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Some have said:

“It’s not about where you are, it’s where you’re going.”

Others have said:

“It’s not where you’ve been, it’s where you are.”

In business, I like to say:

“Where you are - Where you’ve been = Where you’re going”

(in addition to the above two.)

Business is all about creation. At the end of the day, every business must create something in order to survive. It then follows, that to check the health (survival level) of a business, one must measure it’s rate of creation. The more healthy a business, the more it is creating. One measurement of creation is cash. The more healthy a business, the more cash it is creating.

This is one of the things I love about business - the fact that it creates; brings something from non-existence into existence. And hey, cash isn’t too bad a by-product to bring into existence. Why? Because cash is a common ground for most things. Of course, one should intend to use the cash for good and positive purposes. But that, is a topic for another discussion (check metaphysics category - soon to manifest).

For now, let us use cash as a measurement for level of creation. So we are now able to measure rate of creation growth by rate of cash growth. Using the introductory equation:

“Where you are - Where you’ve been = Where you’re going”

We can correspond the following:

• “Where you are” = current cash in the bank
• “Where you’ve been” = cash in the bank at time period x before now
• “Where you’re going” will be positive if your position has improved, and negative if it has worsened.

note: there may be some predictive purists out there that state that nothing is predictable, but business is built upon predictions (whether it be scientific method or ‘intuition’).

What if you haven’t been anywhere?

To calculate where you’re going, you must measure the current time period (now) and some period x before now. If you haven’t been anywhere, where you’re going will be 0. Positive means you’re growing. Negative means you’re dying. Zero means you won’t be going anywhere (and thus, relatively dying, since the rest of the world is growing with or without you). So you have the option of growing, accelerated de-growing (ie, dying), or dying by relativity.

If you haven’t been anywhere, you won’t be going anywhere.

This may sound rather harsh, and defenders of the underachieved may champion that “they’ll get around to it” .. but the reality is that an energy of activation must be overcome for some momentum to be built in one direction or another. Once that energy of activation to be overcome, the first and most important step will have been taken. You will have created a predictive factor for a next step. The more momentum you can build in a particular direction, the further you will go in that direction.

In a business, you want growth. Lots of it. How you measure that growth, is up to you. Ideally it would be measured by how well it serves its vision.

Questions for today:

1. Are you growing, or dying?
2. How much momentum to you have in either direction?
3. How do you measure your growth?

(Business Tip: KPIs are a great way to have each business segment measure its own growth.)

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