Profit Beyond Measure

Slow day today. I think it is a combination of the US holiday (4th of July), start of the month and extended holiday weekends for many people.

I finished reading “Profit Beyond Measure” subtitled “Extraordinary Results through Attention to Work and People” by Johnson and Broms. Good book. I have learned many things at SYNNEX. One of the great learnings is attention to detailed numbers and cost accounting. This has tremendous value and the SYNNEX system is truly awesome on granular numbers. This book reinforces the need for good cost accounting systems as long as they are logical. A lot of the book is about having the right systems. As a Systems Design Engineer, I really appreciate the books attention to systems and interdependence. Part of the problem with measuring is that interrelations are often overlooked.

A part of me at times feels that sometimes we are not totally on the right track though. Profit Beyond Measure reinforces what I already know about intuition. It will help me hold firm in areas where I know in my heart we are right to change (or not). Some of it comes back to my continual short term vs. long term dilemma.

I read in the Globe today about a book I would love to read that has actually never been published. I would love to get my hands on it. Sounds like a lot of business leadership wisdom. The book is “Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management”. One quote is “When faced with decisions, try to look at them as if you were one level up in the organization”. I already do this in a big way. I think we could do better if more of our people thought this way. This ties into the granular numbers that we manage by. Without care, we can end up with no team but very good individual numbers which will ultimately hurt the company and the individual numbers.