Difference between revisions of "Sustainable Business Learning Community Conversations, September 2013 - October 2013"

Revision as of 16:01, 8 October 2013

October 3, 2013 Topic: Setting the Priorities of the Day

Comments from Bob's workshop on Measuring Profitability:

• A tutorial on the spreadsheets might be helpful. There is a lot in there and they can be a bit complex.

• Perhaps in the future do another session on Profitability based solely on examples of questions that people have put to Bob.

• Fully 1/3 of people who want to start a business have never calculated profitability for their product or service. This is a really important issue for start up businesses.

• Calculating profitability might become much more complex when you have multiple products/services. How much of your overhead is attributed to each product/service? Insurance costs? Administrative costs? etc.

• Your products/services might be ever-changing. Need to change with the business climate.

• You do these profitability calculations to what end? What questions do you want answered? Question isn't how much should I allocate to each product or service, but, for example, should I continue this product line or not? These are the kinds of questions you will have to answer throughout the life of the company.

• Those who can't control their personal finances won't be able to run a business successfully. Chaos in personal life will spill over into your business. Try to get control of the chaos before attempting to start a new business.

• Core to any system is to start with discipline. Be consistent in your work. If you don't do things consistently, then trying to measure what you have done will result in bad information.

• Know how much it costs for producing each product. Also time yourself as to how long it takes you to make a single item. (Curt)

• Data must be consistent. Different people in the company will have their own information based on the work they do and what they know, but how do you integrate all that information into a single report?

• Terms: COD, Paypal take a certain percentage of your profit. Payment terms matter to your profitability. You have to really be aware of payment terms: - who is financing your business?

Today's topic: Setting the Goals for the Day

Question put to the group: What techniques do you use to set your goals and priorities of the day? How do you allocate your time, recognizing that the decisions you make today affect the future of your work and your business?

• Good to have a system of some sort. Chris uses Outlook Calendar. He prints his calendar each week and then reviews it each day, highlighting what needs to get done that day. Whatever didn't get done that day is reprioritzed. He keeps a weekly list from which he pulls stuff off on a daily basis. He looks at what wasn't done or what was added to the list during the week, and then re-prioritizes for each new week. This helps him to not forget things and to keep track.

• Kimberly makes a daily list in the morning when she thinks more clearly. Because she has responsibilities in different spheres of her life, she wonders how she will allocate her time in each sphere. She feels that she's going to need to move to a weekly instead of a daily schedule because she has so much going on. She also makes sure to respect her personal rhythms: no energy after 6pm means no work after 6pm.

• Curt organizes everything by project or context. He does what makes the most sense at the time based on how much time or energy he has available and where he is right now with each project. He reviews throughout the day (see David Allen: Getting Things Done)

• Productive procrastination: A technique that works for some people (but certainly not everyone). As your stress level increases (since you put everything off until the last minute…), your productivity level increases as well.

• Kevin: He reports that he takes on more projects than he can handle and then sees what he can get done. He needs to be multitasking (maybe 3 projects at a time) - that seems to be how he likes to work. He recognizes that he requires other people to be involved in order for him to keep structure in his work. His teaching job is an example. His students need a more structured environment and the class he teaches is naturally structured, focusing on a specific skill each day. He reports that when he works alone, he feels like he is less focused, less in control.

• David Broner: He sets a theme for each day: SCORE one day, school stuff the next. He says "no" when it is necessary, when he might not have the time or the inclination to do the work someone asks of him. He makes exercise a priority and will never change that part of his schedule. Also, he makes no plans after 5pm.

• It's really important to know what you want to do and to know when to say NO. Do you really need to answer that phone? Being interrupted in the middle of work can be very disruptive and cause you to get off track.

• Bob: There is a difference between goals and tasks. Also, you have to recognize that there are "seasons" to your life that will affect your work, energy seasons, emotional seasons, etc. So look at goals more holistically, in context with the other aspects of your life - work, personal, spiritual, etc. When you understand this, it tempers your goals for that time.

• Kimberly prioritizes self care (health, spirit). Her advice: There is ALWAYS work that needs to be done, but know where your boundaries lie. Make sure to schedule time for yourself. You must first honor yourself before you can honor those you work with. If Kimberly is going through a busy time, she always makes sure to schedule some time off to keep herself in balance. She also recognizes her need to do what she loves. If she's bored with something, it will take her much more energy to do that thing than she wants to expend.

• Doug writes things down the night before in order to make sure he doesn't forget. Writing tasks down helps take it out of your mind so you don't worry about it - it takes it out of your head.

• Josh: He looks at which conversations he wants to be part of in general, and which he wants to be in today. He knows that if there's something he really doesn't want to do, he does everything he can to postpone it. He doesn't like to waste energy, so if he finds that his is wasting energy, he tries to redirect it somewhere else.

• Putting things off: If you have a tendency to put things off, ask yourself, is it likely to get easier by delaying a task or will delaying it make it harder to do? When you put off doing something, are you really prioritizing? Will there be a negative impact?

September 12, 2013 Topic: Forming Sustainable Partnerships

Comments from last week's conversation about Motivation:

Important take away from this conversation:

• What motivates people is really a big question.
• Focus on positive, avoid being buried by the negative.
• Focusing on the good things that are happening and driving those things can help you to maintain motivation.
• Try not to let problems and negativity diminish your motivation.
• Don't let mundane tasks overburden you and keep you from doing the really important work you need to do.
• Matt D: Planning, thinking, building, designing are all energizing to Matt. Mundane tasks can take up a lot of his time and keep him from doing the work that he loves, so he tries hard to minimize the amount of time he has to spend on those types of tasks.
• Make sure to give yourself time to tackle the big picture stuff rather than getting all caught up in busywork.

Recommended reading: Your Brain At Work by David Rock

Josh: Sees motivation as a kind of hunger; what drives our hunger? We do things because we know we have to in order to live.

A sense of justice motivates many people to do certain work. Knowing people are suffering is enough to motivate people to try and effect change, help end suffering.

Money motivates many, many people. People imagine that money might simply be a tool to gain freedom, but then when people acquire a lot of money, they realize they don't have all the freedom they imagined. (Tom mentioned studies that show that people aren't, in fact, very motivated by money)

Money as a vehicle to attaining something else; so what is it that people want money for, what is the underlying motivation?

• Freedom
• Acquiring material possessions
• Maintaining an image - keeping up with "the Joneses"
• Ability to assist others?

How much is our motivation an illusion and how much is real? You can be motivated to act or make a choice, but then that choice could result in something that is different than you thought it would be - it's an illusion, a fantasy.

How do you form truly effective partnerships with other people or businesses?

Topic for today: Partnership: How to form sustainable partnerships with other businesses

When you form a business and you have some capabilities that you need to move to someone else or to another business, it can be tricky to build a truly effective partnership.

Matt D's Story from Final Five: At the time that Final Five was in process of evolving, another company came along and was able to form the perfect relationship with FF at that time. Now that company has indicated that they want to be more of a transactional partner rather than having the really deep relationship FF wanted. They are trying to grow in breadth rather than in depth like FF wanted. So Matt D is trying to figure out if he is going to keep working with that company. Matt is now talking with another company and they both seem to be looking into many of the same questions, and so might be a better fit.

This process for Matt has required him to get clear what he is really looking for in a partner. He's laying out the layers in the relationship, figuring out what is critical to that relationship. He wants the other partner to be "speaking the right language."

Matt didn't start with values when hiring partners. He was thinking only of time, productivity and billing. But then he started working with people based on shared values and figures they can work on the skills stuff as they go. Also, this has attracted customers to them because they recognize shared values.

Other thoughts on forming health partnerships:

• Sometimes having a transactional relationship with a partner is really enough - it may be all you need.

• Get crystal clear what you want in a partner business so you will recognize them when they show up. You can learn a lot from having those "crash and burn" relationships.

• It's a lot like dating: When you first meet someone, they appear to be one way and may say the right things, but as you date longer, you figure out who they really are and what they really want in a relationship. Tom remarked to Matt D, as his first business partnership started to go through a change, that "it seems like you've exited the dating stage" of that relationship.

• A partner has to come along at the right time. What if the right person isn't around at the right time? Then you just move ahead with what you have.

• A good partner business cannot necessarily meet all your needs (it would be nice, but it isn't realistic to expect). Sometimes the partner will do things outside of their core competency area because they want to continue working with you and truly want to help you out. It's better to keep things simple. Only work with that partner in the area in which they have a real competency, where they can be of real help to you. Then, you may need to bring in another person/business to cover the additional work that the first partner cannot do.

Curt's story - Red Panda: Curt has plans to move the soldering work for Red Panda to an outside company. His options were to hire and train people to do the work, or hire an outside company to do it for them. To begin with, he did all of the soldering work himself. It was important for him to gain a competency in soldering so that he could evaluate those he would pass this task to. Also it allowed him time to refine the process, and make the job as easy as possible before he passed it on to the manufacturer. When you pass work onto a partner company, you want to have a good understanding of how long the work should take so you can tell if they are up to speed or struggling. Rather than hire and train a new employee, it seemed a better idea to hire someone who is an expert in soldering and who can handle the larger volume of work.

Question to Curt: How do you ensure that the quality of your work will be maintained when you bring on a partner business? A: By doing it all in-house and establishing the blueprints of your product, then you can feel more sure of the manufacturer you send your work to. Also, you can do quality inspections to monitor the quality level of the product as it is being produced or at the end of production. (Curt and Eric continue to do quality control).

What else is there in the partnership thing that has to be dealt with?

• Price
• Quality
• Meeting deadlines
• Response Time
• Is it convenient to work with them? Are they in China? Brazil?
• Can your partnership evolve with changing conditions? (You put in all this work up front to get the whole partnership thing worked out, and wouldn't it be great if the world didn't change, but in fact it does change and then you have some new problems to deal with. Can your partnership evolve?)

September 5, 2013 Topic: What Motivates You?

Comments from last week's conversation about Maintaining Your Vision:

Tom's observation on vision: Tom doesn't believe people truly have a real vision. What people say they envision, and what that vision becomes in the end don't sync. People may have a direction they are going in, or a loose outline of what they want to see or create, but no one ends up in a place that is exactly what they envisioned in the first place.

Thomas Edison: Was he really a visionary? Tom believes it wasn't so much vision as process. The first incandescent light had already been invented by Englishman Humphry Davy in 1802 and Edison just refined it after many, many failures and accidental successes.

It's less about vision and more about just having the courage to try something new.

How do you know if the reality feels right despite how it differs from the vision? How do you reconcile the vision and the reality?

Jeff asks, what's the difference between vision and intention? Is it just a question of semantics? He views intention and vision as the same thing. Vision can have attached to it the idea of a destination while intention is open-ended, but defined as well.

Jeff sees vision as something you may never arrive at completely, you just have to enjoy the journey. If he ever arrived at his destination, he would be bored. He would need to expand his vision in order to having something new to strive for and not be bored.

Vision needs to be a little more specific and concrete if you're designing a product.

For Eric, vision is a combination of foresight and objective. Once you reach your objective, you might become stagnant, so how do you stay motivated? He would always be needing to find that next objective in order not to stagnate.

Language is important: how are you defining this word so that I can communicate this clearly in my conversations with others?

Heather's thoughts: Vision is an orienting set of imagery, not specs. Her vision is what she believes is possible for human beings. It's more of a belief statement of how she wants the world to be.

Maybe a better word would be aspiration rather than vision.

Suntae's thoughts: If your intention is grounded in yourself, then if everything changes around you, your intention need not change. He has noticed that as people go through the incubation process here, their intention or aspiration was, in fact, strengthened by the process.

What motivates you?

Topic today: What motivates you?

Heather: She has one grounded belief in what motivates people: Creation and Community, that is, creative work and relationships. Creative work is what brings you alive, it's what you want to contribute to the world. Community is all about relationships. Meaningful human lives are made of both.

We as human beings naturally have to be challenged, because frustration comes out of this build up of energy. The mind needs challenge, something to work on.

When you reach a level of comfort, you start to create new challenges to keep your mind occupied.

Diversity motivates Kimberly, connecting to people who have different experiences and are dealing with different challenges feeds her energy.

Community is important; connecting to other peoples experiences and ideas - extremely motivating for Michael.

Diversity: In almost any context, diversity is associated with health. (Permaculture) Lack of diversity is boring for some, and the presence of diversity can be inspiring and motivating.

Learning motivates Kimberly, and diversity motivates her to learn. It's a continuous growth.

Sometimes we may not always want to seek diversity. Jeff says he frequently looks for people who share similar values and ideas. For example, he wonders what the world would be like if everyone was on the same page with regard to sustainability and environmentalism? But then he wonders if that would really be such a good thing - what about the law of unintended consequences? If we all shared the same values, what would that lead to?

Jeff sometimes thinks he would like to be in a spot where things are running smoothly and he isn't being challenged, but then he realizes that he would lose his edge. He needs to be looking for the next challenge. With challenge comes frustrations and difficulties, but the way he approaches these can produce growth.

There is a difference between contentment and complacency. You can be content and still move forward and find motivation, but you cannot be complacent.

Dissatisfaction: The principal motivation for sustainable business comes from dissatisfaction with the traditional way of doing business. This dissatisfaction produces the motivation for many people to pursue a new way of doing things.

Making a difference: Kimberly's desire to look back on her life and recognize that she did something that really made a difference motivates her to do her work. Having seen a lot of preventable tragedies , she truly believes she is here to do something constructive, to make a difference. She maintains a positive outlook by being in contact with community and with people that help to motivate her work.

Positive focus: It's important to maintain a positive focus. Focusing on the suffering of the world can create anger and frustration, and although it can motivate in the short term, it can wear you down. It's better to focus on imagining how to fix things, and on what the world could be like. Try to effect change based on positive models, not negative. This can give you direction and motivate you when you see what good work others have done.

Being motivated by past success: Doug is noticing a lot of New Yorkers moving to Detroit because they have already seen the improvement that has happened there and they know that the same thing can happen in Detroit, too.

People do the same thing for very different motives. If we are all doing something, we may not be doing it for the same reasons. We may have common values, but do we have common motivations? When we started GG, we had to be open to the variety of reasons that people chose to get involved.

If you don't ever get to a result, it's always out of reach, you risk losing your motivation. Just acknowledging that you something, even something small can help to keep you going. Recognize that you are in the middle of a process, just where you should be, and that this is part of moving forward.

Good communication is important. You can discern others' motivations and values through conversation.