Trying to keep on top of everything is hard enough at the best of times but Covid has made it even harder. My To-Do list has 80 things in it today, and it’s a Sunday. We have to make lists because we can’t keep everything in our heads.
In 1956 George A. Miller published “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information”. One of the most highly cited papers in psychology. It is often interpreted to argue that the number of objects an average human can hold in short-term memory is 7 ± 2. This has occasionally been referred to as Miller’s law.
Whole forests have been cut down to churn out self-help books on how to best deal with this problem. One of my favorites is “Getting things Done” by David Allen. The other is “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey.
If you are stuck in lockdown right now it’s a great time to do some planning but one thing we have to be careful of, from my humble experience, is to not reinvent the wheel each time we come across a problem. I have seen many a billing system built in-house that was…. um, well, not very good.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference
I have lost count of the number of times (pun intended) that I have written a blog that explores a business issue from a financial perspective and ends with “the trick is to know the difference …..”. Usually going on to say, or at least implying, that we can help with whatever the issue is. Please excuse me for being forward but this time I’m going to flat-out pitch to you.
Most people would feel uncomfortable describing themselves as wise, but wisdom is what we are talking about here. In a technical sense; experience, knowledge, understanding, and insight. People that have faced a problem more than once in the past and found a way through, and learned more from it each time. Talk to a good tradie to really see this in action. Of course, it does not mean anyone is wise about all things. We are all specialists in our own way.
Green Spinach feel we have gathered particular wisdom over our many cumulative years, seeing inside many businesses, and our clients get to benefit from that. I think the most valuable thing we can do for a client is our diagnostic report. We look, from a financial perspective, at the 50 things in your business that can have the biggest impact on shareholder valuation. We gather data from you, and your systems, then give you a score for each of the 50 things. As well as our insights and recommendations for each one.
You get a checklist that gives you comfort in some areas and, in others, a listing of opportunities to increase the value of your business. Usually by increasing margins, reducing costs or risk. What you do with the results is your business. You can use it to support a business valuation or sale, to help you plan, to guide your management team, or to help you sleep at night.
Give me a shout if you want to know more. A report doesn’t cost as much as you might think.
Photo by That’s Her Business on Unsplash