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Category Archives: Work and Business

Resolutions, schmesolutions!

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Posted on December 20, 2006 – 13:59

A few years back I made some New Year’s resolutions; one of which was to keep a regular diary. If the eclectic posting dates on this blog are anything to go by, you can guess that this was about as successful as a lead balloon. I’ve never considered New Year’s resolutions since. That’s why this year I’ve decided to throw resolutions out completely in an attempt to actually stick to one or two “goals”!

The last 6 months or so have been psychologically and financially significant for me; I’ve started, for the first time in my life, to mange my finances properly, set targets in my work and home life, eat more sensibly and healthier whilst being more socially aware. These things weren’t accidental: I worked towards them gradually, and I’m still a long way off perfecting them.

Whilst this gives me clarity and a target I want to achieve in the relatively near future, it’s also very confusing: I now know what I want but I don’t necessarily know how I’m going to achieve it or how long it will take.

  • I’m managing my finances; but why? It’s not just to ensure that I’m not an identity theft victim (1 in 10 in the UK are!) or to ensure I’m not spending too much money on unnecessary alcohol, snacks and food: I want to increase my wealth by spending more economically. How can I measure my success at this, and how can I even start?
  • I’ve set targets at work so that I can become more successful at what I do. What exactly is being successful at what I do? What exactly is desirable – what will make me more employable?
  • At home I want to practice and get better at my hobbies. I want to learn to take much better photographs than I currently do. I want to make good progress on my projects whilst still being able to sit down, watch a film and have a drink.

How can I train, holiday and eat better food whilst not spending so much money? How can all the above tie-in with me being more environmental and socially conscious?

There’s a way… but I’m currently trying to find it. I’ll let you know what I find before the New Year.

How to Not Work For a Living

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Posted on November 29, 2006 – 14:12

Recently I’ve been reading Steve Pavlina’s very interesting Personal Development blog. Now I don’t agree with everything Steve says and have also sometimes thought he may be a bit of a quack, but what I do know is that Steve knows how to write convincing articles. One such article is ‘Ten Reasons You Should Never Get a Job‘ which I would really like to rename ‘One Really Good Reason You Should Never Get a Job’.

And what is that reason? You are trading your time for money and only getting paid whilst you work – this is impractical and inefficient. To me that sounded odd at first as surely that’s what earning a living is all about, right? Well, now I realise that I was wrong and it’s obvious really – I just needed it to be pointed out to me. Why should I only earn an income while I’m working, especially as I have, or can easily gain, the expertise and knowledge to earn it constantly? Getting paid whilst eating, sleeping and enjoying myself is quite the attractive prospect.

To do this one must build a system that can generate a passive income (of sorts) 24/7 – possibilities can include starting a business, building a web site (Steve earns £20,000 from his blog per month!), becoming an investor and generating royalty income from creative work.

To paraphrase Steve, this system must deliver an ongoing value to people and have a way to generate income from it so that once it’s in motion it runs continuously whether you tend to it or not. Essentially the system model must involve a fixed-time investment that people can extract value from continuously so that the bulk of your time can be invested in increasing income (by refining the system or spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining it.

I would like to look into some of these possibilities and see how viable one of these systems would be for me. The problem is, my time isn’t very flexible at the moment so to implement and generate an income stream in this way would be quite difficult – learning for the future is always a good idea though. Got any ideas?

The Genericide of Google

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Posted on November 28, 2006 – 10:03

Talking of humour (previous ‘irony’ post), it may seem to many that Google have recently been lacking their sense of it after it emerged that they have been setting their ‘brand police’ on a number of publishers and dictionaries who use their name as a verb! This may seem a bit over-the-top, but in reality it is common practice – Google must protect its usage to protect its trademark.

When “Google” entered the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary earlier this year, the Washington Post noted that the word is becoming a descriptor for the search sector as a whole. You have probably misused the word too, saying something like “I found out when I googled it yesterday”.

On this subject, Google wrote that they must avoid what they call “genericide”. This occurs when a trademark becomes synonymous with a group of products – it is the generic name for that commodity – and as such its brand is taken off the trademark register and the company is left without rights. Then we could start googling at Yahoo or Microsoft!

Google is not alone in writing to the media, worrying about genericide: Hoover, Perspex, Portakabin, Frisbee and Jacuzzi (and Band-Aid, Kleenex and Xerox in America) are all still registered trademarks that already seem like a generic name for a type of product.

Escalator, cellophane, pogo and many more common ‘items’ are all past victims of genericide whose trademarks were long ago struck off the register. More recently, Sony too have been told that Walkman is no longer a trademark after losing a legal battle with an Austrian company after they labelled rival personal stereos as Walkmans. Now the Concise Oxford English Dictionary has defined Walkman as a noun, without reference to Sony.

Getting your brand into everyone’s vocabulary might seem like the ultimate accolade, but it is dangerous.

Washington Post Article
1 | 2 – Lists of misused and lost trademarks – You’ll be surprised at some of them (heroin and petrol at least – they were medications!).

Business is Religion

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Posted on July 25, 2006 – 10:31

I usually refuse to get drawn into debates about religion and, even more so, despise to tell people my views. I’m not ashamed of my religion, it’s just I feel that people may think I’m trying to convert them – I don’t want to come across as ‘preachy’. People should make up their own mind regarding their beliefs… who am I to question them? Today, I’m going to make an exception.

I recently learnt that someone who I know believes in Creationism: they believe that Carbon Dating is unsound and that Darwin was incorrect about the Origin of Species. Evolution is not how humans have come to be, and the Earth is between 6 and 10 thousand years old – not 4.5 billion as some claim. To believe otherwise is heresy. (N.B. A 2006 poll in this country showed that only 48% of respondents believed the origin of life to be evolutionary – 22% chose Creationism, 17% Intelligent Design and the remaining 13% ‘did not know’. [Ref: 1 | 2])

This person I know is a Christian – not strictly devout, but still committed to the religion and its teachings. Does Creationism really have to go hand-in-hand with a serious belief in religion?

To me the Bible is a non-factual text – to be taken with a pinch of salt. It is a series of teachings collected together in one book. Not represented as fact, but rather as a series of moral stories to mull over; to consider and live your life according to their teachings. After all, the Bible was written by humans – fallible humans. It surely can’t be taken as fact for that reason alone?

In IT, Creationism is the belief that a large, new project can be completely specified and then successfully developed by a team… in one go. As anyone who has worked in application development will know, this is unfounded and not based in reality – developing a successful application arises through evolutionary methods. Constant interaction is required between analyst, developer and user in order to fulfil a requirement. Multiple versions are required to create a successful, working application as desired by the end-user. The first attempt will almost always be incorrect.

The analyst’s Use Case document is not to be taken as fact. Developer input is required so that their specialist skills and technical knowledge is applied during development. The user’s requirements may change and the document must reflect this. The document develops – evolves – just as the application does.

Although, this doesn’t fit with management’s view of how a project must be completed: it must be created perfectly, first time round – further versions are uneconomic and costly. So, the facts are ignored in order to appease those who we perceive as above us.

Religion is Politics? Business is Religion.

Enron: The Brief Explanation

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Posted on July 21, 2006 – 11:18

With the news of the NatWest Three’s extradition and the conviction and death of the ex-CEO, the Enron scandal is hitting the headlines again. Most people know that Enron has had its troubles, although not many of them actually understand the problem. I would like to take this opportunity to concisely explain, in simple terms, the Enron scandal so that you can understand it better. So, without further delay I give you: ‘The Enron Scandal in Under 500 Words’

In addition to that linked article, here are some other news-worthy pieces of information:

The former Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Andrew Fastow, who was the mastermind behind the huge fraud, was found guilty on 78 counts. He accepted a plea agreement and will serve 10 years in prison and pay $24m; in return providing testimony against other Enron corporate officers. Kenneth Lay died after suffering a massive heart attack only months before his sentencing. The US SEC was seeking more than $90 million from him at the time.

Arthur Andersen – the accounting firm responsible for the fraud – were investigated and exposed for another serious fraud at WorldCom. This huge telecommunications firm then went bankrupt and soon became the new biggest bankruptcy in history. Many more companies filed bankruptcy after this, exposing high-level corruption, accounting errors, and insider trading. Arthur Anderson still trades as a bona-fide accounting firm due to “flaws in the jury instructions” at their trial. Although, they now have around 200 staff – down from over 110,000 worldwide – almost exclusively handling the numerous lawsuits against the company.

The NatWest Three? These men used to work for Greenwich NatWest – part of the NatWest group of financial institutions owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group. The three instigated the selling of the company’s stake in an investment company (at much less than market value) to a small company controlled by Fastow (Enron’s CFO). The three then left their jobs, bought shares in Fastow’s company which was later sold on to Enron for more than ten times what NatWest had received. The three gained around $2.3m each.

Their case, and particularly that relating to their extradition to the US, has been in the media a lot recently. They have received almost unanimous sympathy from most media outlets, politicians and the public – most arguing against their extradition. No matter what your opinion on this matter, you should know that they have received the unpaid support of two London-based public relations firms to change the law and appeal against their extradition. Spin is all around us.