THE PRACTICE

Your category.
Your negotiation.
Your Friday afternoon.

Fifty procurement people, from a few years in to Head of Procurement, on whatever is stuck on your desk this week. A membership, not a course.

One hour on Friday. A different person on Monday.

Be one of the fifty How a Friday runs
Fridays 3pm Melbourne · 60 min · 50 places · Opens 1 Feb 2027 First month free, then $600 a year plus GST. Founding price held for five years while you renew.
A live Friday Fix on Zoom with five participants, one of them blurred
A live Friday Fix. Cases are anonymised and recordings stay members-only.
What people bring

You are better at this job than your week lets you show.

None of these go in a development plan. They surface at 11pm, or in the car park after a meeting that went badly.

  • Credit

    You delivered it. Someone else described it to the executive. Their name is the one that stuck.

    You were never taught to put a number on your own work in words a CFO repeats, so the person who can narrate it owns it.

  • Promotion

    Someone with less experience got the role. You know you could have done it. Nobody asked you.

    Quiet competence gets you kept, not promoted. What moves you is a run of banked outcomes and two or three people senior enough to say your name in a room you are not in.

  • Access

    The question that would take someone four minutes has been sitting in your head for three weeks.

    Your manager has four other fires and no gap in the calendar. Nobody is withholding help, you just guess and carry it.

  • Negotiation

    The supplier pushes back. You go blank. The right answer arrives in the car park.

    Knowledge and judgement are different muscles. Nothing has rehearsed the pressure of the real moment, opposite someone who does this for a living.

If one of those landed, this is meant for you. Be one of the fifty

10

Formal training, courses, certifications

90

Reading the politics, the room, and the people who actually decide it

Built on one idea

Everyone sells you the ten percent. We work the other ninety.

No certificate. Nothing for your CV. It will show up in how you handle your next negotiation.

How a Friday runs

The Friday Fix. 3pm Melbourne, every week.

Sixty minutes, same slot. The format rotates across the month, and urgent work overrides it. Five have already run. Every session is recorded, so a bad week at work does not cost you your month.

  1. By Wednesday

    You submit a case

    The live category, negotiation or stakeholder problem on your desk.

  2. Friday 3:00pm

    Two get picked

    The two the room learns most from. Your own comes around every few months.

  3. 3:00 to 4:00

    The room works it

    Mixed on purpose, a few years in through to Head of Procurement, so you are never the most experienced person in it.

  4. After

    It stays with you

    The recording, and the members channel: post Tuesday, get a straight answer before Friday.

Across the month
Week oneTeardownSomeone puts a live project on the table. The room pulls it apart and puts it back together.
Week twoThe prep roomA negotiation you have coming up. Plan it, rehearse it, and pressure-test whether your stakeholder still backs your walk away.
Week threeSkill drillFraming an ask. Handling a price increase. Language that survives the first objection.
Week fourConcept or caseA real engagement broken down properly, including what went wrong. Ends with how you use it this month.
Session slide on inflation management using a chocolate bar shrinkflation example Session slide: the burger dilemma on price neutral, increase or decrease Friday Fix number 2 title card: cost savings strategies to beat inflation
Slides from Friday Fix #2, cost savings strategies to beat inflation.
One that has already run

A member was told to find opportunities across their category and had no idea where to start. We built the hypotheses, worked out how to test each one, and they left with a pipeline they could take to their sponsor.

In their words

Three to five years on your own. One to two in the right room.

You could spend 3 to 5 years learning by yourself in an organisation. Or, you could learn from the people in the community and shorten your learning curve to 1 to 2 years.
Raymond Chen
Procurement Manager, Packaging, Lactalis

Not from the Friday Fix. From coaching and advisory work before The Practice existed.

Ashokk N Menon
Your host

Twenty five years in the seat. In the room with you every Friday.

I am Ashokk N Menon. Client side, supplier side and consulting side, across 130+ projects and 15+ sectors. The Friday Fix is me in the room every week, with a rotating faculty of guests: people who have run the function, people who sell to it for a living, and operators from outside procurement entirely.

Founding membership

Fifty founding places. One price, held for five years.

$600a year
plus GST

Your first month is free, whichever month you join. $660 including GST for the twelve months after that.

Twelve months of weekly one to one coaching runs $30,000 to $50,000 in this market. This is a room rather than one to one.

Be one of the fifty

Nothing charged until your free month ends. Invoice available.

OpensMonday 1 February 2027
WhenFridays, 3pm Melbourne. From October to early April that is 5pm Auckland, 12pm Singapore, 9:30am India and 8am Dubai. From April, Singapore, India and Dubai run an hour later.
Places50, chosen for the mix. Founding members keep $600 a year for five years, as long as they renew each year, and can nominate one person they would want in the room.
IncludedThe Friday Fix every week. Every session recorded, members only, for your membership year. The members channel. Roles members put in front of the group first. Templates, models and prep sheets. The category management fundamentals, pre-recorded. A curated monthly pick.
RenewalYou choose each year. Nothing rolls over.
RefundsNone after the free month.
TaxMost likely a self education expense. Check with your accountant.
Do not join ifYou want the certificate more than the skill, or you want to watch quietly from the back. A room where nobody brings work teaches nobody anything.
Before you put your name down

What members ask first.

Will I ever get my own problem looked at?
Two cases a session, submitted by Wednesday, and I pick the two the room learns most from. Your own case comes around every few months. In between you watch other people's, which in the early months is the better half of the deal.
Is this new? Am I a guinea pig?
The Friday Fix has run five times already. What is new is opening it as a membership, with a cap, a calendar and a price.
I am not in Australia. Is this for me?
The room is spread across Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore and the Gulf, and the hour works in all of them. The price is in Australian dollars because that is where I invoice from, not because of who it is for.
Is what I bring confidential?
Nothing goes outside the group and nobody is named externally. Nobody names their employer, suppliers are described by category, and numbers are worked in ranges. Recordings are members only, teardowns are cut so the case cannot be traced, and you can ask for yours not to be recorded at all.
I am fairly junior. Will I be out of my depth?
No. Bringing a problem you cannot solve yet is the point, and watching someone more senior work through theirs is most of the value in the early months.
Someone on my team sent me this. What does it cost me as their manager?
One hour of their Friday and nothing of your week. No coursework to review, no days off site, no approval to sign. They bring back positions already tested against pushback, and business cases built to survive the room. An invoice is available if your organisation wants to back it. If it is your whole team that needs this, Million Dollar Week is built for that.
What if it is not for me?
Your first month is free, whichever month you join in, and walking away before it's up costs you nothing. After that the year is paid in full, no refunds, because by then you've seen exactly what you're buying.
FOUNDING FIFTY

Get in before it opens. Then bring the work.

Put your name down now and you get invited to sit in on a live Friday Fix before February. I read every name myself and pick the fifty.

In January: the payment link and the year's calendar. Nothing charged until 1 March. Founding members keep the $600 rate for five years, as long as they renew each year.

No cost and no card. An email now and then before January, not a drip sequence.

You're on the list.

I read every name myself. You'll hear from me before January, with the payment link and the year's calendar.