Every business function wants to elevate its role, its influence, its status. So it is in this context that we should consider current conversations about the need for ‘licensed procurement professionals’. It’s an important conversation because it opens the opportunity to discuss our fast changing business environment and how commercial roles more broadly should evolve. […]
Two weeks on, I reflect on @Docusign’s Momentum events. These have become a barometer for where agreement management is heading, and London 2026 confirmed an important message: the process by which most organizations manage their agreements is broken. In my conversations with delegates, the reasons for that were clear and consistent. Fragmentation across functions and […]
The way agreements are handled today is fundamentally broken ...
“Finance professionals must become leaders who pair financial rigor with data literacy, business acumen, and strong communication.” That’s the view of James Rivett, CFO of Deutsche Bank Americas, expressed in a recent Wall Street Journal interview. What he describes has similarities with the opinions of WorldCC when it talks about the emergence of the ‘commercial […]
“I’m so excited about what Copilot is doing for us”, gushed an attendee at a recent contract management event. “We are serving the business so much faster and soon the quality of output will mean we can avoid many of the traditional reviews and approvals.” I don’t disagree with those observations, though I do wonder […]
When uncertainty spikes, people do not behave rationally, they behave defensively. The panic buying of toilet paper during the pandemic was not about hygiene. It was about control, reassurance, and fear of being exposed if systems failed. The same dynamics play out inside organisations. When markets become volatile, organisations retreat to what feels safe: rigid […]
The ancient Mesopotamians carved their story of the great flood into stone tablets. The Deluge wasn’t divine punishment: it was what happened when each person looked only to their own survival, when collective action became impossible, when short-term protection trumped long-term flourishing. And we are living our own version today. Walk into most commercial negotiations […]
As we mark the first anniversary of the CCM Institute, one thing is clear: this was never intended to be a traditional research body. The past year demanded something very different. Market volatility, cost inflation, delivery risk, social expectations, and the rapid advance of AI created immediate, real-world questions that organisations and governments could not […]
“I will do one thing differently in every significant commercial engagement – question one assumption, challenge one standard, stay engaged one step further, build one relationship differently.” At the end of last year, I ran a survey to ask what most often prevents win-win outcomes in negotiations. 45% of practitioners identified lack of trust, more […]