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Scoop from Scope: Volume 2 Issue 1

Posted by Huntington Copper on Fri, Jan 13, 2012
  
  
  
  
Business Advisors Scoop from Scope

By: Sean Scope, Regional Vice President at Huntington Copper

“Ok, get on with it already!”

For those of you who suffer from trishaidekaphobia, I thought it was appropirate to release this year's first issue of "Scoop from Scope" on Friday the 13th. I have decided to challenge the age old superstition. Contrary to triskaidekaphobia, I believe that 13 is a lucky number. With that said, on to my blog...

Here’s a question for my readers:

How long is vacation/holiday mode supposed to last?

I have personally witnessed a seven week long holiday mode this year. I don’t understand it. If business is so bad in the States and the economy stinks and nobody is buying anything and any other reason for that matter, why would a business owner stay in vacation/holiday mode for 7 weeks? How does that benefit their company? How does it contribute to offsetting the aforementioned excuses? Well folks…it doesn’t. 

I’m convinced that we live amongst an overwhelmingly amount of professional procrastinators. So...Get on with it already! I don’t know anyone that likes to wait for good things to come to them. However, when the individual refuses to do something to get something they are creating the wait themselves. So folks, is this a business issue or person issue? The answer is both. I believe business issues are the results from the people issues. People have had to face adversity throughout the beginning of time. Some did it out of courage some out of stupidity and some out of desperation, compassion or love. The one thing all of these motivators have in common is that the person faced the fear. 

When are business owners going to get back to work? Have they given up? I can’t believe that for a second. What is the obsession with not addressing the obvious? Look…it’s not complicated. If something is not the way you want it, then it is up to you to change it. If you don’t know how to change it…then find someone who can. Believe me…I don’t think we have a massive “Phobia Epidemic”, but as silly as triskaidekaphobia seems to me, there are people that experience this. Walking under a ladder, a black cat passing you, a broken mirror (This one comes with a time limit…hysterical!). It’s all hogwash. I have walked under a ladder, had many black cats pass me by and even broken a mirror or two and nothing happened to me. I choose to spend my time on creating my path and doing whatever it takes to get what I want and not making excuses. A colleague once said to me about another manager, “he made the lazy choice, instead of the right choice”. I have been reminded constantly by this quip during the 2011 vacation mode (Have I mentioned it’s been 7 weeks?)

Let’s get back to talking business. Let’s get on it with it already!

Sean Scope is a business advisor at Huntington Copper with 20+ years experience and is still very active in the small and medium sized business arena.  You can read more about and connect with Sean Scope on LinkedIn.  Through the "Scoop from Scope" blogs a business owner can keep his thumb on the pulse of what is trending and what is working for business owners with similar interests, challenges and wants.  To make sure you don't miss any of the "Scoop from Scope" issues, we'd recommend you subscribe to this blog in the upper right hand corner of this page.

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Comments

This phenomenon builds on itself. In passed years, I worked through the holiday weeks, but it is tough to do business when there is no one to do business with. I can get nothing done in other places besides the office, like in a cabin in the mountains or at the in-laws'. In Europe the standard is 35 vacation days throughout the year, maybe if American companies were more flexible, employees wouldn't be dumping their use-it-or-lose-it days at the end of the year.
Posted @ Friday, January 13, 2012 8:51 AM by Mark
Thanks for the feedback Mark. American companies dont have the luxury of being flexible these days. We are a society that has lost touch with what real work ethic is. Our workers expect more benefit for less work. A real sense of entitlement has swept across our country and infected those whom might not have had this disease. Just suppose everyone was paid based on the results they achieved - (like me). Boy would that surely define the good from the not so good. As far as a use it or lose it policy,I have been part of an organization where this was the policy. I always used it .. why not thats what youre supposed to do right? As far as people not being around to do business with_ there are activities that any business can execute in "down time" that would benefit the organization as a whole. The lack of strategic planning that occurs in small businesses is astonsishing. Annual strategies get finalized 3 months into the fiscal year and the business misses out on a whole quarter of potential improvements and added profitable activities. Again, too many excuses and not enough innovation and strategy to get past the things that create problems for us.
Posted @ Friday, January 13, 2012 6:39 PM by sean scope
Sean, 
 
I agree with you, but I am afraid I obscured the point I was trying to make. I would like to demonstrate that besides the cluster of holidays right at the end of the year, there is a quantifiable forcing factor perhaps unwittingly applied through company vacation policies that encourage vacation taking at the end of the year. 
 
For the sake of the math, let's say employees accrue one vacation day per month. At the end of the year an employee can only carry over as much as he/she earned that year. This gives a variable time when an employee can use each vacation day. A vacation day earned at the end of January can be used in 1 of 24 months. A vacation day earned at the end of December can only be used in 1 of 12 months. Probability-wise, the likelihood that an employee will use vacation increases exponentially toward the end of the year. 
 
Contrast this with a scheme where accrued days are only good for 24 months where they are lost at the end of the same month they are earned. This would eliminate policy-driven vacation clusters. This is the "flexibility" I referenced in my prior comment. 
 
The link below is a plot that demonstrates a comparison of the two scenarios in the context of percent of employees likely to take vacation in a given month based on policy driven accruement and carryover. 
 
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3243086/Vacation.jpg 
(copy and paste into address bar) 
Posted @ Saturday, January 14, 2012 8:37 AM by Mark
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