What Procurement Leaders Can Learn from Wordle

You’d be hard pressed to find someone today who hasn’t heard of the word puzzle Wordle, not to mention played it.  It seems to have consumed millions of people -   they can’t wait for the new puzzle each morning; and then many post their results on every possible social media site (including inexplicably,  LinkedIn), often with a note of self adulation or a hearty groan.

Full disclosure – I have played it a few times but haven’t gotten “hooked”.  There are a couple other word puzzles and so called ‘brain games’ that I do play regularly, so I’m not passing any judgments about Wordle enthusiasts. 

I started thinking about what makes Wordle so attractive (maybe even addictive?).  It is part guessing game, part playing the odds (what letters occur more or less often), part strategy (more to come on that), and part plain old luck.  Then it struck me that those are very often characteristics which are relevant to how procurement leaders tackle some challenges and sourcing scenarios.

The Guessing Game

The first word you try in Wordle is just that – it’s a guess.  Most regular players have a word or two that they always start with.  There are dozens of articles and videos on what the best word is to use first; and each one is backed up by a theory or studied approach – ADIEU (vowel intensive word); RAISE (mix of both commonly used and vowels and consonants); CRANE (according to several mathematicians and computer scientists, the word with the highest total letter frequency in the English language).

 More often than many leaders would like to admit, guessing plays a role in how we approach professional problems.  Let’s face it; we don’t always have the answer, and sometimes we don’t even have particularly relevant experience upon which to craft a solution.  But we have to take an action, make a decision, even if it may be a no more than an educated guess.  A seasoned leader will have a basis (or so we tell ourselves) for most of the guesses – experience, historical outcomes, and sometimes a bit of intuition.

Playing the Odds

Although some Wordle answers are arcane words, most are ones that you’ve heard of, and when you have even a couple letters correct, you can eliminate various letter combinations (i.e., J and D are not likely to be contiguous letters, and Q will be followed by U).

The same is true for tackling procurement challenges.  Once you have a few data points, you can start to make educated decisions based on what outcomes are more or less likely to occur. 

Strategy

If you try and solve Wordle by randomly guessing six different 5 letter words, you probably won’t win very often.  As you progress through your 6 word attempts, each word (and the letters within the word) becomes a strategic decision – of the letters which haven’t been tried, and which ones can fit into each position.

As procurement leaders, we thrive on strategy – for category management, value creation, stakeholder and vendor relationships, and of course, negotiations.  And just as in Wordle, the strategy often changes based on the success or failure of the tactical steps in the plan.

And Sometimes It Comes Down to Luck

You’re down to your sixth and last word guess; you have all but the first letter, for example,  _LAME.  You still have B and F as possible unused letters, and the correct answer could be either of these.  It really does sometimes come down luck if you pick correctly or not.

Again, procurement leaders are usually reluctant to admit that one of their decisions has came down to luck, but we all know that it happens.   If luck led to a successful outcome, we may admit quietly that it played a role.  If the outcome is not so successful, most people won’t admit that they resorted to luck to influence an outcome.  And, we’ve all been on both sides of the luck coin!

However

There is one stark difference between Wordle and procurement – you can’t Google the answer.  Some studies show that 20% to 40% of Wordle players look up the answer to the puzzle.  As a procurement leader, you can’t “scroll down” to find the answer!

Nonetheless, if you are a Wordle fan (or fanatic), or if you have yet to try it out, consider how the current hottest online word game can mirror how procurement leaders approach problems and challenges. Sometimes we find business advice and commonalities in the most unlikely places!

If you enjoyed todays column you can try your hand at our very own wordle.