Intuitive Plan » Business Principles

Values of Good Business

Rosemary Senjem — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:35:00 +0000

I recently heard Halla Tomasdottir, co-founder of Audur Capital financial services, share her company's values in a TED talk (embedded below). I couldn't agree more! Here they are, paraphrased:

Risk Awareness: You should always understand the risk you are taking. We will not invest in things we do not understand.
Straight Talking: Telling people like it is in plain English, good or bad.
Emotional Capital: Emotional due diligence is just as important as doing financial due diligence.
Profit with Principles: We care how we make our profit. We do it with a long term view. We use a wider definition of profits that include benefits to environment and society.

Recognize investments and expenses.

Rosemary Senjem — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:41:03 +0000

Entrepreneurs sort spending this way:

Expense: Spend this on a regular basis to cover the basics of running the business. I see the value of creating stability by laying a foundation of spending for regular operating expenses.
Investment: This spending could create more value later. I see strong enough growth potential for results that I value. These results may be money, resources, referrals, market share, and more.

Julie is debating whether or not to rent an office in town for her consulting work. Her clients are all over the nation, so there is no obvious benefit to them if she moves. In fact, she might be less accessible to her clients, because her home office allows her to be available at all hours. Yet, the isolation she feels in her rural home office is not nurturing her and she is noticing that she is losing enthusiasm for her work. She takes pride in being frugal and feels smart in taking a tax deduction for her home office. She wonders if it would be a waste of money to move her office to town, and then have expenses for rent and commuting. What would you advise her to do? How do the concepts of investment and expense come to play here? Julie needs to run the numbers, including her Body Wisdom numbers. She needs to evaluate the real costs and benefits of where her office is now for her, her company, and her family. Then she needs to evaluate the potential costs and benefits of moving her office to town. Thinking of the move as an investment at first, with a potential pay-off later, helps her to open up to the idea that moving her office could be a way to grow a local group of clients for a new service she dreams of offering. Her mind is then freed up to map out how her expenses would change as her business changed.

Response to Shame and Disgust by Louis Rosenfeld

Rosemary Senjem — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:22:38 +0000

I recently read a blog post by Louis Rosenfeld, titled "Shame and Disgust" about an ethical issue he faced a while back. A link to his story was posted as an example of dilemmas worth discussing at an upcoming usability conference. Due to spam, his post is now closed to comments. However, he found my reply useful and gave me his blessing to post it here for you. Hello Lou, You asked what you "should have done." I can't answer that, but I can tell you what I would have done as a contractor in this order:

I would have slept on it and calmed down.
Stopped everything and scheduled a brief private person-to-person meeting with the person who told me, "they didn't really want to make it easy for veterans"
In that meeting, I would fully support this person and want to hear this person's full story. I would start by asking for clarification because it really seemed to me that I must have misunderstood. Adding that it seemed to go against all my training and I wanted to make sure they weren't asking me to do something illegal or professionally inappropriate. I would leave a wide girth for that person to change their stance or blame someone else for the policy (just following orders). If they change their mind, GREAT - move ahead with new direction.
If they blame someone else, I can choose to expand my scope of the project and:
1. Ask them how they feel about the policy they have to enforce. If they feel good about it, put on my business analysis cap and ask a lot of questions to dig up whether there is another way (of course there is always another way) to address the true business problem that this policy is trying to address. (Remember that when people oppress or feel oppressed, both feel they are victims of a system in which they are caught not knowing how to change.) So, in essence, I look for ways to make this person a hero by finding a win-win business solution.
2. Ask them who is responsible for the policy and what it would take for me to get a private meeting with that person to ask for clarification (basically move up the command chain til I get someone willing to take responsibility for the policy), so I can move forward with the project. I would do this knowing full well that I might get fired for the inquiry. Again, my query is personal. I want to know that in fact they were NOT asking me to do something illegal or professionally inappropriate, so I can proceed with my work.

These meetings in themselves are awareness-raising for the people I meet with. I meet them as a peer professional for the sole purpose of making my OWN ethical decision. I am not there to whistle-blow or put people on the spot. The fact that I even need to ask these questions is going to make most feel itchy. That's good. I've done my job well. Usability in general makes some people itchy. Especially people who like to control things from their own viewpoint. So, you see, I imagine that it is my job to help people see things differently. Not change them. Just help them see things differently. So after these 1-3 meetings, I continue working on the project and wait to make my ethical decision... Sometimes after a few days or a week, the way magically opens after people have gotten itchy and they do what they can to move the itch or make it go away. IF things don't change and its really clear to me that the Agency is indeed asking me to do something that I feel is professionally inappropriate, I will state this plainly and matter of factly and give my notice, with a bill and deliverables completed so far. No fan fare. I don't need to embarrass people, who I know see themselves as innocent. I only need to help people see things differently, because that's the nature of my job. There is plenty of work out there that doesn't require me to be inappropriate. Letting go of a mismatched job just opens the way for something better. In case you're wondering, have I been in such a situation? Yes. Not the same details, but there was a similar need to help the client see another way to meet their goals that was more ethical or more legal. Have I been fired for it? Not yet. So far, they are REALLY GRATEFUL for this adviser-ly approach.