Slack – or resilience?
My number one activity this week – hanging around.
I have been called for Jury Service, which in the UK means being available to sit on a jury to decide whether someone is guilty or not guilty in a court case. A jury usually has 12 people, and these are randomly selected from a ‘pool’ of available citizens.
The first part is being selected to be in the ‘pool’ (that was me), yet with the randomised process I was not selected to sit in on a case – well, not this week.
Therefore, I was hanging around, although this was minimised as the jury officer let us out early as soon as it was known we would not be required on a particular day.
In fact, I quite enjoyed learning more about the court process, and the hanging around enabled me to catch up on some reading and casual surfing.
Some people regarded this as a waste of time and poor organisation. If you had arrived without some reading material or activity to keep you occupied, I can see that. But I found the hanging around gave me the opportunity to think it through.
Selecting a jury from a pool means that cases can run as justly as possible knowing that jurors are available, and we know from research on team work how effective decisions are made when more people are involved. It also helps keep the whole process confidential.
Slack is built into the system.
In the 2020s supply chain disruption is never far from the headlines, and the Ukraine war has impacted supply of grain, gas, and car parts, among other products. In these areas, not so much slack.
In the energy sector, gas supply is especially important in Germany right now, as Russian gas supplies dwindle at a time when gas tank reserves are built ahead of winter. Having visited Berlin in January I can understand the importance. Even my own gas tank is filled well in advance (no doubt helped by being internet linked, as no doubt your own heating system is…). Slack is built in.
Many of us live with systems with built in resilience. Seth Godin’s blog today* reminds us how many water tanks operate: a small cheap pump gradually resupplies a larger tank so that gravity can provide for peaks of demand. My own heating runs on the same principle using a ‘header’ tank.
You can run your bank account on the same principle: gradually build up savings to prepare for peaks of demand. Even when some will question the value of leaving money in the bank, unused, at a low interest rate, and eroding with inflation.
Efficiency is great, just in time a wonderful concept. But the real world has friction and uncertainty.
Are you working with slack, and building resilience – or merely efficient?
*https://seths.blog/2022/08/the-wisdom-of-the-water-tower/
Stat of the Week – 65.35% – As of August 2022, the Google Chrome browser accounted for 65.35 percent of global market share for internet browsers. Apple’s Safari browser was the second most popular internet browser around the world, accounting for over 18 percent of market share. Apart from these two, no other browser controlled more than five percent of the overall market share. (Statista.com)
What this stat does not say – is that it also guides advertising and therefore behaviour. Some markets are looking at this as monopolistic behaviour: I have changed my search engine to Ecosia.
Buzzword of the Week – Goodwill
Definition – Financial definition: the value of a business reflecting its ability to generate profit over and above its intrinsic, balance sheet, value. This creates an intangible asset in a buying company’s balance sheet.
Wider definition: friendly, helpful or co-operative feelings or attitude.
Alternate View – Easier to define than recognize. A company is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it, and the balance sheet equity value may not reflect that. Yet even the price paid may not accurately reflect the value – both up and down – so goodwill as recognized may not be worth much. The situation is not helped by accounting guidelines which do not mandate the amortisation (depreciation in value over time), leading to intangible fixed assets at unrealistic amounts. Look at Carillion’s pre liquidation balance sheet for case study on how not to do this well.