Procurement has a strategy problem. But it's not the one you think.

Common challenges in effective Procurement strategy sessions

Strategy sessions are a crucial component of elevating Procurement's impact and presence in the organisation.

To get the best out of them, you need to be intentional about what you're looking to achieve; and make sure it's not just another talking shop that gets revisited once in a while and forgotten about.

But intention only gets you so far. Because before you've even agreed the agenda, you're already working with the most complex variable in the room: the people in it.

There are those who very much relish it; the big picture thinkers who finally feel like the day is designed for them. There are those who want to get straight into the detail, the delivery, the how. There are those going through the motions, heads already back at their desks. And there are those sitting silently with a familiar thought: this won't really change anything.

All of those people are in the same room. And within the first hour, some common obstacles arise:

The retreat into operational detail. The mindset challenges. The simmering tensions that politeness keeps just below the surface.

The session itself isn't the problem; it's more about the conditions surrounding them.

Here are some of the key challenges I see in team strategy sessions.

1. The operational detail isn't left behind.

Stepping out of the operations can feel hard when a Procurement team is constantly firefighting.

The team has changed location, badged it as an away day, but the mindset in the room is still operational. The language is about process, compliance, headcount, and delivery. The problems being discussed are the ones already on someone's desk.

Strategy asks a fundamentally different question: not "how do we keep improving what exists?", but "what does Procurement need to become?"

Unless you are in the right environment, the ability to step out of the operational detail can be challenging.

This is compounded by focusing on the long-term. When the metrics on the wall are quarterly, when the Exec are breathing down your neck for this year's savings number, the long view can become derailed. Strategic thinking needs room to breathe, and the operational world rarely gives it any.

There's also a facilitation dynamic worth naming here. When the Procurement leader facilitates their own strategy session, it creates a subtle but significant problem. The team don't fully own the outputs; they've been guided to them. And the leader can't simultaneously hold the space and be a genuine participant in it. An external facilitator changes this. It frees the leader to be present as a member of the team, and it gives the team genuine permission to think for themselves.

The shift from operational to strategic isn't just a mindset change. It has to be structurally enabled; through the design of the session, the questions asked, and a facilitator willing to hold the team in the discomfort of thinking differently.

2. The silos walk in with them.

This rarely gets named in polite company, but I see it often: Procurement teams often bring their internal divisions into the room with them. Individuals come in with their own priorities, their own stakeholder pressures, their own unspoken frustrations about how other parts of the team operate.

Unless handled carefully and navigated intentionally, a strategy session exposes it even further.

If not navigated with care, the team can unintentionally spend the first half of a session unconsciously defending their own category rather than building something shared. They're not being difficult; they're being human. But without the right facilitation and the right conditions, what should be a collective strategy conversation becomes a series of parallel monologues dressed up as alignment.

Real cross-functional thinking, inside a Procurement team and across the business, doesn't happen automatically. It has to be created deliberately.

3. The mindset in the room is working against the strategy

It doesn't get talked about openly, but it can derail a strategy session before stepping into the actual room.

Strategy requires a particular kind of thinking. It asks people to let go of what they know, sit with questions that don't have clean answers, and be honest about things that are easier to avoid.

Most teams haven't been asked to do that before. So they resist it, in the ways people do: reverting to the familiar, deflecting with humour, shutting down ideas before they have room to breathe, or simply disengaging.

Some of this is cynicism built up over time; previous strategy sessions that promised change and delivered a slide deck with no concrete action. Some of it is anxiety about sharing what you are really thinking: if I say what I actually think, what happens? How honest can I actually be? Some of it is a genuine belief that Procurement doesn't get a seat at the strategic table, so why invest in the conversation?

These are protective patterns rather than character flaws. But they need to be acknowledged and worked with, not managed around, if the session is going to produce anything real.

A team that enters a strategy session with the psychological safety to think boldly, challenge constructively, and genuinely commit to something different is where strategy becomes more than a document.

So what does a strategy session actually need?

It needs the operational-to-strategic shift to be structurally enabled, not just hoped for. It needs the long view to be protected, not just mentioned. It needs the silos to be surfaced and worked with, not ignored. And it needs the mindset barriers in the room to be named and navigated, not papered over with a standard agenda.

These are effective conditions for a successful strategy sessions, rather than facilitation tricks. And getting them in place is the work that happens before anyone writes an agenda.

When those conditions exist, I've seen Procurement teams produce strategies that fundamentally shift how they're perceived in their organisation meaningfully and sustainably.

When those conditions don't exist, the session produces a document, the document sits in a folder and everyone goes back to their quarterly savings targets.

Before your next Procurement strategy session

If you were to run a strategy session with your team tomorrow, what condition is most absent right now? The operational-to-strategic shift, the long view, the cross-functional trust, or the mindset in the room?

Giving some time to these questions will set your team up for success.

How Coaching For Procurement Ltd Can Help

I work with Procurement leaders and their teams on exactly this; the thinking, the conditions, and the environment that make strategy sessions worth having. If this resonated, I'd love to hear what you're navigating. Contact me here for an informal chat about how I can help.