To be included, you must be a team player

I spend some of my time supporting a variety of MBA and executive education programs at international business schools. This support includes discussion and mentoring of project teams. Recently, I spent a couple of hours talking with a group of senior managers - all at Vice-President level - from the defense industry. They were examining how their companies could improve supplier selection, particularly in the context of choosing suppliers who would assist innovation. Very early in the conversation they made a point of telling me that they had deliberately not included anyone from Supply Management in their team 'because they seem to us to be the problem'.