A life worth living

Building on from What are we working for? a very moving incident occurred recently which needs a small diversion from the usual semi-business related themes to discuss life in general.

A few weeks back I met with a very good friend called John* who with tears in his eyes mentioned to me that his wife wanted a divorce and was cold towards him, not hostile, but worse -- painfully cold.

Now John is a very successful business man with his own firm which is incredibly powerful and often finds himself away from home dealing with clients. John is incredibly well respected by his employees and clients and well liked by all. John has a lovely nine year old daughter.

If the divorce goes through, under British law he will lose a lot more than half as he does not want to displace his daughter by selling the home that he has saved so hard to earn for her and is not guaranteed the one thing he really cares about -- time with her.

So how can this happen?

Well, I am no Relate counsellor, but here are some questions to consider:

- Why do you work long hours and away from home? Who are you doing it for and do they appreciate it?
- Do you believe that a relationship left alone deteriorates over time?
- Do you know what leaves your partner feeling loved?[1]
- If you lived as you do now from now until your death, would you be happy? If not, why not?

- Finally: What are you going to do about the answer to the above questions?

[1] The 5 languages of Love (Amazon), is an incredibly good book which deals with the different ways in which people show and receive affection. Every man should have at least skimmed this book. It is inevitable that your relationship will at some point hit rocks and hopefully this will help prevent it being ship-wrecked.

*names may have been changed to protect the innocent

Recommended Reading... the power of being different

Paul Graham has written an essay on the power of not being in the "in crowd". It discusses the power of being at the edge of the activity along with other things.

Ironically this essay sums up in a much more insightful way than I can manage my views on the power of being small.

This is truly a time of incredible opportunity for the world in general and (I believe) the United Kingdom in particular. David has a few years in which he can truly take on Goliath with new ideas.

How can this be true?

Well

• the development can be done with the help of numerous off-shore companies
  
• the marketting can be done inexpensively through Google's Adsense
• the distribution can be done through technology enabled deals with companies such as FedEx
• the brand can be built through the viral networks online as well as through traditional channels
• even the billing can be outsourced through use of PayPal along with several online merchant banking providers
  

The internet's main strength is that it allows everyone to compete... at times of change like this a small gap opens up for those who will dive through and grow quickly. Google have, ebay have, amazon have. Could you?

This diversion is totally off the topic of Paul Graham's essay and not quite as insightful...

p.s. For a thorough look into this topic, I recommend "The World is Flat" (Amazon), it is moderately heavy reading - but once you have conquered your way through it you will be thoroughly informed!

Consulting - it so much easier with two

In the world of computer programming there is a practice called eXtreme Programming[1] which suggests that two roughly equally matched programmers will find some genuine synergy and work better when working in tandem than both working separately.

How about extending this idea to other intellectual activities - e.g. consulting?

Over the past year, I have been lucky enough to regularly work with a very good manager and together we achieved a lot of work and managed to get a book published on the side[2]. Reflecting back on why we were so productive, I realised it was due to the very close collaboration where I could immediately ask for help if I thought it would be more efficient to and visa versa.

Would this work in any job where people know different amounts or is it unique to consulting? I am not sure, but my guess is that it would.

In (almost) the words of A.A.Milne, "It is so much [easier] with two.."

Notes:
[1] eXtreme Programming - XP is a commonly used programming style with start-ups and small teams. It can lead to very high productivity rates with fewer errors than solo programming.
[2] Clamped by David Blackwell - "A fun read...the perfect trashy novel for your next winter holiday", MethodMag

Change - Ever increasing, never changing?

Change is moving faster. People are having to be more flexible than they have ever been before and businesses are facing challenges which the sleepy businesses of yester-year never had to worry about in their happy, stable existences. Is this true?

A classically uninspired thought for the day:

Read any business book of the past hundred years and they will all discuss the unrivalled rate of change at the time the book was published and the step change in difficulty between the last five years and the current one. My brain rejects this hypothesis as being far too simple, if we really were on the global CAGR [1] that this kind of change would represent then our collective economies would be signficiantly larger.

Is it an effect similar to the accoustical shepherd effect[2]? It sounds like it is continually rising as your brain first focusses on one band of noise increasing and then subtly switches and focusses on another band of noise increasing. In fact the shepherd tone is simply an unchanging and cyclical tone which just sounds as it is ever increasing/decreasing.

In a similar way, each rapid area of change in business appears to become less important with time, but a new area of change appears each time the brain adjusts to the old change, with that change increasing until it too is superseeded.

Listen to the shepherd tone and consider the effect. An identical cyclical tone sounding each time like it is (in this example) lower than the time you heard it before.

Perhaps, it is the same for business, and although we are learning from the latest new discovery, in fact there are a number of sound principles which are proved true every iteration around the cycle.

[1] CAGR - Compound Annual Growth Rate: the % rate at which something is increasing each year in comparison to its previous years. A CAGR of 10% on an initial size of 100 would = 133.1 after 3 years... (100 + 10% = 110 in the first year. 110 + 10% = 121 in the second year. 121 + 10% = 133.1 in the third year)


[2] For more information on the Shepherd tone see Wikipedia's article.