Tributum Newsletter #20

Hi there

American comedian Jerry Seinfeld once said that if you are looking for a detergent that can take blood out of your laundry then laundry may not be your biggest problem.  In my view the Medium-Term Budget Speech (“MTBS”) delivered by Minister Tito Mboweni is an attempt to contain the bloodstains in our economy, but unfortunately it does little to stop the hemorrhaging.

He rightly painted a very bleak picture about the SA economy, but no surprises there as you don’t have to be an economist to know we are in bad shape. The R10.5bn funding for SAA was approved – this may also not have been a surprise but more of a shock. I am not sure of the reason to keep throwing good money after the bad, but it smells of a lack of political will. That political will is surely to be tested further by the effective 3-year Government wage bill freeze mentioned in the MTBS. Apparently, negotiations with unions are underway – but recent results stack the odds against Government coming out on top, I think.  

And that political will is much needed to move the SA economy from the bleeding person taking bloodstained clothes to a laundromat to the bleeding person lying on the surgery’s operating table. There is a saying that failure is not so much not knowing what to do as it is not doing what you know. However, doing what you know requires decisions to be made and actions to be taken, sometimes difficult and painful ones. But it is needed in order not to fail. I think Government knows what they need to do, I am uncertain whether they can follow it through.

On the topic of doing what you know I direct my thoughts to another person that believes in doing more with less, Warren Buffet.  He famously suggested that you should list the 20 things that you are good at in order from best to “least good” on one page. Then draw a line through everything after number 5. Focus on only doing the 5 things you are really good at and do them well. That will lead to success, rather than also trying the other 15 you can leave to someone that have them in their top 5 list. At a 5/15 split is close to the 80/20 Pareto principle that 80% of results are achieved with 20% input.

With social media being awash with comments on worker burn-out, excessive hours worked and increased stress levels, maybe its time to reassess what we spend our time doing. Are we “wasting” time trying to get the 20% results from the 15 non-core skills rather than perfecting the 5 skills we excel in and achieving 80% of output required? If failure comes from not doing what you know then success must come from doing what you know.

Try doing less, maybe it will result in us achieving more. Until next time, keep breathing.