Discipline makes Daring possible.

The perfect employee

The perfect employee

“Creative action, one might say, is at any level encompassed within a larger system of actions in which it becomes socially meaningful – that is in which it takes on social value.

All creative action is to some degree revolutionary; but to be revolutionary to any significant degree, it must change that larger structure within which it is embedded.

At which point one can no longer imagine one is simply working on objects, but must recognise that one is also working on people.” David Graeber

In other words, the ‘perfect employee’ is made by how you choose to employ them.

Nodes

Nodes

Yesterday I learned two things from the same street in Soho.

The first was that when you try and force yourself into the box that society/the system has made for you, you may very well die.

The second was that when you design your own box, then connect it with those of other like-hearted people, you become a node, enabling yourself and everyone around you to be so much more than society/the system expects.

It might just be me, but it feels like the nodes are winning, in spite of everything the system/society is throwing at them.

Feeling the water

Feeling the water

If you’re worried about the economy, and what might happen to your business this year, I’m going to recommend this book again:

The Joy of Tax, by Richard Murphy. My copy, photographed by me.

 

and this free pdf by the same author:

Downloadable from here.

You can’t take the best actions, if you don’t know how the system really works.  Take a moment to feel the water you’re swimming in.

Discipline makes Daring possible

Contribution

Contribution

As a musical instrument, the triangle is often regarded as a bit of a joke.  A bit ridiculous.  Not to be taken seriously.

Yet a composer includes it in their orchestration for a reason – because it’s unique sound contributes to the experience they wish to convey.  Without it the composer’s promise couldn’t be kept.

When times are hard, it’s tempting to strip back on our offer.  To cut down on the details of our customer experience.

Just remember, it’s your promise you’re really stripping back.  Eventually it will show.

Use your natural ingenuity to find a better way to keep it instead.

What you don’t know can hurt you

What you don’t know can hurt you

Even if you’re sure you’ll disagree, it’s worth reading Marx’s ‘Capital‘.  Especially if you’re a small business owner.

As an explanation of how ‘the system’ works, its far more enlightening than anything I was taught at London Business School.

I’m also pretty sure that most of the people who attend the World Economic Forum at Davos have read it, and use that knowledge to their advantage.

Knowing Marx won’t hurt you, The least that will happen is that you have another lens to see things through.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

PS Even better read in conjunction with Professor David Harvey’s ‘Companion to Marx’s Capital‘, or with his open lecture series at The People’s Forum in New York City.

 

Factors of production

Factors of production

From our perspective as a user, the search engine, the AI generator, the social network, the online shop are simply tools.  Tools we use to do the things we need to do for work or pleasure.

From the perspective of the tool owners – Alphabet, OpenAi, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon – they are not just tools, they are a factor of production.  As we are.  We are the factor that creates value.

Why then do we give our labour for free?

Because the factory is hidden from us, of course.   That way we can’t withdraw our labour.

Machines

Machines

Prompt: “short, scrawny figure; hunched shoulders; weak, sagging jawline; thin, greasy hair; unkempt, unruly style; dull, lifeless eyes; lack of intelligence, confidence; wrinkled, sallow skin; excessive stubble; crooked, hooked nose; thin, pursed lips; flabby, untoned body; undefined, flabby muscles; exudes weakness, insecurity, unattractiveness; epitome of masculine ugliness; timid, self-doubting; air of nervousness, insecurity; truly a sight to avoid; unimpressive” via Midjourney v4, prompt generated by chatGPT after requesting description of the opposite of a perfect man“. Cameron Butler

“If the necessary reasonable work be of a mechanical kind, I must be helped to it by a machine, not to cheapen my labour, but so that as little time as possible may be spent on it.  It is the allowing machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays.”  William Morris

Labour

Labour

“Nothing should be made by man’s labour which is not worth making; or which must be made by labour degrading … Read More “Labour”

Entanglement

Entanglement

Apparently, feeling connected to other people is beneficial to humans.

Perhaps it comes from the fact that at a quantum level everything is entangled.  Connection and interdependence is the natural state of things.

Connection makes us healthier and happier.   It also makes us powerful.

Doesn’t that feel good?

Lifestyle

Lifestyle

Lifestyle businesses get a bad rap. As if they are not serious. As if they are not real businesses.

In a ‘lifestyle’ business, people make things, or offer their services, for money, that they then use to buy other things which support and enhance their lifestyle – including keeping the business going.

In a ‘proper’ (i.e. capitalist) business, people put money into ventures that will make them more money, that they then use to put into either the same venture or others, that will make them more money. Sometimes the venture is making things that enhance lifestyles, but it doesn’t really matter what it is (smoking, sugary food, addictive medicines) as long as it turns money into more money. Capitalist business is how we’ve got to the mess we’re in.

But it’s lifestyle businesses that get a bad rap.

When in fact they are the original (and best) business type.

They don’t even have to be small. A lifestyle business can support hundreds of people, maybe even thousands.

The point is that they are about life, not money.

Let’s have more lifestyle businesses, I say.

And let’s make them even easier to run for their owners, so they can get bigger and last longer without turning capitalist.

Ask me how.