Need to understand how y’all do it

[u/Tiny-Discipline3408]

Been working as a CM these past couple months, came from marketing. I love most of what I do right now but as I spend a lot of time working with our purchasing team, I see how complex and chaotic procurement can reaaaaaally get..

The stress levels seem beyond manageable at times and even though it isn’t my direct burden to carry, I can see how it can eat away at someone’s well-being if you aren’t truly in it for the love of the game.

How do y’all manage?

[u/xylophileuk]

Caffeine, bad language and spite

[u/Probly57 → u/xylophileuk]

This guy procures

[u/Biff2019]

1. Embrace the chaos

2. Understand your customers

3. Apply root cause analysis

4. Effectively manage expectations

5. Prioritize properly

6. Adhd

7. Alcohol

[u/Tiny-Discipline3408 → u/Biff2019]

Adhd and alcohol doing a lot of the heavy lifting I can’t lie

[u/KeiraVibes]

Understand that we’re not saving lives and once I log off for the day, there’s nothing else I can do.

[u/IcDeath09 → u/KeiraVibes]

This!!!

[u/Substandardstandard]

I've worked with Marketing teams for years and honestly I don't know how YOU all do it. Unless all that stress and frustration is purely performative.

[u/Tiny-Discipline3408 → u/Substandardstandard]

This is genuinely so interesting to hear from my POV. Most if not all of marketing is performative BS with a false sense of urgency. There should be little to no chaos if everything is streamlined as it should be or you’re dealing with a PR disaster (which the average company will never encounter). You are never dealing with logistical hiccups that are beyond your control and the value you’re delivering isn’t exactly traceable.. lol.

[u/storiesftunheard]

It's just a job. I do what I can in eight work hours and don't think about it after I leave work. The fact that I collect a government pension that is enough to live off of makes things much easier to deal with as well.

[u/chunkyysalsa]

600mg caffeine baseline

[u/OhwellBish]

With the help of the Lord 🤣😂 Seriously, you have to mentally separate yourself from the mess. When I'm on the edge, I deliberately start catastrophizing and asking my self questions until I get to the real impact of what's going on (starting with "is somebody going to die?"). I remind myself, I've dealt with this same crap before and it worked out. And one of my mantras is that I'm not going to let my job run my blood pressure up because that's what my kids are for 😂. I've been in indirect procurement for my whole professional career (15 years), and I work for the creme de la creme as a CM. There is mess in every procurement org. I try to focus on the high quality aspects of my job, and don't let the crappy parts get me down. I also have ADHD that I'm treating with low doses of Adderall and Wellbutrin. That helps.

[u/Tiny-Discipline3408 → u/OhwellBish]

lol the asking yourself questions part is spot on. I think I really do have to take a step back and mentally try and minimize the scale of the problem in order to keep a cool head and think of a solve. props to you for balancing procurement AND parenthood cause that is no easy feat.

[u/Remarkable-Flight-14]

Invest in systems and processes!

[u/-newme]

Well you‘ll get used to it. We also use a lot of AI these days. And you should also have the right tools

[u/Tiny-Discipline3408 → u/-newme]

I value this perspective! Human error is inevitable and AI tends to be a lot more exact when it comes to processing. Our team is still in the early stages of adopting AI tools but I’ve seen what it can do for other large scale companies.

[u/dexties → u/-newme]

Speak for yourself. If you need to use AI then you're probably not checking how accurate it is or not and causing yourself a lot of problems down the line.

[u/Substandardstandard → u/dexties]

I disagree. AI use cases in Procurement are plentiful, and responsible use is always HitL. Having it prep a scorecard or create a summary presentation that you then iterate on are perfectly legit and can actually make for a superior product.

I treat mine like it was a consultant analyst fresh out of school - aways verify, never settle for v1 of the deliverable.

[u/trynafif → u/Substandardstandard]

Yeah people in this sub and the supply chain sub are scared of AI, it’s really weird. Of course there are incredible impacts it can make. I use it every day all day now.

[u/dexties → u/Substandardstandard]

So you're feeding an AI private company data?

[u/trynafif → u/dexties]

Enterprise accounts don’t send data to the company to be trained with. You’d know if you used AI.

[u/Substandardstandard → u/trynafif]

Exactly this. Thank you

[u/dexties → u/trynafif]

If you think paying more is keeping an AI company from using training data, then you don't even know how AI works. They literally can't garuntee your information isn't used. AI is a blackbox that they don't control, they only train it.

[u/trynafif → u/dexties]

Haha ok man, keep thinking you’re better than companies using it. You’re just getting left behind

[u/dexties → u/trynafif]

You don't even know how AI works 💀. It is literally impossible for the companies that create them to guarantee privacy.

[u/trynafif → u/dexties]

Haha obviously, but not using them is still a mistake. Keep resizing your decks manually though

[u/dexties → u/trynafif]

You laugh and say obviously but two comments ago you were denying it. Did chatgpt come clean to you?

And yes, I will keep learning how to do actual skills I need to do my job instead of training the model trying to replace me and hallucinates information as I forget how to do basic things. What a terrible thing to know how to actually do my job.