#218: DO Sweat the Small Stuff
Good morning good friends
/strategy
Strategy conversations are often dominated by innovation, acquisition and the like. They are important. As important is operational excellence.
FT Strategies August newsletter, The Path to Profitability, included this observation, “Based on data from over 400 news organisations, we found that publishers that actively monitor their cost base and forecast revenues have an average profit margin of 6%, whereas those that don’t recorded a loss of approximately 4%”.
I followed the thread to their News Sustainability Project, a survey of 450+ news organizations and found another insight, businesses that that set and effectively communicate strategic goals have an average profit margin of 5%. Those that don’t recorded a 2% loss.
Their conclusion was, ‘operational disciplines really matter’. You might think, ‘this doesn’t apply to our business. We’re not in media’.
PWC’s Global CEO Survey shows similar results.
51% of the variance in company performance was a consequence of project-level decisions.
Companies that actively monitored how they used resources and then redeployed where appropriate, on average, generated 5% more profit than those that didn’t.
Paying attention is powerful.
These results focus on financial resources. Do the same with time. Wasted time (along with low engagement) is an enormous hidden cost.
Peter Drucker reminds us “Effective executives do not start with their tasks. They start with their time. And they do not start without planning. They start by finding out where their time actually goes. Then they attempt to manage their time and cut back unproductive demands on their time. Finally, they consolidate their ‘discretionary’ time into the largest possible continuing units.” (Read more in Make Your Time Count).
Once a month review how you and your team spent time. Does it align with your strategic objectives or were you sucked into a series of ‘urgent’, but not truly important processes? Realign.
Sweat the small stuff. It makes a difference.
//self
Last week I received an email from Harvard Business Review inviting me to join their ‘Advisory Council’. Don’t get excited. It’s a fancy name for an opt-in research community that many publishers use to research readers’ views. Retailers do the same. I join them because I am interested to see how large businesses engage their customers. Not a big deal.
Over the next few days, I was bemused as my LinkedIn timeline flooded with people declaring, “I am starting a new position as Advisory Council Member at Harvard Business Review” accompanied by the requisite cascade of congratulations. To be fair to the celebrants, if you don’t know, it sounds impressive but as for those that posted, I wondered why.
HBR was clearly aware of the risks associated with the inflated name. Their Terms and Conditions include this clause, “Membership in the HBR Advisory Council may NOT be used by any Member as a claim of ‘Professional Accomplishment’. By ‘Professional Accomplishment’ we mean that a member may NOT make claim or state in any written, verbal or other communication that their membership of the HBR Advisory Council is any form of qualification, status or accomplishment that has been vested upon them by Harvard Business Review… It’s important that it is clear that in any use of the term ‘Harvard Business Review Advisory Council’ that members are clear this is an opt-in group of professionals where the primary purpose is participation in market research…”
Lots of CAPS and bolds there…
It is all rather bizarre. I’m still processing what it means.
For now, I am holding to Lao-Tzu’s words, ‘The Sage…does not show himself off; therefore he becomes prominent. He does not put himself on display; therefore he brightly shines. He does not brag about himself; therefore he receives credit. He does not praise his own deeds; therefore he can long endure. It is only because he does not compete that, therefore, no one is able to compete with him.’
/// soul
The soul part of our letter aims to inspire contemplation. I mostly keep it uplifting. Today is different.
Mia Arderne’s Mermaid Fillet is a crime novel set in Cape Town’s Northern Suburbs. Few people can capture Cape Town’s unique patois, Arderne does. She has the skill to get the street onto the page. Read it for the dialogue and painful insight into the Cape’s dark places.
Amongst her cast of characters is Letitia, whose uncle abused her under the cloak of hugs. She reflects “There are things more violent than violence… violence can only ever be what it is. You cannot lie with violence. Violence is essentially honest. But the gentleness? Gentleness can be used. And she knew just how. The most insidious shit can come from ‘gentle’ men. She never trusted it”.
Barbara Boswell’s The Comrade’s Wife is a contemporary South African horror. Written with a thriller’s pace, the demons are not from any hell other than the one we choose to make. You’ll meet Neill, the comrade, and Gary, and wish you hadn’t. You know their real-life equivalents and wish you didn’t. The book will end, and you will rage, ‘What about Gary?’ knowing his escape speaks of how many do.
The Comrade’s Wife, Anita, is an academic. She wants her work to disrupt conventional approaches. Her performance reviews are lacklustre, complaining of her inability to complete projects. Associate Professorship remains elusive. No-one remembers the Head of Department introducing her, ‘Meet Dr Anita Fredericks. Our new transformation appointee’.
Violence takes many forms.
(You can read more about Mermaid Fillet here, and The Comrade’s Wife here.)
All the best
Karl
PS: If you missed it, here is The Booker Prize’s 2024 longlist. Libyan author, Hisham Matar’s My Friends is on it, you can read my reflections here.