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🧠 You Can Have the Best Risk Framework in the World. It Will Still Fail if There is No Risk Culture Next episode of our series: Supply Chain Risk Management done right! Here is the part nobody puts in a framework document. It is also THE part that determines whether everything else works.  I have seen it in multiple organizations across different industries. A buyer spots a worrying signal from a supplier. They are not sure it is serious enough to escalate. They do not want to be seen as alarmist.  They wait:  Three weeks later, it becomes a crisis. The process existed. The governance existed. The risk register existed. But the culture did not support early escalation. Nor was there any trust (remember my post 2 weeks ago?). And that made all the difference. ➡️Risk culture is not a values poster on the wall. It comes down to one question:  „In your organization, what actually happens when someone flags a risk early?“ If the answer involves extra meetings, justification overhead, or quiet skepticism, you have a culture and trust problem, not a process problem. Building a genuine risk culture means a few concrete things: ✅  Leadership visibly rewards early flagging, even when the risk does not materialize ✅  Leadership walks the talk and integrates managing risk into discussions, decisions, and processes – and they listen whenever they are asked to listen! ✅  Near-misses are reviewed without blame, not swept under the rug ✅  Risk is a normal topic in S&OP and supplier reviews, not a special escalation ✅  Cross-functional teams share ownership, so procurement is not carrying it alone ✅  Roles, responsibilities, and incentives get adjusted. Protecting the organization, its assets, and earnings becomes everyone’s responsibility by default. My takeaway after years of building and leading supply chain risk organizations: ➡️ Culture is not just an enabler. It is THE enabler for managing supply chain risk organizations effectively. ➡️ Yes, culture change is slow. Process change is fast. Most organizations default to the fast option. And then they wonder why the processes never quite stick. ➡️If you ignore building and maintaining a risk culture, you are going nowhere, wasting budget and time, and frustrating your entire organization! This isn’t from a textbook or study; it is the experience of a practitioner who learned it the hard way.

RISK AWARENESS WEEK 2026 – JOIN 22,000 RISK PROFESSIONALS IN OCTOBER I’m speaking at Risk Awareness Week 2026 – the largest virtual conference on risk-based decision-making (12–16 October). My sessions: ➡️When Supply Chains Break: How the Best Companies Decide Under Uncertainty (30 min talk) ➡️ Building an Effective Supply Chain Risk Management Capability (3h Workshop) If you haven’t come across RAW, it’s been running every October since 2019 and has reached more than 22,000 professionals from over 140 countries. In 2024, FERMA named it Training and Education Program of the Year. The conference’s central theme is that risk management is not about risks; it’s about decisions. The program focuses on practitioners showing how to put credible estimates on uncertainty and use them where decisions are actually made: budgets, forecasts, projects, insurance. My sessions are part of a full week of talks and hands-on workshops running 12–16 October, entirely online – sessions are broadcast at scheduled times and available as replays afterward, so any time zone works. I am happy to add the wisdom of 18 years of Supply Chain Risk Management, including 15 global, award-winning SCRM implementations across numerous industries. As usual, hands-on with practical solutions and a focus on what’s really needed to increase speed, save budget, and be effective from day 1. The first two days of the conference are free to attend. You can register and see the full program here: https://www.riskawarenessweek.com/

🇺🇸 ☕Coffee & Procurement Talk in Georgia or South Carolina. targetP comes to the US I spent almost eight years living and working in the US. I helped build an automotive plant in South Carolina from the ground up, restructured the North American Procurement operations out of Detroit, and later built the global procurement organization of AGCO Corporation, headquartered in Atlanta. Now I am coming back, and I am not here for a conference badge or a keynote slot. I am here for some business meetings, coffee, conversations, and the kind of honest talk you do not get in a boardroom. Today I lead targetP evolving procurement, a Procurement Advisory firm with offices in Berlin and Atlanta. We are not traditional consultants; we are former procurement and supply chain executives who have built, led, and turned around global procurement organizations from the inside. Many of us have lived and worked in the US while leading global organizations and projects. We work with companies such as Autoliv, KION, Danfoss, Swiss Railway SBB, and many others, helping them build procurement capabilities that withstand pressure. If any of this sounds like where you are right now, I would like to talk: ✔ Procurement Transformation that has stalled or lost momentum ✔ A leadership or performance gap that needs an Interim CPO / Interim Executive ✔ Supply Chain Risk you have been meaning to address but never quite get to ✔Digital Procurement & AI Enablement, if you are wondering where to start or how to separate hype from real value No pitch deck, no sales call disguised as a meeting. Just people talking Procurement. I will be in Georgia and South Carolina July 15 to 28. Send me a message, let’s find a time.