The Future of Work

Polyvalence is the future of work, and therefore management. Whereas the previous economy bred specialization, today's economy invites "workers" to enjoin knowledge. Work itself is instructive: taskings are non-delegable; production happens without supervision; communications and information are ubiquitous; and attention is a commodity.

For management, the "where" of work is incomprehensible. Yet, the topography of the new workplace has shape and form: space is supplanting place; companies compete on analytics; evidence-based thinking is in vogue; jurisdictions are morphing; metal and flesh are fusing; cyberspace seems to have a conscience; the human genome is technology; and the symbolic is now menial.

These modern times are embedding a transformed image of economics onto our society in what is now a new age. The challenge for the future will be how to connect enterprise to the new economic landscape.

Create a Personal Board of Advisors

This advice comes from Dale Winston, CEO of Battalia Winston International, an executive-search firm. "Identify two to three professionals you can regularly go to for career consultations, much like check-ups at the doctor’s office." She goes on to say the “board” should meet on an "as-needed basis," but "no less than three times a year" (WSJ, 2008).

The truth is we all have support needs. We might turn to our significant other, a family member, a close friend or colleague, an elder, or even a stranger, depending on the situation. Recruiting and forming a team of trusted advisors makes good sense, especially for busy executives with tough issues to confront. Of course, it remains your responsibility to make your own decisions. It is also important to trust your advisors while demonstrating to them how they can trust in you. Nevertheless, a personal advisory board may be just the thing to help shape your future.

The Need for Good People

I believe there is always a crying need for good people. My father passed these words to me following one of my adolescent tirades about the apparent lack of opportunity in my life – that was almost forty years ago. Today, while attractive opportunities seem scarce to many in society, the need for good people is as great as ever.

My own career has taken me through both highs and lows in advancement and success. My work history spans three decades and includes public and private sector roles that have taken me around the world. I have worked in tents, factories, offices, camps, hangers, barracks, warehouses, restaurants, vans, kiosks, aircraft, and classrooms, as well as on stage, behind podiums, on telephones and radios, and of course, online. Each of these workplaces was a vantage point from where I could watch and learn how opportunity presents itself to people. The result of these experiences is my deep conviction that opportunity abounds in our world, and that what is in short supply are good people.

Choosing to believe that opportunity is abundant is not an easy path for anyone, including me. It means taking risks and accepting responsibility. It means lifetime learning. It means practicing integrity in my affairs, keeping promises, and exercising compassion for those less fortunate. Ultimately, it means living life centered on the ideals and virtues that lift humanity, while becoming the best person, I can be.

My father understood this very well. He grew up a depression child, joined the Marines during World War II, earned an accounting degree after the war, and raised a family on a salary thereafter. He has since passed away, but his legacy to me are his words that find their way into my beliefs and values, and while I am now on my own course through life, what is clear for me is that opportunity is abundant, and that the search for more good people goes on, just like it always has. Choosing to live life abundantly is a choice I hope I can realize in who I am and will become. Life’s opportunities are as great as ever, and the choice of becoming the person who can fulfill society’s need is mine to make everyday. My father was right; there is always a crying need for good people, now and in all times. This I believe.

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My Mission

Dr Stephen Covey makes the point that "the key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about, and what you value." Hence, "who am I, what am I all about, and what do I value?" These are all good questions.

For years now, I've tried to guide my actions and decisions based upon an integrated and comprehensive understanding of my beliefs, values, knowledge, experiences, motives, and drives -- what some might call a "mission statement." Here is my mission as it appears in a framed version that stands on my desk:

• I am MY OWN MAN. I choose how to LIVE my life. I take RISKS and accept RESPONSIBILITY. I have a right to be HAPPY.

• I am a LEARNER. I seek to UNDERSTAND life and the universe. EXISTENCE is instructive.

• I make INTEGRITY a guiding principle in my affairs. I am impeccable to my WORD and strive for ACHIEVEMENT. I avoid taking things PERSONALLY, and resist making ASSUMPTIONS about people.

• I respect POWER and understand how KNOWLEDGE, WEALTH, and VIOLENCE affect me. I practice INNOVATION, IMPROVISATION, and ADAPTABILITY.

• I match PROFIT to PRINCIPLE in the conduct of business. I promote ENTERPRISE amongst STAKEHOLDERS. I foster and nurture COLLEGIALITY within my domains.

• I am FRUGAL. I seek to get the most VALUE from my time and the things I have the use of. I invest for my ESTATE and use it to pursue a LIFESTYLE of fitness and growth.

• I practice CHIVALRY. I have COMPASSION for the innocent. I MENTOR deserving talent along the way and give the CREDIT to those who deserve it.

• I live in the LIGHT and fear the darkness. I understand the difference between REALITY and delusion. I believe TRUTH prevails over lies.

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Ternary Capital Structure

In this occasional paper, I discuss the emergence of structural capital as the ternary equivalent to human and financial capital. The paper describes the current state of structural capital as part of a larger intellectual capital framework.

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About Vantage

Executives activate enterprise by vectoring human, financial, and structural capital resources through operating, investment, and financing decisions. The quantum resultant of these vectors is generally reported through proxy measures such as profitability, capability, capacity, market share, influence, and perspective. The ternary interrelationship of human, financial, and structural capital to their whole can be depicted influentially as shown below, and requires from management ever more advanced concepts and methods in order to achieve and sustain competitive advantage in the global marketplace. The stakes in these decisions are high. For individuals, such decisions generally affect financial freedom, which in turn leads to time and relationship freedom. Organizationally, they determine the fulfillment of stakeholder needs, wants, and expectations. The essence of enterprise lies within the topography of this framework.

Financial capital is the sum of the depreciation, amortization, depletion, rent, interest, and maintenance expenses associated with holding or using commoditized financial assets (both tangible and intangible). Human capital is the sum of wages, benefits, commissions, and other expenses associated with employing people (i.e., those who go home at night). Structural capital is what remains after accounting for the financial and human capital of the firm.

While the competition between financial and human capital has been the subject of classical and neoclassical economic debate, ad nauseam, it is the emerging recognition of structural capital as the ternary equivalent to these traditional capital forms that provides the vantage point for visualizing the topological landscape which stands guard before the vista of strategic success.

Patterns of Beauty in Finance

This is an occasional paper I released arguing that there is beauty in the patterns discovered by financial economists that transcends symbolism and nominalism in what only the mind can understand within its conceptual space.

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Towards Matching Profit to Principle: Pricing Matters

This is a short editorial essay I submitted to We > Me in March 2007, arguing that capitalism must seek to match profit to principle if the world community and global enterprise are to thrive together in our modern times.

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Critical Modeling Strategy

In this occasional paper, I promote critical thinking by modelers in finance and accounting. In particular, I argue that reliability and validity checks are integral to the business modeling process.

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New Approaches to Finance and Accounting

In this occasional paper, I discuss the issues affecting accounting reform from the perspective of the stakeholders, including investors, management, regulators, academia, and the accounting profession itself. My conclusions argue for future reforms in accounting and finance, irregardless of the untimely nature of such reforms on all stakeholders.

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Isoquantal Capital Modulation: A Harmonic Modeling Approach to Understanding and Managing the Investment Decision

My doctoral dissertation where I argue that the purpose of business is to employ capital factors in such a manner as to generate value for its customers and profits for its owners. To achieve these ends, management must make at least three distinct decisions -- the operating, investment, and financing decisions. The purpose of this study is to formulate a modeling methodology that harmonically analyzes and explains how the investment decision and capital elasticity influence competitive advantage. The research explores the descriptive literature for the current states of computational modeling, accounting theory and practice, managerial finance, macroeconomics, capital theory, and harmonic analysis in order to provide evidence supporting the content validity of a proposed modeling framework, which encodes, modulates, and transforms raw financial data into waveforms suitable for harmonic analysis. The framework is operationalized algebraically, translated into a high-level computational language, and subsequently tested using simulation methods in order to analyze the computational robustness of the implementation. Finally, empirical testing shows a significant correlation exists between the model's reported results and the profitability of sole proprietorships in the U.S. providing initial evidence of the framework's construct validity. Additional empirical testing shows that the relationship between the model's reported results and net profitability is stronger than results returned from the use of raw capital magnitudes providing evidence of the model's positive capacity for recommending decisions. The study uses extant financial data obtained from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which maintains and releases Federal tax information extracted from its archives into the public domain through its Statistics of Income (SOI) programs.

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The Vantage Point

If tired of trees I seek again mankind,

Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,

To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.

There amid lolling juniper reclined,

Myself unseen, I see in white defined

Far off the homes of men, and farther still,

The graves of men on an opposing hill,

Living or dead, whichever are to mind.

And if by moon I have too much of these,

I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,

The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,

My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,

I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,

I look into the crater of the ant.

~ Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost (1874–1963)