February 2017 – Solving Citizen

Navigating your business in different political environments

Companies exist in all countries with many types of government where the political narrative ranges from mostly capitalistic, to communist. No matter what political environment people live in there are ways to make sure you and your company are successful no matter what roadblocks are put in front of you.

If you live in a mostly capitalistic society then your worries should be focused on your competition. Humans will always look after their own self-interest, and this is no acceptation with capitalism. You will always need to find ways to cooperate or compete with everyone under capitalism. Technology will be something you have to be current with because of constant innovation. Just recently Warren Buffett parted with Walmart because he felt they drug their feet while building infrastructure while Amazon has been steeling the lead in the market.

If you are located in an area corrupted by crony capitalism then you might start to deal with government regulation controlled by corporations that are too big to fail. In this political landscape you have legislation written by major corporations approved by government officials or court rulings in favor of the biggest bankroll. We saw this most recently with strict federal regulations favoring the EpiPen over any other competitor. This caused an unnatural price increase in the product because the company had an illegitimate monopoly.

The more a government controls the more things will be subsidized. Under socialism there are many subsidies given out. Roads are almost always government subsidized, along with food, and alcohol and things like green energy. There is an abundance of cash flow that can move into any organization that position themselves around such subsidies. While technology will make things efficient for every society it is wise to exercise caution and not to keep all your investments tied up in it. Last week Bill Gates said that government needs to put extra tax on innovation to keep people from loosing their jobs to robots.

I’m sure most reading this will agree that communism or even extreme cases of socialism are the most restricting form of government and makes it hard for almost anyone to succeed. Fortunately progress cannot be stopped no matter how hard people try. Currently in Venezuela there is a thriving industry around mining Bitcoin. Mining Bitcoin uses a massive amount of electricity that would be too costly for someone to mine under capitalism, but because electricity is subsidized in Venezuela people are able to mine it with little cost.
Companies and innovation will drive progress in a direction that others will try to hinder, but ultimately those obstacles will be overcome. Right now Spacex is putting up satellites to give the world access to internet. Imagine what this will do for the people in countries like North Korea? The people of the world will have access to education resources online outside of the bubble they live in. The will have access to articles like this explaining to them that they can climb out of the rut they are in and find success where ever they are. If you look hard enough you can find success in any political environment.

-Brandon

Teaching with automation in mind

If your old enough you might remember how different life was before the internet. It was practically a different world. Think of how many people were impacted negatively in the growing pains of that progress. If history teaches us anything it is that it repeats, and if we want to avoid becoming a victim of progress we must focus on increasing the skills of ourselves and the next generation.

Whatever the cause, the quality of our education is declining. This makes it hard for businesses to find workers with the skills that are required to step up to new rolls in developing and maintaining automation. On top of that we are in the brink of the Augmented Age which is throwing a learning curve to students while adapting to Artificial Intelligence.

This announcedmovement toward progress will inevitably hurt people in our economy by replacing some major roles humans play in the workforce today. Take driving for example. Elon Musk owner of Tesla Motors has announced that self driving cars can roll out in as early as two years! Think of how many people in our economy rely on this skill to acquire a living wage. Once this form of automation gains steam, driving could go the way of the horse and buggy. If driving is your best or only skill then you will quickly hit poverty.

In fact up to 80% of the roles humans have today could be replaced by automation. So what do we do? We work on continually building our skills. We move to the next step in everything we do. If you use Microsoft Excel, then you need to learn Visual Basics and write macros. If you operate or set up a machine for manufacturing, then you need to learn how to write the programs and read the G-code for that machine. Even if you have a WordPress account to make a website for you, you need to learn the HTML-code.

Not only must we do this for ourselves but we must have patience with the adaptation of our children and young coworkers who are stuck between old education and new. Parents and companies must step up and fill the gaps left behind in our education system and evolving technology by implementing training for performance. This will ensure that people with dedication will have access to a living wage. We need to focus on education which is still not jeopardized by the Augmented Age (yet). Focusing on fields that will add value to others like nursing, or teaching will make us masters over machines. I think we can all agree that it is far more desirable to work like the master over the machine.
-Brandon

Using 5S

5S can be a powerful tool to help you identify when something is out of place. The idea is to maintain order by having a place for everything and for everything to have a place. Knowing when something is out of order will help you to quickly identify and address problems. This tool is also useful because it implements preventative maintenance by utilizing check sheets and encourages all employees who are affected by a process to have a say in changing and maintaining that process.

5S is as follows:

Sort (Seiri)
Set in Order (Seiton)
Shine (Seiso)
Standardize (Seiketsu)
Sustain (Shitsuke)

Sort: Go through the work place and red tag everything that is not being used.

Set in Order: Put everything in a logical order and place. Keep things ergonomically correct.

Shine: Things must be clean and ready for white glove inspection.

Standardize: Document a process and keep check lists to maintain order.

Sustain: Perform audits and involve workers in continuous improvement to controle this cycle.

Eliminating waste

Waste can come in many forms and from a variety of places in your organization. By the time you are trying to cut costs by reducing the amount you spend on paper towels just to make ends meet, it is too late. It is time to hang up that paper towel.

Entrepreneurs spend most of their day putting out fires and when the rest of us get to go home, they start to do the real work. The best way out of this is to eliminate your biggest problem using a Pareto chart. Then when the bulk of your time is freed up, elaminate your next biggest problem, and then your next biggest problem until you maximize your time.

Another great visual tool to help you see wasted steps in a process is a Process flow diagram. Seeing a process layed out in front of you will often help you see the obvious waste you can immediately cut out. This tool will also help you define what you are doing. If you cannot define what you are doing, then you don’t know what you are doing.

Use these steps to move from putting out fires, to obtaining more of the most valuable resource you have. Your time.

-Brandon