Gendernomics- Building Value Read online

  The critical activities are the last link in the chain that goes Vision – Mission – Strategy – Critical Success Factors – Critical Activities – Key Performance Indicators. This makes it easy to trouble-shoot a process because you can simply follow the chain backwards.

  Not all activities are critical in a strategy, but one can easily identify them if one charts out the entire process in what is known as a critical path map. A critical path map is a mapping of all activities and how they are dependent on each other in an easy to follow chart.

  In the chart above, each activity is labeled with a number, and has a time estimate for how long that activity will take. In this chart, we have the rare double-critical path where one goes 1 – 5 – 6 – 4 – 11 and the other 1 – 5 – 3 – 4 – 11. What this tells us is that activity 5 is the single most important activity to keep on track, but 3 and 6 are also of utmost importance. If any of these activities are delayed then it delays the entire timeline. The “Game path” 7, 8 , 9, 10 takes has less estimate time to completion than the other two paths, so a delay in this path will not delay the implementation of the strategy.

  The critical path in a chart is the path that has the least slack time, and the most interdependencies in your strategy, it’s the place where you cannot afford any delay what so ever without it leading to a negative deviation in your overall plan.

  To identify which activities are critical, it is useful to begin with each critical success factor. For instance, if we begin with consistency in weight training, you can log and measure every time you go the gym. You plan to go 3 times a week, then record every time you go, in a month you can see how consistently you went to the gym.

  Suggested tools and Techniques:

  - Critical Path Mapping

  - Resource Requirement analysis

  Designs, Systems and Processes

  This chapter deals with how to structure activities based on a philosophy of Total Quality Management, the goal is to design systems and processes where it’s easier to do something in the more efficient way than it is to not do so. In most of my early self-improvement efforts, I didn’t track anything, I didn’t plan anything and I got results that reflected that.

  The key issue we are attempting to solve with this chapter deals with what resources you have available to you. Men often attempt to fix everything at the same time, neglecting the fact that they are over-reaching and will run out of resources before they reach their goal. If you are attempting to quit caffeine, nicotine and sugar at once, this will tax your willpower and discipline, we only have a limited amount of these resources, and they have to be carefully allocated towards each goal.

  There has been a lot of discussion of “Systems Vs. Goals” and I like having both, you have to be both process oriented (system) and goal oriented (goals), the goal tells you what you are working to achieve, the system how to achieve it. For instance, if you are quitting sugar, the systems approach means that you clear out all sugar from your house, and other places where you have control, then utilize your self-discipline and willpower to resist eating sugar when you are in locations where you do not have control.

  The basic premise behind process design is that you should create a process that makes it easier to do it right than to do it wrong. For instance, if you spent all day putting hard-drives into laptops, and there are two ways you can install the hard drive, one that works and one that does not, this is a process built to create errors. If you put in 30 hard-drives per hour, and have an 8 hour work day, you will put in a total of 240 hard-drives per day, if you only make a mistake 1% of the time that’s 2.4 laptops every day that do not work. If we imagine a factory with a 1000 workers just like you, that’s 2400 laptops every day that have to be identified by quality control, sent back onto the line and fixed. If a mistake is made on 1% of those as well, that’s 24 laptops that do a second lap with quality control and get sent back. This is a hindrance to productivity, and a costly process.

  There are two ways of fixing it, we can have a stricter quality control regime, we can add extra steps to the process to make sure that no errors are made, or we can simply get hard drives that can only be mounted one way; the right way.

  The same principle applies to building value, if you build a system that is a minefield, don’t be surprised when something blows up in your face. If you go on a strict low carb diet for a while, clear out the cabinets of all the carb heavy foods you have. There is a reason why body builders and figure athletes become anti-social loners when they are in contest preparation, because if the only two places you spend any time is the gym and your house, you have solid control over your environment. If you work in an office where pastries and candy are always available, odds are you will have your moments of weakness.

  This is in part why we conduct the external and internal analysis and chart barriers and enablers, so that we can design a process that takes into account the external environment. If you spend 250 days a year on the road this is something that will create issues with any plan, but it can also create some opportunities if you build in a way to take advantage of them.

  We also want to design measurement metrics for every critical activity and critical success factor. For the former we design activity measurement, often centered on frequency and accuracy, for instance how often did you check your outgoing expenses and how accurate where you when recording your expenses. For the critical success factors, we measure progress and effort, how much progress have we made at what effort.

  This is also where you can build in reward systems for the short, medium and long term in order to give yourself a break. 100% adherence is unrealistic to any program and if something is done over a long period of time you will need occasional breaks, not only to relax but also to reflect on the progress that has been made.

  Suggested Tools and Techniques

  - Value chain analysis

  - Process mapping

  - Risk identification/valuation/mitigation/management techniques

  Example Case Study

  Introduction

  For this case study I’m going to start with a trainwreck of a man, this is a fictional man but the problems in this case study are all things that I myself have dealt with or that other men I know have dealt with. Let me introduce you to Dave. Dave is a 28-year-old man who still lives with his parents, he has no education beyond high school, he works part-time as a pizza delivery guy, and spends all his free time playing video games. He’s a competitive guy in the game, and he’s working his way up the ladder, and hopes to land an e-sports gig.

  He usually smokes a lot of weed when he’s gaming and consumes a lot of mountain dew and dominos. Most nights he orders an extra pizza after eating his mom’s dinner, and stays up all night eating, drinking dew, smoking weed and gaming. He’s broke, he hasn’t had a girlfriend since high school, and he’s 300 lbs at 5 ft 8. He also struggles with depression and social anxiety, so he barely leaves the house.

  This is Dave’s past and his present, however Dave recently had a moment of clarity and found the Red Pill, he struggled with it a lot to begin with, because he was feeling kind of good about himself and his progression up the ladder in the game he plays. He’s actually a pretty high-status guy within that community, and a person that many people look up to. However, he’s determined that he doesn’t want the next 10 years of his life to be like the past 10 years of his life.

  Vision and Mission

  Dave is determined to change, and his vision for his life is one where he can enjoy life to the fullest, he wants to play the field for a few years before settling down with a woman and building a family with her. He struggled a bit with formulating a vision statement, but he landed on “To be a man with options”. He thought this was a good vision statement, because it is a high-level objective, and right now he feels like he has no options other than continuing on the same path towards a life of celibacy and early death.

  A vision is the highest-level objective, but it must be made more concr
ete in the mission statement. A good way of doing this is to be specific in which areas you want to apply the vision. In Dave’s case, he wants enough money to be able to enjoy life and he wants to improve his standing when it comes to work. He also wants options with women, instead of having to take whatever he thinks he can get. He wants to move out from his parent’s house and get his own place. He wants to make sure that he doesn’t die in the next 5 years from his unhealthy lifestyle and he wants to get in shape.

  Thus, a good mission statement is “To be a man with options in the lifestyle, career, financial, sexual and physical realms”.

  Internal Analysis

  The internal analysis of Dave begins with a GAP analysis of his life. He currently has no options in of the desired realms, and he is of very low value from a social perspective. In his financial life he needs to improve his employment options, which means either taking courses, classes, starting his own business or developing a skill-set that someone will pay him for. To improve his health he needs to lose a lot of weight, clean up his diet and start lifting weights.

  To move his lifestyle in the right direction he needs to get his own place and stop spending all his free time on video games. He also needs to get out of the house more and develop a circle of friends that will help support him towards reaching his new goals.

  In order to improve his sex life and have options with women, he needs to learn game, get out there, start a pipeline of leads, and he needs to build his sexual market value up to a point where he is over the hurdle rate for those types of women that he desires. The hurdle rate being the minimum sexual market value a woman requires of a man prior to considering him a prospect for intimacy.

  Normally, Dave should make a GAP map for all the areas he wants to improve in, however in his case the present state and desired future state in all maps are identical and the same metric, he wants more value and more freedom in his life. This gives us the gap chart below:

  In his present state, Dave has very little freedom, with no solid job prospects and a very limited income he has few options to get a degree, some courses or certification and he also has no seed money for his business. This means that he’s also unable to move out from his parent’s house, and get his own place.

  He also has little freedom when it comes to his health, he’s 300 lbs and due to that weight he struggles with moving.

  In his sexual life he has no options what so ever because of his low sexual market value.

  This means that Dave needs to work on building value in all these areas of his life.

  External Analysis

  Dave lives in a small town of just a few thousand people, that has been losing people every year since the mine closed almost a decade ago. It used to be a booming mining town, but since the mine closed the town has been going under, and Dave barely gets any work from the pizza place. There are few jobs that offer on the job training, or entry level positions where there is an opportunity to work your way up, and there are no free classes he can take in the area.

  The demographics of the place is largely older people and some families, and the main employer is the public sector, mostly municipal management and law enforcement. There are very few single women in the area, and very few places to meet likeminded people his own age.

  A major benefit is that he lives close to a public gym that he can train at for a very modest fee, and they even include a few sessions for free with a personal trainer. A major detriment is that he lives very close to a convenience store and the pizza place where he works, so he’s around temptations all the time.

  Thus, Dave’s external environment is not conducive to his long-term goals, but it does offer some infrastructure support in the health area, his house being within walking distance from the gym.

  Barriers and Enablers

  With Dave’s case being very severe, a lot of emphasis must be place on barriers and enablers. He is starting from a very low point and he has a long way to go and it will most likely take a lot of time to dig his way out of the hole.

  If we start with the barriers, we’ve already touched on the fact that he lives in a situation that enables his present self-destruction, his only distraction is gaming, his mother enables him by feeding him all the time and he has mental issues.

  Barrier

  Action taken

  Depression and Anxiety

  See a doctor about the problems.

  Mother overfeeds him

  Take responsibility for his own food intake, start tracking calories.

  Online gaming addiction

  Block internet access 22 hours of the day with a password.

  Lives close to fast food place and convenience store

  Take out a small amount of cash for each day, and lock credit cards in a lockbox with a timer

  Is very inactive

  Start walking 2000 steps a day tracked on the phone, add 1000 steps each week until he reaches 10000.

  Constantly high

  Taper down marijuana usage over the next month, then give it up.

  Poor social skills as a result of isolating himself for years

  Find a club or group to join in the area to work on baseline social skills.

  No job opportunities to speak of in the area

  Start planning to move to a different area in 12 months

  No money to speak of

  Start putting the money that is spent on food and weed in a savings account

  These are the major barriers, there are probably more, but writing a list of 100 barriers is counter-productive in a case such as this, the focus has to be on the major ones, and in Dave’s case that is his addiction to food, weed and gaming.

  If we review each one, he does have problems with depression and anxiety, and these two things can have a major influence on his ability to execute the tasks required to reach his goals. I think a good first step is to see a medical professional for a general checkup, not only because of those issues, but also because he is beginning a new, more active lifestyle, and knowing his health status is important. Secondly, he needs to figure out how much damage his previous lifestyle has caused.

  His mother being an enabler for his addiction to food is a problem, and the remedy for this is simple, he needs to take control of his own food intake. If he doesn’t, this will derail many of his goals and this combined with his food addiction represents a major barrier.

  His online gaming addiction is another problem that must be tackled, and the simple way of doing this is to block internet access 22 hours a day, only allowing access for a short period of time. This is a first step in getting him off online gaming as a buffer against reality.

  Easy access to fast, convenient calorie dense foods, to which he suffers an addiction represents another barrier that can be solved through locking up his credit cards and limiting himself to a given sum in allowances per week or per day, that limits his intake maximally.

  The inactive lifestyle can be tackled through installing a step counter on his mobile phone and setting a goal of walking at least 2000 steps every day the first week, increasing by a 1000 steps every week until he reaches the recommended 10000 steps per day.

  The addiction to marijuana, requires quitting, it’s as simple as that. His addictive personality mixed with the munchies, the monetary cost and the other effects that cannabis has on him means it’s a major barrier to his goals of health, fitness, better finances and better job prospects.

  Poor social skills are not a barrier for some of his goals, but it will have a major negative effect in both the employment area and the desire to have more choices for female companionship. Like it or not a tendency to self-isolate due to anxiety and poor socialization means that Dave lacks the necessary social skills to be successful in both the modern job market and the modern dating market. He needs to deal with his tendency to self-isolate, which can only be done by forcing him to do something he is uncomfortable with.

  A lack of job opportunities in the area which he lives. This i
s an example of an environmental barrier over which he has little control, and the only real way to handle such barriers is to change environments. This is true whether you’re an aspiring player in a town of 4000 people or entrepreneur in an area where your customer base is zero. You can only do as well as your market will permit.

  No financial resources. Money cannot buy happiness, but it does buy peace of mind and no matter your situation it’s better to be wealthy in it than broke. This is a barrier because it prevents him from moving, hiring professionals such as a nutritionist or personal trainer, alternatively other people who could support him in achieving his goals.

  Enablers

  If we look at Dave’s enablers there are some surprises.

  Enabler

  How to use

  Persistence and task orientation

  Dave got to the top of a competitive online game. This requires a high degree of understanding and consistency. These are traits he can apply to his transformation.

  Information intake

  Dave did well in high school, and graduated with very good grades, so he knows how to get information.

  Lives with his parents

  This is an enabler that allows him to save a lot of money fast, because his parents pay for his food and shelter.

  Lives close to a free gym