How to Reach Your Sustainability Goals in Your Procurement Network

In order for sustainable supply chain management to succeed, company employees and individuals across the entire business network that make up the supply chain need to act with a sustainability-oriented growth mindset. Here are the 10 key steps for building the growth mindset in your procurement teams/network. 

1. Create a safe space where ideas can be openly discussed, mistakes are adopted as an opportunity to thrive, and openness and transparency prevail. Allow solutions to be produced with the out-of-the-box thinking technique in the face of problems. Create not just top-down but a dynamic culture that grows with criticism by creating a versatile feedback model. 
2. Organize training, events, and habit-changing activities so your teams can move with a growth mindset on the road to sustainable procurement goals. Use fun and instructive techniques like "Failure Fridays," where senior leaders (C-Suite leaders) share what they've learned from their mistakes, such as a pool of failed ideas, growth mindset memes, posters about a growth mindset culture. 
3. Trigger your team's drive for success by setting daily, weekly, monthly, and annual "achievable" goals. Keep the motivations of teams that achieve goals fresh with performance measurements and rewarding techniques. Don’t ignite competition between teams, rather work to cultivate togetherness in an inspired growth-oriented manner and mutual appreciation. Appreciate development, not existing abilities. Redefine failure by applying the “Win-Learn-Change" technique, not negative language, when giving feedback. This improves your team's performance by turning feedback into a positive experience. 
4. Make the slogan "Challenge Yourself" your company motto. Instill in your teams the idea that barriers are an opportunity to grow. Individuals with a benefit mindset support not only their own development but also the development of the groups they are a part of. Instead of creating a star team in the HR process, create the right team by selecting growth-oriented, highly motivated, development-oriented, and result-oriented people. Train your teams against challenges and support their individual and professional development. 
5. Enable the entire team to actively work together for sustainable procurement practices and collect data on successful and unsuccessful initiatives by applying new methodologies. Each team member must clearly understand their role in the success of the project. Create a risk culture that encourages them not to be afraid to try new supply tools. Those who are not afraid to fail can take innovative risks and come up with creative solutions in the face of challenges. Support your employees to build a growth mindset, both individually and as a team, by implementing the embrace method. 
6. If you already have fixed mindset teams, don't expect the change to come overnight. Paradigm shifting is a time-consuming process. As a manager, don't think of it as the end of the world when you or your teams return to your fixed mindset actions. Try to adapt to your new growth-oriented ecosystem, follow the shadows of a fixed mindset and expand your mind by taking actions that will take you into the light. 
7. Instill an ethical vision of the future and a chain of values (dialogue) that guides the sustainability of all people and institutions in your supply chain from purchasing innovative procurement tools to all your actions, not as a technical problem that needs to be solved. 
8. Communicate transparently and flexibly by proactively engaging with key stakeholders. Apply Carol Dweck's "The Power of Yet" technique to make sustainability philosophy applicable throughout your supply chain. Reward not only the goals your suppliers have succeeded in but the actions they take on their path to sustainability throughout the process. Standardize the process by publishing the rules of ethics and work only with certified companies that manage sustainability practices. Train your existing companies and carry out multi-layer audit activities in accordance with international standards with KPI's in accordance with sustainability modules. With a performance-based approach, you can encourage your suppliers to adopt innovative sustainable practices. Have your entire network embrace this philosophy, branding themselves with the label "our business is sustainable" and making them feel like they belong by boasting about a sustainable company like you. 
9. An organization needs to use the right tools, activities, and supplier sustainability performance indicators to create sustainable business value and include its suppliers. In the basic sustainable purchasing criteria, it is important to improve performance in cooperation by bringing together all business partners from bottom to top. Accordingly, implementing corrective action plans, life cycle impact mapping, risk assessment models, improvement strategies, and sustainable procurement practices and training encourages sustainable procurement purchasing tools. 
10. The best way to achieve sustainable supply management is to use high-tech information systems (such as big data analytics) and auditing mechanisms by acting with the Industry 4.0 concept. As the person/institution in charge, do not be afraid of technology and trying new things. Update your procurement vision with smart technologies. Keep up with the spirit of the age of innovation, carry your mind into the future and think bigger.

 

Tags: supply chain, procurement, supply chain management, procurement network, sustainable procurement