The Fundamental Concerns for Business and the “Spine” [12 pages]

And Their Financial, Strategic and Competitive Importance in IR#4

The Fundamental Business Concerns I explain in this paper are used financially, strategically and competitively by businesspeople, and businesses, that use “Aji” to increase their competitive capabilities and advantages, productivity and incomes, and those of their colleagues, employees and employers.

They enable businesspeople earning at least $150k to double their productivity and value using their computers and the internet so they can produce incomes between $400k-$4m. 

When businesspeople are not earning that much money they can still use “Aji” to double their productivity, value and incomes.

Using these Fundamental Business Concerns enables businesspeople and their networks to design and execute steady streams of fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS) that are highly valued and scarce relative to demand. 

They use them strategically and competitively with Networks of Capabilities to increase their incomes, earn a living and become rich.

Perhaps most important, using these fundamental business concerns with “Aji” enables businesspeople to quit using the business philosophy, knowledge and skills invented for The Third Industrial Revolution (IR#3) before computers and the internet …

… that is thwarting their ability to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions,

… and their capabilities to earn a living or become rich.

This set of 22 fundamental business concerns, which I explain below, is one of five sets of fundamental concerns used in “Aji” to produce and increase competitive capabilities and advantages, and to double productivity, value and incomes.

“Aji” includes these additional sets of fundamental concerns businesspeople use to design steady streams of fresh, new offers, practices and narratives that are highly-valued and scarce relative to demand so that they can execute The Strategy effectively, strategically and competitively enough to double their incomes:

13 human concerns such as body, family, money, career and dignity

6 financial concerns such as 3% average inflation and 8% average stock market returns

12 career concerns, which are “Aji’s” 12 strategic intentions, and include ambitions, ethics of power and highly-valued accomplishments

14 marriage concerns such as one’s vows, or public commitments to one another, companionship/intimacy/sex, raising children, dignity and retirement

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The Fundamental Concerns for Business

Executive Concerns:  Business Owners and Executives

1. Constitution of Fundamental Offer to the Marketplace
2. Finance – Capital Structure
3. Politics
4. Technology
5. Education
6. Identities of Trustworthiness, Value, Authority and Leadership
7. Organizational design
8. Leadership
9. Ethics of Power
10. Membership
11. Anticipating
12. Strategic Planning
13. Marginal Practices (Networks of Capabilities)

Operational Concerns:  Presidents, Vice Presidents and Managers

14. Managing
15. Resources
16. Selling
17. Production of new products and services
18. Finance – Accounting, Profitability
19. Distribution
20. Marketing
21. Design of fresh, new specific offers, practices, narratives and strategies that are highly valued and scarce relative to demand
22. Trust Maintenance and Production (Quality)

* Italicized concerns are part of The Spine of Fundamental Human Concerns, which I explain below.

They are the concerns every businessperson must take care of in IR#4 to a satisfactory standard, strategically and competitively, using their computers and the internet in order to double their productivity, value and incomes.

In IR#4, these 6 business concerns must be taken care of to build careers and businesses.

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“Aji”:  Financial, Strategic and Competitive

“Aji” is a new business philosophy.

Instead of being “efficient and effective” as IR#3 business philosophy promulgates,

… it is directly competitive, makes money literally instead of by proxy, and is strategic and competitive.

This enables businesspeople and businesses to use their computers and the internet to fulfill their financial, career and business intentions, or to earn a living or become rich.

It is a new philosophy because it offers:

1. A new interpretation about how human beings think and act to make money, design and execute competitive strategies and compete in the marketplace

2. A new way of knowing how and why it is that we know what we know or think that we do.

When fundamental business concerns are used “financially” it means they are used to make money or to design steady streams of fresh, new, highly valued and scarce offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS). 

Average inflation, for example, is used financially to anticipate how much money businesspeople need to plan to earn and save during their careers.

Designing fresh, new practices is used financially to produce the value and income businesspeople need to fulfill their financial intentions.

When fundamental business concerns are used “strategically” it means they can be used to:

Execute a strategy, or action plan

Improve a strategy

Design and execute a new strategy

… to produce competitive outcomes or make money.

A “strategy” is a commitment to produce an outcome, or “strategic objective”,

… by performing a sequence of tactics

… to produce a sequence of situations

… that progress towards fulfilling the strategy’s objective.

When fundamental business concerns are used “competitively” they are used to produce and increase competitive capabilities and advantages, productivity, value and incomes.

Competitive capabilities, for example, include the ability to design steady streams of fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies (OPNS) that are highly valued and scarce relative to demand, or sell new goods and services in the most rapidly changing and complex global marketplace in history.

They are used to produce competitive advantages such as being first to market, having seductive and compelling offers or increasing capabilities with increased complexity.

When businesspeople’s competitive capabilities enable them to produce OPNS with marginal utilities that are highly valued and scarce businesspeople have a competitive advantage. 

When businesspeople produce steady streams of fresh, new OPNS,

… build Networks of Capabilities to help them design and execute,

… produce identities that their trustworthiness, value, authority and leadership is superior to competitors

… produce highly valued accomplishments and establish identities of superior trustworthiness, value, authority and leadership

… they increase their productivity, value and income.

In order for a fundamental concern to be used strategically and competitively, action to take care of them must have 5 Properties and meet 12 Design Concerns.

They are explained in Chapter 5 of the book, Aji, an IR#4 Business Philosophy.

The 5 Properties an action plan, or strategy, must possess in order to be effective and competitive are:

The 12 Design Concerns an action plan, or strategy, must take care of to be effective and competitive are:

1. The Unsatisfactory Situation

2. The Strategic Objective

3. The Current Competitive Situation

The Threats to Avoid

The Obligations to Fulfill in order to keep existing opportunities, produce new opportunities and avoid avoidable costs and risks

 Opportunities to exploit

4. The Denouement, or set of new possibilities that will appear when the strategy’s objective is produced

5. The Ultimate Purpose, or outcomes in the near and distant future the current strategy is helping to produce

6. Inventories of Practices that can be used as tactics, or tactically to execute, improve or design a new strategy

7. The Fundamental Competitive Intentions:

First to market

Compelling (force) and Seductive (pleasure or enjoyment)

Increasingly Capable due to its complexity

8. The Strategic Competitive Intentions: Effective, Strategic and Competitive

9. The Tactical Competitive Intentions: Producing steady streams of fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies that are highly valued and scarce relative to demand

10. How the Strategy will be executed

11. The People who design and execute The Strategy, the Person in Charge as well as Major and Minor Actors

12. The Sources of Thwarted Intentions, or Adversaries, e.g. competitors, the economy, technology, politics, etc.

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The Spine of Fundamental Business Concerns

RIP

IR#3’s Individual Contributors

One of the changes The Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR#4) has imposed on the marketplace and businesspeople is the demise of “the individual contributor”.

They work hard, keep busy, are determined to produce the result, think outside the box and use their common sense to make incremental improvements.

They are unable to fulfill their intentions to earn a living, or become rich, in IR#4, and shut down the possibility for those who work with them, around them or who hire them.

They work alone no matter how many people are working around them, or how many meetings they attend, because they decline to allow anyone to affect how they think and act.

This has them decline to accept requests to increase their productivity and value, or learn “Aji”, as those around them and the businesses that employ them need them to do.

Being a prideful IR#3 businessperson who worked alone was effective up until about the mid-1990s when businesspeople using computers and the internet first began working together strategically and competitively.  As they learned to think, design, speak and execute steady streams of fresh, new offers, practices, narratives and strategies, rather than completing tasks,

… they also made it impossible for IR#3 Lone Rangers to compete successfully enough in the marketplace to fulfill their financial intentions to earn a living, or become rich, when 25+ years of unemployment during old age is included.

To quit being an IR#3 businessperson and to “pivot” away from having to rely on common sense, hard work and determination,

… which are IR#3’s labor-based and task-oriented work ethics,

… businesspeople use The Spine of Fundamental Business Concerns to design and fulfill their financial intentions to earn a living or become rich.

“The Spine” is the first 6 fundamental business concerns every businessperson needs to learn in order to use their computers and the internet strategically and competitively, rather than task orientation.

The Spine of Fundamental Business Concerns

1. Constitution of Fundamental Offer to the Marketplace

2. Finance: Capital Structures

3. Strategy and Planning

4. Selling

5. Design of fresh, new specific offers, practices, narratives and strategies, including “goods and services” that are highly valued and scarce relative to demand

6. Finance: Accounting and Profitability

To pivot away from having to use IR#3’s obsolete and uncompetitive business philosophy, knowledge and skills,

… and use “Aji” strategically and competitively with computers, the internet and Networks of Capabilities to double productivity, value and incomes,

… businesspeople learn how to take satisfactory care of these concerns.

It isn’t hard.  But, it’s a very, very different way of thinking about how to make money.

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The Fundamental Business Concerns

Business owners and executives are responsible for the first 13 fundamental business concerns.

Their purpose is to:

Constitute the declarations and other commitments needed to fulfill the owner’s intentions to make profits or produce a return

Lead the business by helping employees fulfill their commitments and personal ambitions in IR#4’s rapidly changing, complex and intensely competitive situations

Design and execute strategies to fulfill their intentions

Anticipate future competitive situations

Produce and increase competitive capabilities and advantages

Operate the business in current financial, competitive, economic, political, technological and demographic “situations”

Establish identities of superior trustworthiness, value, authority and leadership

Avoid avoidable threats, costs and risks

Keep existing opportunities and produce new ones

Produce and exploit opportunities

Senior managers, i.e. presidents and vice presidents, help business owners and executives fulfill their intentions and commitments by fulfilling the final 9 fundamental business concerns.

To help their employers fulfill their intentions and commitments senior managers need to understand these concerns well enough to be able to listen effectively, strategically and competitively to their executive’s requests and declarations, or to help them fulfill their financial, career and business intentions.