Some of my best blogs come directly from interviews with subject-matter experts while we are
Recently, I interviewed a senior line manager at a high-tech company. He shared a story that was equally hilarious and horrifying.
They were launching a major AI-enabled services initiative to support their core hardware platform. Big opportunity. Big revenue potential. Big margin expansion if executed well.
The marketing team was already a little chaotic. Eight people. Project managers. Event planners. Administrators. Everyone busy. No one is quite sure who owned what.
And then…
Corporate procurement stepped in.
“We were told we had to route every vendor, every venue contract, every service agreement through corporate procurement,” he said. “It turned managed chaos into mismanaged chaos.”
Procurement didn’t understand the product. They didn’t understand the launch strategy. They didn’t understand the revenue objectives. They didn’t understand the margin profile of the new services.
But they absolutely understood how to slow things down.
The tipping point?
They required vendor travel expenses to be pre-approved by procurement.
The estimated savings? Maybe $5 per person.
The hidden cost? Massive.
Time wasted. Momentum killed. Vendor goodwill damaged. Internal frustration amplified.
And now the leader was worried the event would underperform; not because of strategy, but because of process.
That story is not about procurement being “bad people.”
It’s about business acumen.
Because when cost control is divorced from value creation, organizations make decisions that look smart on a spreadsheet but are destructive in reality.
So let’s talk about it.
The Real Business Acumen Issue
Procurement exists for good reasons:
Those are real value drivers. But business acumen requires something more sophisticated:
Understanding where cost control creates value—and where it destroys it.
If your AI-driven service launch could generate $50 million in incremental high-margin revenue, then optimizing for $5 in travel expenses is not discipline.
It’s myopia.
This is the classic tension between efficiency and effectiveness.
And this tension has been studied for decades.
Good to Great and the Hedgehog Concept
Jim Collins wrote about the importance of understanding what you can be the best in the world at and aligning your resources accordingly.
Procurement’s “hedgehog” is cost discipline.
Marketing’s “hedgehog” is demand creation.
Operations’ “hedgehog” is execution excellence.
Business acumen is knowing when one hedgehog should lead, and when it should support.
When procurement starts optimizing costs during a strategic growth moment without understanding the flywheel of value creation, friction occurs.
Five Business Acumen-Oriented Ideas for Dealing with Your Own Procurement Department
Now here’s the practical part. Because complaining is easy. Leading is harder.
1. Translate Strategy into Financial Language
Don’t say:
“This event is important.”
Say:
“This launch is tied to $32M in incremental revenue over 18 months with 62% gross margins. Speed and vendor quality matter more than small cost variances.”
Procurement speaks numbers.
Give them numbers.
Business acumen means reframing decisions in terms of revenue, margin, cash flow, and risk—not emotion.
2. Clarify the Cost of Delay
A five-day delay in contract approval may cost:
If the opportunity window is tight, quantify the cost of delay.
In high-growth initiatives, time is a financial variable.
3. Differentiate Between “Core Spend” and “Strategic Spend”
Not all dollars are equal.
Office supplies? Optimize aggressively. Core operational contracts? Standardize tightly. Strategic growth initiatives? Optimize for impact first, cost second.
Business acumen requires categorizing spend by strategic impact rather than treating every dollar as identical.
4. Build Procurement into the Strategy Early
The mistake in the story wasn’t that procurement was involved.
The mistake was that they were inserted late, without context.
If procurement understands:
They can actually become strategic partners instead of tactical gatekeepers.
In many organizations, procurement is underutilized because it is never given the full business picture.
5. Escalate with Data, Not Drama
When necessary, elevate the conversation to senior leadership.
But don’t say:
“Procurement is killing us.”
Say:
“We are trading speed and vendor experience for small cost reductions. Based on projected revenue impact, this trade-off may not be value-maximizing.”
Executives respond to trade-offs, not frustration.
The Bigger Lesson
This isn’t really about procurement. It’s about silos. It’s about misaligned incentives.
It’s about parts of the organization optimizing locally while the company suffers globally.
And that is exactly why business acumen training matters.
Because when leaders understand:
They stop arguing about $5 travel approvals.
And they start asking:
“What decision maximizes enterprise value?”
That’s the real test.
And in 2026, as AI-driven services, digital transformations, and new revenue models accelerate, organizations cannot afford to let procedural efficiency suffocate strategic growth.
Business acumen is not about cutting costs.
It’s about knowing which costs to cut and which ones to accelerate.