A Meaningful Life

I dropped two generalist feeds from my Google RSS Reader, both well ranked and known. I’m convinced feeds need to be specific. These feeds publish a couple of good posts per quarter but the rest of the content (such as US election candidates) I couldn’t care less about. I want specific information else in some cases everything from an identity or a friend.

Some people might only be interested in my trading views as an example. I had a spike in traffic which seemed to be internal Microsoft people checking out my Facetime for Microsoft Bought Cheap post. However I doubt they would be interested in my personal content. To support specific RSS content better we really need a couple of elements. Mainstream bloggers adopting multiple feed approach instead of one bulk feed. Otherwise better filtering mechanisms in RSS readers. There’s other ways but these seem the most probable and some are already in play.

The old economy data management shops like Reuters and Bloomberg have a lot to teach the Y-Gen reader developers.

My dream RSS reader would:

• give me tight 1 line snippets of blog posts in a list.
• allow me to exclude posts using tag filters.
• allow me to adjust font size so I can jam more posts in a page.
• add posts in from the top, waterfall style.
• highlight new post arrivals.

At Deutsche Bank we had a saying for idea testing. “Can you monetise it?” Systems can be like a salesperson. If you are going to buy into the value add argument would you employ Facebook to distract hundreds of employees? Facebook and it’s fans claim it brings many advantages to business. What is the opportunity cost of those employee Facebook hours? Could you spend them on something else?

I’ll be controversial on this one and say it should be disallowed. The ratio of distraction to value-add is heavily skewed against giving staff access in the workplace. The coal face reality is that this thing isn’t getting stuff done. It’s not creating massive networking opportunities that the same time spent working on other social media could. It’s not high quality content with high IP value. It’s not producing widgets. It’s not paying you any money. It sucks time. Time is money.

I can’t see an easy way to monetise it from a business perspective. Sure you can pick up some networking value but it’s limited relative to those Facebook Hours better spent on hard core CRM systems such as Salesforce.com that drive workflow, lead generation and networking. These systems create business opportunity. Alternately, I’d put those Facebook hours into using a system like a Wiki to collect employee ideas on business improvement, planning and sales strategy.

All this Facebook hate is misguided. The reality is that Facebook users and Facebook are in a bi-lateral agreement after terms are accepted. Then Facebook provides the ability to let users show what they want in the application. In some cases they don’t give the user choice such as this new feature of revealing what you buy to your friends when you make purchases in certain way. If you are a user of Facebook and you no longer like ‘the terms’ then you can leave. Vote with your wallet, I do! Many bloggers have suggested a commercially naive idea. They are suggesting both the user and Facebook have terms. This sounds like a complicated version of permissioning to me. Businesses (web based and otherwise) simply can’t do custom bi-lateral agreements for millions of users in a low value product (actually free in this case).

I’m Leaving Facebook

I confess I’m switching off Facebook after giving it a try for a few weeks. My decision has nothing to do with their plans to reveal peoples buying habits. I do believe that feature should be permissioned though. You can’t really leave Facebook. They don’t make that very clear on entry in my opinion. You can only “Deactivate” your account. There may be a harder legal angles to get your data removed but I don’t have the time or will power to be bothered. I’m sure we will read about it in the press some day. “Using the Australian Privacy laws blah blah blah….” I tried Facebook for a couple of weeks but quickly realised it drained time and other than giving me an update on what people are up to in life via their News Feed page I don’t see the massive advantages. It isn’t helping with the goals of happiness, survival and a meaningful life. Facebook is weak in the areas of images, email and wall/chat features. Facebook is strong on data aggregation and creating value out of ‘degrees of separation’. Lots of peoples activites, uploads, updates and the like are all aggregated into the News Feed page. It’s a ticker tape of human activity. Key appeal points:

• look at what people are up to from a distance
• generate content from degrees of separation
• create an ability to promote events and causes

So just use it as a social tool if you have the spare time in my opinion.

I tried not keeping a list for a couple of weeks. This was a bit weird for me. I’ve always run lists even though I often get distracted from them. Still it is there in the back of my head like a personal assistant ready to remind you of the tasks at hand.

Lists in investment banking were essential. Lists helped mitigate monetary and legal risks by ensuring important things weren’t forgotten. Such as booking all the components of structured transaction. Missing one component could be fatal. You could also use them to waterfall trading priorities based on risk mitigation and/or monetary return.

I was going to do no-lists for a month but stopped today. I felt I had enough to know I want to operate with them. However, there were a couple of interesting things that showed up for me. Here’s what I found out.

1. Prioritisation Weakens

I didn’t prioritise as well without my list. Lists definitely help me with this. You need a cracking memory to keep a mental note on what order things should be done and by when.

2. Memory Lets You Down

You do forget the odd thing you need to do. I remembered most things but I slipped on some and one was quite important. So to keep in integrity with people the list is a good structure that helps.

3. List Free Isn’t Liberated

I wasn’t any happier, liberated or spontaneous than normal without a list. It felt the same in fact, only with a little more anxiety in the form of “Have I missed something?”.

4. I Still Got a Lot Done

Well this one was predictable. List don’t change the quantity of work you can get done. Good prioritisation probably has some efficiency payoffs but it wasn’t noticeable for me. It’s in my nature to work full days anyway. The list can’t do the labour, I have to, so it makes sense.

5. Old Jobs Completed At Last

This was the best outcome of not having a list. I did a few things that had been at the back of my mind that never made the important list. It felt good to clear them, a lot like fixing a very old software bug that doesn’t really impact anyone but annoys the crap out of you.

6. Not Adding Any New Things Shortened My List

This is probably my favourite outcome. I added some things today but not as many as would have been there if I were adding things every day over the last two weeks. So the take away is being more ruthless about what goes on the list. I liken it to only permissioning important email - it can only help.

7. You Adapt To Not Having A List

I found myself relying more on Trac (our internal ticketing system) and also on Email search. Email started to become a surrogate todo list.

Appropriate Friday afternoon find by our CEO, Peter Cooper. We are all thirsty for a Victoria Bitter and we’ve all done it at BBQ’s, but not this well!

If you are in a room with 100 people representing the buying power of the global economy only 1 or 2 of them are Australians. I realised how small we were when I stood in a Tokyo train station. This photo isn’t in rush hour - it was too hard to take. Humanity in your face as I remember it.

If you believe our politicians control our interest rates and economy then you are a victim of political propaganda. They might have a pinky on the gear stick but be sure that China, USA and Japan are driving the truck with big old Doc Martin boots.

I always laugh when politicians sledge each other on interest rates. As though they are somehow responsible for what’s happening in our economy. The self importance of their posture, the blanket statements sweeping over their “constituents” (even their use of this word feels demeaning).

Get real! The game is about liquidity, who’s got it and where they are spending it. Everything else is secondary. Few hands have it, and many hands don’t. Liquidity buys resources to build assets, or it skips a step, and just buys the assets.

Our favourite truck driver at present is China. She will change gears up and down for us Aussies based upon the speed for which her purchase orders come. At present, the cup runneth over. They come thick and fast and the speed burn hurts. Higher interest rates for all.

Apparently the politicians think the financial indicators tell the Reserve Bank of Australia what interest rate gear to sit in. Yep, that is true but that’s the speedometer not the truck driver! While the truck driver needs us she will keep us on the truck. When she doesn’t were off and look out for the gutter on your way out. Pray for a soft landing. (Note that she’s not a mean truck driver, she just doesn’t need us when her truck is full of inventory that she can’t move because the global economy is slowing down)

The governments role in this is a third order magnitude effect plain and simple. The arguable and very rough order:

1. Global liquidity - e.g. asset valuations, flow/velocity of money
2. Global macro - e.g. economic well being, wars, trade policy
3. Local macro - e.g. GST, superannuation, income tax decisions

Don’t bother making a voting decision based on interest rates. Make a decision based on anything else but this if you want your watered down democratic vote well represented.

Before you jump on me. Let’s remind ourselves that democracy in history was about voting on projects and their proposers as they came along. Wow, that would be cool! I’d love to vote on a fibre optic network or whether to build a desalination plant. That would be democracy, old fashioned style.

Somehow we changed this to a 4 yearly farce which wastes part of my weekend. Politicians argue this is often enough because people need to be governed, let’s face it they say, because we don’t know the issues well enough. Please, Mr Politic save me the “constituents aren’t smart enough to vote often and on detailed matters” speech.

Loic Jean Albert is one man who can fly. This guy will die some day but he certainly will have lived a life only a few can are willing to pay the exit price to experience. Found via Doc Searls

For people without investment banking backgrounds this could make or save you a fortune. Worst case it might take the blinkers of your eyes around the topic of free or cheap options that are all around us.

There’s a simple test to see if something is like a option. Have you been given the right to do something for free or cheaply for a period of time. If so, then it’s an option and has financial value.

Here’s a few examples:

Quotation Option

Getting a quote is a chance to better a price. So each quote has value while a vendor has agreed (or implied to agree) to beat any other price.

Reverse Auction Option

I once bought a car from my desk. I called six dealers and told them I will buy the car specified in the fax I was sending them at 4:00pm that afternoon. I told them they were in competition and that my purchase was only about price. I repeated this to make it clear. I said that you only get one quote, no second chance. Five dealers faxed me their prices, one refused and one was extremely aggressive on pricing whom I ended up buying from. I removed variance in the product with my faxed instructions and specs. e.g. removing service location as a consideration. I saved 18% off the list price.

Pricing Mechanism Option

Continuing from above, I was told that this dealer network closed their sales books mid month (another option they had with their manufacturers where if they exceeded ‘x’ sales they had a jump in revenue payment to the dealer group). So the pricing mechanism was multifaceted. What they sold at wasn’t a clean equation. Towards this special date of theirs it wasn’t so much about profit but about vehicles sold. Vendors give you the option to chose when you buy from them. Again, that’s worth money.

Deposits On Goods (in some cases)

Sometimes you can legally walk away from a deposit, sometimes you can’t so make sure you have the vendor spell it out to you. I’d never do it personally for ethical reasons unless I’d checked they were ok with it in advance. The option here is to find something the same but far cheaper. This sounds lame but there are actually millions of dollars made and lost on this one alone by the big end of town.

The housing market is a classic example of it. Back in the 80’s and 90’s the deposit on a property bought of the plan was a cheap upside option on house prices. Developers didn’t always document the transaction as a full sale with delayed payments but instead they just asked for a forfeitable deposit of say 5% that you could walk away from. This doesn’t happen as much these days, but there are still anomalies even though more complex. The developers didn’t realise they were ‘writing’ call options on property prices extremely cheaply. Property markets were moving 10-30% per annum.

Some smart cookies ran around buying 5% options and just sat on them waiting for prices to go up. The downside was 5% and the upside was, well lets call it, the Moet outcome. The kicker was not having to fund the full price of property if they invested the traditional way. Some made fortunes. I was only a kid then

Decisions With Financial Impact

There are dozens of these, too many trade secrets I’m sorry, become a Saasu.com customer and I’ll reveal some One example is the right of Company Management to decide if a company wants to buy back its own shares from the market. There are multifaceted advantages in this ‘decision option’. Accordingly it has value when the circumstances are right.

The Time Extension

When someone is willing to sell you something and leaves a firm price with you for a day then they are giving you the right to accept or decline for 24hrs say. This is an option with very little time value. Accordingly it isn’t worth much. However if you ask for (or are offered) a time extension you are effectively being given money. That time has value. If the market price changes but you can still transact at the offered price per your agreement then you stand to save money or avoid losing money.

Either way you win in this situation so the option had value. I could go on for a while but I’ll save some for another day. If you have any share them and I’ll post and credit them to you next time around.

I witnessed 3 very well dressed army personnel clear their remembrance day fund raising supplies in double quick time. This happens every year but it is normally school kids doing the volunteer selling who take a couple of hours to sell down the stock for a good cause. This year however the higher profile image of rarely seen military personnel in full garb was obviously lifting fund raising to a new level.

Someone actually pushed in front of me to buy their poppy! Note to self: The product was the same but the presentation was different. I posted on the “different presentation” theme opening up new markets for business some time ago. See Transformers More Than Meets the Eye

What is it in humans that causes the massive disconnect between knowledge acquired and knowledge executed? There are obviously a bunch of blockers at work. Here’s some of them but feel free to add to the list via comments and I’ll republish the full list down the track:

1. Knowledge overwhelm. Leads to decision confusion.
2. Not enough resources to execute. Namely time, money and people.
3. Procrastination.
4. Knowledge gaps.
5. Fear and greed blocks. Human survival strategy.

What is it in one individual that has them execute on knowledge better than another? Arguably two humans equal in knowledge and physical capability wouldn’t differ. Still you get different outcomes.

The difference is tools.

Do you hunt with and axe or a spear? How primitive are the tools you use? Do you regard emotions as tools? Do you adopt technology or hang out with Luddites? Do you create a complex life for yourself and ignore one of the best performance tools of all, simplicity.

Start thinking about character traits as tools. It’s not just about physical tools. The solution is simple but like all things you need to do something about it. I can’t say I have practiced all that I preach, but I definitely feel like I’m along the road a little.

Regularly assess your tools, learn new skills (tools), try new SaaS products (blatant plug for our web finance engine - an automation and connectivity tool), hire new or better people (time and resource tools), reallocate tasks to better skill sets. People are just as much a tool applied to a problem. Don’t use the wrong tool (person) for the job.

Revolutionary Action is Required

Revolution is a word I like to use instead of change. Change is small, it’s a maybe, it’s weak. Revolution brings on immediate, sudden change. It’s a shock and awe tactic to break old habits.

You need revolutionary attitude to take advantage of new tools. Don’t engage in change. Change means slow evolution that may not happen. You may not get around to it or you may leave it till later (i.e. never do it in many cases).

Static is the worst position of all. Static means zero evolution, zero improvement and zero execution on knowledge.

Revolution is sudden and brutal. It gives immediate results for analysis. Revolution can’t be maintained though. You need to create a method to sustain it. Have others keep you accountable, create reminders, take away the old tools and use you imagination to think up anything that will hold the revolution in place until the everyone is following you.

Real Life Example - A Motivation Tool

Attitude. Yes it’s a tool for motivation. If you have a positive attitude we all know it will rub of on people. Everyone knows it. Everyone has the knowledge of what a positive attitude does. Wake up in the morning and be a positive person. Live it and you watch the difference it makes.

I think it is revolutionary to witness a negative person switch to positive. I love to see it happen. Something in your human spirit has you start liking that person.

I once worked with a guy who was very successful at selling Term Deposits to government authorities for a Bank (Mick you’re an inspiration) and I put it down to his daily attitude which was abundant in the all powerful tool called ‘optimism’. Every sales call was a step closer to a ‘yes’, every ‘no’ from a customer created an opportunity for an upswing, a ‘yes’. Every person I met who new this guy loved this guy. He oozed optimism and this tool he wielded like a sword caused revolutions in money making.

A tool I was thinking about today that prompted this post is the ‘filter’. I decided I needed a tool to cut down on my notes and email writing. My filter was weak, I needed a better one. When I looked at my pipeline of email, RSS, meeting notes and brainwave scribbles it was scary. So I got rid of my notepad (a method to hold this revolutionary action in place). I’ve decided to test my memory out as my new filter. If it’s really important, really necessary then I’ll remember it and put it into Trac (support/bug system), my calender, or send of an email immediately to the relevant person for fear of forgetting. So this cuts out my note taking, which otherwise would need re-keying and accordingly would clog up my to do list. It would mean more and more B-list to do’s that in many cases shouldn’t make it. A-list only, just like Paris

Anyway I’ll let you know how it goes. I will drop this new filter if it doesn’t work. At least I will have explored the option for long term advantage. A ‘free 30 day trial on an efficiency tool’ if you like