Dr. Accountant And Mr. Chartered - A Study In Evil

The CFO, having been positioned as the confidant and counselor to the CEO, has at last revealed the truth about him-or-herself.  A week ago, an eblast from CFO magazine trumpeted a white paper that was chilling in its baseline premises.  Thanks to that inadvertent revelation we now know the truth: where we stand and how we are perceived by the leading luminaries of the financial profession; what little that Napoleonic cohort understands about supply chain management; and, how little it cares.

The rumors may be true.  The principal responsibility of accountants is to swarm the battlefield after the fighting has ended, and bayonet the wounded to ensure that: 1) someone pays the price for things gone wrong, even if nothing did; and, 2) there are no survivors to contradict the ultimate scorekeepers.

The electronic advert was, in truth, disheartening.  It opened with the identification of supply chain management as "a tremendous cost of doing business" and a "drain on profitability".  It promised those who downloaded the (apparently Rosicrucian) secrets contained inn the white paper that they would learn how to "cut costs" and "grow revenue".

Can they possibly really think that cutting costs is the same as growing revenue?  If so, we are doomed - as a profession, as an economy, and as a nation.  And, the antediluvian concept that all we are is a pile of cost to be whittled down, or shoveled out, speaks volumes about the baseline ignorance involved.

Clueless, careless, callous, calculating.  It is no great surprise that we don't trust this gang, and are wary from the get-go. 

Until they mature in their understanding of business context, and accept  -however grudgingly - that supply chain management represents an investment, with payback, in profitability, customer retention, sales volume growth, and appropriate balance in asset performance, the enterprises in which their voices are disproportionately heard will suffer.

We owe them, like all of our organizational peers, a shot at understanding, and communicating what we are about in terms that they can relate to - and embrace.  But, if the students are not ready, the appearance of a teacher is an empty symbol.