Exposing the crazy thinking about how businesses (don't) work
Dean Fleming PI and the Mystery of the Global Shift, Part 3
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- The world’s changing Big Time. How the heck is one supposed to keep up?
We first met Corporate PI Dean Fleming in Happy Friday #7 where we learned about the global consulting giant McNifty (and its arch-rival, Futur-o-logic) and McNifty’s leader, Sam Freestone, and her challenge to Dean to investigate new global business opportunities. Dean then reappeared in Happy Friday #14 where we also met his assistant, Jewel, and where she and Dean discussed some historical ideas about shifts in the global zeitgeist.
Now, Dean’s back, and the McNifty story is elevated, if that’s the right word, into its own story stream, The Mystery of the Global Shift. After all, if this is a major challenge of our time, it surely qualifies for a dedicated space?
Eight forty-five a.m., and one of the London coffee shops favoured by those employees who actually bothered still to go in to McNifty’s head office on a Monday morning was heaving. Some queued up and then, clutching their coffees, straight away set off to cover the hundred or so meters to the McNifty building. Others stayed in the coffee shop and chatted with colleagues. Then there was Dean Fleming; he sat alone, occupied with his own thoughts.
Give me something, Dean! Give me something to work with! What are the key opportunities? Dean recalled Sam Freestone’s plea of a few months earlier. The brief was straightforward enough - trouble was, the challenge itself was huge.
An arm touched his shoulder: A penny for ‘em, mate.
Dean looked up and smiled. Bhav, hi.
Bhav, tall, well-built and dressed in the smart casual wear of today’s executives, pointed to the chair opposite Dean and looked questioningly.
- Yes, do, please. Sit down, said Dean.
Bhav put his cup down on the small round table, took the chair opposite Dean, unshouldered his backpack and wedged it between his feet. You look pre-occupied, Dean. Great thoughts, huh?, he said, smiling.
- I wish! Truth is, I’m going round in circles.
- Part of the process, isn’t it?
- Yeah, but … at some point you do hope to be able to draw some conclusions.
Bhav nodded, sipped his coffee and looked around the crowded coffee shop. As McNifty’s Head of Marketing he knew Dean well because they’d had occasion to work together on several projects over the five years Bhav had been the firm.
Bhav liked Dean. Liked him a lot. He and Dean got on really well. And one of the things Bhav had learned was when to keep his mouth shut: if Dean wanted to talk he’d do it in his own good time.
A couple of minutes passed, then Dean turned to look directly at Bhav: It’s just, I think I started out on the wrong track.
Typical Dean opener, thought Bhav and raised a quizzical eyebrow.
Dean smiled: Are you okay for five minutes?
- All ears, mate.
- A while ago, back before Christmas, in fact, Sam asked me to take a look at the … well, I suppose you’d call it the Big Picture. You know, “The world’s changing, where are we headed as far as business is concerned?” sort of thing. Dean paused. I’m not even sure I should be talking about it.
- Don’t worry, I can keep your secret. Bhav smiled broadly. Anyway, I’m impressed - Sam’s cleverness never ceases to amaze me.
- How do you mean?
- Look, we are a big firm, a very big firm, and we’re supposed to be bright bunnies. New tech? Talk to McNifty. Global growth issue? Talk to McNifty. Outsmart the competition? Talk to McNifty. And because we’re bright and because we do all of these things we have formal structures that mean there are hundreds, possibly even thousands, of people right now tackling that self-same challenge to keep us out in front.
Dean looked chagrined. Well, if you’re right, what the hell am I supposed to be doing?
Bhav’s smile broadened further. That’s the clever bit.
It was Dean’s turn to look quizzical.
Bhav leaned forward, his voice now quieter but more intense. All of those internal goings-on … no, that’s not quite right … all of those formal internal goings-on, are … well … formal. Hang on, sorry, I’m not doing very well here, am I? He paused to gather his thoughts, then: The point is, they are all, to a greater or lesser extent, official, organized, bureaucratic. Which means they follow top-down rules, there are rigid meeting plans, and minutes with action points and all that palaver. And you know what, whether they mean to or not, they’re almost certainly all focused on revenue outcomes - revenue or profit first.
Dean nodded. So?
- But you’re not like that. You come at things from a different angle. That’s the point. You have a kind of detective’s mind. So, with all the committees and the special events and the talkfests going on about the future of global business in general and McNifty’s business in particular, Sam has the nous to switch you on, so to speak … independently, with barely a brief, just a broad ‘Please investigate’.
It was Dean’s turn to smile: Well, there’s nothing like a ‘Please investigate’ to get me going.
- But a couple of minutes ago you said something about starting off down the wrong track?
- Yeah. You know there’s a lot of stuff out there about civilizational change, the end of the Western world, the shift from national to global, and on and on? Well, I picked up on that - it seemed a logical place to start - I started investigating thinkers who’d tackled that issue.
- That sounds like heavy going.
- I know, and some of it’s just plain wacky. W.B.Yeats - you know, the Irish poet - had a thing about gyres, and Flaubert and Descartes and some others had various ideas …
- Good grief, that all sounds weird.
- It is a bit.
- I begin to see why you’re wondering whether that was the right start point, said Bhav
Dean leaned back. Have you got time for another coffee?
As nine o’clock approached the coffee shop was emptying out and, when Dean returned to the table with fresh coffees, he and Bhav were able to spread a little for greater comfort.
- You’ve got me thinking, said Dean. Can I try an idea on you?
- Go for it.
- It comes from your point about my looking at things from a different angle. You know, I like to try to work out if there are things about a situation that others might have … well … missed.
- Yup.
- And what you’ve triggered me to realize is the fact that I ignored what I call ‘The Dog in the Night-time’ test.
- Aha, I know that one! said Bhav. It’s Sherlock Holmes, isn’t it? My eldest lad is reading some of the stories.
- That’s it. The story’s called ‘Silver Blaze’, which is a horse, by the way. I have the snippet by heart:
‘Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’
‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’
‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’
‘That was the curious incident,’ remarked Sherlock Holmes.1
Bhav looked puzzled. Dean clarified: I’d forgotten about it. I’d ignored it. Whatever, I’d neglected my own process - and you reminded me of that. Thank you.
- Pleased to be of service. Bhav looked puzzled: But does that mean you’re suggesting there is or are factors that have been entirely overlooked? I’m not sure I could think of any.
Truth to tell, Dean was beginning to feel a tingling sensation, an excitement. There is one, he said, and it’s something that takes me back about … ooh … fifteen or twenty years.
- That’s almost pre-digital, said Bhav. What could possibly exist from then that would have relevance today? His smile made it clear that he was being somewhat facetious, but he was enjoying the exchange.
- Back then, said Dean, I was in the police force - a rookie member of a specialist commercial crime unit in the City of London.
- Well, well, I never knew that, said Bhav. So you were actually in the police force?
- Yup, and to get up to speed I spent blocks of time with various types of business. One of them happened to be a consultancy firm, a small one specializing in helping manufacturing clients. Now, let me see if I can recall the logic they talked about …
Dean closed his eyes in concentration. Knowing better than to break the silence, Bhav waited. Eventually Dean spoke …
- Okay, the first thing to say is that you are right - massive change has happened in the past fifteen or twenty years. Actually, that’s the whole point … but bear with me. Back in the noughties, digital tech was already changing everything. The outsourcing boom that started in earnest in the 1980s could only happen when digital tech got to a certain maturity. Then, it really took off in the ‘90s, and then, after December 2001 when China joined the World Trade Organization, it just went … . Dean punched upwards into the air. The point was, the ‘distributed enterprise’, if we can call it that, was an essential part of the shift to globalization but it was only possible if the digital technology had what you might call an outsized role in everything.
- Outsized? What do you mean?
- Well, if you’re going to distribute business functions all over the globe, the only way it can work is if the processes are absolutely defined, nailed down and declared to be absolutely inviolable.
Bhav, cautiously, Okay.
- But now, just think, what have you done to swathes of people in the organization?
Bhav looked questioningly, Isolated them in groups?
- Spot on.
- But that was always the case, surely? The people in the factory never had much to do with the board.
- Oh, it’s more subtle than that. The point is - and here’s ‘The Dog in the Night-time’ point - twentieth century business was based on a bunch of assumptions that were completely false.
Bhav laughed, Oh, this sounds interesting!
Dean looked around. The coffee shop was almost empty of people now. Alright, he said, here goes:
Assumption One - a business is made up of discrete, rational blocks of activity. And those blocks of activity flow into each other in a predictable, linear fashion. He repeated the words for emphasis. Discrete … Rational … Predictable … Linear. Okay?
Pause.
Assumption Two - That first assumption leads inexorably to a conclusion about leadership. It must mean that the main role of leadership is control to shape reality.
Bhav was nodding.
Dean continued: Assumption Three - It gets worse because this mindset also goes on to assume that people, individually or in groups, are also rational and logical. It has to, otherwise the board would have a mutual heart attack. Then, the whole combination of these assumptions leads to …
Assumption Four: The idea that it’s possible to design - it was Dean’s turn to finger-waggle to indicate the inverted commas - ‘ideal’ structures that will inevitably lead to decisions and behaviours that generate … another waggle … ‘ideal’ results.
Bhav sat back smiling and nodding: Uh huh, and you, I presume, are going to say that that’s inhuman - literally?
Dean nodded: And the more things get micromanaged by the technology, the more inhuman it gets. But in the pre-digital world it didn’t matter so much because organizations were in much closer proximity, in every sense, at all levels, and the people talked much more with one another.
- And argued, added Bhav.
Dean smiled and nodded.
- In fact, continued Bhav, isn’t our conversation, now, something like what used to happen a great deal more?
- Maybe, a bit. But it used to happen multiple times a day, in the workplace, at the water cooler, in the pub, at the sports club …
- Hey, that’s a point, Bhav interjected. You mentioned your time in the police force. In the past I worked for an engineering company, and back then I played in the firm’s football team. And you know what, although the company has long since gone, outsourced overseas, the company name lives on in the football team that still exists in our local league.
- There you are - social elements have a power and a resonance that is far more persistent than this or that piece of tech.
- Would you say this has a bearing on the issues we hear a lot about young people particularly being disenchanted, disorientated and mentally stressed?
- I think it’s a dead cert. I think it is part of The-Dog-in-the-Night-time issue besetting twenty-first century business. What I’m thinking, now, is where this leads in responding to Sam’s request. She asked, what are the key opportunities at the moment. Well, maybe we can find an answer to the screwed-up relational situation? Bhav, thank you. Dean checked his phone. I’d better get a move on. I’ve got a meeting with Jewel.
- I’ll perhaps see you here same time next week?
Dean reached for Bhav’s hand and shook it warmly.
Thanks for reading.
Arthur Conan Doyle. ‘Silver Blaze’, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)