At 1:30 am on March 26th, the container ship Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge and sent it falling into the Patapsco River. Six members of a construction crew lost their lives and the port of Baltimore has been partially closed since.  Dueling investigations are underway, with the FBI working to determine whether any federal laws were broken and the NTSB looking to reconstruct the accident and learn from it. The ship is still in place, with the bridge on its bow and the crew onboard, and The Army Corps of Engineers hopes to have the port of Baltimore fully open by late May. How is ..read more

Recognizing the need for procurement transformation sometimes comes from within procurement, and in other cases it is driven by management-level goals and expectations. Regardless of where the idea for transformation begins, few stones in the organization will be left unturned by the time it is over. In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes Nataša Cikač. Nataša is the CEO of Cronata, a Croatia-based company that provides procurement transformation support and coaching. In this interview, Nataša shares her perspective on effective procurement transformation - inc ..read more

Few environments require leadership in higher concentration than the military. And yet the development of leadership skills is still a highly personal journey - where each individual has to find their own style and improve it over time through training, observation, and repetition. In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes Tom Williams. Tom enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2013 as an Airborne Intelligence Analyst. He has served in locations from the Middle East to the Arctic, displaying exceptional dedication and forming his own unique philosophy on leadership. In th ..read more

Human nature has a way of becoming numb to that which we absorb as part of the status quo. Sadly, this doesn’t just pertain to the weather; it also applies to human suffering and warfare, especially if it is far away. Today this applies in the form of the Red Sea attacks that continue,  and which have escalated, turning global supply chains into a literal battlefield. In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes back Kris Lance, Senior Director at Una, for a recurring monthly conversation about current news stories. Kris has experience in multiple industries an ..read more

Marketing requires a combination of data and storytelling to motivate people to take a desired action, whether that is making a purchase, supporting a cause, or providing their email address. Procurement can leverage a marketing-esque combination of information and storytelling to build consensus, increase influence, and even control the narrative when plans go awry.  In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes Alex Ball. Alex has spent most of his career in marketing and demand generation, helping companies connect with and engage their target personas. He ha ..read more

Procurement has been working to build stronger, more partnership-based relationships inside the business, and yet we still struggle to maintain trust. Fortunately, we are not alone on this journey… other functions, finance in particular, struggle with the same.   In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner is joined by Christian Frantz Hansen. Christian works at the Business Partnering Institute, where he helps clients (most of whom are in finance) improve the strength of their business relationships. Procurement listeners will be pleasantly surprised at how many thing ..read more

How connected do you feel to the people around you? What about yourself - when was the last time you paused to think about which philosophical choices are good and which are bad?  In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner is joined by David Meltzer. David is the Co-Founder of Sports 1 Marketing, a consultant and business coach, keynote speaker, and a three-time best-selling author. His mission is to “make a lot of money, help a lot of people, and have a lot of fun…” so it may not come as a surprise to learn that he was the CEO of the Leigh Steinberg Sports & Ente ..read more

In 1918, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and naturalist writer John Burroughs took one of many long distance road trips together. The combination of their unique forms of genius, especially when viewed against the backdrop of WWI and the Influenza pandemic, makes it possible to see just how critical their curiosity was to every form of success they achieved. In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes Wes Davis. Wes has a Ph.D. in English Literature from Princeton University and taught at Yale for nearly a decade. His writing has appeared in the New Yo ..read more

With the last few years being as unpredictable as they have been, procurement has experienced a number of mindset shifts - all of which have increased our agility and resilience. In fact, procurement has undergone so many changes that comparisons to the approaches and team models seen in military settings are not out of line.  In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes Harold Hendrickx. Harold is a fractional CPO and the founder of TransExecutive, a company that deploys the Procurement Task Force model to help procurement teams enable, optimize, transform, an ..read more

New research from MIT shows that trusting employees are 260% more motivated to work, have 41% lower rates of absenteeism, and are 50% less likely to look for another job. But… one in four workers do not trust their employer. Trust is the easiest thing in the world to lose and the hardest to get back - and it plays an important role in every type of relationship. In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes back Kris Lance, Senior Director at Una, for a recurring monthly conversation about current news stories. Kris has experience in multiple industries and has his f ..read more