Every procurement function has the same complaint. We get brought in too late. The supplier is chosen, the price is emotionally agreed, and the function inherits a compliance job dressed up as a sourcing decision. The standard response is to tighten policy, add an approval gate, and escalate. It rarely works, because the problem was never that stakeholders forgot the rule. It is that calling procurement did not feel useful.
The alternative is tactical rather than structural, and procurement writer Tom Mills laid out ten habits from his own practice. Meet stakeholders before you need them. Learn what they are measured on, not what their job title says. Give bad news straight and in person. Never raise a concern in the room for the first time. Bring two options, not one. Follow up in writing within the hour. Give a recommendation, not a report. Make compliant the easy option. Find out what they are being asked in their next meeting. Tell them what you would do with your own money.
The list is unglamorous and entirely behavioural. What the responses added was a rough consensus on which of these actually moves the needle, and why.
