My first foray into fraud bored me senseless. I was sure I’d never work in that area again.
It was a hot summer in 2001, and I was sitting in a stuffy Edwardian building (converted office) temping as a paralegal. The lawyer instructed me to review reams of ancient correspondence looking for connections between different construction firms. I asked why, and they snapped back, “It’s a pretty simple instruction; just do it.”
Fast-forward to now, and workplace manners seem a little better (in places), but investigations are all too often still treated like a knowledge power-play. I understand confidentiality. I get delegation. But you’re cooking up a mess if people don’t know the broad strokes.
Maybe you’ve seen those kitchen shows where Gordon Ramsay verbally abuses sweaty people in the name of light entertainment. Communication is a recurrent theme (or the lack thereof). Not communicating what you’re cooking in an investigation is like not telling chefs the dish.
“Chop the onions!” “How?” “It’s a pretty simple instruction.”
Preparing onions for a salad differs from pureeing them as a sauce base. In investigations, the nuance exists across various domains, including:
- Purpose - assess credibility, verify, understand impact, etc.
- Driver(s) - internal complaint, regulatory action, dispute with external parties, etc.
- What next - litigation (civil or criminal), internal disciplinary, information gathering, etc.
Presumably, we all (want to) hire smart people. When we provide the basic information about why they’re being asked to do X or Y, they will often go above and beyond. They create masterful dishes, communicating with other chefs. Yes, you can keep some distance between teams (fish station, sauces, etc.), but they need to know (roughly) how the service comes together. This sounds like statements of the blindingly obvious, but investigations are more often tightly held. Like secrets. And just as leaky.
The problem with this - aside from suboptimal performance - is rumours and mistruths spread in communication vacuums.
If we want better investigative outcomes, those leading need to think like head chefs, not territorial legal partners.
Is procurement like Kim Jong-un’s train?
Kim’s trip to the Russian spaceport, the Vostochny Cosmodrome, was made by train. Slowly. This is partly a show - it creates quite the spectacle. He also doesn’t trust a decaying fleet of Soviet-era planes. In many ways, this is a metaphor for third-party risk frameworks where procurement leads.
The train travels at 60 kmph (37 mph). The bulletproof glass, decrepit rail networks, not to mention the karaoke and satellite rooms onboard make this worse than British commuter services.
If your procurement framework (including contract management) takes six months, maybe you have Kim’s train fever:
🚂 You carry too much stuff (too many questionnaires, boxes, forms, etc.).
🚂 The delivery platform needs updates (the year 2000 called and asked for Microsoft CRM back).
🚂 The alternatives are scary - if procurement is set up to shield the business from conflicted, fraudulent, or otherwise problematic supplier-employee relationships, working on culture is probably a better investment than bulletproofing a very long workaround.
Just saying…