things change on a on an ongoing basis. I mean, we’ve had, you know surprises of semiconductor supply chain problems coming out of Taiwan and China due to COVID and global supply chain. Priorities change and you just have to adapt, but we don’t have to take it all on ourselves. Working with our stakeholders to agree who’s doing what, when and how, so that we leverage the broader commercial skill set of the company.
I think it’s really an important thing to do. For example, if the priority is supply chain certainty, well supply chain certainty is many things it could include, financial due diligence for example, well we don’t necessarily just need to be the ones doing financial due diligence. Why don’t we get one of our finance teams to come with us with a meeting to the suppliers, and the CFO and get them to do some ratio analysis for us and then tell us what they think. Leveraging the broader skill set for those priorities, I think it’s really important. Being able to adapt at pace to kind of deal with these. I think it’s really important because you’re listening to the stakeholders and suppliers then you can get ahead of the curve to try and foresee what’s going to happen.
Putting in plans, preventative plans rather than just reactive plans, is helpful, but we don’t always get it right. And sometimes we just have to run around like headless chickens trying to solve problems in the moment. That’s life! We just do the best that we can, but at least we’ve got some structure there and we leverage a wider skill set.
How do you typically get the most out of your suppliers?
We talk about being the client of choice. I like to be known as a person, a team, an organisation that does what we say we’re going to do. So, back to getting the basics right, just pay them on time. You don’t want to be on the naughty list in a in the suppliers CFO for example, comply with the obligations that you set out in the contract. If you said you’re going to do some testing of something on X day, do the testing on X day, make sure you’ve planned it forward to make sure you’ve got the resources available. Make sure you’ve got the budget to do stuff, so that’s about really, really good planning.
Be curious, be one of those clients who’s willing to take a recommendation from a supplier and run with it. Even if sometimes it fails, because as long as you fail fast, fail cheap. That’s OK, that’s part of learning, right? Don’t let things drag on and then it becomes an expensive mess up, as you know some things in the media are reported accordingly. You know, fail fast, fail cheap and then and then make time for them. Suppliers often have objectives to present new concepts to clients. If you’re one of these clients who’s willing to listen, willing to try stuff, willing to fail fast, fail cheap, willing to do everything you said you were going to do, and we all have bad days, but in the main, that’s nice and consistent. Then they’ll want to work with you and want to help you when you particularly need it.
And probably put the A team of people on your account rather than somewhere else. Yeah, and in satellite, I’m often not the biggest spender with organisations, but it’s really interesting tech that gets people really excited and when they come in the office and I show them a rocket and a model of a satellite and take them to the Network Operations Centre controlling them 24,000 miles above you, they get excited. That takes an hour of my time. I’ve now gotten excited client executive at the supplier who’s going to inspire others. These simple things, which are the kind of thing you do at home with your family and children, I just apply at work.
People do things. People do things for people. Companies don’t do things for people. You just want to have a really good person to person relationship.
Happy people are productive people.
How do you keep people happy? What is that secret sauce?
Well, I think one thing is don’t beat yourself up that people aren’t always happy. I mean, I’m not always happy. There’s something going on at home, or work or exercise that kind of it means you can’t always be happy. So be a realist, first of all. Everyone’s slightly different. As you get to know and understand your team and if you have a massive team of people, the honest answer is you’re never going to be able to get to know everybody. But at least your managers should, or your directors should. Or your vice presidents, whoever it is, should.
Understand their people, understand the culture and as a result of that put in place things that are likely to make people happy. So not everyone wants to go laser clay pigeon shooting, but most people will give it a try. And if they want to leave early, that’s fine, but at least they’re giving it a try. We pay them right, bonus them right, give the recognition where it’s due and you know especially call out the learnings from failures in a really positive way so that others can see that it’s absolutely fine to fail. Doing the same thing again and again and failing is probably insanity. But nevertheless, giving people permission to do that is fine. And then finally – invest in them. So here we have a learn and grow learning and development programme.
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The Importance of Learning
Learning is where we invite people externally and internally to come into the organisation. We do it every other month, and to the team, they talk about something that allows us to learn about the company or learn about suppliers or learn about the market. That’s one thing. Grow is a personal or team thing. So, it might be behaviours that we’re investing in.
The inquisitiveness, curiousness maybe. It might be hard skills like negotiation or contract awareness. We invest money into individuals on their journey or an MBA or something and then core team skills on an ongoing basis. So, we keep them at the right level as high as possible. It keeps people engaged, it keeps people growing and generally keeps them happier.
Finally, I’d say, you know, everyone’s got complicated lives and maybe coming out of COVID people have put more of their personal lives ahead of work life, that’s OK, no problem. So if someone needs to go and collect a child every four every Monday at 4:00 PM, and that’s really important to them because they, they want to be the mum or dad.
There all the time. Don’t book a meeting at 4 o’clock on you know it’s going to irritate them. There’s no point at all knowing kind of your people and flexing around what’s important to them is a good way forward. There’s give and take on that, of course. And as long as there’s good give and take, it works well.
How have you created a career out of this wonderful profession that is procurement?
I’ve been really lucky. Working with some amazing people over the years, whether it be my boss, which is usually the CFO but doesn’t have to be, but board level kind of thing.
I have worked with some amazing people in the team that I’ve hired and learnt from and I’ve worked with amazing suppliers and wider stakeholders. That’s kept me really excited about the profession that I love it when our team does an amazing deal and achieves an amazing outcome.
I love it when we get involved early in a strategy that allows us to put the optimum solution in to get the best value for the company. I love it. Those things keep me really interested in the career. I love seeing people grow. I love seeing people get promoted. I’m not bothered if people leave the team for a promotion. That’s a good thing. If I can’t offer it and they want to go outside, that’s fine. And then the other thing is I’ve gone across sector from airlines to mobiles to insurance to public sector.
From retail to beauty, to space and who knows where next!
The learning you get across all those sectors and how you can see commonality but learn differences keeps me really excited about the profession and me continually learning. I’m not going anywhere out of this profession as long as it’ll have me.
I love seeing people grow. I love seeing people get promoted. I’m not bothered if people leave the team for a promotion. That’s a good thing!
I’m committed to staying and I think we should as leaders we shouldn’t be afraid to ask our bosses to add things on to our job. So, as I’ve been successful and the team’s been successful at Inmarsat, I’ve added on to it a team of paralegals to do sales contracts. I’ve added on insurance, space and on planet Earth. I’ve added on prioritisation and portfolio management.
The theme is commerciality. The theme is fixing stuff, the theme is strong stakeholder relationships, but as a as a you know CPO just asking for more because if you can take on more responsibility, there’s more room to grow for your team as well which creates happy, productive people and greater delivery.
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