How to Reset When Becoming a Strategic Procurement Function Feels So Hard

Today marks 4 years since I founded Coaching For Procurement Ltd 

After almost a decade of working with passionate Procurement teams supporting the NHS, I wanted to build a business to help Procurement feel more confident in articulating their strategic value. In the four years since I set up, I've worked alongside CPOs, senior Procurement leaders and their teams and something many of them have experienced is the struggle to become more strategic.

Why is it so hard to become the strategic function we know we can be…and why doesn't the C-Suite see it?

The talent, the ambition and the delivery are all there. And yet something keeps getting in the way. The gap still feels wide.

As with all of my coaching work with Procurement, we break strategic impact down into relevant areas and put them back together with more clarity, direction and intention.

Becoming a strategic Procurement function is not one problem with one fix. The dilemma plays out at different levels, often simultaneously. And until each level feeds into each other's strategic picture, it's an uphill struggle. Let's take a look at three of those levels today.

1. At CPO/Director level: learning to speak the language of the exec

As a Procurement leader moves up through the ranks, the gap becomes less about commercial acumen and more about communication and language. The ability to translate what Procurement delivers into the language, the priorities, and the narrative that resonates at executive level.

Procurement leaders are excellent at reporting what the function has done. Often focused on category performance and savings delivered. But the executive table is not necessarily listening for activity. It is listening for impact. It wants to understand what risk has been mitigated, what growth has been enabled, what the business can now do that it could not do before.

And this means you need to engage a different kind of storytelling. One that connects Procurement's work to the strategic agenda of the organisation and that makes that connection feel obvious rather than laboured.

It also requires an understanding of the room. At executive level, you are no longer navigating categories competing for airtime. You are navigating a new dynamic of politics and tension; entire functions, each under their own pressures, their own targets, their own need to tell a compelling story to the same audience. And if you are working at a global level, you will also need to navigate different cultural aspects. The CPO who understands that dynamic, and who can position Procurement's narrative in a way that complements rather than competes, is able to gain buy-in more effectively.

When a CPO can walk into a leadership conversation and speak that language fluently - and hold the room with the presence and clarity to back it up - the gap will not feel as wide. And it isn't because anything in the operation has changed. It's just that the value is finally being seen in a context that feels relevant for your audience.

How to put this into practice

Before your next executive conversation, spend a few minutes reflecting on: what does this audience care about most right now? Then work backwards: how does what Procurement is delivering connect directly to that? Lead with the business outcome, not the Procurement activity. Tell the story from their perspective, not yours. Put them at front and centre.

And do not underestimate the role of executive presence. Involve people in the conversation. Connect with them; non-verbally as much as verbally. Articulate the vision with confidence, not just competence. The story matters. So does how you tell it.

2. At senior Procurement leadership team level: alignment, healthy tension, and knowing the part each category plays

Many senior Procurement teams are a collection of capable category leads operating largely in parallel. Each one focused on their own remit, their own suppliers, their own stakeholder relationships. And while individual category performance matters, it is not the same as a function that is working as a coherent whole.

What separates a high-performing senior Procurement team from a capable but fragmented one is two things that might seem contradictory: alignment and healthy tension.

Alignment means every category lead understands the function's strategic direction and knows clearly how their category contributes to it. What does indirect Procurement enable that direct cannot? And vice versa? How do the parts fit together into something greater than the sum of them? And where category specifics cannot always align, the ability to connect on a human level - to understand each other's pressures, constraints, and goals - is what holds the team together.

Healthy tension means those category leads are challenging each other. Asking hard questions. Pushing back on assumptions. It becomes less about protecting their own patch and more about intentionally stress-testing the collective strategy in service of a better outcome.

When both exist together, the senior team becomes a powerful strategic asset. When neither does, it just becomes a competition over who is delivering the greater numbers. And let's face it, that's a game some categories will never feel they can win against the big-ticket savings figures. As a result of these politics and team tensions, the CPO ends up carrying the strategic thinking alone...which is exhausting, unsustainable, and ultimately prevents them from stepping fully into their own role at the top. And it holds the Procurement leadership team back from developing their own strategic thinking too.

How to put this into practice

In your next senior team meeting, move beyond category updates. Ask each lead to articulate how their category is contributing to the function's wider goals and invite the rest of the team to respond. Include each other. Learn from each other. Where there is confusion or disconnect, take the opportunity to build a bridge. Alignment at this level does not happen passively. It has to be built deliberately, repeatedly, and consistently. Give them visibility of the strategy at the top and empower them enough to lead strategically at their own level.

3. At wider team level: people need to know why they matter

This is the level that gets overlooked most often in favour of relentless operational detail.

Most Procurement professionals are hardworking, commercially sharp, and motivated to do a good job. But motivation and meaning are not the same thing. And when people do not have a clear line of sight between the work they do every day and the strategic impact the function is trying to have, they'll end up disengaging. They do the job, they hit the targets. But they stop bringing their full thinking to it. Others will leave and the leadership team's efforts get caught in a constant churn of hiring new talent.

Strategic capability does not just live at the top of the function. It lives throughout it; in the Category Managers who know their supply markets better than anyone, in the Analysts who can see patterns in data that no one else has joined up, in the Procurement Business Partners who have relationships with stakeholders that the CPO does not have direct access to.

The question is whether those people know that their contribution matters. Whether they can see how their work connects to the vision the CPO is trying to bring to life. Whether they feel like participants in something meaningful or processors of workload.

AI readiness lives here too. A team that is genuinely ready to leverage AI is one where people understand the strategic intent behind the tools they are being asked to use and have the confidence, the context, and the capacity to push it beyond surface-level automation. That only happens when people are connected to the bigger picture.

How to put this into practice

Find a way to regularly connect the wider team to the function's strategic narrative, not just through town halls or monthly strategy slide decks, but through the everyday conversations and decisions they are part of. When a category win lands, explain why it mattered to the business. When a supplier relationship brings great collaboration, help the team understand the broader impact. People who understand the why bring a different quality of thinking to the how.

What transforms when all three levels are working together

When the CPO is telling a compelling story at executive level, the senior team is aligned and productively challenging each other, and the wider team understands their place in the function's vision, you're on your way to having a greater strategic impact, with the whole team pulling in the same direction.

The effort compounds and strategic thinking stops being the preserve of the people at the top and starts flowing through the whole function. The seat at the leadership table stops feeling like something to justify and starts feeling like somewhere you genuinely belong.

That transformation is more within reach than you realise. Because the talent to get there is almost always already in the room.

Four years in and why I do this work

A strategic partnership with a coach is not a one-off intervention. It is a thinking partnership; one that helps you see clearly across all three levels, build a people strategy that is coherent rather than fragmented, and lead with the confidence and clarity your role demands.

If you are a CPO who knows the function has more to give, I would love to have that conversation.

Ready to find out where your function's strategic potential is really sitting? A Procurement Team Strategy Audit gives you a clear picture across all three levels and a direction to lead from with confidence. Message me to book yours.