On Friday a new and helpful law for NZ based businesses comes into effect.
“On 2 May 2008 the Limited Partnerships Act 2008 will come into force.
The Act has been introduced to promote sustainable growth* in New Zealand’s venture capital and private equity industries. (*my emphasis)
Limited Partnerships are a form of partnership involving general partners, who are liable for all the debts and liabilities of the partnership, and limited partners, who are liable to the extent of their capital contribution to the partnership.”
and …..
“Features of Limited Partnerships include:
separate legal personality
an indefinite lifespan if desired
a list of activities that the limited partners can be involved in while not participating in the management of the Limited Partnership (safe harbour activities)
Here is a great little conference (Freelance08) on next Wednesday, May 7 and Thursday, May 8 at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Auckland.
It offers huge value for members of the freelance nation. Also a chance to hear from Nicky Hager, Brenda Ward, Virginia Larson and John Cranna as well as old favourites David Cohen and Rod Oram.
The scope is wide enough to include useful business tips for all contractors regardless of whether they get paid to write for a living. And at $100 for the whole day it is very good value.
Registration needs to be before close of business tomorrow so don’t delay. I’ve decided to go along to a few sessions myself. So if you make it, be sure to say hi.
As it happens still do some some contract research and writing for various business documents and it is always helpful to understand the best ways to frame up that kind of work since the creative element and the craft often has to be rationed to the budget at hand.
There is also a big difference between a quick note and a research piece or marketing content and that is not always so easy to explain or get paid for.
Hawking your wares overseas
David Cohen, journalist Tracey Barnett, journalist
Negotiating - a way to better pay
Jenny Ruth, freelance business journalist Julia Thorne, photographer and writer
Slicing/dicing your interviews/expertise
Gill South, freelance writer Rod Oram, journalist and commentator
Making your writing a business
Baubre Murray, director, Dowse Murray Chartered Accountants Simon Penlington, partner, Jones Fee, barristers and solicitors
Hat tip to Kim And Phillipa for nurturing this idea. I believe this is the 3rd conference and it looks like the combination of practical help and actual facetime together has achieved some critical mass.
About 8 or 9 years ago there was a real glut of conferences on the impact of the internet and most presenters felt obliged to talk about Moores law which applied then mostly to hardware.
In fact we are surrounded by lots of “business cycles” and ripple effect such as the innovation cycle - start something new, refine it by bringing down costs and so on over time, while expanding and changing markets in new and interesting ways.
Increasingly more people are realizing that there are parallel and social effects in other technology related areas like software and business cycles for instance.
Two of the thinkers I really like on the wider tech implications are Paul Graham and David Cowan.
Paul has a large number of very helpful essays and this one from October ‘07 really caught my eye - he was talking about The Future of Web Startups.
(This essay is derived from a keynote at FOWA in October 2007.)
There’s something interesting happening right now. Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper.
It’s a pattern we see over and over in technology. Initially there’s some device that’s very expensive and made in small quantities. Then someone discovers how to make them cheaply; many more get built; and as a result they can be used in new ways.
Computers are a familiar example. When I was a kid, computers were big, expensive machines built one at a time. Now they’re a commodity. Now we can stick computers in everything.
This pattern is very old. Most of the turning points in economic history are instances of it. It happened to steel in the 1850s, and to power in the 1780s. It happened to cloth manufacture in the thirteenth century, generating the wealth that later brought about the Renaissance. Agriculture itself was an instance of this pattern.
Now as well as being produced by startups, this pattern is happening to startups. It’s so cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started. If the pattern holds true, that should cause dramatic changes.
David Cowan recently speculated in a video that we are now at the stage where perhaps every 18 months or so it becomes half as expensive to roll out an application to the web in some kind of echo of Moore’s law.
The mathematical element is not as important as the key point that many more thousands of developers, entrepreneurs and business people everywhere are using the latest software tools and technologies to accelerate just about everything.
From my perspective many of these observations come across like that ancient story of the blind men describing an elephant. The elephant is large and each man describes a different part of what sounds like more than one animal.
As a creative generalist myself with extremely diverse interests and training in multiple disciplines I recognize many of these perspectives all being part of the same large elephant - as it were.
There’s a good side to that, at least for consumers of technology. If people get right to work implementing ideas instead of sitting on them, technology will evolve faster.
Some kinds of innovations happen a company at a time, like the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution. There are some kinds of ideas that are so threatening that it’s hard for big companies even to think of them. Look at what a hard time Microsoft is having discovering web apps. They’re like a character in a movie that everyone in the audience can see something bad is about to happen to, but who can’t see it himself. The big innovations that happen a company at a time will obviously happen faster if the rate of new companies increases.
In New Zealand there is a temptation to invent something new because we can’t find an obvious answer. It is now becoming much harder to do that and go global as many of these opportunities are already driving entrepreneurs simultaneously in multiple timezones at warpspeed. There are still advantages to be had from this though.
As David Cowan suggests it much better to come clean and stimulate the discussions by leveraging the wisdom of crowds.
The other great point in his video is that now it is possible and even desirable to move down the pyramid to innovate and invest outside of the top few large companies.
Now with the rate of change and ease of deployment across the internet it is becoming easier and more necessary to be able to provide new products and services in smaller and medium sized businesses.
Recruiting staff, especially for small companies has its risks as everyone want to look good.
As the Semler story below emphasizes everyone is highlighting the positive but just maybe there is a way to ask the “right” questions in an interview or assessment to get a more realistic idea of the suitability of candidates.
For example I’d want to know what people are like when the chips are down. How did they recover a tough situation at a previous workplace. The reality of small businesses is that the outlook can change fast.
The best staff can think on their feet and recover when there are mistakes and that is when character and integrity are tested the most.
And for a start-up company I’d definitely want to know if they had EVER risked their own money. I’d want staff to act in the best interests of investors and if they already have experience of risking their own capital then that might be a useful indicator.
Ricardo Semler was interviewed for a feature Strategy+Business and he explained Semco HR practice as follows…
Then Mr. Semler segues into his perennial theme: the habits of thought that can change rigid, dehumanizing workplaces into engaging, productive ones.
As he writes in The Seven-Day Weekend, “Our ‘architecture’ is really the sum of all the conventional business practices we avoid.” Consider, for example, typical employee recruitment.
“It is like Internet dating,” says Mr. Semler. “I’m always six foot, four inches, and I look like Brad Pitt; you are always Cindy Crawford or Angelina Jolie.
In the recruitment process, we put out fraudulent stuff about the company, like we’re going to double our earnings, leaving out that we’re also transferring all production to Vietnam in a year.
You forget to tell us that you have fits of rage, that you worked six months here, six months there, and it’s not on your resume. Then we meet at a bar and decide to marry. What are the chances that is going to work?” he asks.
At Semco, by contrast, “We put out ads that are realistic,” says Mr. Semler. “We don’t have an HR department, so the person who has the opening will take the stack [of applications] and distribute it for review.
We wind up with a group of 35 people in a room, 15 of whom are candidates. When that conversation ends, our people will pick three for further interviews. They’ll come back several times. By the time we decide to marry, we know a lot about these people. That leaves us with 2 percent turnover in an industry with 18.”
I have been testing out VortexDNA as a way to better understand the underlying intentions and most likely behaviours and outcomes. The system is a platform to help make the web a more relevant place and has the ability to decode some of the key motivations of its members. To quote from that site..
“Your Vortex DNA profile is a map of who you are – the beliefs about yourself that create your world. Each strand of your DNA is highlighted according to it’s relevancy to you.”
“VortexDNA has mapped the genome of human intention - the mind-DNA that predicts human characteristics. Advancing our understanding of how belief creates our world, the human intention genome opens up a new era of science and human empowerment.”
“VortexDNA technology tells you, accurately, what your users are likely to care about.
In an independently verified trial against Google SearchTM, VortexDNA technology proved its ability to increase the relevance of search results by up to 14%, which translated into a 3% improvement in click rates.
VortexDNA is easy to install and complements your existing search/recommendation technologies.”
All of which brings me back to my original thought. If we can get an idea of what staff might do / have done under pressure in the past - we can better understand their intentions and motivations. It is also much more obvious what people care about when the chips are down - so to speak.
In asking the right questions knowing what is in the DNA of our prospective recruits could be very helpful. This includes attitudes, intentions and beliefs which are all influences of future behavior in my view.
What do you think? What are other great HR questions?
Note: Vortex DNA has many business applications - have only scratched the surface here.
Many years ago I studied law and even completed my law degree, however my view then and now is that commercial business law is far too important to be left to lawyers.
In short the legal considerations of law in business need to be very pragmatic and practical as part of an overall solution.
My observations since then show that the very best legal advisers are those who understand the wider business context and can help with that.
Since 1993 I have had the pleasure to watch a master at work and now some of that hard won wisdom is available to all of us. Noric Dilanchian has completed a 18 page manifesto on the practical legal considerations of deal making. Let’s Make a Deal - the full version is freely available for download and it contains a template of 7 essential deal making principles.
As Noric outlines in the beginning of his manifesto.
“Deal making should be led by process, as well as practical and commercial considerations, not purely legal considerations. It is helpful to think of deals as blueprints for living outcomes, not just glue to bind relationships.
The seven principles in this document help minimize risk and maximize returns from deal making activity. The principles are guidelines and simplifications.
They are relevant to all legal regimes. In this document they are grounded on business law in legal jurisdictions derived from the law of England, often called “common law jurisdictions” (these include Australia, Canada, England, India, Malaysia, India and the United States).”
The area I like the best is at the very end. In many respects the most important part of any deal is often the exit clause/s. While everyone has the best of intentions at the outset there needs to be much better ways to recalibrate as key variables change and a smart deal allows you to do this wisely.
In my book that relates to performance issues. Noric has devoted Principle 7 to that area.
PRINCIPLE 7: SET PERFORMANCE CONTROLS
“This final step in deal making process improvement involves effective implementation of deals. Unlike the previous principles, its practical implications apply to all the six previous principles.
Our era is characterized by major shifts in business practices, models and circumstances caused by a tide of technological and business ingenuity. In most contemporary markets there is what we might call a “performance challenge.”
This challenge includes constant market demands for enhanced customer relationship management, more sophisticated products and services, and innovation at many levels. A solution is quality performance control.”
Noric is one of our featured blog links as his entire site offers many other valuable snips of legal and commercial information. His site is also one of the top law sites in Australia.
If you are unfamiliar with ChangeThis you should also check out the other 200+ manifestos there all freely available under Creative Commons licence to anyone who is interested.
“ChangeThis is a vehicle, not a publisher.
We make it easy for big ideas to spread.
While the authors we work with are responsible for their own work, they don’t necessarily agree with everything available in ChangeThis format…..”
“The copyright of this work belongs to the author, who is solely responsible for the content. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.”
And by the way I have found having a legal background very helpful in business since all roads lead to a deal of some kind or another.
“media futures”
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