A short story is probably inappropriate. Once for a short period, I worked for a large state agency as a contractor. I watched as a money saving project moved forward to take personal printers out of staff offices and replace them with a couple networked printers.
The savings appeared substantial on the macro level but at the office level, staff members would have to get up from their desks, secure their offices and go find the paperwork at the networked printer. Then they could be standing around and finding their printed copies in a queue? These staff members were doing sensitive work with clients and were responsible for securing their offices.
Now consider the intangible cost of disrupting human talent, vs, the savings of a percentage of a penny saved per copy with networked printers. You might conclude too, that someone had trouble evaluating intangibles, but the ace bean counters had the savings configured to a portion of a penny. It saved hundreds of thousands of dollars statewide...
All right, lets get back on point here. On measuring intangibles, back in the good old days you could measure personal productivity by the widgets produced, the bricks laid, the number of screws inserted–. but not so much anymore.
I repeatedly try to emphasize the point here of the value of slack and the value of creating the space necessary to let key people contribute to content creation.
Effective content on websites and in social media greatly enhances the bottom line, but the costs are much more tangible- a punch to the gut to many :) This is an aspect of the industrial mindset we talk about often; while the true value of quality content requires analytical analysis and tracking conversions that still is pretty much an intangible.
Lets talk about the estimate creating process.
Nothing is more expensive in the small business list of investments. But the industrial mindset impacts here again, and the inertia for positive change is stymied again, by the inability to resolve intangible costs.
Getting estimates completed quickly and effectively is essential. There is a well-honed procedure. But if you watch and listen, you see and hear the creaking of processes and procedures that do not work as well as they should.
Are the estimates getting out promptly or do other events conspire to stall estimate creation.
Are we stopping to evaluate existing processes and figuring out how to improve them?
What is the cost of delayed delivery of estimates?
There is a pull date on estimates. The longer the homeowner waits, unless carefully kept in the loop on complex estimates, the poorer the conversion rate. And I think we have all seen the cancellation of an estimate over waiting? OUCH!
But the issues with estimates get even more murky.
What is the cost of a promise made to a prospect that is broken? All intangibles and all impact the bottom line in multiple ways. How many issues like this put your front office team into damage control? What is the impact on them? All significant costs but all intangible.
I hope your answers are a series of yeses which mean you have none of these issues; but there are great companies out there right now, that are
When you are trying something new, things go slower and things do not go was well and as smoothly because you are not practiced at it. The industrial mindset is causing major headaches.
Too often conversations about creating change are happy musings around proposals written out by consultants :) with some added talk and promises of action, and then something urgent happens- maybe even a customer care issue generated by a fundamentally flawed process and the system resets to the status quo.
Now, there are more factors at play here than just a lack of ability to understand and deal with intangible costs but this inability is a major part of the issue here.
The less important things are easily measured. All the urgent interruptions have a big impact on the present because they are the customer calling, or the phone ringing with an urgency; but in the long run these single urgencies are not important, but too often displace the big important issues which impact costs and profit margins and productivity over the years.
What other little toe stubbers slow down and impact human creativity and problem solving? Well, I know at least one more. Software is really helpful in the modern business office, but how many are using the technology to its fullest potential?
But things seem to be going along OK, why take time for special training and the few hundred bucks from the wallet is like extracting teeth, quite painful.
This is a great example of the pain of tangible cost but a basic amnesia to the continual cost of wasted human motion and the cost of messed up data that could be used effectively if the software was better understood, if the data was up to date, and if the data was organized properly. And these kinds of problems only accumulate because the data pile just keeps growing; even a data pile that is broken and useless; until it is done right.
Here is the finale point for a good chuckle here. We balance the books to the penny because we can and do because total order is necessary to understand the financials. But most companies have disordered data in databases that don't add up and the continual piling on of more data is like postponing balancing the books for a few days, a few years... costs big bucks that cannot be measured because such a loss is an intangible.
Now, this long diatribe either does not match at all your personal experience, or it matches in some way and not others, or you feel that you and I are members of a similar self-help group.
We need to
What are we going to do about it?
This post exposes some of my favorite cows. Identify your own for sure. Who has some solutions to help us deal better with intangibles? Who has ideas for some formulations that can help us get a sense of the intangible costs and intangible returns on investment?
What are your thoughts here? Helpful ideas here could certainly make my life easier and reduce my stress :) Who was that nut who suggested that "in the land of the blind, the one eye man is king." He must have been thinking like a despot.
The savings appeared substantial on the macro level but at the office level, staff members would have to get up from their desks, secure their offices and go find the paperwork at the networked printer. Then they could be standing around and finding their printed copies in a queue? These staff members were doing sensitive work with clients and were responsible for securing their offices.
Now consider the intangible cost of disrupting human talent, vs, the savings of a percentage of a penny saved per copy with networked printers. You might conclude too, that someone had trouble evaluating intangibles, but the ace bean counters had the savings configured to a portion of a penny. It saved hundreds of thousands of dollars statewide...
All right, lets get back on point here. On measuring intangibles, back in the good old days you could measure personal productivity by the widgets produced, the bricks laid, the number of screws inserted–. but not so much anymore.
I repeatedly try to emphasize the point here of the value of slack and the value of creating the space necessary to let key people contribute to content creation.
Effective content on websites and in social media greatly enhances the bottom line, but the costs are much more tangible- a punch to the gut to many :) This is an aspect of the industrial mindset we talk about often; while the true value of quality content requires analytical analysis and tracking conversions that still is pretty much an intangible.
Lets talk about the estimate creating process.
Nothing is more expensive in the small business list of investments. But the industrial mindset impacts here again, and the inertia for positive change is stymied again, by the inability to resolve intangible costs.
Getting estimates completed quickly and effectively is essential. There is a well-honed procedure. But if you watch and listen, you see and hear the creaking of processes and procedures that do not work as well as they should.
Are the estimates getting out promptly or do other events conspire to stall estimate creation.
Are we stopping to evaluate existing processes and figuring out how to improve them?
What is the cost of delayed delivery of estimates?
There is a pull date on estimates. The longer the homeowner waits, unless carefully kept in the loop on complex estimates, the poorer the conversion rate. And I think we have all seen the cancellation of an estimate over waiting? OUCH!
But the issues with estimates get even more murky.
- How well are we following up on estimates?
- How well are we tracking the opportunities disclosed in the notes in old estimates.
- Are we leveraging the best estimate writing on the sales team?
- Are the sales people learning from each other and constantly learning and improving?
- Are we taking the time to stop and learn from past mistakes?
What is the cost of a promise made to a prospect that is broken? All intangibles and all impact the bottom line in multiple ways. How many issues like this put your front office team into damage control? What is the impact on them? All significant costs but all intangible.
I hope your answers are a series of yeses which mean you have none of these issues; but there are great companies out there right now, that are
- so busy with the existing processes
- so head down and pushing forward to actually stop and see the process needs improving
- so caught up in trying to catch up that the fundamental issues are not addressed.
When you are trying something new, things go slower and things do not go was well and as smoothly because you are not practiced at it. The industrial mindset is causing major headaches.
Too often conversations about creating change are happy musings around proposals written out by consultants :) with some added talk and promises of action, and then something urgent happens- maybe even a customer care issue generated by a fundamentally flawed process and the system resets to the status quo.
Now, there are more factors at play here than just a lack of ability to understand and deal with intangible costs but this inability is a major part of the issue here.
The less important things are easily measured. All the urgent interruptions have a big impact on the present because they are the customer calling, or the phone ringing with an urgency; but in the long run these single urgencies are not important, but too often displace the big important issues which impact costs and profit margins and productivity over the years.
What other little toe stubbers slow down and impact human creativity and problem solving? Well, I know at least one more. Software is really helpful in the modern business office, but how many are using the technology to its fullest potential?
But things seem to be going along OK, why take time for special training and the few hundred bucks from the wallet is like extracting teeth, quite painful.
This is a great example of the pain of tangible cost but a basic amnesia to the continual cost of wasted human motion and the cost of messed up data that could be used effectively if the software was better understood, if the data was up to date, and if the data was organized properly. And these kinds of problems only accumulate because the data pile just keeps growing; even a data pile that is broken and useless; until it is done right.
Here is the finale point for a good chuckle here. We balance the books to the penny because we can and do because total order is necessary to understand the financials. But most companies have disordered data in databases that don't add up and the continual piling on of more data is like postponing balancing the books for a few days, a few years... costs big bucks that cannot be measured because such a loss is an intangible.
Now, this long diatribe either does not match at all your personal experience, or it matches in some way and not others, or you feel that you and I are members of a similar self-help group.
We need to
- stop and figure out the costs with continuing to do dumb stuff,
- we need to figure out the costs to innovate and improve, and figure out what innovation will pay out for us.
- We need to take the time to try new things because we know they are valuable and can reduce our huge opportunity costs.
What are we going to do about it?
This post exposes some of my favorite cows. Identify your own for sure. Who has some solutions to help us deal better with intangibles? Who has ideas for some formulations that can help us get a sense of the intangible costs and intangible returns on investment?
What are your thoughts here? Helpful ideas here could certainly make my life easier and reduce my stress :) Who was that nut who suggested that "in the land of the blind, the one eye man is king." He must have been thinking like a despot.
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