Yesterday’s luxuries
Over the course of many lockdowns (our sixth started on Thursday night!), at my place we’ve been having a debate about whether great internet at home is desirable, or essential, or a right.
After hours, my wife leans to the desirable (Netflix and Instagram) and during work hours, we both regard it as essential (we each run our own businesses). For my son, Jasper, high-speed internet is a human right (gaming).
The reason we’re having the debate is because ADSL2+ is hopeless, NBN has been poorly provisioned outside our house, and I’ve experimented with a 5G home system that (technically) meets Optus’s minimum requirements, but is wobbly. At home, our Zoom calls drop out. Loom videos fail to upload. (It goes without saying that, worst of all, Fortnite lags, and the images in it render poorly!)
But, the whole debacle made me think: for my grandparents (in 1940s rural Hungary) electricity wasn’t a must. For my parents (1950s immigrants to Australia) on-demand hot running water wasn’t a must (we had a briquette hot water heater until I was 15, which required firing up each time we wanted a shower). But when did streamed media, central heating, and a fridge that makes ice cubes become assumed?
The world is changing rapidly, and what was yesterday’s luxury is today’s necessity. The best organisations are those who can predict which way these trends will turn and can identify which of today’s necessities are tomorrow’s non-negotiables.
Question: What do your customers consider non-negotiable?
Who will do it?
Why don’t good ideas get traction? I frequently talk with my clients about Everett Rogers’ famed “diffusion of innovation curve”. The communications theorist watched his father, a farmer during the Great Depression, resist planting new seed strains until he saw his own plants wither, and his neighbours’ crops flourish. Rogers created a model that showed, quantitatively, that just because something is a good idea doesn’t mean people will take it up in large numbers, quickly.
This is proving true with our vaccine uptake in Australia. Countries like United Arab Emirates, Malta, Hungary, Uruguay, and Canada are leading the race (with 60%+ already vaccinated), while we languish below 20%. We’re 36th out of 38 OECD countries and we need 6 months of 180,000 doses to get to 45 million doses (2 per eligible person).
Certainly, we’ve had supply problems, but we’ve also had demand issues. And, it’s the tail (Everett Rogers’s ‘laggards’) that concerns me. One of my disability agency CEO clients told me today that he believes that up to 25% of his customers (and their families) are vaccine-hesitant.
So we need scale. And speed. Just like the innovations in our own businesses, where we need ALL staff to come up to speed quickly, or we want ALL our customers to understand a new service offering, or change in processes.
Question: How do you ensure rapid uptake, at scale, when it’s essential in your organisation?
Top of license
OK. Here’s something that regularly shocks me.
I’m starting a new State Government project and spoke with a Director level leader who’s project lead. I asked him for some documents, and confirmation about who was attending a workshop next week. I told him my VA would follow up with his assistant.
He said, “I don’t have an assistant. I do all that myself”.
Now, I looked up his payscale and he earns in the order of $200k per year. That’s close to $100 for every hour he’s at work for the year. I’ve seen magistrates, too, (on $300k+) doing the same thing: negotiating court dates and organising people’s court support needs. How is it worth an hour of these people’s time to locate documents, herd people, and work on calendar invites? More importantly, think of what they’re not doing while they’re doing these things.
Now, some lower level tasks are unavoidable in anyone’s job but, in healthcare, the Americans have a concept called practising at the ‘top of license’. This means that specialists should spend most of their time specialising, generalists providing general treatment and care, and administrators administering.
And, today, there’s little stopping us, with a plethora of searchable talent available.
My wife employs an amazing Serbian documenter in her interior design business, while she herself does the (high value) design direction. My bookkeeper does the (high value) client liaison, while her team in the Philippines do the reconciliations. I have a team of three VAs (all in Australia, but different time zones) who manage my scheduling, organise project documents, and much more — while I do the high value strategic advisory, process design and facilitation tasks. There are platforms, too, that permit this outsourcing to become a very precise, very deliberate part of any business - check out 99Designs which sets up contests amongst graphic designers, or Upwork for an astonishing array of knowledge work.
Question: What can you and your team do to better work at the top of your license?
Dogs and leads
A little addendum about the COVID generation that’s emerging. An employee of my wife has an 18-month-old daughter. The toddler wanted to go out for a walk. To communicate this, she fetched a mask and deposited it in her mum’s lap. Mum got the message but reflected, “Oh, gosh, this is entirely normal for her”.
Please let me know you enjoyed reading and click the ‘heart’.
For those in Victoria, find a way to enjoy your sixth lockdown (use your friendship bubble wisely!) and I look forward to seeing you next Friday.
Andrew
Interesting article on working at license level - it always the first to be cut - Admin when things get tough.
Always enjoy these Andrew - thank you. I think the first one is a subtle way to be grateful - for the progress we have made and to remain calm when things don't always go to plan. As Viktor Frankl said - 'Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.' Thanks again.