Good busy and bad busy

What should you call “work”? 

I define work as whatever needs to be done to reach a certain goal. If you work in a company, this outcome is usually about producing revenues and EBITDA.

Productive work is essential. On the contrary, producing an intermediate outcome is not work by itself. Communicating to your team that you have reached an intermediate task, or that you are in the middle of something but have not reached your goal yet: this to me is not work. People often delude themselves into thinking that they are really busy when in reality, all that they are doing is sending emails around.

Spending hours on tasks which do not contribute to reaching an outcome is not work either. Carrying out a repetitive task, which was defined as part of a routine some years ago in a specific situation, but brings no advantage or added value whatsoever is the present or the immediate future, is not work – at least from my perspective. This is sometimes called “bad busy“. 

What can be done to promote effective work? 

What can you do if you come to the conclusion that your team is doing work that is not leading to any substantial outcome?

The first step would be to analyse the situation: is your team working effectively? Is your team reaching its objectives? If not, there are usually 4 scenarios:

1. Wrong objectives. In this case, the first step towards a solution is obviously to communicate objectives that are meaningful and achievable
2. Right objectives, inadequate execution. In this case, objectives are not reached because you or your team are performing the wrong tasks. Focus on useful tasks, rather than losing time with repetitive, useless tasks or discussing intermediary outcomes
3. Right objectives, fear of failure. Do not fear failure, embrace it. It is part of working life. Think of the dire consequences of inaction
4. Right objectives, procrastination. Often the best solution is to stop altogether and fix and existing emotional problems. If one of your team members has emotional problems about work, do not assume that will improve with time. It will likely worsen. These types of problem are quite tricky to solve and it often is down to the individual concerned to make an effort towards a resolution.

5 lessons I learned from Américo Amorim

Some lessons I learned by working with Américo Amorim:

1. Never rely on anyone. You should not depend on a single supplier, bank, or person. If you offer someone the chance to influence your actions, you are effectively exposing yourself and this will become a source of weakness sooner or later. We live and work in a market economy, you should only depend on the system. Use the system to your own advantage;
2. Walk the talk. Working in a company (or a bank) is a choice and a lifestyle. Some chose to become an artist, a politician or a civil servant – you made your own choice. You will meet people from all walks of life: understand what they expect from you and walk the talk;
3. It is often physical. No-one ever seriously developed a business just by sitting in an office. If you work in an industrial company, you need to talk with people on the shop floor. If you sell a service, you need to meet your clients. Travel if you need to. Spreadsheets are good, being on the ground is absolutely fundamental;
4. Keep your promises, and ask others to keep their own. While some people are good at delivering on what they promised, most are not. Remember what you were promised and demand it. Conversely, you should make a real effort to honour your promises;
5. Talk with everyone – including politicians. While you may have your own political views, you cannot afford to alienate a group of people based on their political views, as you may need their support further down the road. This is more tricky to carry out than you might think, since you should make yourself scarce at the same time. Find that balance.

A Bloggers’ Conference (#ABC)

This coming Saturday 14 December, I will attend #ABC – A Bloggers’ Conference at the LEAP Centre in Lisbon.

The event is organised by Coworklisboa, Marta Valente and IAMIN, who have invited a number of speakers to discuss subjects including creative writing, social marketing and web design.

It is the first time I attend a bloggers’ event. I am certain that there is a lot to learn from bloggers and marketing specialists. If you are in Lisbon and would like to attend, follow the link above.

Integrity impli…

Integrity implies that competitive advantage and commercial success are derived through the application of superior individual and collective skill and not through the use of manipulative or deceptive devices or practices.
European Venture Capital Association Handbook, January 2012

This quote, taken from the EVCA’s handbook, appears slightly idealistic at first reading. We all know that superior personal and collective skills are not always rewarded in business life. However, innovation in business is probably based on the same ideals. From this perspective, an innovative company can be seen as a group of individuals that have superior collective skills.

 

Fostering an innovation-based economy

In the last articles of Innovation Models, we addressed micro issues concerning innovations in a specific industry and theory on innovation as a whole. Brooking’s Study on “Building an Innovation-Based Economy” by Darrell West, Allan Friedman, and Walter Valdivia approaches the issue of innovation more broadly, with various suggestions and recommendations not only in the private but also in the public level in order to create an effective innovation-based economy. The most general ideas of the study are policy recommendations for government: In their recommendations, they argue that the primary goals of policymakers should be: ensuring conditions that promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the private sector, leveraging the digital economy in a way that boosts government services and makes agencies more efficient and effective, enhance digital infrastructure and provide data that allows the proper measurement of economic figures and laying the foundation for a strong, educated, and innovative workforce.  More specifically the study reveals that policymakers should foster the improvement of metrics that value worker productivity; invest on the mating of entrepreneurial skills and academic life and the expansion and create conditions for start-ups to evolve, to encourage entrepreneurship early on, which encourages government to get more involved in entrepreneurial activity by providing credit and/or tax breaks to new businesses; legislate the improvement of infrastructures that enable the evolution and widespread of communications which facilitates business everywhere; improve the harmonization of cross-border laws that facilitate communication and freedom of expression; improve technological transfer and commercialization of knowledge from universities to public and private companies so that both public and private investments translate into jobs and economic activity as well as better health, security, and well-being.

This study focuses on turning the US economy into a more innovation-based economy by appealing to policymakers to create legislation and programs that facilitate the creation of new businesses. Even though it is primarily directed to the US economy and it’s issues with the lack of innovation in some sectors, the study presents more general examples and guidelines of important policy that can be applied outside the US. One of the most impressive statements in addressing this issue is the concern for the improvement of infrastructures that facilitate communications, since it is normally not a big issue in most developed economies but it is extremely important in the US. Another issue in fostering an innovation-based economy that can be applied outside the US is building an educated and innovative workforce, and reducing bottlenecks in the dissemination and commercialization of knowledge, which is crucial for a starting point in building a strong and ever so innovative business environment in the long-run.

Brooking’s study focuses on the US economy, however some of the policies and structural reforms that the authors suggest were already implemented in some countries and most of them are now an example of groundbreaking sustainable innovations. Such is the example of Japan and Finland. The source for this claim is the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum; a complete and thorough index that measures the competitiveness of OECD countries, comprised of 12 pillars that formulate macro-economic and business data into a competitiveness ranking. We will be using the last pillar, and one of the most important ones to formulate the point we are making above. Below are the matrices of these 3 countries, the US, Finland and Japan. Upon analyzing the matrices, the level of innovation in both Finland and Japan top the list, however, in other pillars that compose the competitiveness index there is some evidence of their difference to the US. Japan is on average with innovation-driven economies while Finland is above average on most pillars except market size and infrastructure. Both these economies have higher levels of business sophistication and institutions which are pillars fundamental for the fostering of innovations in any country.

Failure to launch

See on Scoop.it – Innovation and business models

Innovation is a key component of any enterprise, but failure is an intrinsic, inevitable part of the process. Most products fail, most mergers and acquisitions fail, most projects fail and most startup ventures fail.

See on www.fastcompany.com

 

Innovation in Portugal – 1957

From the proceeds of the II Congress of the Industry and Economists, which took place in 1957, we learn that “it is crucial that initiatives which are useful to the country’s industrial development, are not constrained in any way, as this would refrain the dynamics of creative enthusiasm” (the translation is my own).

Lesson learned?

Why are acquisition multiples a taboo subject in Portugal? [barrier]

Whenever a UK or US newspaper reports on an acquisition, one of the most usual subjects is a short analysis of the acquisition multiples. Why is this important? One of the main questions that arises when a company is acquired is whether the acquirer paid the right price.

One of the most bewildering facts about the way journalists report acquisitions in Portugal is that price and value multiples are almost never mentioned. I really cannot say for sure why this is the case – there could be several explanations.

One explanation could be that transactions in Portugal are comparatively small and there would be limited interest in the price. But then, why bother reporting at all? Perhaps journalists simply know that, if they were to ask questions about the value of the acquisition, they would not get a straight answer.

Another possibility is that journalists cannot be bothered to calculate an EV/EBITDA multiple. The maths are not challenging… The media sector is going through a difficult phase now with cost cutting and editorial staff limitations, which may explain why there are rarely in-depth articles about acquisitions.

While multiple analysis has a number of limitations, it allows analysts to draw certain conclusions. The lack of transparency in M&A in Portugal is yet another barrier to entrepreneurship. No-one really understands what a company is or could be worth, so why bother starting a business?

Yet there are positive developments. TTR is a financial information company which focuses on providing proprietary information about global M&A transactions which involve Portuguese and Spanish companies.

Should TTR data make its way into mainstream media in Portugal, this could indirectly act as an incentive to entrepreneurship. However, newspapers and TV stations have given up on actually hiring editors and are happy to use and reuse existing news so this could prove unrealistic.

Do you think that mainstream media and particularly newspapers should focus on acquisition multiples? Or would you find it too technical?