Do you know what you know? If you’re like me, then I doubt it until someone triggers a thought. Which is a funny way to get to Yedda. Anyway: this morning I spent 20 minutes looking through questions to see if there were any I could answer. Sure enough I came up with 7. The most interesting one concerned running a restaurant. Most of the answers covered experience and all that good stuff but I took a slightly different tack. I said you need a good accountant/lawyer (I would say that wouldn’t I?) and then listed some sample questions:
- What are the start up costs for the area in which you’re thinking of operating?
- Are there untapped niches/specialties?
- What are the anticipated gross margins in this area?
- What are staff costs likely to work out at?
- What are the typcial other overheads I need to consider?
- How do I control costs/wastage?
- Who are the most popular suppliers in this area?
- What are the tax implications for employing staff – eg what’s the law on tips?
- What is price competition like in the area?
- Is there demand for additional eating establishments in the area?
- What about location?
Then it struck me that I know the answers to the generality of these questions because I used to handle a number of restaurants. That doesn’t make me a super specialist but it does allow me to ask important business survival questions. Something to which Stefan and Jason frequently allude.
It also struck me that much of what I was saying is tacit. In other words, it is knowledge I’ve acquired from experience. The kicker is that most of it is in my head rather than recorded anywhere useful. But as McKinsey point out,(simple sign in required, no paywall) it is incredibly valuable:
By contrast, advantages built on tacit interactions might stand. A company could, for example, focus on improving the tacit interactions among its marketing and product-development staff, customers, and suppliers to better discern what customers want and then to provide them with more effective value-added products and services. That approach would create a formidable competitive capability—and it is difficult to see how any rival could easily implement the same mix of tacit interactions within its organization and throughout its value chain.
That’s where collaboration among professionals both internally and externally could make a quantum difference to a professional’s ability to service clients, improve knowledge and develop client relationships at a level way beyond where we’re at today. We have the technology to do that right now – if we’re brave enough to use them.
As a footnote, There was an unexpected additional benefit from going through Yedda. I was able to find a couple of folk I’d not ‘met’ before. Plus – guess what? David Terrar turned up answering similar questions. I never knew that until I visited the site. Does this make ‘It’s a small world’ a rationally correct aphorism any longer?
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