Some of You Have Enough Prior Knowledge

To see the “issues” with some fundamental changes some are making with “basic” financial terminology. Which won’t hurt anything – or anybody – unless you take it out of your home room of ISD-folks w/o a clue about financial terms and meaning and into the world where others do know a term or two.

We do ourselves a BIG disservice when we create new meaning for established terms. We lead others down a bad path, a rocky road, a bridge to nowhere quickly.

Like my grandson, who when first playing baseball at the age of 6 knew that every time he crossed home plate it was a home run. You could not convince him otherwise (so being a good grandparent I let that slide). Every game he played he had several home runs! The next season he had figured it out – and so he knew that he had more bases on balls than hits and only a rare home run (in the park at that).

When we sell, market or explain our services and our “value add” – it doesn’t help our cause or help the listener when they get a feeling of “cognitive dissonance” when our language isn’t congruent with what they know. Talking about financial terms incorrectly – with the right people – who know better – puts us in the wrong quadrant in their assessments. Talking with people who don’t know any better will lead to their embarrassment someday – and perhaps they will remember who they mis-learned it from in the first place.

Finance isn’t the only set of metrics of an Enterprise. But it is – as they say – the bottom line. You cannot go on doing good things if your initiatives keep returning less than their costs – as you’ll simply go bankrupt. Champions of this or that need to be business champions first and last – and champion their specialties in between. Not champions of what they do all-of-the-time.

How Do You Sell Quality?

10 minute video.
http://blip.tv/guy-w-wallace/how-do-you-sell-quality-wallace-asq-influential-voice-response-3-2012-6018783

Use & Abuse of ROI

10 minute video.
http://blip.tv/guy-w-wallace/the-use-and-abuse-of-roi-in-isd-and-performance-improvement-communities-6025482

Learn the Language of Business

Learn “how score is kept” financially and otherwise. Learn the terminology. And learn how your Enterprise and/or industry has adapted any of that. Be careful about making your own clever adaptations without enough prior knowledge about exactly what you are changing/messing with.

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