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Showing posts with label Value. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Value. Show all posts
Production values = quality
[in progress]
To get back to the hub list of healthy business factors, click here.
To get back to the discussion of businesses as living systems, click here.
To get back to the hub list of healthy business factors, click here.
To get back to the discussion of businesses as living systems, click here.
Value transmission and storage
From the point of view of business health, or just business in general, it seems that it might go without saying that money is important. Of course money is central to business. But then, what is money?
"Hey wait a minute!" I can hear you saying. "What a question! What is money? The green stuff! Moola! Revenue, profit, costs, taxes. It's all about money! What are you thinking?"
Well, not so fast. What about frequent flier miles, or any other kind of loyalty points? What about coupons? What about those crazy Bitcoins? Or euros, yen, RMB, pesos? Well, yeah, there are all kinds of money. And be warned if you start down this path, because, trust me - once you start thinking about it, you will see different forms of money everywhere you look.
So, here's the thing. Anyone can create money. The only question is, will anyone else accept it? Say you declare tomorrow, "I have just created BarbaraBucks, and you can earn them by ..." So someone comes and does ..., and you hand them a fistful of BarbaraBucks for their trouble. Awesome! So they go off happy as a lark and spend all those BarbaraBucks, hmmm, where? That's the point. The only, simple key. Your money, any money, is only as good as the agreement with some other people that they will accept it. That they will let you spend it.
So that's the definition of money. Don't let anyone tell you different. This is incredibly important. The definition of money is that there is an agreement that someone will accept it for payment. That someone will let you spend it. That someone else really wants it, and will exchange it for something you really want. That's it. Simple. But, of course, not so simple at all, really. Because who really wants to accept it, and can they turn around and find someone else who wants to accept it, and can they turn around and find someone else who ... You get the picture.
In the context of this expansive view of what money is, we can always talk about the two core functions of money as being:
From a technical perspective there is one other key factor that defines forms of money. This is the difference between value that is derived from the use of something, and value derived from the exchange of something for something else. There are some forms of money that have both use value and exchange value. Coins, for example, may be made from metals that have value simply as the metallic substance. Silver is a great example. Apart from its use in decorative artifacts, such as jewelry and home ornamentation, silver is also in great demand as an industrial material. Of course, this is basically true of gold, as well. But the more interesting cases involve things such as the gangland practice of using bottles of liquid detergent as money. This kind of thing has become so common that law enforcement has a term for the practice - organized retail crime, or ORC.
There is a lot to be said about different forms of money, including many forms of alternative or complementary currencies. For instance, there's the practice of forcing a currency to devalue over time, to keep it constantly in circulation and avoid hoarding. This practice is known as demurrage, one of the more esoteric aspects of moneys! The point here is that your healthy business can benefit from a creative approach to funding and money itself. In order to help you with this, here is a link to a site where you can find a number of barter networks, each one using some form of alternative currency to encourage different forms of trade: http://www.irta.com/
At a later time I intend to say more about some forms of money that I am excited about as a major boost to business and the economy. When I do, I plan to come back here and make a link. Help me remember to do that, please? Thanks!
"Hey wait a minute!" I can hear you saying. "What a question! What is money? The green stuff! Moola! Revenue, profit, costs, taxes. It's all about money! What are you thinking?"
Well, not so fast. What about frequent flier miles, or any other kind of loyalty points? What about coupons? What about those crazy Bitcoins? Or euros, yen, RMB, pesos? Well, yeah, there are all kinds of money. And be warned if you start down this path, because, trust me - once you start thinking about it, you will see different forms of money everywhere you look.
So, here's the thing. Anyone can create money. The only question is, will anyone else accept it? Say you declare tomorrow, "I have just created BarbaraBucks, and you can earn them by ..." So someone comes and does ..., and you hand them a fistful of BarbaraBucks for their trouble. Awesome! So they go off happy as a lark and spend all those BarbaraBucks, hmmm, where? That's the point. The only, simple key. Your money, any money, is only as good as the agreement with some other people that they will accept it. That they will let you spend it.
So that's the definition of money. Don't let anyone tell you different. This is incredibly important. The definition of money is that there is an agreement that someone will accept it for payment. That someone will let you spend it. That someone else really wants it, and will exchange it for something you really want. That's it. Simple. But, of course, not so simple at all, really. Because who really wants to accept it, and can they turn around and find someone else who wants to accept it, and can they turn around and find someone else who ... You get the picture.
In the context of this expansive view of what money is, we can always talk about the two core functions of money as being:
- A store of value
- A medium of exchange
From a technical perspective there is one other key factor that defines forms of money. This is the difference between value that is derived from the use of something, and value derived from the exchange of something for something else. There are some forms of money that have both use value and exchange value. Coins, for example, may be made from metals that have value simply as the metallic substance. Silver is a great example. Apart from its use in decorative artifacts, such as jewelry and home ornamentation, silver is also in great demand as an industrial material. Of course, this is basically true of gold, as well. But the more interesting cases involve things such as the gangland practice of using bottles of liquid detergent as money. This kind of thing has become so common that law enforcement has a term for the practice - organized retail crime, or ORC.
There is a lot to be said about different forms of money, including many forms of alternative or complementary currencies. For instance, there's the practice of forcing a currency to devalue over time, to keep it constantly in circulation and avoid hoarding. This practice is known as demurrage, one of the more esoteric aspects of moneys! The point here is that your healthy business can benefit from a creative approach to funding and money itself. In order to help you with this, here is a link to a site where you can find a number of barter networks, each one using some form of alternative currency to encourage different forms of trade: http://www.irta.com/
At a later time I intend to say more about some forms of money that I am excited about as a major boost to business and the economy. When I do, I plan to come back here and make a link. Help me remember to do that, please? Thanks!
ROI for health investments
Let’s
consider a fundamental business perspective – return on investment (ROI). It almost goes without saying that the resources that we allocate to various health-producing and health-sustaining activities and capabilities absolutely must return greater value than your investment level. Do you disagree that it would be a
fundamental mistake to take hard-earned money and invest (spend) it on things
that are known NOT to be valuable to the business? This would be a kind of business malpractice, wouldn’t it?
It is clear that we need to be able to demonstrate business results in
terms of the value that they deliver to individuals or organizational
role-players. At the same time,
different people with different responsibilities in the business might evaluate
the same result differently. This
leads to a simple accounting accounting framework that addresses investment
in capabilities of business health on the one side, and value returned to the
business on the other side. from the perspective of different stakeholders with
specific responsibilities.
On
one side of the healthy-business investment and value ledger, when it comes to the business, everything that you provide
comes at a cost in terms of some kind of investment. This insight further leads to a reflection on the kinds of
investment you make to acquire or establish these capabilities:
- Service provided: What is it that the capability provides – some level of result (often internal to the business area, sometimes exposed or provided to external stakeholders)
- Roles involved in the capability:
- Who originally defines the capability?
- Who maintains the capability over time?
- Who provides the capability at the time it is actually required?
- Investment levels in the following categories:
- To develop: How much is invested to develop the capability?
- To install: What is the cost to make the capability available?
- To maintain: What is required to keep the capability relevant and useful over time?
- To invoke: What is the cost to invoke the capability in each instance?
On
the other side of healthy-business investment ROI framework are the kinds of
value actually returned by the effort and resources expended:
- Value to: Who receives the result?
- Value type: Is value seen as:
- tangible?
- intangible?
- monetary?
- enhanced prestige?
- etc.
- Value units:
- dollars?
- satisfaction of recipients?
- esteem of colleagues?
- etc.
- Value level: What is the desired level for this kind of result, within the type of value and measured by the appropriate units?
- Value realization timeframe:
- days?
- months?
- years?
Finally, there may very well be dependency relationships among capabilities. In other words, the ability to provide or produce some result
depends on interim results from some other capability. In turn, that capability may or may not be
available at the time it is needed, which will obviously affect the ability to achieve the health-related result desired.
This value and investment viewpoint helps to isolate investment requirements. It also focuses on the point that every health-enhancing capability actually produces some level of result, which can be subjected to value analysis. Between the value view of results and the investment view of capabilities, the capability network provides a powerful way for the business to model cost/benefit tradeoffs.
This value and investment viewpoint helps to isolate investment requirements. It also focuses on the point that every health-enhancing capability actually produces some level of result, which can be subjected to value analysis. Between the value view of results and the investment view of capabilities, the capability network provides a powerful way for the business to model cost/benefit tradeoffs.
To get back to the discussion of businesses as living systems, here.
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