Happy Friday #7

A few thoughts at the end of the working week

Image: Shutterstock

Introducing Corporate PI, Dean Fleming, and
The Mysterious Case of Net Zero

Sam Freestone leaned back in her office chair, drew deeply on her vape and stared vacantly into the middle distance. There was a tap on the office door. Reflexively the vape went into a desk drawer kept open for just such occurrences and she affected the look of intense concentration expected of the head of global management consultancy behemoth, McNifty.
- Come in, she called.

Dean Fleming entered and strode across the carpeted expanse towards Sam Freestone’s desk.
- Hi Sam, sorry to barge in but we’ve got an issue. Hmm, the ice-cold fruity slush flavor vape, again, he thought. Fleming was McNifty’s in-house Corporate Private Investigator. As CPI’s go he was reckoned to be one of the best in Business. At least that’s what he himself claimed.
- Dean, what’s going on?
- It’s Global Goodies …
Sam raised an immaculately-styled quizzical eyebrow. Whatever this was would be important because GG, as Global Goodies was usually referred to, was a McNifty Top Ten client, good for several hundred million dollars in fee income every year.
- … they’ve had an exploratory meeting with Futur-o-logic.
- So there was truth in that rumour! What’s going on?
- It’s the Net Zero thing - they’re getting criticized for their CO2 emissions and they’re blaming us for it.
Sam leaned back, closed her eyes for a few seconds, then sighed: It’s what I was afraid might happen.
Dean looked expectantly at her, awaiting an explanation. After a few more seconds of silence, Sam leaned forward with her elbows on the desk. Softly, she explained: Twenty five years ago I was new here, fresh out of uni, and all the action at the time was around outsourcing. Back then, GG was only about a tenth of the size it now is. We convinced them to outsource all of their manufacturing … all of it! … shut down all the plants in the U.S., Europe, right across the West and move it to lower cost areas … India, China mostly. Alongside all this we scooped all of the Business Process Management work needed to make the new processes and supply chains operate. I was just a rookie, but I remember Gary Kumar talking about it.
She paused and leaned back, lost for a few seconds in recollection of Gary Kumar who, back then, had occupied the position she now held.
Dean looked quizzical: Aha, that was the time, presumably, where McNifty became indispensable to GG?
Sam smiled: You bet. Gary was so good. I remember him saying, ‘This is it - we’re in the back door! - they cannot now do without us. As of now, McNifty has become indispensable to GG … for ever!’
Dean nodded his head: Clever he said. Control the processes and you control the company.
- Not quite, said Sam, That was the next step.
She smiled again. Gary had it all worked out. Having control of the processes meant we got insight into any issues that there were, good or bad, ongoing, in real time.
- That’s control of the company, isn’t it? said Dean.
- Not quite. The final step, as Gary pointed out, was that, having the key to the back door, we then needed to go in through the front door and direct things.
- Aha, the strategic bit.
- Exactly. Armed with the knowledge from the back office, we could make strategic proposals for new developments. Which is what we’ve done now for … she waggled her left hand to indicate an approximation … fifteen years. And they’ve been fifteen very good years. She paused. But, now, they’re talking to Flog-it, are they?
‘Flog-it’ was the familiar, almost affectionate, nickname for McNifty’s arch rival, Futur-o-logic.
- So it would seem, said Dean. As I understand it, as far as emissions reductions are concerned, our closeness to GG is the problem.
- Yes, I get that. It has bothered me for a while. We could all get away with the fiction that we were reducing net emissions for as long as all of the work, particularly manufacturing, got done ‘over there’, ‘somewhere else’, ‘out of sight’, so to speak.
Dean interjected. Exactly. It was the best of all worlds. Over here, we could hand on heart say that we were cutting emissions while simply not reminding folks that, for the most part, all we had done was outsource the emissions elsewhere.

- That’s right. The global totals just keep on climbing, apart from the little dip when the world stopped for the pandemic. Only today I was reading about a new UN report, published just a few days ago, which reckons that global emissions by the end of the 2020s will not hit the target necessary to keep under the 1.5C target.
- Do you really think that matters? asked Dean.
- Well, I guess it does if you believe that climate change is a man-made existential issue. Personally, I’m not convinced, but I’d never admit that outside these walls. Whatever, Gary’s thinking enabled us to get so tightly linked to GG that we can’t pretend that McNifty plus GG doesn’t have responsibility for the whole supply chain and, therefore, responsibility for all of the emissions, no matter where in the world they arise. GG realizes this. It’s why they’re edgy, talking to Flog-it.
- So, what next? asked Dean.
- We’ve got a brief window so let’s open it up for debate, see what people think. I’ll invite contributions.

- Okay, thanks. Dean strode out of the office.
Sam reached for the vape.

Thanks for reading.