Neither Operations nor Finance wants to own vendor negotiations and supply chain procurement, so vendor terms and margins are sliding. How do we place a dirty-work seat on the Accountability Chart that nobody wants?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Every growing company develops orphaned functions that leadership team members consider thankless dirty work. When nobody wants to own procurement, pricing slips, payment terms deteriorate, and vendor risk spikes because the work happens haphazardly across multiple departments.

The rule of the Accountability Chart is absolute: every necessary function must live in a specific seat, and exactly one name must be accountable. If a seat is ignored because nobody wants it, you have an accountability void that will bleed cash.

First, isolate the seat and define its five major roles cleanly. For procurement, those roles typically include vendor contract negotiation, cost baseline management, supply chain reliability, quality compliance, and vendor relationship management. Do not bury these responsibilities inside a generic operations or accounting role, or they will be ignored.

Second, determine where the seat reports. Vendor procurement usually sits under Operations for physical delivery or Finance for service contracts. Choose the seat that carries the primary operational or financial risk of failure.

Third, confront the GWC reality. If nobody on your current leadership team wants the seat, do not force a reluctant manager into it. An unwilling owner guarantees mediocre execution. Instead, assign an existing leader to hold the seat temporarily as an open seat, document the required operating processes, and immediately initiate an external search or internal promotion for someone who possesses genuine GWC for vendor operations.

A single accountable owner with full authority over vendor spend will immediately pay for their own seat through captured margin.