Relationships: The Priceless Asset Money Can’t Buy with CPO & Director of Facilities at NATS, Tim Bullock – Episode 66

Episode show notes

“We had to stay absolutely core to our principles around collaboration, relationships and partnerships. In the supply chain arena, the strength of those came to the forefront.”

It’s hard to deny that one of the most affected industries from the pandemic has been air travel, so how has the industry’s supply chain stayed strong in preparation for its return?

The value of strong, long-lasting relationships is paramount to NATS’ CPO, Tim Bullock, who joins us on Talent Talks to discuss how the lengthy groundwork in building bonds will pay dividends, whether soft skills trump technical knowhow, and updating practices to better integrate with the business’ objectives.

This episode of Talent Talks covers:

• The quest for talent, and where EQ and soft skills might trump technical skills
• Balancing service function obligations with being the conscience of a business
• Dividends paid by building relationships that NATS could rely on throughout the pandemic
• The value of collaboration and partnerships in long-term industries

“It won’t surprise you that we constantly have exercises and plans for business resilience contingency. But I don’t think anything could have prepared either us or many other businesses for something the size, magnitude and duration of the pandemic.” – Tim Bullock

“We had to stay absolutely core to our principles, one of which has always been around collaboration, relationships and partnerships. In the supply chain arena, the strength of those just came to the forefront when this originally struck.” – Tim Bullock

“The relationships both internally within the business and within our supply base were the absolute key to delivering, and having a highly motivated team where we’ve invested a huge amount over the years in terms of the technical skill sets, and more importantly the people skill sets. It’s when you get into these situations that that pays its dividends.” – Tim Bullock

“What I’m describing is investment in relationships. Somebody asked me, probably at the beginning of 2021, ‘What’s the secret to this? Can you replicate it?’, and I said that you can potentially replicate the concept, but I’m afraid there’s no shortcut. You can’t just go and buy this, you can’t just suddenly invent it, you have to put the hard graft in. ” – Tim Bullock

“We’ve increased our electronic trading capability through a way of thinking that says you want to make the right way the easiest way. So if it’s off the catalogue, it’s against an approved supplier, and it’s within these parameters, it pretty much can go straight out the door. The minute it is breaking some of those particular parameters, it’s just subject to some additional levels of scrutiny.” – Tim Bullock

“I’ve always taken the view that the technical end of procurement can actually be relatively easily taught. What you can’t teach so easily is all of the interpersonal skills, the ability to form relationships, etc.” – Tim Bullock

“The more rounded you become, the more experiences that you have, the more value we bring as an individual, so we’ve tended to adopt that philosophy.” – Tim Bullock

“The last thing a business will want is its procurement profession spending and dedicating its scarce resource, given what we’ve described about resource, to transactional procurement. It will want that scarce resource working on those big strategic change programmes that really deliver against the business objectives.” – Tim Bullock