Category: Culture

Last year there was a proposal to set pricing limits on food. Here’s the thing, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a grocery buyer negotiate pricing but it’s down to the 100th of a cent at times. Why? Scale. If you’r off on a purchase of a million+ watermellons that 100th of a cent can erode margins by a lot.

There is no evidence of price gouging
Putting aside my own problems with the grocery industry and simply addressing the market dynamics of this situation, groceries are a highly competitive market and there’s no key evidence of anything related to price gouging. Kraft, as an example, has lower profitability this year.

Free Markets Lower Prices
I was talking to my son yesterday about a plastic part of a trimmer that we purchased yesterday for $9. He thought it was expensive until I explained that it was produced by oil drilled out of the ground and refined into something that could cool and harden to hold shape, then someone created a design of a tool and a mold for the thing, produced it in a factory, shipped it to a store, and sold it. This is not including all the other work such as marketing, etc.
Like that situation, groceries are a highly competitive free market and the number one result in that is competing of prices down as close to $0 as possible. As an example, Strawberries are actually down in price to pre-covid levels.

Why does stuff cost more?
Yeah, about that. There’s a chart on the pic of this post. It shows the growth of all the cash in the system. Notice the jump at 2020? Went from 16 Trillion to almost 22 Trillion. Yeah, I know we’re tired of hearing about covid, still the results are continuing to work their way through the system.

Legally imposing a limitation on prices has never fixed a systemic issue.
In fact, it’s historically backfired and there’s no evidentiary reason to conclude that it will resolve the inflationary issues we’re seeing in the system at the moment. There is only one way to bring prices down and it’s not limiting inflation so much as innovation that is deflationary in nature. That type of innovation has not happened with any significant oversight that caused reduction in margins which would limit any kind of investment into R&D.

We need to stop the silly game of thinking someone else will rescue us instead of simply getting to work and solving the problems in front of us. Ok. Rant done.

I’ve stopped thinking about how to balance work and life. In terms of work and life there is a transaction cost to what you want your life to look like. I think more of work life integration. Your work agreement with your employer can be viewed as a mix of compensation and incentives that help empower or detract from the life you want.

First principles:
The thought is that “I have problems to solve and people pay for my attention into solving those problems. Financial transaction enables other parts of my life.” Each job does this and in a free market, your compensation is commensurate with the difficulty of the problem you are solving. Some problems simply cost more time and energy.

Practical Outworking at Ground Level:
One example is teams that work on shift. I have a team like this. Part of the problem they’re solving is coverage of a service with a time bound function. So they don’t have the flexibility in the time they can be on or off work. To the point that we put hard boundaries around calling them outside of their shift hours. The other transaction mechanism is if they’re working overnight (11:30pm – 8:30am) that’s a harder problem to solve compared to someone working days(8:00am – 5:00pm). The overnight shift has a 10% stipend over their base salary. What each shift gets back out of the transaction is a very clear stop and start point to work. Some people want or need that in life for a myriad of reasons.

Transacting Back Incentives in Compensation:
That team is paid less than me and it’s a reasonable expectation given their job is limited in scope and clearly defined. I have a larger scope and I’m looking at problems with a longer reach and impact. I also, don’t generally get the same lines of off/on time. I work remotely from a laptop. So long as I do my job I have the ability to be mobile, I can work from where I want, and I can come and go as I please related to work. That IS a great benefit and that IS a double edged sword. If things are healthy I get to “leave on time”, if things aren’t healthy I get 10pm and 2am calls. My time back is part of my compensation, so i’m very incentivized to make things healthy.

Very practical schedule:
I hold to a schedule. It keeps me productive and consistent for my team. I usually end up starting a little before 8am, and working until around 6pm. Then I drop out and jump back online for another hour sometime that evening to wrap up a few things. (The time I get back on is reducing as the kids get older.) Because of my role with FaithTech I sometimes need to work from another city. So I leave early (depending on the city as early as 4:30am) and start work from a cafe somewhere in that city at 8am. I’ve worked from my travel trailer a few times and many times someone asked me to lunch or afternoon coffee or beer around 3pm. I’ve had the ability to say yes and have done so.

What about you? Like if you’ve nailed the work/life integration and comment to share how or ask for help.

I took some time off this past week. What basically added up to a long weekend, but it was needed. Made me think about work/life balance. I hear many people talking about the freedom they want with work. I don’t really think that’s the point though.

If you’re expectation is that you can gain now, what you want your life to look like in the future without any understanding of the journey and cost required to get there, then you might have set yourself up for failure, disappointment, or both. I’ve become more and more convinced that money is simply a tool to allow for transaction back in terms of personal time use. If you don’t have a real need for more money, do what you want. Everyone else, is beholden to a rule of constraints.

If you’re just starting out from school at whatever level, don’t try to gain the job you want to have in 20 years and for which the requirement to add value in that position will be 20 years of setting your hands to a task. You either, don’t add enough value back to the business for that transaction to make sense on the other side or you’ll be overpaid and the first to be released during the bad days.

“Well, I’ll just start my own business.” is the other response I think I’m going to hear. I hope you do, also that’s not just sunshine and rainbows. If you’re starting that for the right reason, which is to truly solve a problem, then it’s still a 20 year journey to build a business.

Even if you get that dream job in your early 20’s, it’s not your dream job. Been there. Landed my dream job after a decade of work and was out 3 years later because it wasn’t that after all. Your life is more than work and work is a significant part of your life. Learn to enjoy the journey of that more than an end that you’ll never catch.

That does not mean, don’t think about what you want your life to look like in 20 years. Start with the end in mind and engineer your path accordingly.

Interested what the rest of you think. Like if you agree, comment if you differ in thought. Will post more about work/life integration and how that might work. In the meantime, here’s a pic of a sunset from this weekend.

Last week I mentioned some conversations I had last week. One of them was a situation where a friend had a decision to make about two separate positions at different companies. In terms of comp package they were the same. My response?

“Well now that money isn’t the issue you have to decide why you would want to do one or the other.” Many aren’t as fortunate as my friend to be thrown into turmoil because suddenly the decision isn’t about income. If you ever have a moment like that, it’s odd in it’s ability to cause turmoil rather than peace. That’s usually because most of us aren’t clear on why we’re working beyond the paycheck. It’s healthy to have that level of clarity though. It’s actually what will produce your best work.

What is your why and how did you get clarity about that?

Happy 5th! I didn’t post yesterday since everyone else seemed to and I enjoyed simply spending time with my people.
Started the day with a run though and it gave me some thoughts. There are plenty of places where simply being able to go about my day in peace like that isn’t possible. All the technical advancements that enabled that run (moisture wicking clothes, lighter shoes, Strava) would arguably not be here if it weren’t for the advent of our nation and the attitude we carry around pioneering, innovation, and work.

There are trade-offs/costs to it and there are plenty who will rave about other parts of the world’s choice towards less work days, social needs outweighing our own individualist tendencies, etc. There’s truth to that, we get to choose what to opt in and out of and the value that gives us. I will say that those models of living are also not the ones that gave us the benefits we have today.

So here’s to July 5th. The day after the celebration. The day we get to go back to what we celebrated and are priviledged to participate in. The day we get to go back, innovate, push further towards a preferred future.

Let’s go!

Rest is good. If you haven’t planned any for the year, we’re 2/3’s of the way through.
-Go to your calendar now.
-Look 4 weeks out.
-Book it.

There will be excuses as to why that can’t happen. They’re excuses. Be as ruthless with your rest as you are with your work.

I’ll catch you all next week.