Comment: R&D in Labour Process Optimisation

This is why I work with in the minimum wage sector. I believe that globally, we're going to have an oversupply of manhours with very limited skillsets. The question then is how to turn an unskilled labourer into a competitive advantage.

Comment: on Building to Flip versus Building to Own

On a couple of these posts.

To own, or to flip?

/commented/ To flip. But I don't want to flip it too easily, or it will be too boring. So building a long-term business, to flip, is more interesting.
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Ok... so my perspective is that I have been basically retired and just killing time since I was about 20. (Not the highly-encashed kind... more the I have no further ambitions kind.) At that time, I had not yet started my commercial career, as I had been postponing it while I was studying. So when I was 21, I started studying commerce, and did (what I considered to be) the normal tour of duty... think tank / consulting firm / bank / startups / freelance... then back to studies. Anyway, started my first business when I was 31... been running it since... now I'm 36.
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You should be able to tell that I can work on very long horizons... since I have too much time. I find it very amusing that the buzz in these 'startup' groups is all about being the 'fastest-growing', not about other things like being the most resilient, or having the best product, and that's generally motivated by the VC chase, I think, since the hot money by definition is looking for growth, not impact outside of financial metrics. I don't think it's my job to tell people how to run their business, or their lives, but I do enjoy encouraging people to think about non-trendy things, which may be valuable.

Do we spend too much time hacking for attention?

/commented/ I think hacking for attention is 50% of the game. The reason is, I don't actually have a motivation to build a company for the sake of building a company... so I'm only doing it on the off-chance that it'll sell at some point in the future. If I actually cared about the product or customers, then hacking for attention would be 0% of the game (introverted artisanal businesses, relationship/ecosystem welfare oriented businesses), and if I only cared about selling, then hacking for attention would be 100% of the game. I tend to think of it as a management imperative to go right down the middle... but that's a lot of arm waving, I know.

Comment: on the Calibration of Discipline

I don't baby my staff. Even when I think that I don't, people tell me I'm too nice. Constant challenge, really. Better to get rid of weakness in the organisation before it poisons the well. Depending on the population poison is really just defined as whatever stands to kill whomever remains. Game on, mate!

Attempt to rewrite that in 'English' upon request:

I prefer not to be too nice, but I am too nice from time to time. The traits we want to remove from an organisation in any iteration N, are the traits which would reduce the efficacy of the remaining individuals in iteration N+1.

Second attempt to rewrite that in 'English' upon request:

Perhaps if it's easier to remember, you can just remember 'Jerng's a cunt' and I think we would agree!

On the word choice: well, in the questioner's initial question... I was being asked how much of a 'cunt' I'd want to be... no offense intended to women (or other cunt-owners) in general. The questioner appeared to identify as male.

In general, speech is neutral. The risk of speaking any word always includes that death may befall someone, whether it is the listener, or someone else, such as the speaker.

Comment: Burn-outs should be Always Possible, Never Mandatory

Reacting to this headline.

A good workplace protocol should encompass the opportunity to

1. allow managers to select against a specific absolute or value-for-cost performance level
2. without forcing staff to burn out
3. but with the provision of freedom for fully informed staff to allow themselves to burn out in the name of competition.

Reflection: making Tough Decisions on Mental Health Concerns

How comfortable are you, in advising subordinates, to receive diagnosis from medical professionals, on their workplace behaviour?

I always find it troubling to ask this. Sometimes a staff will go berserk and quit because they cannot deal with the thought of questioning their own sanity.

We must teach people that behavioural patterns are like catching a common cold. Humans often have no control over their conditions. We can only examine, or deny what we see.

Just offered a staff, the opportunity to receive help from the right people, if the staff wants help, on concerns about 'compulsive lying'. Never sure if I'm doing the right thing. But I think, this is help offered on an indeterminate concern - we are not qualified to further diagnose or treat certain symptoms.

Perhaps, a better protocol that can be practiced across the entire workforce, should be put into law.

From a RMD point of view, I'm just mitigating the risk of underreacting to indifference. We are throwing the kitchen sink of therapies at this one... short of reducing ourselves to hourly nannies - we can't afford to do that.

I have a very simple model of behavioural bucketing. Non-compliance with any social norm * ... can be attributed to the actor being either lazy, stupid, or evil. Bear with me, for this model is like all models, leaky, but not leaky enough to be useless.

Now based on that model, I can safely say that I generally don't care what the actual reason is... I don't believe it is possible to determine the truth behind the motivations of any private counterparty. So all non-compliance in a counterparty is basically dealt with the same way, with the same penalties and rewards, regardless of motivation in the actor.

However, at the meta-level, it's useful to discuss behaviour. What I am addressing in the post above is purely about how we discuss behaviour, after all the penalties and rewards are said and done.

In the case of this particular individual, I do not think that new therapies will be invoked in time to save their integration into our firm. However, it may benefit the general well-being of the individual due to an improvement in self-understanding, and perhaps in their future opportunities in other firms. I shall keep the group updated on how this all turns out!

(* business norms are a sort of social norm, all the way down to the rules in each organisation, because business is a social activity by definition)

Do Invite Me to Legal Suicides - I will try to make it

Three messages I posted on Facebook.

As a general rule, I avoid most weddings, as they take up far too much time and carry far too little significance in society. However, someone asked me if I would attend their suicide, and so I have decided that yes, if you're committing suicide in a LEGAL fashion, WHERE IT IS LEGAL to do so, yes, please DO invite me, and I will try to make it.

On suicide: You can't choose to be born. You can choose how to live and die. Suicide is a legitimate tactic in war - there's no reason to discount its utility to the individual. Don't reject it on impulse, as an evil ideology. Be reasonable. Think about it. Then decide. One way or another, freedom is illusory. You are the choices you make. We all are. Some people will never accept suicide as a norm. To others it is normal. Judgey, judgey...

Update: Ok folks, if this account suddenly disappears, it would probably be due to my expressions about the moral virtue of sui**** / sui**** positivity, and my support for the members of communities which hold such views. I have requested review of two posts removed by Facebook (probably flagged by other users). I submit to the rules and mods. But if the account disappears suddenly, you know why! Meanwhile I wonder, how large the actual community is since it faces deplatforming and general castigation from various parties. Every few years, I delete and restart my social media accounts to purge data. Perhaps this time, it'll happen by itself... poof.

Reflection: on Raising Capital as a Slow-growth Technology Investee

I think pitching to tech venture capitalists is tremendously interesting. They have the risk appetite, they have the money, and they have the authority to sign cheques. However, this comes with caveats.

Firstly, often enough, VCs are primarily looking for 'high growth' companies, and they only secondarily look at whether 'tech' is significantly involved - which is to say, it's safer for a general investor to look for viable business investments regardless of what the nature of the investee's competitive advantage is.

Secondly, tech VCs which have a specific mandate to look at technology are not looking at all sorts of technology. To go far left-field on this, for example: businesses which have at their core a practice of industrial engineering and systems engineering may not be considered to derive their competitive advantages from 'technology', as so much of the application of process is to humans and their behaviours in environments outside of software, and outside of software-connected hardware, and outside of software-connected customers.

Personally I work with on technology which primarily affects how human workers interact with each other, and how they interact with hardware and software entities. I am also in no rush to grow my business quickly, as the competitive advantage which I seek is to always focus on developing internal competencies which are pre-trendy on the innovation adoption curve. We would want to exit any area of research which starts to trend.

I am curious about what sort of VCs to approach in the future.

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Now in our fifth year of business, I am circling back to spend more time on getting new investors into our very small business. After a bit of ding-dong-chat-chat with folks in another group, I centered myself around (the above) concern.

While I was initially conducting a general question about what sorts of strategies to use when pitching a slow-growth business to new investors... predictably, some folks requested for a templated summary of what the nature of our business is. This is how I replied.

(i) We help [FACILITIES MANAGEMENT BUSINESSES (example: hotel / restaurant / cafe / coworking / coliving / office / gym / laundry / pool / club))]

(ii) that [face a problem] with managing internal staff to execute on [process optimisation, 24-7-365 operations deployment, technical maintenance, industrial design, marketing communications, bookkeeping, regulatory compliance, and brand management; product R&D, retail merchandising ]

(iii) By [sending in our staff to do it, for a fee ]

(iv) Unlike [people who sell advice, or people who pay for advice, whereas neither of these parties prefer to send in the muscle],

(v) [reason why you're better]: it appears that many operations in the market lack the actual acumen to hit all the operational goals that they want to given the resources that they have on hand; we want to provide a white-label solution segmented by (ii) for this the (i) type of business

(vi) As presented by [our continuous operation of one prototype for 4.5 years to-date] (I think this is weak, but it's the main thrust of the argument, so yeah, looking for resources to do more of the same, really)

Comment: on the Struggle of Socialising

Let me adjust the angle of the conversation. We shouldn't just associate "socialising" with introverts, or extroverts. In fact, both will have equal challenges in socialising...

... the reason being that if someone is too noisy, they will piss off the quiet ones, and if someone is too quiet, they will piss off the noisy ones.

I tend to err on the noisy side... testament to this, is the fact that a lot of the people I talk to end up blocking me. And when it comes to corporate communications, even my shareholders don't trust me to manage brand social media, and
I've been banned from telling customers that they are morons under the brand name (so I just do it with my personal accounts instead).

This is struggle for all of us.

If you find that you're not struggling, because you can talk to anyone normal... then the challenge is simply to be equally comfortable talking to people whom you don't consider normal. Try it!

Reflection: on the Organisation of Talent

As the sole executive of a cornershop with a score shareholders and a half-dozen staff, every minute of my day is preoccupied with the arrangement of talent. The preceding sentences describes the layout of my graph... a sort of hourglass, with myself at its waist.

Within my own person, each minute of consciousness tracks the layout of my bones, muscles, and some nerves (I rarely remember them all, but I never forget them all). In the somatic sense modalities, I track the various effects of food, sleep, sex, conversation, entertainment, social studies, and risk taking upon my flesh... heat, pulse, the shape of the sensation referred to as pleasure, the volatility of tone... the shape of signals in the motor nervous system, and the shapes of sounds, smells, sights, pressures, etc. The fundamental substrate of this flesh as it perceives itself is, a seething, rolling boil, of particles lunging through the abyss. Ah, I find that I am a human, and I am here. And now I am the executive of a firm.

On a daily basis, I wake up and find myself challenged in my gamble of how to spend the first few minutes and hours of awakened consciousness... to improve the preparation of the body for work (I manage the mind as a part of the body), or to simply lurch into work? This has changed over the four-point-five-years of our operations. At the beginning, the shape of work was narrow, and cut out, and we only had to go to market, and along the way I had only to build the factory engine, or become the factory engine when the built engines failed. That was so easy. Over the years, various assets were acquired, and certain other assets were let go, resulting in a complexification of our operations. For the last two years, for example, I have progressed daily with urgent reminders to myself that shareholders no longer protect the corporate interest, and so I have to bear the burden of added concern for their recently stated sensitivities on behalf of all of us.

Whereas for the first two years of operations, I would have to consider for each Ringgit spent whether it improved the profitability of our firm or not, in the second two-year period I have added a layer of consideration for each Ringgit spent... I check how much is spent promoting our business, and how much is spent avoiding the promotion of our business in order to preserve the special sensitivities of our people. Despite these gymnastics, I am yet told to my face that I am bad politician... I think, it is not that so much that I have a low degree of skill in politics, but rather that I only strive to achieve political goals which cannot be predictably acquired at my skill-level. In other words, I think, politics is not a bad challenge, and it is quite a part of business in general, so it must be taken seriously. And in order to grow as a small business, we must only attempt challenges - ignoring non-challenges. Success at non-challenges is a non-investment of talent.

Challenges must be welcomed with open arms.

Beyond my own person, I am then tasked with plumbing of motivations and emotions, for the many fleshy objects which constitute our staff. First the talent of each individual must be analysed and understood... and coached to be internally coherent with itself. And then the interface of each individual must be exposed and made coherent with the interfaces of all other individuals in the firm. Some individuals view themselves grandly, whereas their quality of work is objectively poor and measuredly so; others view themselves hardly, but their measurable work is of admirable quality. All of these myths woven around each mind must be tuned to fit the myths of one another... and that is the other challenge I face, beyond the management of my own talents.

In every individual operator in our firm, I must audit the accounts of knowledge past. And then I must hedge against the probabilities of knowledge that will soon be lost to each individual in the future. I may impute upon each one of us the thing which we must remember tomorrow, and if it has never been read it must be read before tomorrow in order to be remembered tomorrow. That is tactical allocation of wits, on a daily basis. We use tools to help us - modern communications provides us with the 'corporate chat app', instant messaging, categorised by project, or business function, or interest group within the firm. We also use larger documents for long-term storage of organisational lore - the manuals for this and that. The engineering diagrams of what goes where. For each visual design we put into the competitive space, we have our draughts and dozen models from before the final art was culled for production. So on, and so forth. Once a year, we do third-party financial audits, which we prepare for with weekly bookkeeping. Once a year also, we report to the government agencies on various aspects of registration and compliance. Every so often, we liaise with external parties, suppliers, and customers, to poll their knowledge and to keep it in synchrony with our own.

A lot of this work is done by myself, as my staff do not typically concern themselves with the depth and breadth of study that I require. And that too is a gamble of talents. Here we are, on we go. These are the thoughts that consume my minutes, and hours, then weeks, and now over four years.

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This is a brief meditation on work, through the lens of one business function. To some degree, my religion is to do work, and so pieces like these serve both a personal and professional application.

Talent is a word from antiquity, which refers to a sort of money, in weight, sort of in the way that we throw the word 'kilo' around today, to mean something of value. Through a literature of poverty, the Christian tradition brought into use the word talent to refer to human resources in general. If I'm not mistaken, management consulting brought the phrase 'talent management' into the modern vernacular somewhere around the 1960s, hitting a popularity peak towards 1975, a trough in 1983 (the year I was born, incidentally), followed by a constant climb in popularity towards the present (2019).

Comment: on Entrepreneurs and Deaths

/commented on whether entrepreneurs are born or made/

Evolution proceeds via mass extinctions. Of course, it also proceeds via smaller steps - but someone always has to die, that's the definition of progress. You can be opposed to progress, and that's a legitimate sense of ethics, but that's not going to change the definition of progress. It's not a zero sum game, of course. From the individual's point of view, it's a negative sum game; from the point of view of civilisation, it's a positive sum game. Now, is this nonsense, poetry, or systematic patterning? You'll have to decide based on your choice of language...