Procurement Unmedicated

No buzzwords. No synergy. Just procurement, unmedicated.

What is this place?

This is not a thought leadership platform.

There is no proprietary framework here. No “5 Steps to Procurement Excellence.” I don’t care if you find yourself itchy over the fact that I went with “5 Step” while writing this instead of the 7 or 11 step you use like a bible. Here, nobody is going to tell you to “leverage your stakeholder ecosystem” or “drive strategic value through collaborative synergies.” We won’t be circling back to boil the ocean with our value add actionable insights towards continuous improvement.

If that’s what you’re looking for, LinkedIn is right there. It’s free. Knock yourself out.

This is just procurement, told honestly, by someone who has spent years inside it and still hasn’t figured out how to pretend the emperor is wearing clothes.

Who’s writing this?

Hi, I’m Dan Shibilia. I’m a North of Boston based Attorney who woke up one day working in Procurement and never looked back. I like to think I am everything you’d expect from a Boston guy. I’m loud, opinionated, lovable, a little brash, and I’ll fight alongside anyone for what is right.

I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career at the intersection of contracts, supplier relationships, and the very human chaos that happens when organizations try to buy things from other organizations. I’ve seen the best and worst of how companies engage their supply base, and shockingly, and I have opinions about both. Before that, I worked in corporate law. I wore a suit. I pretended to like Bourbon and Cigars so I could land new business at stuffy networking events. I golfed… poorly, but dammit, I golfed. I even hung my own shingle for a while. I’ve bought and contracted for just about everything at this point from SaaS to Airplanes to microchips, and just about everything else.

I’m not a consultant selling you a transformation roadmap. I’m not a vendor with a platform to pitch. However, if you need that, I know people and can point you in the right direction. I’m just someone who cares deeply about this profession and is increasingly convinced that the only way to make it better is to stop being so polite about what’s broken.

What you’ll find here:

Real talk on contracts and the people who negotiate them. Honest takes on supplier relationships, like what actually works and what we just say works. The hiring and talent conversations this industry avoids. The gap between how procurement presents itself and how it actually operates day to day.

Occasionally some humor. Hopefully always some truth.

As this evolves, I would love to start doing a podcast where we talk about procurement, contracting, tools we use that we like and dislike, and all sorts of stuff.

Who is this for?

Procurement and sourcing professionals who have sat in a meeting and thought “we are absolutely not talking about the real problem right now” or “when did I become the smart one in the room, this isn’t ok.”

People who came into this field sideways, from legal, finance, operations, or somewhere even further off the beaten path, and built something real anyway.

Anyone curious about what corporate buying and contracting actually looks like from the inside, without the polish.

If you’ve ever been the person in the room willing to say the quiet part out loud knowning full well that some suit somewhere is going to be upset and you’re going to her about it… this was written for you by someone just like you.

Why “Unmedicated?”

Because most professional content is heavily sedated.

It’s been smoothed, softened, scrubbed of anything that might make someone uncomfortable, and optimized for maximum inoffensiveness. By the time it reaches you, whatever original thought sparked it has been processed into something safe and largely useless.

Let’s be real… most of it is unbearably boring.

This isn’t that.

No filters. No corporate speak. No performance of expertise designed to make you feel like you need to hire someone.

Just the work. Just the truth. Just procurement as it actually is… messy, chaotic, and enjoyable.

Thanks for being here. Subscribe if this sounds like your kind of place.

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