“Procurement writing for people who actually buy things.”
Long-form analysis of structural problems — category errors that collapse on inspection, incentive blind spots baked into measurement, scope failures that determine the answer before the question is finished.
A peer-reviewed causal study finds that above the audit threshold, procurement officers systematically shifted from competitive auctions to direct contracting. Auctions have twice as many auditable steps as direct contracts. Officers who know they will be audited choose the procedure that generates the fewest findings. That procedure is not an auction.
The CIPS State of Procurement and Supply 2026 report is titled 'Time to Lead'. The harder measures in the same report — board representation down, strategic skills retreating, 'afterthought' perception up — describe the opposite. This is the COVID-era bifurcation pattern, running on schedule.
The PAC found UK government can't measure its own consultancy spend. The deeper problem is that both sides of the transaction know which door is unguarded — and the buying organisation's own stakeholders are often the ones holding it open.
The Nature for Climate Fund commissioned five years of tree planting and peatland restoration without building outcome measurement into its design. The NAO cannot assess value for money. Defra says it expects very high value for money. Those two positions are not compatible.
The OAG found Oranga Tamariki applied procurement cost-reduction logic to $500 million in children's services without asking what those services were for or what would happen if the funding disappeared.
BCG calls the CFO confidence gap a procurement credibility problem. It isn't. It's a definition problem that procurement created and then blamed finance for not understanding.
Kearney, Deloitte and State of Flux independently identify the same 6% of organisations as elite. The research model that produces the number also explains why 94% can't close it.