Mavericks are by definition unorthodox or independent-minded people [source:wikipedia]
In my opinion they are a scarcity forming a 20% of the total population.
Today on the way home, I recalled one of the first conversations I had with Johnson years ago. It happened in the car on the way to a restaurant along Bukit Timah Road when he popped me this question “what do you do with Mavericks if you are building a business system?”
“Use them?” I replied.
“No! Wrong. You fire them.” was his reply. “A business system is like any other machine, for a machine to work the way it should, each and every part within the machine should function in the manner that its been designed to be. Mavericks should never be deployed within such machines. Their existance in such machines whilst increases the potential profitability by a 100%, increases your risk by a 100% as well. Managers are different. Though they might not increase potential profitability substantially, they are predictable. If deploying them in a system consistantly generates an increased profitability of 10% on a yearly basis, so be it. Investors that park money in your business are not gamblers, what they are looking for is consistant rates of returns on investment. A business is a system that generates a consistant in flow of cash over time. For an operation to conform to the definition of being a business, the operation must first be well defined and predictable.”
I was young then and being rather rebellious, I considered myself a maverick. While I remembered his advice, I could not find real application to it.
In retrospection now, while attempting to draft up the business plan of my web consulting company, the wisedom of his words dawned on me. The backfiring I experienced recently attempting to delegate an entire project to a maverick did help with my learning of this lesson.
Yesterday, during lunch, we had roasted duck from the stall. Both my parents were commenting that today’s duck was better than usual. My dad further said that if only the quality of the duck was as good everyday, then business will be really good.
That was when this conversation between me and my dad started. Why is it that the quality of hamburgers produced in McDonalds, an international food chain, remain so consistant across geography and time, whilst the quality of ducks roasted in just one single factory vary so much on a day to day basis? Dad stated the quality of the duck roasting has a high reliance on the quality of work by the master chef.
As the conversation soon turned to my talk about the former Johnson Duck franchise in Singapore. My dad further recounted his experience with one of the staff he employed in his stall whom he treated really well, but whom ended up stealing from him. Mom further added to the conversation by stating this employee was not the first setback he experienced. There were many others before this employee. The most common case was that they leave as soon as they mastered his craft and became instead his competitor. These happened during the days when he was still roasting duck himself. My dad eventually gave up on expanding his business after experiencing multiple of such set backs. He concluded that finding capable people for the job is really based on kharmic cause and effect, something beyond his control.
This was when I shifted my focus back to Mcdonalds again. I stated to him my total disagreement. If one of the essential factors contributing to the success of a business is the need for capable people and finding capable people for the job is based on kharmic cause and effect, something beyond the control of man, then multi national giants like Mcdonalds, KFCs and Subways should not have even came into existance in the first place. I further argued stating I do not see any elites working in the Mcdonald’s restaurant I visited. In fact, most of the people working in these restaurants are semi retired people, just happy enough to get a job and an hourly salary that is close to minimum wage. Mcdonalds is in fact a business system built with zero reliance on mavericks.
I recall suddenly one of the key things taught during my days in NUS doing my technoprenuership minor then, something which David KK Kwan mentioned the other day. “Is the core activity within a business Art or Craft?”
Businesses that tend towards Art have a high reliance on mavericks, since the nature of the business has a high level of ambiguity involved. Attempting to maintain the quality and integrity of the output while scaling up the volume of such a business type will be difficult due to extensive reliance on mavericks. This is if it is possible at all to find and retain enough mavericks from the job market.
Businesses that tend towards craft have low reliance on mavericks, since a craft is essentially an activity based on a formula or recipe and all participants who follow the same directions end up with roughly the same results every time. Scaling up a craft based business will not concurrently compromise quality and integrity of output. Due to the low reliance on mavericks, human resources to fill up positions in this business system are easily available.
I started analyzing the problem that has been plaguing my dad for most parts of his career and that one similar instance I had encountered a short while ago. This time I used Robert Kiyosaki’s framework of the E/S/B/I
E – employee
S – self employed
B – Business owner
I – investors
The problem both me and my dad faced belongs to the S quadrant in Robert Kiyosaki’s framework. A self employed person in his attempt to scale up his business inevitably creates another self employed person. Ironically instead of successfully scaling up his business, he instead creates for himself another competitor in the long run. His business never scales up as a result. Instead he becomes the system. The day he stops working is the day, he stops making money.
As I verbally brought my train of thought to its logic conclusion, realization dawned on both me and my dad. “Yeah you are right son” he stated.
“Dad you spent your life time before realizing this, I learned from your experience came to this realization myself today having committed this error only once.”
“Good son, keep on pushing it. This is the true business way.”
Mmmm.. I nodded in agreement.
At the back of my mind, I was glad I had not wasted too much time training another possible self employed type.
In conclusion, all the operations aspects of the new business model must be so refined, nothing is left to art and everything depended on craft. I will no longer waste my time training mavericks into self employed. The requirements of a stable business model dictates that it should continue to function properly even in the absence of mavericks.
Ultilization of mavericks should thus only be restricted to the ideation phase of a new business venture creation. Furthermore for these mavericks to even be of use to an ideation phase of a new business venture creation they must be domain experts in fields related to the new business venture creation. When the new business venture is launched, these mavericks will not be allowed involvement in the operation aspects of the business venture unless they are themselves shareholder of the venture. In the event they have no shareholder stake in the venture, they will be only engaged periodically as external consultants.