calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.

Why You Need a Los Angeles Real Estate Agent

A high number of Americans make the choice to sell their houses. Are you one of these individuals? If you are, then you could be in need of a realtor.

Realtors are individuals that are experienced and trained in the buying and selling of property. They generally have experience with organizing negotiations with prospective buyers, arranging open homes, dealing with specialist attorneys or accountants, and handling the last sale transaction. If you reside in or around the Los Angeles area, you're encouraged to seek help from a Los Angeles realtor.

Los Angeles real estate brokers work like all other realtors, expect for the fact they are knowledgeable about the Los Angeles housing market. This is a benefit of working with a local realtor. If you're in need of a Los Angeles realtor, you'll need to locate an agent that meets your criteria.

When it comes to deciding on a Los Angeles real estate agent to do business with, there are several important factors that you need to think about. These factors often include the expertise of a specific agent and the services they offer. A lot of people mistakenly believe that all property brokers operate the same way, but many operate under different guidelines. These guidelines couldn't just determine whether your home sells, but also for how much it sells.

One of the first things you ought to think about is whether the Los Angeles real estate agent of your choice functions as a duel agent. Duel agents are people who work with home sellers and buyers. In addition to putting your house on the market and overseeing its sale, a duel property agent would aid those seeking to purchasing a house in the region. Dealing with a duel agent may increase the amount of possible buyers for your residence.

Additionally it is important to ascertain whether the Los Angeles real estate agent of your choice participates in an MLS Marketing Service. MLS stands for a multiple listing service. There are lots of cities, town, and counties in the USA that operate an MLS program. Rather than trying to find homes provided by a particular property business, potential buyers can see a group of homes all in 1 place. Getting your home listed with an MSL program is very likely to increase the odds of your house selling.

As mentioned before, a professional realtor may also be able to have an effect on the amount of money that your house is sold for. When locating a Los Angeles real estate agent to work with, you're encouraged to ascertain how much they will list your home for and how they reached that amount. Many realtors use an appraiser to ascertain the value of a house and others utilize competitive pricing.

By taking the opportunity to examine a variety of real estate brokers, you should be able to discover the Los Angeles real estate agent that best meets your needs. Realtors are important to the successful sale of a house. That's the reason it's important to understand all your options when choosing a Los Angeles realtor.

What To Look For in Your Next Real Estate Agent

So you are ready to begin the home buying process - You have thought long and hard about this investment and determined it is the best move for you. But where to start?

Working with a licensed real estate professional with specific knowledge on your niche is a really important starting point. And as you talk with numerous agents, you are going to learn that they ALL will claim to be professionals in your area. GREAT! This means you have options; And we all like alternatives, right?

But knowing the industry is only one component of any fantastic agent. There's more to look at when it comes to choosing the ideal real estate professional. Here Is What I look for when people ask me to refer them to a broker in their area:

1.) What particular designations does the agent hold that shows their ability to aid you? I know they will have received additional training and education on the particular needs of military personnel, and have built relationships with creditors that have access to loan programs which directly benefit service members. In summary, I consider the customers' specific requirements and then attempt to get an agent capable to serve their best interests.

2.) Does the broker have a community of industry-related support experts ready and available to help? Does the broker have the tools already established to offer access to information which will be relevant to the sale and purchase procedure? Can the broker easily provide access to community, lending and house repair services the customer will benefit from? Working with a broker who has created the framework for a smooth transaction process means you're in great hands and can expect the broker to be ready to assist all of the way through close of sale.

3.) Is the broker responsive to the customer's needs? Can they communicate effectively with those around them? Can they give me real concrete answers to my questions? Or do they tell me what they think I might love to hear? When you are excited about buying a house, it's easy to only hear what you would like. And then they take the opportunity that will help you sort out the bad information and create solutions to get beyond any roadblocks in the path of your own success!

4.) Can the broker provide reviews of the services from previous customers? Does their previous business support their capacity to serve your best interests? Past clients' willingness to correct great reviews about a broker is a direct correlation to that agent's capacity to serve customers as a real estate specialist. And this is fantastic information to validate a probable agents' credibility.

5.) Does the broker have the time to commit to you? This is quite important because different individuals need different levels of time commitment. If a buyer is searching for their first house, then I would like to be sure I refer them to a broker who has the opportunity to invest. This goes back, and ties into, effective communication, because many first time buyers will ask the same question many times. And that is okay. We would like you to ask questions. And I wish to be certain that the broker I team you up with has the time, energy and commitment to invest in getting you those answers; Along with taking the opportunity to guarantee you know what these answers mean and how they may affect your standing as a new home buyer.

It's extremely important to work with a dedicated real estate professional. Choosing the correct agent for your job in the beginning means you'll have a dedicated and capable real estate professional to guide you through the entire process with confidence.

The National Association of Realtors® reports that roughly 76 percent of home buyers interview just 1 agent for the task of helping them purchase a house. This means you need to come prepared to ask the correct questions, to ensure you select the right agent the first time. Working with the ideal real estate specialist mean the difference between a smooth purchase procedure; Or one riddled with headaches, anxiety as well as the propensity to increase your blood pressure! Issues always come up in the purchase and sale process, but gifted agents know what to do if problems arise. And they know how to keep customers in the loop and provide clear explanations and practical solutions to keep your deal on track to close in a timely fashion and in your terms.

1 cornerstone of the real estate profession is that"timeliness is of the essence." But this does not mean that you will need to be in a hurry to hire the very first real estate agent you interview. Make time to take some time, before you begin shopping for a house, to work with a realtor who can give you the knowledge, expertise and network of resources that will help you in attaining your goal of home ownership!

Ben Christensen is a real estate specialist with Equity Idaho Real Estate specializing in buying and selling residential and residential-income properties.

O Man, O Machine, O Lord

INTRODUCTION

Reading III: The New Materiality of Design

Amelie Scharffetter 6.10.2019

I wonder how the order in which I read the given literature has influenced this reaction. Knowing that thus far I had enjoyed the texts with a more provocative nature more than others, I instantly grabbed on to “Workers of the world conform”.

What struck me was that what Oswald and his consorts understood as utopian - the homogenisation of knowledge (the world brain), language (Ido), money etc. - read to me as the opposite. To me, they closely resembled ideas that George Orwell wrote about in his book 1984, he for example referred to Newspeak rather than Ido. Reflecting on Oswalds claims I couldn’t help but conclude that homogenisation and standardisation give way to absolutism (there is only one truth) and therefore to power. And those in power, no matter if economic in the form of a monopoly or political in the form of a dictatorship, will inevitably use this power without regards to disadvantages that their actions might cause to some (often the majority). In an economic framework this would mean if one cannot adhere to the standards set by an industry, one won’t be able to compete in the market (as can be seen in the unequal global wealth distribution). The same applies to the use of English language. While it allows us to communicate in most places across the globe it also creates economic hierarchies within and between countries and has a questionable impact on other languages.

The most twisted idea to me was that of a believe system in which “all moral judgements are inextricably linked to the questions of efficiency”. Reading this in 2019, I had to think about the Nürnberger Prozesse in which people were questioned wether they pled guilty for the crimes they had committed. Most of them denied. Not everyone involved in the mass-homicide was especially “evil” but themselves product of a homogenised propagated believe-system (or ideology) with a wide reaching bureaucracy and cogwheels in the perfectly tuned, most efficient killing machine that was the Holocaust where those involved denied individual responsibility.

This is of course an extreme example but issues with humans obsession with efficiency is also visible in other forms today. Flights are efficient but they come at high environmental costs, smartphones are efficient but people suffer mentally from being available and online at all times, Amazon is efficient in delivering in the shortest time possible but it comes result in the exploitation of warehouse workers that operate under constant pressure. Or as the author puts is: “Like Ostwald and his fellow World Brain enthusiasts, their utopian impulses ended up enabling states and corporations to control and extract values from workers, while extolling the morality of productivity, conformity and efficiency”. This text really made me question wether efficiency is something designers should be striving for. Is our overdeveloped society in truth underdeveloped when we make ourselves so dependent on efficiency systems? Which also brought me to the question if the things we design always need to have practical purpose. Would it be ok to design non-practical, non efficient objects?

Arriving with this question at the text about Object oriented Ontology was challenging because OOO claims that there is no such thing as good and bad objects (or efficient and non-efficient). We as humans create this hierarchy to make sense of our reality while OOO arrives at the conclusion that all objects exist without our human consent and evaluation. As a designer this was challenging to accept. First, there is no author so we cannot claim genius or originality and then OOO takes away our ability to judge and categorise?

While this was another crucial moment in my unlearning process I did not dwell too long on the thought of what that does to my own understanding of my role but instead first continued to think about this idea that as humans we take constant ownership over the world around us, understanding ourselves somewhat removed from everything else, neatly dividing and organising into boxes, charts, studies, hierarchies and lists. I thought it was fascinating to see how our obsession with efficiency tries to turn the human into a “non-human” (working efficiently like a machine”) and with the rise of new technical inventions we try to give them what we understand as human traits (anthropomorphism). As Bruno Latour puts it “the debate around anthropomorphism arises because we believed that there exist “humans” and “nonhumans” without realising that this attribution of roles and actions is also a choice”. We as humans create this artificial distinction between ‘society’ and ‘technology’, anthropomorphism and technomorphism are testimony to this distinction.

It will still take me a while to internalise Latours’ statement the “it is the complete chain that makes up the missing masses, not either of it extremities” but I think it is a valid closing point to a course that caused me to dismantle my current believe system. The last weeks were overwhelming and confusing, I had to give away more and more of my idea of being an original individual and arriving at the conclusion that I am a particle in a wider system of chains and believe systems. I don’t want to claim that I entirely freed myself of previous beliefs in hierarchies and truths but I now understand that I can bend them. I hope to do so with the same humour and light-footed elegance that I found in Latours’ text, arriving back at what I understood my creative practice to be from the beginning - playtime!

Mel Feller MPA, MHR, illustrates Building an Accountability Structure in Business

Mel Feller MPA, MHR, illustrates Building an Accountability Structure in Business

 Mel is the President/Founder of Mel Feller Seminars with Coaching for Success 360, Inc. and Mel Feller Coaching. Mel Feller is an Innovator and Business Leader. Mel Feller currently maintains an office in Texas. Mel is currently an MBA Candidate.

 Building a culture of accountability within an organization is a key element to making a business sustainable over a long period. Not surprisingly, all high-performing organizations are moving toward more empowerment, enlightenment and creating a culture of accountability.

 So what is accountability? To some, it is something you make people do, as in “making people accountable.” However, as long as you think accountability can be purchased, mandated, or motivated, you are trapped in trying to create high accountability in a low-accountability culture.

  So let us consider what accountability is, and how we can create an organizational culture that encourages it.

  By definition, accountability is being answerable or responsible for something. Accountability opens the door to ownership – not necessarily financial ownership, but certainly emotional ownership, where someone acknowledges they are responsible for some aspect of the organization.

  Accountability is not something you “make” people do – it has to be chosen or accepted by people within your organization. People must “buy into” being accountable and responsible. For many, this is a new, unfamiliar way to work. Most importantly: individual purpose and meaning come from assuming responsibility and accepting accountability.

  With accountability comes a measure of discipline. Accountability is the opposite of permissiveness. Holding people accountable is really about the distribution of power and choice. When people have more choice, they are more responsible. When they become more responsible, they can have more freedom. That is what building a culture of accountability is all about.

  So, how do you build a culture of accountability?

First, you stop doing things that undermine accountability—stop overseeing, legislating and micromanaging. Realize the power of reflective questioning, conversations, and collaborations.

Companies that can clearly identify, articulate, and execute their strategic goals are well positioned to be able to create a culture of accountability. In order to effectively achieve these goals, companies must measure and manage actual business performance against these goals in a highly coordinated manner.

   A six-step framework to build a culture of accountability is to:

1. Decide what’s Important (develop an authentic mission, vision, values, strategic position)

 2. Set Goals That Lead (planning that includes measures, targets, projects)

 3. Align Systems (streamline processes and resources so everything supports the goals)

 4. Execute the Plan (each employee’s plans and activities support the goals)

 5. Solve Problems innovatively (get to root causes quicker, make more informed decisions)

 6. Develop Leadership (step back, assess results, develop leadership from within)

 Building a culture of accountability requires not only a framework or a systematic methodology based on proven best practices. It also requires technologies that make the framework practical to use and implement on a daily, weekly, monthly quarterly and annual basis. In addition, it takes an outside coach or strategic advisor to help you along the way to make it “stick” – to make it last. Finally, it takes an organization that is ready and able to accept accountability, the ownership  and the freedom that comes with the new responsibility mindset.

 One thing I have learned (the hard way) from founding a rapidly growing company is without ownership and accountability you literally cannot grow your business. In fact, without employee ownership and accountability, your business is dying.

  Ownership offers the freedom for employees to deliver results. It is about them taking initiative and responsibility for their work. Where there is an opportunity to take initiative or bring ideas forward, it happens. Best of all, employees that rate high on taking ownership think like leaders.

 Accountability is the other side of ownership. It is about following through and delivering on everything you own. True accountability is key, because there is an exponential impact (a detrimental one) to a team when one person cannot make timelines or complete work as expected.

 When a team exhibits both ownership and accountability, a high-trust environment is created, and you will see the makings of a high-performance team.

  Not only does ownership and accountability create higher performance, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management also indicates it results in improved competency, commitment to work, increased employee morale and work satisfaction. It is also known to improve creativity and innovation because employees are more invested in the organization’s future.

 However, according to AMA Enterprise, there is significant lack of accountability on the part of employees. In fact, 21 percent of respondents stated that unaccountable employees make up 30 to 50 percent of their workforce.

 How to Create a Culture of Accountability and Ownership

 Clearly, accountability and ownership are important. So, what can leaders do to create a culture of accountability that influences employees to take responsibility over their work? Here are five ways to instill a culture of accountability:

 Make ownership and accountability a lived value.

 Do not just ask yourself how you can get accountability and ownership in the workplace — make employees live it! Living values and communicating values are very different. I have found that the easiest way to embed these as values in your team is to start with goals and metrics.

 Provide everyone on your team with their own meaningful goals and measurable metrics that align with the company’s. Clear goals drive many important behaviors, including accountability. Without good measurable goals and clear timelines, it is almost impossible to effectively enforce accountability.

   Another important aspect of good goals is how the help define what does not get focus. Often accountability suffers when too many commitments get made. Goals need to be achievable and priorities must always align with these goals. This allows employees to prioritize their work easily, for example, “Which task contributes to my goals?” Objectives and key results (OKRs) allow us to focus on our priorities, create clarity and accountability.

  Draw a box and let the employee own what goes on inside it.

  Similar to commander’s intent, establish expectations by defining what the end goal is and the results you are looking to achieve. Highlight these goals to your employees, without prescribing how to achieve them.

  Demonstrate that you trust employees by allowing them to figure out the course on their own. If you instill trust in them to get it done, you will empower them to succeed and take responsibility over the outcome.

  They will also find the work more rewarding, which contributes to their taking ownership over tasks. Goal-oriented employees are comfortable working autonomously and require little oversight from manager and leaders. This leads us to the next point:

  There is no such thing as half delegating.

 Micromanaging leads to resentment, stifles initiative and makes employees feel like a simple cog in someone else’s wheel. The compulsion for you to micromanage results from a lack of trust in employees, teaching them that they should seek constant guidance and check-in often, even when they feel like they are on track. It is also very difficult to take ownership over someone else’s playbook.

  Give your employees an opportunity to problem-solve on their own rather than doing it for them. Productive employees are high performing because they are proactive about identifying and solving problems.

 Explain why their box even exists in the first place.

 Do your employees understand how their work contributes to the organization’s success? When leaders were asked this question as part of the 2013 study by AMA Enterprise, the results were staggering. More than half of the leaders questioned said that only 49 percent of employees fully understand the extent that their responsibilities contribute to the organization’s success.

  Remember that box you drew for your employee? If you do not connect it to organizational success, an employee does not get a clear picture of the purpose of their job. Communicating how they directly cascade towards the organization’s future success gives employees not only a sense of meaning and impact but also information that will allow them to improve the organization.

  This goes beyond the metrics and outputs and into the “why” of the organization and team.

  Become an active listener and let them make their box better.

  If employees are taking ownership of their work, it is your job to help them do a better job, faster. You become their coach, not their manager.

  Creating a company culture that encourages employees to express themselves and share ideas with you is not easy, but listening is the first step. Listening shows that their opinions matter to the business. Let them propose a plan to you, and work with them, if needed, to make it happen. Active listening also means explaining to the core when something is a “yes,” versus “no,” versus “a not now.”

  Workplace accountability and taking ownership is all about acknowledging what is on the line for your team and using it to motivate employees to achieve their goals. It is a simple, human-based and very effective approach to avoid organizational mistakes and to improve overall performance.

 Accountability and organizational change come through a new set of conversations. You can start having these conversations in your organization. Do not wait - start today!

 Mel Feller, MPA, MHR, is a well-known real estate, business consultant, personal development consultant and speaker, specializing in performance, productivity, and profits. Mel is the President/Founder of Mel Feller Seminars with Coaching for Success 360, Inc. and Mel Feller Coaching, a real estate and business specific coaching company. His three books for real estate professionals are systems on how to become an exceptional sales performer. His four books in Business and Government Grants are ways to leverage and increase your business Success in both time and money! His book on Personal Development “Lies that Will Sabotage Your Success”. Mel Feller is in Texas.

The Verdict on Agile

This week Te Papa in Wellington played host to the annual Agile NZ Conference. The team from Assurity have done a great job of hosting this conference over the past few years and its gone from strength to strength - attracting some headline international Agile experts and speakers.

At the same time I have noticed an increase in the number of articles questioning the value of Agile and whether the methodology actually delivers the benefits it promises. Many people I’ve talked to recently have been asking the same questions. After a few years of adoption many organisations are now getting to a stage where they are taking stock of how things are going.

The interest of executives and senior managers in Agile probably peaked about 5 years ago. Everyone was disillusioned with the lack of delivery and cost blow outs associated with the traditional IT project delivery approach. They thought surely there must be a better way - so they (or their consultants) went looking.

What they found was that teams who have a clear purpose, complimentary competencies and communicate well were using Agile practices. Enter a classic case of ‘correlation versus causation’. The assumption people made was that Agile was the key to improving delivery. And why not - iterative value based on more frequent releases, makes logical sense right?

And so happiness reigned in the land again - executives and managers had found a new approach which they had seen delivered value and a whole industry of Agile coaches & experts emerged to help organisation adopt Agile practices. Silver bullet found.

Unfortunately the reality is that most organisations are bad at change, and so what followed was years of largely only the IT function adopting Agile practices - usually with the support of a handful of forward thinking business product owners or stakeholders - whilst the wider organisation around them didn’t shift. Most organisations ended up with what I call the Water-Agile-Fall methodology.

Upstream activities such as governance, portfolio management, resourcing/funding and prioritisation continued to operate in the usual waterfall manner which meant that product ownership/the product backlog were constrained by the same funding/resourcing/changing priorities issues that sank the SS Waterfall.

The adoption of product ownership as a business discipline has also been patchy - so often you end up with product owners who act as proxies for a range of business stakeholders, and who end up being torn between the competing needs of thoss stakeholders without having the mandate to actually make decisions. I think too many business owners see product ownership as an ‘IT thing’ when really it’s about being the responsible owner of the product or service on behalf of the whole organisation.

One of the other major oversights of the ‘Agile scouts’ was that the companies they studied were predominately technology-centric (usually software development) companies or ones that delivered digital products or services. They weren’t based on a classic asset-centric, project cycle based business model - they were based on the construct of product teams and lifecycles. That shift - from project to product - was a crucial part of the Agile recipe which most organisations left out.

Some business models or activity types simply don’t lend themselves to iteration and incremental development - there’s too much rework and wastage introduced. There’s nothing wrong with that - your organisation should be able to pick the right tool (approach/framework) for the job at hand.

So is all lost - do we need the next generation of scouts to go out to the valleys and find us another methodology or framework? My sense is that rather than repeating the cycle organisations should perhaps genuinely commit to change (including difficult conversations around leadership, structures and roles) and utilise frameworks such as Agile to re-engineer their operating models to be fit for purpose.

For me there are a few key things to get you started down that path:

The adoption of any framework like Agile needs to be business focused - led by the CEO and executive - with the intention of changing the way everybody works and the way the organisation delivers products & services to its customers. In fact I would start by re-engineering the customer engagement side first and then work backwards.

Frameworks and methodologies are no replacement for culture and people. The idea that changing frameworks will improve delivery is so appealing. The reality is that there are no silver bullets; you can’t simply ‘import’ something into your organisation - you have to do the hard yards, figure out what works in your context and then work tirelessly to make it happen.

Your primary focus should be on people, not frameworks. Hire and train the best possible people you can find, create a clear purpose for them and then empower them to do awesome things. Creating a culture where people want to stay will ensure that even as you upskills them (and they get offers from other places) they will want to stay. Culture is king.

Now is the time for some difficult conversations - using yesterday’s thinking, governance or processes to manage today’s delivery simply isn’t going to work. It’s time for change; for some people that might mean upskilling or career change.

Rebuild using the product mindset - nothing stands still anymore and as soon as your product or service hits the market there will be a backlog of enhancement and fix requests. Writing a business case to run a project every few years won’t allow you to keep up with those customer demands. Products require a life-cycle approach and constant stream of investment.

The principles, spirit and practices behind Agile are still solid. It’s the application of those that has let most organisations down over the last few years. The adoption of Agile has been too focused on the framework & tools rather than on the people & practices.

I think the experience of Agile adoption has taught us some valuable lessons. The good news is that all is not lost and with the right leadership and focus organisations can still achieve what they set out to achieve.

This is the most exciting time ever to be in IT!… But are we up to it? I’m not sure, but I think it was Brian Johnson who first coined the phrase “IT is too important to be left to IT.” However, I’d also add “…but the business isn’t grown up enough to be put in charge of IT”!  Herein lies one of the greatest, endemic issues we currently face in IT… Business and IT-alignment. Even the term itself causes heated debate. In this blog, I want to show some worrying facts and figures that underpin this issue. I’ll also touch upon Business Relationship Management (BRM) as a critical missing capability, exploring how BRM can help us take an important step in solving the “Business and IT-alignment” issue. Providing we do it properly of course.   The business and IT relationship The ABC (attitude, behavior, culture) card below sums up the “Business and IT relationship.” This has been a top scoring card in global improvement workshops with more than 4000 organizations, and has been for the last 15 years.  …I’ll repeat that, only louder “FOR THE LAST 15 YEARS!” Who is to play this “marriage guidance counsellor” role? Drum roll… enter BRM. But first… Why is it so exciting to be in IT right now?  Digital transformation is the latest industry buzzword. Nobody knows what it really means, but everybody wants it. Suddenly all the vendor products and services in the market have “digital transformation” added as a byline in the description, and existing training catalogs describe how current courses support and enable this need for “digital transformation”… Phew, so we’ve solved that then! Regardless of what it really means, one thing is clear – IT is becoming increasingly important for all organizations and it’s not going to go away. To quote Michael Ganser from Cisco: “Digital transformation represents the beginning of the most significant transformation in our lifetimes.” This means that IT and IT service management (ITSM) are becoming strategic assets and strategic capabilities. YOU are now a strategic asset. How cool is that to put on your CV? However, this new role brings with it great responsibilities and demands new skills and new ways of behaving. The question is will we take ownership for this new position we’ve been given? Will we develop the right skills and capabilities? Will we start behaving like strategic assets? Either we do, or we face the alternative “tragic” consequences as shown in the t-shirt above.  What do you mean “but are we up to it”?  “Business and IT alignment” has once again been named the number one CIO challenge in a recent industry study on Trends in Business, IT & IoT. It’s been in the top three CIO challenges for the last 15 years. And, as IT becomes increasingly important with each passing year, the business and IT “gap” seems to be getting bigger and bigger. If you don’t believe me, then please check out some of these articles: CIO leaders struggle to sway business leaders Communication between IT and non-IT workers in a state of crisis The IT-Business gap remains. The fact that “Business and IT-alignment” has been a top issue for the last 15 years clearly shows that current approaches to closing the gap aren’t working. A reason perhaps for the growing popularity of BRM?  Not only are the current approaches not working, but we’re also not developing the right knowledge and skills.  IT has no understanding of business impact and priority This has been the top scoring ABC card for the last 15 years. Confirming that the findings of this article from 2013 – “The IT talent problem” – is still relevant. In this article executives were asked “If you had a magic wand, what one talent problem would you solve?” More than 70% said “Give business skills to their technologists… they do not understand the business context of their technology work, nor can they have a meaningful discussion with the leaders of the business areas their technology supports.”  “Yes, but that was 2013!”  “We’ve learned and now we do continual service improvement (CSI)!” If only this were true. In a recent mini study my company undertook, less than 20% said they had formal CSI in place. This talent problem was also raised in the 2017 Gartner CIO Agenda report. CIOs reported their top barriers to successfully showing the value of IT – with talent being number one, citing “Business knowledge and acumen.” Worryingly, the same issues that CIOs cited four years earlier in the exact same study. As I said, current approaches don’t seem to be working… And? Now I know I’m not the brightest crayon in the box, but all this clearly shows we need to develop more business understanding and more business-focused skills and capabilities. With “Business IQ” being one of the key competence areas within the BRM Institute body of knowledge.  BRM is an ideal approach to help IT people gain a better business understanding, and to work together with ITSM to develop an appropriate priority and decision–making mechanism. However… The business isn’t grown up enough to be put in charge of IT either! This is another top-three ABC card chosen in our global workshops. We cannot implement effective priority mechanisms without the business.  It’s easy to blame IT. However, it isn’t all IT’s fault. There needs to be, from the business, better governance of enterprise IT. Says who? An ISACA study (Benchmarking and Business Value Assessment of COBIT 5) revealed “More business involvement in the governance of enterprise IT  is required,” highlighting a low maturity score on benefits realization and risk optimization. Perhaps a reason why “70% of everything spent on IT doesn’t meet the functional goals of projects or deliver the expected return on investment” according to a 2015 NetworkWorld article.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t digital transformation about realizing business benefits from emerging technologies? And, managing the inherent risks of doing it and of not doing it? Sounds like governance to me. So, we need some sort of executive-level commitment and governance if we want to realize the benefits of digital transformation. However, in a recent “hands-up” poll I did with event delegates representing more than 500 organizations, sadly only about 25% said they had “Formal IT governance” in place (such as COBIT). But this business issue isn’t just at the executive level. A CIO.com article The key to successful digital transformation stated:  “The biggest innovation happens when the transformation is user [driven], not IT driven”… going on to add “The process requires an understanding of cultural and knowledge gaps for business users, a monumental and often politically charged challenge typically far outside IT’s purview.” The business users also have an important role to play. Two top-scoring ABC cards (again for the last 15 years) are “Everything has the highest priority according to the users” and “Too little business involvement in requirements specification and testing.” Perhaps there’s another role here for BRM to become the “trusted advisor” to business users? Why is governing IT so hard?  In a recent article on CIO.com entitled “What is GRC and why do you need it?” Kim Lindros (CIO) declared: “The decision-making, portfolio management, risk management, and regulatory compliance functions included in a ‘Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)’ framework will not be effective unless the organization’s executive leadership really supports cultural change.” In another article from CIOInsight.com entitled “Cultural issues derail digital transformations” it was revealed that 62% of CIOs said the biggest hurdle to digital transformation was “cultural issues.” So, it seems it isn’t just IT-facing “Attitude, Behavior and Culture” issues. However, the business doesn’t attend IT conferences or read IT blogs and often doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. Unconsciously incompetent (“the individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the defict” – Wikipedia.) The challenge here is “Who has to point this out to the business?” IT currently has an issue with trust and credibility and we now want to say to the business “Don’t worry – we’re now your strategic partner”!  One thing is clear. The business won’t change by itself. It’s up to IT to stop playing the victim and to step up to the plate if its wants to change this before it’s too late. Two more of the core competences in the BRM body of knowledge being “Business transformation management” and “Communication.”  BRM from marriage counsellor to superhero in one tall leap! Is BRM the missing link to the endemic business and IT alignment problem? In a McKinsey report entitled “Partnering to shape the future – IT’s new imperative” it was revealed that 76% of executives found that IT should play a partner role to the business. Only 27% thought that IT already fulfilled that role.  It would appear that BRM not only has to improve the relationship between business and IT but also enable them to transform and to solve something they haven’t been able to solve in the last 15 years. Oh, is that all?! So how do we do this? Send staff on a two–day BRM Professional training course to get the certificate? Now where have I seen that approach before? Let’s not make the same mistake we made with ITIL –focusing too much on the certificate rather than developing the competency, not to mention the fact that the business partner won’t be attending the training. So how do we engage the business in this capability–development initiative? We already do BRM, we don’t need BRM training! The majority of organizations who engage us to run business simulations as part of an education or organizational improvement initiative recognize these business and IT issues. When I suggest we focus on BRM in a simulation an answer is often “No, we already do BRM!” More often than not they either have some kind of account management function or a BRM role that serves as a tactical or operational fire-fighter, solving issues that ITSM should have solved. However, all too often BRM roles have no “authority” and are not seen as an added-value partner to both the business and to the IT provider organization.How do we solve this then?Excellent question. That is the topic of my presentation at the upcoming itSMF UK annual conference this November. In my presentation, I’ll be exploring the topic and presenting a case study on how one organization tackled this issue. Engaging with both the business and IT to gain commitment for strategic BRM, and BOTH parties committing to change behavior.  And, if you want one tip to take away now. Make Monday “Go and meet a user day.” Do this regularly, ideally every Monday. Send everybody from IT into the business for one day to observe how IT services are used. To understand how IT services add value, the impact when services are down, and the priority moments – the critical business cycles. Have people come back and present their findings or invite a line-of-business IT user to come present at IT team meetings. Remember: The top scoring ABC card for 15 years in a row is “IT has no understanding of business impact and priority”!  So, are YOU a strategic asset or a tragic…?  The post “IT Is Too Important to Be Left to IT” So What Next?  appeared first on ITSM.tools.

https://itsm.tools/2017/09/14/it-is-too-important-to-be-left-to-it-so-what-next/

Blockstack Summit Tackles the Future of Decentralization

http://www.cryptoga.com/uncategorized/blockstack-summit-tackles-the-future-of-decentralization/

Blockstack Summit Tackles the Future of Decentralization

Following a 7 days of bombshell developments in the market, from the SEC classifying the DAO Tokens as securities to the arrest of Alexander Vinnik for allegedly laundering 4 billion pounds via BTC-E, the inaugural Blockstack Summit kicked off on the early morning of July 27th with an eye towards modern layered protocols that can exist on top of existing blockchains.

Hosted at the Personal computer Science Museum in Mountain Look at, CA, the conference commenced with a discussion of transitions in between the “terminal model” of computing and the personalized personal computer in excess of the class of electronic historical past. In their talk, Blockstack co-founders Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea reviewed how latest moves towards cloud computing and storage choose away the info privacy and safety ensures lengthy afforded by personalized computing. In response to this difficulty, Blockstack and other decentralized apps crafted on top of a variety of blockchains goal to give buyers the ability to handle, control and streamline their very own electronic lives.

Elizabeth Stark, co-founder and CEO of Lightning Community, then reviewed latest complex developments that make it possible for for both of those larger transaction volumes via specialized off-chain payment channels and transactions in between two various sorts of cryptocurrencies. These developments are conserving both of those parties transaction service fees in the lengthy operate and assisting alleviate some of the scaling troubles that bitcoin and other currencies have been going through in latest yrs.

Master far more about Lightning Networks in our three-element series, Understanding the Lightning Community.

Bram Cohen, BitTorrent creator, took the phase later with Blockstack’s Ali to go over developments in the place. When asked about the scaling debate and latest implementation of SegWit, Cohen drew chuckles from the crowd with an adamant declaration that “SegWit solved a bug that really should have been solved when Bitcoin was produced.”

Cohen also endorsed Bitcoin Core and shared his doubts about the complex competency of the teams guiding some of the far more latest ICOs of ERC20 tokens crafted on top of the Ethereum blockchain: “As a standard rule, if you will not have the abilities to develop your very own token from scratch, you should not operate an ICO.”

Nick Szabo, personal computer scientist and lawful scholar, then reviewed the origins of agreement regulation, the historic implementation of good contracts and the up coming ways the market wants to choose to carry out good contracts in a assortment of industrial transactions, both of those in between buyers and businesses and in between businesses on their own.

Drawing on his experiments at George Washington University Regulation School, Szabo advocated for the integration of good contracts into standard agreement and property regulation frameworks. In its place of making an attempt to rebuild lawful idea from scratch, builders really should function with existing frameworks that have by now been debugged for hundreds of years.

Szabo discussed a dichotomy of agreement regulation: “dry code,” where an entire settlement can be interpreted and executed by pcs dependent on a number of electronic inputs and “wet code,” or standard regulation, where the agreements are interpreted by particular person parties dependent on their very own definitions of words and phrases and phrasing.

Many industries exist nowadays to assistance quantify and define examples of “wet code” in the earth. Insurance plan claim adjusters evaluate incident stories and eyewitness testimony in order to accurately pay out out promises dependent on fault and the monetary benefit of the true damages suffered by every single social gathering, for instance.

Translating poorly organized info from authentic-earth circumstances into a series of executable actions dependent on the phrases of an settlement is a useful service. Relatively than call for an abolishment of these systems, Szabo argued that the upcoming of decentralized good contracts will exist in tandem with the finest pieces of far more standard finance industries in the coming upcoming. Above the coming yrs, greater portions of standard info investigation will turn out to be obsolete, done digitally by far more highly effective and intelligent pcs.

This is not the to start with time Szabo has spoken on the subject: As early as 2008, Szabo broke down the dissimilarities in between wet and dry code on his weblog, Unenumerated.

Following, Balaji Srinivasan, founder of 21.co and a16z Board Lover, launched the Nakamoto coefficient, a metric influenced by the Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient to quantify the relative decentralization of various sorts of cryptocurrencies. By hunting at the distribution of electrical power in six subsects of particular person cryptocurrencies, Srinivasan was able to assess the relative strengths of various blockchains and networks in opposition to assaults that need a greater part or supermajority of the electrical power in a program to be compromised.

Srinivasan commenced by organizing the six crucial subsystems of both of those Bitcoin and Ethereum:

mining, where electrical power is equal to who receives mining benefits

customers, where electrical power is equal to the number of users

builders, where electrical power is rather equal to the number of commits

exchanges, where electrical power is equal to buying and selling quantity

nodes, where electrical power is measured by the distribution of nodes all around the earth and

coin ownership, where electrical power is measured by how substantially coin every single wallet tackle contains.

After calculating the total of electrical power owned by every single entity in the six subsystems, Srinivasan was able to compute a Gini coefficient (dubbed the “Nakamoto coefficient”) dependent on the relative electrical power concentrations for every single subsystem. For instance, if every single miner has the identical total of hashpower and receives the identical reward, the subsystem would get a benefit of . If a single miner receives all of the benefits, then the subsystem would get a benefit of 1.

Srinivasan’s Nakamoto coefficient calculations for Bitcoin and Ethereum

In spite of a myriad of dissimilarities, both of those Bitcoin and Ethereum have approximately equivalent Nakamoto coefficients of ≈0.91, indicating that at minimum one particular subsystem in every single ecosystem is very centralized. Nonetheless, dependent on Srinivasan’s calculations, it is clear that Bitcoin is either marginally (consumer, exchanges, nodes and owners) or substantially (mining and builders) far more decentralized than Ethereum. Most surprisingly, Bitcoin’s mining network is significantly far more decentralized than Ethereum’s (.4 vs. .82).

This is the to start with time Srinivasan has reviewed a metric for decentralization of cryptocurrency markets. He has considering that released his findings, with one-way links to the underlying datasets, on his company’s weblog.

After a panel discussing specific use situations for cryptocurrency payments, Prosperity and Poverty creator George Gilder led a rousing endorsement of a tokenized, decentralized website and its ability to wipe out “silos” of the world-wide-web produced both of those by nations and businesses alike.

Citing the wide quantities of info businesses like Fb, Google and Amazon conserve and measure about their users’ electronic lives, Gilder spoke of a upcoming where persons can explicitly handle the stream of their info, secured by decentralized protocols and run by tokens.

It was fitting that Blockstack Summit was held in the Personal computer Heritage Museum, an ode to the tales and artifacts of the information age and its influence on culture. With fully restored IBM mainframes, an Apple I and the source codes of dozens of impactful softwares like MS-DOS, Photoshop and Term, the museum served as a backdrop for discussions that look to an open up, free and uncensored culture of the upcoming.

9 Reasons Why MMA Is the Greatest Sport On The Planet

1. Virtue:

Other than the occasional blips in the framework like interval titles and furthermore drawn out suspensions, blended hand to hand fighting is the purest game on the planet. It routinely features its capability to astonish, fulfill and hunger its adherents. There's no whimpering, no embarrassments, no money mongers and no oat box title belts. The game is as decided as it can be. The preparation, devotion, diligent work and give up that enters being an expert MMA boxer is past our cognizance. It's an intercontinental, my country versus yours hard and fast fight. It's a heel kick to the face or an elbow off the octagon. It's a five-round, ground-and-pound battling regal. It's battling, the most regular entertainment perceived to man.Roland Garros 2017 live scores

2. No Ownership:

Less the few folks in control that truly think about the game, the greater part of games supervisors just think about producing salary. Presently while that is all well and awesome thinking of it as' their own money their putting on hold, despite everything it wipes out from the game's trustworthiness. Regardless of whether it's the wellbeing of their players, the money related toughness of their representatives or the aggregate prosperity of their group, chiefs are usually ducking and getting away ethically essential commitments for fiscal achievement. However in blended hand to hand fighting, where singular proprietors are as abundant as non-warriors, it's each person for himself. Without a doubt, suppliers like the UFC run the universe of MMA and are regularly ridiculed for not paying their contenders sufficiently about, but rather reality of the worry is that no one is making these contenders accomplish something they don't wish to. Each person has his own chance at receiving the rewards of sponsorship while putting in the measure of time and additionally exertion that they consider required.

3. Sensible Deals:

Blended hand to hand fighting understandings are regularly speedy. This gives the game's various advancements the likelihood to pay its warriors the money they should get, or don't. For instance, a considerable measure of UFC understandings are worked around a six-battle span. This gives proprietorship the possibility to manage its advantages and not have found paying contenders scads of dollars after they're no longer ready to execute. Not at all like MMA, different amusements like softball, football and b-ball are consistently subjected to "secured" contracts. Protracted arrangements that are regularly 8 or 10 years in length make these games ridiculous. Sportsmen wouldn't perform in their prime for a long time long. It's sound judgment. I speculate MMA is the main diversion to remember it needs to secure its money and additionally make each arrangement stride by step.

4. Aggressive Salaries:

Generally, MMA pays are amazingly focused. Of course, the incidental PPV money dairy animals like Brock Lesnar will surely appreciate a greater number of advantages than the rest, yet toward the day's end, MMA is among the most fiscally sensible games around. Extra elements like softball, football and additionally ball work madly rich members, some making as much as $ 24 thousand a year. For MMA warriors, picking up a $ 10,000 paycheck could be the deciding variable in paying their lease on time or not. They don't have space for misstep. They can't unwind and ride a guaranteed pay into the twilight. They are obliged to give A HUNDRED percent, 100% of the time, each moment they're inside the octagon. It's precisely what makes the game a great deal more perilous, which thus makes greater delight and additionally enthusiasm for fans.

5. Limited Injuries:

In spite of being the bloodiest game on the world, contenders are scarcely at any point genuinely harmed inside the pen. Of course, the intermittent damage bug strikes preparing camps and furthermore puts a portion of the best contenders on the rack for a couple of months, however literally nothing near the ACL tears and furthermore Tommy Mark surgeries that contain each different other game. Regardless of whether it's getting evacuated off the football field after a head protector to-cap mischance or breaking a lower leg in the wake of moving into home plate, different games are some of the time more hazardous contrasted with battling. Unmistakably a couple of contenders have the ability to break bones, similar to Frank Mir and also Ronda Rousey, however for a standout amongst the most segments, matches are put to an end before incapacitating wounds are endured. AFL Sports News

6. One and Only Title:

Not at all like the abundant title belts that wrap themselves around a modest bunch of boxers, blended hand to hand fighting - especially, the UFC - just has one belt for each weight class. There's just a single big cheese in UFC. The game doesn't just hand a title over to a warrior since he struck make it to the battle that night. It requires exertion, responsibility and furthermore a grateful winning streak to snatch the transcendence of genuine title.

7. Year Round Action:

The UFC is the most huge blended hand to hand fighting promoter on the planet. From January to December, the UFC hoards many gatherings, regardless of whether through pay-per-see, FOX, FX, FUEL TV or even Facebook. Presently, while heaps of individuals would state their endeavors have been excessively, exactly how might you badger the supplier for displaying its item? In the event that they have the assets, why not utilize them? With eight different weight classes conveying incalculable engaging warriors, the UFC has could supply its supporters invaluable movement throughout the entire year. A great deal of games, potentially other than tennis and golf, can not state that. Their timetables are restricted. Also, to trust, these sums are simply from the UFC. Imagine what some other MMA promoters can add to the recipe.

8. No Scandals:

Blended Martial Arts doesn't endure junk. The game isn't built to work around defilement. Battling is battling, and in addition it starts and furthermore keeps with that. The entertainment does not seem to keep running into significant embarrassments, due to some degree to MMA's strength divider being iron-clad. Boxers aren't tossing battles, administrators aren't taking on the web video tapes of preparing camps, mentors aren't being discovered enticing children. As of recently in its fast presence, MMA has really been as perfect as a game can be, less fizzled testosterone tests. However these days, precisely what entertainment does not have its inconveniences with execution improving?

9. Constrained Concussions:

Blended combative technique contenders have a superior chance of getting struck by lightning than encountering a blackout over the span of a fight. It basically doesn't occur that normally. Conclusive battles are 99.9 percent of the time halted at the greatest second, with the intermittent unpracticed arbitrator making oversights for a concise few moments. Dissimilar to MMA, extra diversions seem to consolidate a mess of blackout related occasions - others particularly, the NFL and in addition NHL. At the point when your game sees a member get concussed at any rate once every week, it may be an ideal opportunity to reposition a few focuses about. For contenders, wounded jaws and additionally brow slashes are the greatest dangers. Latest Sports News

Dream Responsibly

In an age when entrepreneurism has exploded in popularity – egged on by the innumerable Apprentice-esque TV shows that make such a mockery of the profession – it is hardly surprising that a chasmic gap has opened up between the aspiration and the reality. This article is intended as an antidote to the typically saccharine and unrealistic popular portrayals.

While starting a business may have the potential to provide you with a more rewarding life, there are no guarantees and no shortcuts. Taking the plunge is not for the faint of heart – the mortality rate remains nightmarishly high. Of the half a million businesses that will be launched in the UK in 2017, a quarter will fail within year one. Half will not see the end of year three.

Assuming that you are still reading this (having resisted the urge to gingerly retreat to the safety of gainful employment), the good news is that new businesses do survive, and whether you become a positive or a negative statistic is mostly within your control. Laying a solid foundation with meticulous planning – before building on it with a diligent work ethic – remains the cornerstone of commercial success.

▼ Start With Why

Before taking the first step, I urge you to examine your true motivations for embarking on such an epically arduous journey. Understanding what it is that brings meaning to your life will dictate the appropriate route to take. I say this because more and more people these days feel an overarching need to be busy. Perpetually busy people equate being busy with being important and of value, i.e their self-esteem is inextricably linked to their level of work activity. Their maniacal mantra is: ‘I am in the business of busyness – the busier the better!’ If this describes you, you are perfectly suited to the micro-management model of business building, whereby you are both the boss and the employee. Robert Frost hit your nail squarely on the head when he wrote: ‘By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.’ In fact – if you work frantically enough – you can avoid any meaningful engagement with your personal life whatsoever.

If your motivation is purely monetary, you may be interested to know that numerous studies conducted over the past decade have conclusively proven that money really does buy happiness. There is a small footnote to this however: the plateau is approximately £50,000 per annum; anything you earn beyond will make little or no difference to your level of happiness. Furthermore, chronically high levels of stress – like those that come with establishing your own business – tend to be a real happiness-buster over time. Incidentally, the ‘Buying Happiness’ research also shows that the way in which you spend your money makes a significant difference to how happy it can make you. In particular, a life experience such as a restful holiday provides considerably more lasting happiness than material goods. This presents quite the catch 22 for the aforementioned berserkly busy business people, who are surely too busy to take a holiday; and would only spend the holiday thinking about work if they did. Off to Louis Vuitton they go!

If, like me, your motivation is freedom – in terms of your time, quality of life and financial means – my recommendation is that you design and build your company as a machine that will not ultimately require you to be its operator. The idea that you can own the machine that you built and have someone else operate it for you is incomprehensible to many people, yet I assure you that this recusant mindset leads directly to the Holy Grail of personal freedom. Helpfully, it also adds value in terms of a potential exit strategy: companies that are not owner-managed invariably achieve higher valuations.

▼ Leprechauns

Our modern culture of instant gratification is plagued by delusional wannabe entrepreneurs. The pursuit of a ‘get-rich-quick scheme’ is idiocy akin to chasing a rainbow in the hope of finding the pot of gold. Producing a bonafide pot of gold takes time, tenacity and eye-watering amounts of work. Be under no illusions about the sacrifices you will need to make if you are to launch a startup successfully.

Answering two fundamental questions will help you to decide whether you would be best suited to a full-time, part-time, spare-time or seasonal business, or indeed whether you are cut out for starting any business at all: 1) How much time are you willing and able to commit to it, and 2) how little money – if any – can you afford to earn in its formative years?

In the slurry of syrupy ‘entrepreneur’ memes that pollute the internet, there is one that actually captures the essence of successful business building rather well: ‘Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.’ The only caveat I would add to this – and it is a big one – is that anything that is going to significantly improve the quality of the rest of your life is most probably going to take more than a ‘few’ years to build (I would set aside five, but even then, you will have been lucky).

▼ Formation Flying

There is plenty to be said for having a wingman or wingwoman. They may have the skills or experience that you lack and / or the capital that the business needs. Either reason justifies entering into a partnership.

The complimentary skills rationale is particularly useful when starting a business organically; when it is unlikely that you will have the money to employ someone who can fulfil an essential role that you are not suitable for. Having said that – if you are mercenarily minded and have the funds to pay someone to do the same job – an employee is usually preferable to a partner in the long term (it means that you are not obligated to share any profit that your business may make, or the proceeds of sale if you ever execute your exit strategy). Bear in mind however that nobody will ever be as motivated and energetic as a business owner who has everything to play for, and building a business is a lot more fun if you have the right partner to share the thrill of the ascent with. If you remain convinced that you possess the broad spectrum of every skill required and can do it all single-handedly, then good luck to you, Narcissus.

Should you find yourself in the position of ‘founding partner’, structuring your partnership in a responsible and realistic way enables you to retain control of the business while sharing the profits with your partner fairly. A true 50:50 division of ownership is the kiss of death – the business arena is not La La Land. The norms of human nature dictate that the partners will disagree on key issues at some point, spending endless amounts of time attempting to convince each other of their views. For as long as this nonsense continues (which can be indefinitely in a true 50:50 partnership), the board is deadlocked and literally cannot move forward, damaging both the company and all those who work within it. Successful partnerships require a clear decision-making framework on which to grow. For decisions to be made dynamically and in order to get things done, responsibility must be allocated within a business to give each partner the controlling authority for the appropriate field. For fundamental issues that affect the entire business, one partner – usually the ‘Chairperson’ – must have the final say, if ever a final say is needed. Who this power falls to is usually dictated by a historic disproportion in the investment of money, experience, and burden of risk borne. In my opinion, the closest you can get to the spirit of a 50:50 partnership in any professionally run company is 51:49 and – if you take it this far – you should ideally believe that the business will not work at all without your partner.

Never take on a partner because they are a friend – this is a lethally effective way to ruin a friendship; many people pour their heart and soul into their business and very much view it as the concomitant of their self-worth. The potential for conflict when ego and money are involved should not be underestimated.

▼ 20 / 20 Vision

Most successful entrepreneurs identified the niche to be filled before they dreamt up the vision and made it into reality – not the other way around. Any examples of exception are simply those that prove the rule (and they will have been flukes). Beware of randomly searching for ideas to suit your inclination to set up a business for the sake of setting up a business. It has been my experience that when someone wants something – or likes the idea of something – there is an unfortunate tendency to imagine that which is not there. Bearing in mind that whimsical blue sky thinking is responsible for some of the worst business ideas in history, I strongly advise you to allow your open-on-impact parachute concept to marinate before you plough your life savings into it.

Innovation is not a prerequisite for success. Many a stellar business has flourished by simply taking an existing offering and making it better – the bulk of Richard Branson’s Virgin empire was founded on the ethos of reinventing the wheel. Pure originality is useful, though not essential; you can simply be better, or cheaper, or – ideally – both. It is wise to avoid competing on price alone however, because doing so may not be always be enough to win customers over. Being cheaper is of course always a huge selling point in certain markets, but the consumer must believe in your brand in the first place and have the confidence that you are the real deal. Nothing will debase your brand kudos quicker than prolific discounting. If it transpires that the price point of your offering is so low as to make turning a profit all but impossible, it is likely that your business model was not viable to begin with.

▼ Write the Blueprint

As stiff and boring as it may seem, writing a comprehensive business plan is wholly worthwhile, regardless of whether you are applying for any funding and even if the only people who end up reading it are your friends and family. The process of putting pen to paper – particularly when it comes to projecting the figures for your profit and loss, cash-flow and balance sheet – will focus your thinking by forcing you to explain exactly what your business is, how it will stack up financially, where it fits into the market, who your customers are, what you sell, how you sell it, and what you plan to do with your business in the long term. Even if you are only mirror-pitching, subjecting your idea to this structured scrutiny may well reveal it is barking lunacy. This is not the realisation that you want to be having when you have just invested your last pound in it and publicly stated that it is going to be the next Facebook. Far better to have this little eureka moment before you do any damage; when you can still make any necessary adjustments in sandbox mode.

▼ Crystal Ball vs. Grim Reaper

Nothing is more important in business than having a sound grip on your finances. Anybody who blunders through each day without knowing the whereabouts of every penny is not ‘in business’ at all – they are asleep at the wheel, careering down the motorway in the wrong direction. Getting the figures wrong will annihilate both your finances and your reputation, and the ripples will spread much further than you can imagine. Most people underestimate the grave responsibility that comes with owning a company. I may have cut my teeth the hard way and learned invaluable lessons through humbling failure, but it took me many, many years of hard work to recover. You can avoid this by doing your homework properly first instead.

Accurate cash-flow forecasts – updated in real time – are the proverbial crystal ball and are your only real defence against the prolific Grim Reaper of fledgling businesses. Be pessimistic when it comes to your projected figures – under-forecast your revenues, over-forecast your costs. The essence of business is really quite simple: income must exceed expenditure – ideally in that order – and you must track every single penny obsessively. The equation for success in business is as straightforward as the one for losing weight (eat less, move more) yet there are morbidly obese people making themselves miserable everywhere. It is the same in business – the theory is proven; the practice requires staunch discipline.

A common area of fiscal ineptitude arises from the difference between cash-flow and profitability. Profitable businesses fail due to negative cash-flow, whereas businesses operating at a loss survive for as long as their cash-flow is positive. Monthly profit and loss reports that correlate with your cash-flow forecast are a necessity because understanding both profitability and cashflow – and how they interrelate – are the only things that can give you the foresight with which to steer your ship. Essentially, these tools enable you to see the oncoming iceberg – and figure out how to steer around it – before the crunch comes.

▼ Speaking the Language

If you cannot read and interpret accounts, you simply do not understand the language of business. There is a plethora of self-help books on the subject out there, but the most straightforward and user-friendly I have come across is ‘Understanding Accounts’ by Stephen Brookson. The prevailing misconception that the accountant is responsible for financially steering the business has become the obituary of many a venture. The fact is that the only person that is ultimately responsible for the financial welfare of your business is you.

▼ Feigning Innocence

Financial cross-contamination is a deadly sin; countless business owners have sunk the ship – and all the poor souls who sailed in it – by treating the company coffers as their personal bank account. This nefarious behaviour is born of building upon foundations of sand; a catastrophic oversight that occurred at the planning stage (if any planning took place at all, which it probably did not).

The way it should work is this: Assuming that you do not have personal reserves enough to enable you to wait until the business is profitable and cash-flow positive before drawing any money by way of dividend, your startup capital must include a modest survival salary for you. Alternatively – as long as you have good reason to believe that your company is on target to make sufficient profits before the financial year ends – you can take modest director’s loan drawings in lieu of declaring sufficient dividends to clear the outstanding balance (providing of course that cash-flow is positive enough to tolerate such ongoing payments in the first place). The key word in either scenario is ‘modest’ and the salient point is that payment should be made as strictly and as professionally as any payment to any other member of staff.

It is infinitely easier to forgive the actus reus (guilty act) if it was committed in the absence of the mens rea (guilty mind, i.e understanding or intent). What you will often see instead are unscrupulous business owners jetting off on holiday, quaffing champagne, eating lobster, paying the mortgage on their house, meeting the finance payments for the car(s)…..yet all the while their staff are paid late or not at all, the overdue supplier invoices are piling up, and their premises are falling further into a sorry state of disrepair. When the guillotine inevitably falls, the business owner pleads sympathy, waxes lyrical about the blood, sweat and tears he purports to have poured into the venture, blames everyone other than himself for the failure, and takes shelter from the carnage he has created under his coward’s umbrella of limited liability. Staff have lost their jobs (often having worked without remuneration), suppliers have provided products and services for which they have not been paid (sometimes to such an extent that they themselves go bust in turn) and taxpayers lose out on the monies that the owner should have been holding on trust for HMRC. In the face of such dire consequences – arising from dishonest and irresponsible actions – the mens rea defence is patently absurd.

It is precisely through this perversion of the capitalist creed that company law leaves itself open to abuse: the table is set for the amoral business owner to have his cake and eat it – to suck the lifeblood of the company’s cashflow to fund his lifestyle, safe in the knowledge that the statute of limited liability will most likely protect him from misappropriated monies being clawed back.

Moral issues notwithstanding, the legal reality is this: a company – enshrined as it is in commercial law – is an entity all it’s own, just as though it were a person. Your duty as a company director will always be to act in the best interests of the company, not in the best interests of yourself. Understanding this separation is crucial; one of the criteria that the government use for prosecuting or disqualifying a company director on the grounds of unfit conduct is ‘using company money or assets for personal benefit’. The fair warning in this could not be clearer.

▼ Your Staff Trust You

As Benjamin Franklin famously wrote: ‘in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes’. If you employee people, you are obliged to operate a payroll; you must deduct their PAYE tax and – if they earn more than £155 per week – National Insurance (NI) from their pay. You may also need to deduct things like student loan repayments or pension contributions. Every time you make payment to an employee, you should provide them with a payslip that shows exactly how much they have earned and what deductions you have made.

All of the above involves a large element of trust: the government trusts you to pay the income tax and any other contributions; the employee trusts you to pay their income tax and things like National Insurance on their behalf. The money does not belong to your company, nor does it belong to you – the money belongs to your employees, and their money is due to the government via you.

Unethical business owners often deduct amounts equivalent to PAYE (and anything else applicable) from their employees pay, but – rather than paying it over to the government – swallow the money into the company’s beleaguered cash-flow, or even pocket it for themselves. Incredibly, it is the unfortunate employee that is held responsible in these circumstances; HMRC’s somewhat peculiar stance is that the money is ultimately owed by the employee, regardless of the fraudulent behaviour of the business owner. Again, the law seems to leave itself wide open to abuse here, but it is important to remember that such laws are predicated on the theory that business owners are honest and upstanding members of society. (In practice, it can be more like giving guns to monkeys).

▼ HMRC Trust You

You have a duty to understand how VAT works and whether your business will be required to charge it. Broadly speaking, when a business reaches the point of taking £83,000 in one financial year, it must be registered for VAT. At this point you will need to charge 20% on top of everything you sell (unless you sell reduced or zero rated goods) and show the breakdown on all the invoices and receipts that you issue. Again, the key point here is that the VAT you charge is not your money; it is HMRC’s money – your company merely holds it on trust for the government. The classic schoolboy error that new business owners make is gleefully banking the VAT they have been charging as though it is some sort of 20% Brucie Bonus. They have somehow convinced themselves that they have taken £X, when in fact they have only taken £Y. Lo and behold, some three months later, the VAT man comes knocking for his £Z (£X minus £Y). “How unreasonable!” cries the new business owner, having spent all the money that was never his to begin with and bankrupting his fledgling company in doing so. How unreasonable indeed.

▼ Powered by the People

The most powerful asset of any business is the people who work within it. A business is nothing without solid people, and this holds true for all the strongest businesses that are known for generating goodwill. Your team members should be happy in their environment and naturally motivated.

Be obsessively selective about recruitment – if you don’t employ idiots, you won’t need to rule with a rod of iron. Dictatorships are unpleasant and unnecessary; intelligent human beings – operating on a level playing field – rarely need to be told what to do. Establishing an incentivised structure with a clear pathway to success is the key (human nature will do the rest). I am proud to say that the staff of my group of companies treat the business as their own and work largely under their own steam. Many have been on the team from inception and have steadily worked their way up – credit is always given where credit is due.

▼ False Prophets

Before you taxi to the runway, please undertake your own primary research on what starting and running your own business really involves. There are several excellent websites that offer free advice for startups: Business Link, Start Up Donut, Smarta and Startups.co.uk. As these sites contain all the information you need, there is absolutely no need for you to pay a charlatan ‘business consultant’ to give you overblown advice that is already free of charge and in the public domain (if the consultant were genuine, they would advise you not to waste any of your startup capital on their piffle).

▼ Fortune Favours the Brave

Nothing happens overnight – it took a million days to build Rome. Like anyone starting any business, you will need an abundance of grit if you are to stay the course. Dogged determination and adaptability will be of more use to you than God-given intelligence, but there is of course a fine line between bravery and recklessness. Make no mistake about the fact that there will be dark moments when things seem rather hopeless; knowing exactly what you are working towards is the only thing that will get you through those times.

While it may be true that running a business is pointless if the aim is not to turn a profit, the sole motive should not be money. Freedom, independence and the satisfaction derived from creativity should be the key motivators. Money is of course a welcome by-product, but there will often be easier ways to make considerably more of it, albeit less exciting ones.

Personally, I enjoyed myself most in those formative years; when everything was touch-and-go and we were desperately trying to get the aeroplane off the ground before reaching the end of the runway (and – in the case of one company – sellotaping the wings back on in mid-air). I therefore suspect that the adventure you are about to embark upon will bring you some of the best and the worst years of your life. I envy you this first flush of entrepreneurial youth and I urge you to savour every minute of it – it is as good as it gets.

This article was originally published on my website ➪ www.jamesjukes.co.uk. Pay me a visit to read more of my work (you can also subscribe for free).

@remedialaction​

I would argue that your use of the word meaningfully is a concession in and of itself, because property would exist, it merely would not be ever in contention under these circumstances. However, you’d still own yourself, and the results of your actions and the like, and should another person ever come into being, it would be then possible to determine ownership.

Except that no, it does not make sense within that context.  There is no one to exclude, therefore the idea of property does not even apply.  

Furthermore, since all matter within the system (if you insist on using this method as a crude hack) would belong to the original agent, it would imply that the first agent owned the second agent’s body, or at least literally everything they needed to survive, and could therefore coerce them virtually at will.

I disagree, property and self are intimately linked on a fundamental level, the very fact that you use possessive terms to indicate the person you are speaking to and attribute statements (really, actions) to is, again, a concession of this very fact. 

It isn’t a concession, it’s a linguistic construct.

The principle of self-ownership is intrinsic, and its because of that fact that property, as a concept, exists.

It is not.  In the one-agent system, the concept of direct physical control over bodily tissue would exist, but this is distinct from the concepts “ownership” and “property”.  

How do we know this?  Because you said the body-hijacker parasite doesn’t have a valid claim over your body.  This is extra information which is not included in physical control of your body.  If “property” and “direct physical control over body” are identical, then this extra information would be encoded into the universe and the parasite’s actions would be impossible, even though both you and I know it is physically possible to hijack nervous systems.

It is no less intrinsic, though; it follows naturally and necessarily from physical reality. 

It does not.  You have failed to produce an ought from your is.  You can control your body.  Why should you be able to?

In short, even if I was a pure materialist, I still can argue the necessary existence of property as a, well, property of reality. 

You have not shown this.  Property is not a property of reality.  It does not exist in the same sense that minds do.

This is silly, because unless your end argument is that there is no such thing as an individual, following your argument here to its conclusion ends up hardly where you want. 

Oh yes it does.  Borders in some sense exist, but like the boundary between “chair” vs “stool” it’s more of a statistical effect describing a cluster that has real implications than a hard, solid line.  

Individuality, too, is blurred rather than solid, more like a cluster of points than an opaque sphere.  You argue that you have control, and therefore, absolute rights to property.  You have no absolute control, and therefore, no absolute property, even if we run by the fiction of human rights.

Of course, you’re missing the point by attempting to appeal to outside exceptions or missing the actual core of the statement. My consciousness, and my conscious actions are my own, and only ever my own. You are attempting to obfuscate that.

Your actions are not purely your own.  If they were then they could not be influenced by outside factors.  And probably, weird stuff with minds will show up later in human history with transhumanism (could be 50 years, could be 10,000), so your moral system should be able to withstand that if it’s a true objective morality.

They influence your behavior but the behavior and actions ultimately are, again, your own. It is not an outside agent controlling you, it is an outside agent using means to manipulate you; they are not controlling you as one might a character in a video game.

Absolute responsibility is a crock.  If they can manipulate you, then they have some share of control of you.  If they literally have no impact whatsoever on your actions (a far cry considering just how potent some drugs can be), then it doesn’t even count as manipulation.

Such a hypothetical organism would not be able to do so any more than my seizing of your car makes it my car merely because I’m the one driving it. The organism would not have any claim to the body.

Why?  It was your exclusive control that you said established the claim in the first place.  Establishing exclusive control through a nervous system was the method by which the claims were established.

The simple fact is you do control yourself, and the results of your actions.

Let me know if you ever develop an executive functioning disorder, so we can talk about how that’s a bunch of baloney.  You want absolute responsibility to be applied to agents.  That requires absolute control.  Absolute control doesn’t exist.

You acknowledge this as an implicit fact in your recognition of me as an independent entity, which you do each time you address me, and respond to my statements. 

This implies a perfect binary of control is required.  It is not.

The principle of self-ownership is logically necessary for us to even converse this way.

No, it is not.  Distinctness from self precedes property, and is recognizable even in a single-agent system in which property is nonsensical.

Furthermore, you have still failed to derive the should for a principle of self-ownership which can make moral claims, independently from the fact that you have some level of control over your body.

To branch off, the funny thing is, even if it wasn’t the case, it would still be ideologically necessary to commit to supporting self-ownership and the right to property, because otherwise, you end up being arbitrary, and morality cannot be arbitrary, even if we were merely inventing it for the function of society.

Recognizing the personhood and utility of others, both of which precede property, is not arbitrary.  The choice of property is arbitrary, which is part of why you have failed to convert your is to an ought.

either you have a right to keep all your property, or you can’t really argue that you have any property at all, and we fall into merely utilitarian claims and that’s hardly a road I think you want to fall down.

Oh ho, I do want to go down the road towards Utilitarianism, because Utilitarianism correctly recognizes that property is merely a tool to be exploited for the benefit of people, and both utility and personhood precede property.

To which the actual response, which I’ve stated, is that folks will invent new jobs that we never could have thought of now, and resolve the problem,

This is based on market faith.  If machines are better than humans at literally everything, then there is no reason to ever hire humans.  I’m not going to believe these jobs exist until their first instantiations are actually created.  

 to say nothing of the fact that this theoretical world of hyper-automation still needs consumers, and you seem to be running on this idea that production drives consumption, rather than the other way around.

This role is fulfilled by the owners of capital.  Those without capital are the ones really in trouble there, as they need the capital owners’ property to exist, but the capital owners do not need them.

Given your supposed solution to this imagined crisis is essentially a rehash of socialist central planning, I feel more or less sound in dismissing it as an attempt to push that under a new guise,

The funny thing is that markets throughout the world manage to have some regulations like “don’t dump so much waste that the Cuyahoga river lights on fire” (where does that even fit into your framework, where someone could presumably claim water after it has evaporated?) which are “centrally planned”, and yet still produce enormous amounts of wealth.  There’s a continuum, or perhaps some scale even more multidimensional than that, and the optimal point isn’t what you think it is.

 yet that guise passed away already when your plan seemed to have very little to actually do with the supposed problem of this oncoming hyper-automation. 

It’s actually a medium-term solution intended as a flexible response for the time period between “soon” and “all human economic labor whatsoever becomes obsolete.”  There is the potential for a lot of unnecessary human suffering in there - much of which your system lacks the ability to morally condemn.

Long-term would probably be something like just cutting a check for some % of the output of the economy, but while an initial experiment in Canada was not a failure, there are reasons to believe such a policy is not suitable yet and should still be limited to much smaller experiments than a whole country.