An excerpt from
Aji Notes, Volume 2, written by Toby Hecht.
Aji Notes, Volume 2
(pages 106-132)
The Spine of IR#4 Career and Business Concerns
Constitution, Strategy and Capital Structures
Selling, Production (OPNS) and Profits
The Spine of Career and Business Concerns is the six fundamental business concerns, out of 22, that every businessperson must take care of in IR#4, no matter their role, career or business is in the marketplace.
Business concerns are “fundamental” when they underlie, or always exist, and must be taken care of to a satisfactory standard in every business situation, with every business capability and in every business strategy.
The usual way to understand a business is to look at what people are doing in it or to listen to them explain what they are trying to accomplish.
Another way is to know in advance that people and businesses are always working to produce outcomes that take care of a very small set of fundamental concerns in different specific situations (threats to avoid, obligations to fulfill and opportunities to exploit),
… even if they don’t realize it.
This helps businesspeople anticipate what to listen for, and how to listen for it,
… in a way that reveals easily and quickly
… how to design a fresh, new offer, practice, narrative or strategy they will find important, useful and worth buying,
… and are unable to find anywhere else (even if it’s only for a day, week or month).
To double your productivity, value and income,
… regardless of your role, career or business,
… or the enterprise value of your business,
… using Aji’s fundamental business concerns
… begins with taking satisfactory, strategic and competitive care of The Spine of Career and Business Concerns.
The Spine of IR#4 Career and Business Concerns
Visionary/Executive Concerns
1. Constitution
2. Strategy
3. Capital Structures
Operational/Managerial Concerns
4. Selling
5. Design and Production of New Offers, Practices, Narratives and Strategies
6. Profits
Careers and businesses revolve around these six fundamental business concerns in IR#4 because reality’s operations require it.
The larger your career or business, and the more you intend to increase your income or the enterprise value of your business, the more taking care of the remaining 16 fundamental business concerns becomes important.
Executive Responsibilities: CEO, COO, CFO, Career
The Spine of IR#4 Career and Business Concerns
Constitution, Strategy and Capital Structures
Selling, Production (OPNS) and Profits
The Spine of Career and Business Concerns is the six fundamental business concerns, out of 22, that every businessperson must take care of in IR#4, no matter their role, career or business is in the marketplace.
Business concerns are “fundamental” when they underlie, or always exist, and must be taken care of to a satisfactory standard in every business situation, with every business capability and in every business strategy.
The usual way to understand a business is to look at what people are doing in it or to listen to them explain what they are trying to accomplish.
Another way is to know in advance that people and businesses are always working to produce outcomes that take care of a very small set of fundamental concerns in different specific situations (threats to avoid, obligations to fulfill and opportunities to exploit),
… even if they don’t realize it.
This helps businesspeople anticipate what to listen for, and how to listen for it,
… in a way that reveals easily and quickly
… how to design a fresh, new offer, practice, narrative or strategy they will find important, useful and worth buying,
… and are unable to find anywhere else (even if it’s only for a day, week or month).
To double your productivity, value and income,
… regardless of your role, career or business,
… or the enterprise value of your business,
… using Aji’s fundamental business concerns
… begins with taking satisfactory, strategic and competitive care of The Spine of Career and Business Concerns.
The Spine of IR#4 Career and Business Concerns
Visionary/Executive Concerns
1. Constitution
2. Strategy
3. Capital Structures
Operational/Managerial Concerns
4. Selling
5. Design and Production of New Offers, Practices, Narratives and Strategies
6. Profits
Careers and businesses revolve around these six fundamental business concerns in IR#4 because reality’s operations require it.
The larger your career or business, and the more you intend to increase your income or the enterprise value of your business, the more taking care of the remaining 16 fundamental business concerns becomes important.
The Spine of IR#4 Career and Business Concerns
Constitution, Strategy, Capital Structures
Selling, Production, Profits
Executive Responsibilities: CEO, COO, CFO, Career
1. Constitution
Every career or business is “constituted”, spoken or written. It is declared into existence by someone.
Constitutions of businesspeople’s careers and businesses are organized, first, to fulfill their financial ambitions so they can afford goods and services everyone needs to take care of their fundamental human concerns and live a good life with their family. This requires them to constitute their career or business’ fundamental offers, practices, narratives and strategies.
* Use the Top 1% Business Planning available on aji.com to design, redesign or revisit how to design a business with the purpose to double your productivity, value and income.
Careers and businesses with weak constitutions, or common offers, are “hot dog stands”. They can’t generate enough income to succeed because their productivity and value are constrained, or limited, by reality’s operations, e.g., financially, competitively, operationally, etc.
There are at least four practical reasons why it is flat-out impossible to earn a living operating a hot dog stand, no matter how hard businesspeople are willing to work, how much they use their common sense or how committed they are to getting jobs done.
One of them, for example, is the limited number of hours in a day that customers want to buy them. Another is a competitive limit on how much hot dog vendors can charge.
The marketplace is flooded with careers and businesses that will not work for similar practical reasons. No matter what businesspeople do in those careers and businesses, no matter how hard they work, underlying practical realities caused by physical laws, competitors, technology, economics, politics and demographics mean
… they can’t make enough money to take care of their immediate concerns and save enough for decades of old age.
Mediocre constitutions that are doomed to fail in IR#4 are based on common sense, obvious ideas, pop culture and traditional business thinking. That’s what makes them mediocre.
When careers or businesses have mediocre constitutions, they generate incomes and enterprise valuations that are equally mediocre and unsatisfactory.
They thwart businesspeople’s intentions to save enough money to afford food, housing, medical care and transportation until they and their spouse are at least 90 years old.
2. Capital Structures
Structures such as human beings, hammers, computers, the internet, promises, business organizations and offers, practices, narratives and strategies
… have real properties in the world that can affect human concerns, situations, capabilities and strategies (CSCS).
If they do not, businesspeople don’t need to care about their existence.
When a structure is called a capital structure, such as capital equipment, or called a type of capital, such as operating capital, it means they are used to make money.
That’s all.
The reason is that you need capital structures to make money, and it doesn’t matter whether you are concerned only with your career or operate a business organization.
Every individual or business organization makes money with their capital structures. If the structures are missing, weak, flawed or incomplete, businesspeople cannot fulfill their financial intentions.
The first five capital structures every businessperson and business must bring into existence and cultivate throughout their careers are:
Human capital
Employees, colleagues, vendors, employers and customers, including you, who are able to design, make and fulfill the commitments needed to fulfill, or help fulfill, people’s financial intentions.
Capital equipment
Tools such as computers and the internet that people and businesses use to increase their competitive capabilities and advantages to produce outcomes sufficiently enough to fulfill their financial intentions.
Capital inventory
The offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS), including goods and services, that businesspeople and businesses have already designed and have “on the shelf” waiting to be sold, or that can be produced whenever they are needed.
Operating capital
The money used to keep a career or business operating tactically, strategically and competitively enough to fulfill businesspeople’s financial intentions.
Financial capital
The money used to open new businesses or build new careers to make more money.
3. Strategy
Every career and business in IR#4’s rapidly changing global marketplace requires a competitive, fundamental strategy and an array of specific strategies that constitute and coordinate thought and action to advance action, or make progress, to fulfill the career’s or business’ purposes, intentions or missions.
A strategy is an action plan.
It is…
1. A commitment to produce an outcome, which is called its strategic objective,
2. By executing a sequence of tactics…
3. To produce a sequence of situations that make progress, or advance action,
4. Until the purpose, or strategic objective, of the strategy is fulfilled.
The fundamental strategy of every career and business is always The Aji Source Fundamental Strategy, or some version of it.
The specific strategy of every career or business is the particular way businesspeople design their OPNS in order to execute The Strategy in their market niche to fulfill their specific financial, career and business intentions.
Operations: president, vice president, managers and individuals
4. Selling
Selling is any conversation whose purpose is to produce a transaction to make money.
When businesspeople sell, they create transactions to make revenues, profits, incomes and enterprise values.
To double productivity, value and incomes in any role or for any business in IR#4’s rapidly changing and intensely competitive global marketplace, businesspeople must be able to sell the OPNS they design effectively, strategically and competitively.
This is because everyone is competing directly with the world’s best salespeople, global competitors, on the internet every day, all day.
In other words, learning expert sales skills is not optional in IR#4. Everyone hears them every day on the internet, which makes them normal.
But hearing selling, like hearing a classic rock band play a familiar song, doesn’t mean businesspeople understand how it is done so they can do it themselves.
* Learn the Sales Training (normal sales) and Top 1% Selling ($400k-$4m) on aji.com.
5. Designing OPNS: Fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand
The only way to compete in the most rapidly changing and intensely competitive global marketplace in history is to have the skills to rapidly generate one’s own steady streams of offers, practices, narratives and strategies that are fresh, new, highly valued and scarce relative to demand.
OPNS include your goods and services as well as all the OPNS used to produce them.
* Complete The Aji Starter’s Course on aji.com to learn how to design OPNS.
6. Producing Profits: Managing revenues, costs and expenses
“Profits” mean businesspeople increase their financial capabilities to take care of their family.
They cannot be produced directly, though. They are a derivative of revenues, costs and expenses.
Revenues – (Costs + Expenses) = Profits
Therefore, to double their productivity, value and incomes, businesspeople must focus some of their OPNS on managing their revenues, costs and expenses to produce profits, incomes and higher enterprise values for their business.
Businesspeople can’t increase their incomes if they simply go to work, work hard, rely on their common sense, get the job done and make incremental improvements. (Decades of income statistics make this point.)
They can’t earn an IR#4 Income that is twice as high as the IR#3 Income they currently earn.