The Way to Wealth (4 page)
Authors: Steve Shipside
Franklin is often misunderstood on this point since he is adamant that you should do your own work and not rely on others to do it for you. There is one key proviso he adds to that, namely that
‘the eye of a master will do more work than both his hands’
…
DEFINING IDEA
…Micromanaging is ridiculous. There’s always a certain amount of dynamic tension, which is good because it stimulates creative thinking. But what we want to look for is a balance where each body or group of people is fulfilling their role.
~
KARIN UHLICH, POLITICIAN
Now, this is a particular problem for those who have started their own businesses or who have come up through the ranks of a business, getting their hands suitably dirty on the way. It’s an old truism of many industries that the way they reward good workers is to promote them away from what they did well in the first place, thereby leaving that work to be done by less able colleagues instead. What’s often forgotten is that there is a flip side to that truism, which is that the more able workers are often reluctant to let go of their hands-on skill and are resistant to the new role that they have to play. Translating hands-on experience into the ability to train, manage or assess the work of others is not necessarily the smooth transition we all have the tendency to assume it will be.
Micromanaging doesn’t just mean that you try and do everything yourself; it can also mean that you don’t allow others the free rein to come up with their own solutions or style. Which doesn’t mean that you know best—just that you’re not listening. If you’re tempted to describe your workers as blockheads it could be that you have blockheads working for you (you wouldn’t be the first, of course) or it could be that your style of management has so taken the initiative away from your workers that they see no real incentive for trying to sort out problems for themselves. Like a bad workman blaming his tools, the hard-core micromanager curses the dumbness of his staff while silencing them with his work style. Or her work style, of course.
You might think you have to be a raging psychopath to be a micromanager, but you don’t. The chances are that you’re just hanging on to a way of doing things that you liked when you were the one doing it and are resisting the idea that those times and ways have gone, probably for ever. The problem, indeed the likelihood, is that in the process you may be discouraging any development from the major asset that is your own team. It can be hard to overcome pride and admit that someone else has come up with a better way of doing things but if you don’t bite that bullet then the business is unlikely to move on.
HERE’S AN IDEA FOR YOU
…Get your staff together and throw out a problem as a question without offering a solution. Keep quiet. If there is a free and easy discussion, good. If nobody has ideas, dares proffer them or you don’t want to hear them, then you may be micromanaging and strangling your business.
Never mind what they say—it often actually pays to sweat the small stuff because, as Franklin says,
‘adviseth to circumspection and care, even in the smallest matters, because sometimes a little neglect may breed great mischief’
The business guru Richard Carlson was the one who advised us ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’ but, as fine as that advice may sometimes be, it should really go straight out the window when it comes to websites, communications and all sorts of promotional material.
DEFINING IDEA
…We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
~
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD, BRITISH MATHEMATICIAN AND PHILOSOPHER
Back in the mid-90s the web dragged itself out of the primeval swamp of the Internet, and promptly evolved into a nerd playground complete with eye-popping games and porn. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that the business world still retains a highly ambivalent attitude to it to this day. A great many company websites were initially knocked together by some employee’s kid brother working in a back bedroom. All credit to the pioneering spirit of those armies of nascent geeks, but their legacy is that companies a) expect to pay for all sorts of webbery in pizzas and diet coke, b) impose a very different quality threshold on electronic material than they would for a printed brochure or other literature they were sending out, and c) still have terrible websites that look like they were knocked up by a sleep-deprived teenager.
Benjamin Franklin was understandably ignorant of the wonders of HTML, TCP/IP and Flash animation but he nonetheless made points that are as relevant in the digital domain as they were then. It’s just that he illustrated the point with horse-shoe nails rather than pixels.
‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost, and for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for want of care about a horse-shoe nail.’
You don’t have to look far online to see that the World Wide Web is liberally scattered with discarded horse-shoe nails. Senior management rarely take the time to ensure that those involved with digital media are doing their job, and it shows in such everyday nuisances as links that go nowhere and ‘info@mycompany’ addresses that send email enquiries straight into the inbox of, erm, nobody. Official websites for deeply respected companies sport spelling mistakes that would shame a six year old. Vague attempts at translation are so poor that they insult rather than welcome foreign visitors, probably because they’re still being put together by a back-bedroom teenager who is copying the foreign language off a Wiki/Facebook/porn page in the target language.
You wouldn’t print thousands of copies of a company brochure without having it carefully proofread and checked by a professional. So why broadcast to tens of thousands of visitors, potential clients and customers that you don’t really care about what they think when it comes to the web?
HERE’S AN IDEA FOR YOU
…There’s nothing quite as shoddy as having spelling errors in an email. Use spell checkers intelligently, and if your email programme doesn’t provide a relevant one (say it’s in US English and you’re in the UK) then write your message in a word processor which does. Copy and paste it in.
You might think someone writing over two centuries ago wouldn’t have a handle on ‘retail therapy’ and its problems. But Franklin did. Consider this:
‘buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries.’
DEFINING IDEA
…Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
~
WOODY ALLEN
We have all done it. It might be the latest, shiniest i-Thingy, a company car which is this year’s model or, in extreme cases, even that small but irritating rival companyyou’ve always hankered after buying out. In each case the whole purchase experience runs like a roller coaster from anticipatory nerves to orgasmic retail delight to post-retail therapy discussion. From there the excitement gradually slips away to the point where the i-Thingy sits forgotten in the back of the cupboard while you’re going over the credit card bills with a growing sense of disbelief.
Retail therapy, like comfort eating and chocoholism, seems to work on a basis of binge and bust whereby once we’re in the ‘zone’ we actually look around for more things to buy. We genuinely convince ourselves that the new sound system just isn’t complete without a professional-quality mixing deck even though all we’re going to use it for is listening to the Corrs while cooking. Think about how many people you know who own a top of the range shiny Scandiwegian fridge which opens to reveal a curling sandwich, a dead tomato and some curdling milk. As for buying new cars, there is no end to which we can be upsold to a better model with extras we will only ever use to demonstrate to our friends exactly how fab the vehicle is. All of which would be just fine, bog-standard human frippery if it wasn’t for the annoying detail that this kind of cerebellum-numbing consumerism comes at a cost. Often it’s a cost which is quietly topped up by credit card rates, which finally leads to insidious—and ultimately horrendous—debt problems.
Franklin was a great proponent of the make-do-and-mend philosophy of anti-consumerism, an attitude that has more recently come back into vogue partly as a backlash to the rampant consumerism of the 80s and 90s, and partly as a very common-sense response to the soaring levels of personal debt across most of the West. The generation which is old enough to remember rationing or double-digit interest rates almost automatically understands the make-do-and-mend approach as a way of life. The problem is that those of us who have lived through neither tend to see both credit and resources as limitless.
It matters little whether you decide to curb your consumerism on the basis of morals or budget (or budget disguised as morals), the simple truth is that a few months down the line you will almost certainly thank yourself for holding back on spending on goods that you knew, in your heart of hearts, you did not need.
HERE’S AN IDEA FOR YOU
…You want something, but you won’t expire if you don’t buy it. Impose a twenty-eight-day moratorium. Take out your diary, write the object and the price on today’s date, and a note reminding you about it twenty-eight days later. If it still seems desirable then, perhaps it’s worthwhile. You’re more likely to have forgotten about it.
13
IF YOU HAVE TO SHOP, SHOP SMART
‘Who dainties love, shall beggars prove,’
said Franklin, meaning that if you pick up expensive tastes then you run the risk that they will ruin you by way of thanks.
DEFINING IDEA
…Whereas women generally value their appearance more than men, which can lead to ‘retail therapy,’ men value social recognition. Even though they’re both trying to build self-esteem, they’re coming at it from two very different directions.
~
JAMES ROBERTS, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MARKETING AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY
Rampant consumerism hadn’t hit home in the America of Franklin’s time. He lived in an age where there wasn’t much of a market for second-hand goods simply because people held on to their things until they were beyond selling or handed them down through family and friends. Then again, he didn’t know the beauty of eBay, Amazon, Wiggle or comparison engines. You may still want to buy yourself a shiny i-Thingy. Sometimes it’s going to happen, but if you absolutely must have expensive tastes then at least do the smart thing and shop around before you pillage your purse.
Today, if you really, truly have to shop, you can almost always find the products cheaper direct online, or at least use a price comparison agent (such as Kelkoo) to see which retailers are currently offering the best deal. But to really get the benefit of buying online you should consider going second hand, or ‘pre-owned’ if you prefer the phrase.
Take a look at Amazon. I recently looked for a copy of a book that was retailing for around £16 in the shops. Sure enough, there it was on Amazon for only about £11, a healthy reduction. But if you checked the new and used link next to the book there were good condition copies for about £6 and that kind of saving makes a difference to my weekly budget. The same approach applies to just about everything, no matter how high up the luxury scale you go. Car dealerships and classified ad newspapers might not be too happy about it, but eBay is now the biggest seller of second-hand (sorry, pre-owned) cars in the UK. Fancy a Rolex but put off by the extortionate price of this year’s model? You could opt for last year’s one at a hefty reduction, but something tells me that if you’re into the label that much you won’t be interested in last year’s model. So instead try going for a classic with a little history to go with it—it’s a smart and stylish alternative at a fraction of the price.
The only downside is to remember that luxury goods are plagued by the scourge of fakes. So if you’re after a big-ticket item of some kind, you have to have absolute confidence in the seller. That means knowing where they are physically located and what their reputation is. Check into them and make sure they know why you are asking—a legitimate dealer will only welcome the enquiry and be happy to establish the authenticity of their goods.
HERE’S AN IDEA FOR YOU
…Some comparison engines aren’t disinterested third parties, but middlemen taking commission. As such, some suppliers—the ones who only deal direct—do not deal with them. So check out
www.travelsupermarket.com
to find a cheap flight, but remember there might be a better offer on the site of a no-frills airline.
