Saturday's Systems and perfected states in space and time

First, and foremost, business is a system for creating value. The more perfect a product or service is, the more perceived value it has.

Back in the 70s, I worked with a group of physicists on one side of me and a group of theologians on the other. Each group was striving to understand the most fundamental aspects of life. Pushed to their logical limits, each wanted to understand the very nature of perfection. In the physical world, there is only an ideal perfection that exists in our mental constructions alone. In the theological world, the ultimate world or God's world, it is always perfect. The place where these two meet -- an interstitial, nexus, or transformation point -- is a perfected state in space and time.

What does that all have to do with business? Everything.

Business is a system for creating something of value:

• In Big Businesses -- over 5000 employees (Wal-Mart is the biggest with over 1M) -- people tend to think of business as where you go to work and get compensated for it. It's a job. Very, very few are looking to create a perfected moment for the business, oneself or the customers.
  

• In most mid-size businesses -- from 500 to 5000 employees -- people still tend to think of their work as a job. It is where you go to get paid at the end of the week. Though a greater percentage of people see the end product that is sold, very rare is Total Quality Management and Continuous Improvement something that is within one's guts and being, from head to toe.
  

• In small businesses -- up to 500 employees -- most people know the founder. Most people know the company's stories. Most people know the mission, the vision and the products and services. They participate. Their compensation is often closely related to their contributions in moving the products and services to a higher perfection.

So, we all have to look at the processes within our business. Processes open the way to systems. Once those systems begin working well, you have a sustainable business on its way to rapid growth.

Small businesses have the greatest probability of getting these systems so dynamic, that the corporate culture becomes one focused on continuous improvement within one's business domain.

Though each business in this library is a great example, one of the best businesses to examine where all the people are caught up in continuous improvement -- making it perfect -- is Ziba Design.

Saturday's focus on systems is a focus on the path to wealth -- monetary, physical, psychological, and spiritual wealth.

Hattie and I just met a long-time viewer of the show, Dan Swiger, the founder of Mentor Capitalist. He's been watching the show since 1994. He is a de facto systems thinker. Most of us are, but Dan is particularly good. He is constantly thinking about how people and ideas are connected.

That is the beginning of systems thinking: 1) How do things relate? 2) What makes things cohere? 3) How is value created? As you might expect, the answer is a simple-but-deep word: Systems.

The web is a great place to explore systems and ask those three questions. Each defines the heart of business. The best business people constantly think like a World Wide Web. The billionaires and multi-millionaires are very good at it.

On this Presidents' Weekend, we should all think more presidentially by learning how capital and systems cohere and how more value is created. I recommend the following:
1. Spend some time with Michael Novak to grasp the inherent systems within capital.
2. Grasp the power of your financials, as ratios. You'll begin seeing your business is one big system.
3. Protect your systems. Simple stuff. We all have to do it.
4. Teach everybody to respect each others Intellectual Property