Sally Helgesen is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and consultant, and one of the world’s brand-name experts on women’s leadership. Her latest book, The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work, is the first to make the strategic case for women leaders. 
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Nov 14, 2007 / 12:00AMChatham, NY
It may be a reflection of my inherent dullness, but I am fascinated by supply chain issues, one of the clearest examples of the knowledge economy at work. Last week in the New York Times there was a compelling article by Claudia Deutsch about how efforts to go green—or at least greener—are transforming how companies manage their supply chain.
Hewlett-Packer, not surprisingly, is taking the lead. And since the company orders $53 billion (!!) worth of products each year, it has the potential to make a huge impact. What HP seems to get is that focusing on social and environmental responsibility at every stage of production forces an organization to form alliances with competitors who share similar goals. That’s how you exert pressure on suppliers.
As Bonnie Nixon Gardiner, a supply chain exec at HP notes, many of HP’s competitors operate in the same regions and use the same suppliers, even the same factories. So joining forces to pressure those suppliers to adapt greener practices is by far the most powerful approach. She notes, “If you’re going to make a real difference, you have to let go of your corporate ego.”
I call that Web of Inclusion 101.
GE, by contrast, doesn’t seem to understand that once you commit to green it has to change the way you operate at every level. Focusing on sustainable practices in your own company while ignoring what suppliers do is a good way of sticking to business as usual. It is, moreover, a totally industrial approach, all about silos and parameters instead of webs and opportunities.
In the Deutsch article, a GE spokesman named Peter O’Toole is quoted as saying, “We’ve drawn the boundary around activities over which we have operational control, and our reduction efforts are focused within that boundary.” But building sustainability requires entering into a world without boundaries. Boundaries got us to our present dilemma. Once we begin to think about the impact of our actions on the earth, we are thinking about a seamless whole in which everything is connected.
By the way, if supply chain issues excite you, pick up my friend Mike Hugos’ excellent book, Essentials of Supply Chain Management, available at Amazon.com.