Shrinkage!
The old world business killer.
A friend recently told me how he lost millions to a business or supposed investment. I couldn’t stop querying what could have been responsible for the collapse of the business… the word that kept popping in my head is “SHIRNKAGE”. You might not have heard of the word, but it is a silent deadly killer of Nigerian businesses. The term shrikage refers to ‘consumer theft’ or in pidgin, ‘obtain’, ‘shop lifitng’. If for example you run a store, and you periodically notice several items missing, as a manager, you might tend to blame it on the ‘shop girls’ or ‘sales girls’ …”the pikin don steal my goods again”… and it comes with pusnishment or loss of job but might have been ‘lifted’ by ‘lift-shoppers’. Another way to look at the word ’shirnkage’ is employee theft. Instead of the employee recording N200, he records N198. If you want your business to survive, you have to be the eye and watchman for every moulding coin or ‘bankable note’. 40% loss of profit could be attributed to shirnkage in comparison to business incompetence and economic influences.
Some ways to prevent shrinkage
1. Camera: CCTV has helped so far reducing the percentage of cases to 80%. Install cameras!!!. When staff knows that there is hidden camera monitoring their progresses, they tend to compose and operate at their best.
2. Roam your business physically and remotely. How do you roam your business? The essence of accounting software running on web is to help track every part of the operations of your business. You are not there but you can monitor income remotely, visually and analytically.
3. Understand business enterprise architecture. Enterprise architecture enforces discipline and standardization of business processes. What is your business process?
4. Design your own business enterprise architecture. Because this is how it has been done doesn’t mean it is rightly done. Observation should lead to improvement and better automation.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.
They are all powerful but not of same effect; the power of sword, the power of gold and the power of words. While the power of gold can buy you horse, the power of sword can slain it. While the power of sword can slain the horse, the power of words can suspend the sword. If peradventure you could not master the first two, never fail to master the latter(The power of words). By the power of words, the slave wins the heart of the king, the merchant sold an ivory for the worth of an elephant, the hopeless called on his “God”.
Choose the one that is appropriate for you 1. I want money, I don’t want job. 2. I want job, I don’t want money. -Only good thinking, work and moral ethic(s) will suggest what was not mentioned.
It was a kablooey election!
“Trump can’t be president!”. The paean that followed it was in the spirit of the order of impossibility: “Chewing stick no be mcCleans’ toothpaste”,
“Dried fish no dey swim for river / soup”,
“Cold no dey catch fish under water or water belle”,
“I fit climb, I fit come down, Na body dey suffer am”
“Trump can’t be president!”
…and so it was in the just concluded election, TRUMP has triumphantly won.
To those that vowed to destroy their green passport, you are pardoned; to those that based their winning theory on diplomatic experience, there is more to winning than being perfectly qualified.
With the noise and viral rejection of Trump dwindling, I gained and learnt from all these. Here are my lessons:
#1. No amount of strategy can salvage a bad reputation.
#2. Be yourself / believe in yourself even when the community thinks you are losing or against you. Believe is a subject of faith even when not seen.
#3. Don’t place your hands on the plough and quit; see it to the end. There is no room for excuses. I heard a seating “King” almost abdicated the throne in Nigeria.
It is scriptural, “No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.” Permit me to paraphrase the statement, “if you are a king, no procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put your kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day”. Leadership is a responsibility; It is a yoke of a people, for a people, the burden for the downtrodden. Challenges are bound to stir their monstrous heads, the solution is best seen in Einstein’s echo, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”.
#4. Truth sets free, diplomacy / diplomatic prowess is just a cliché.
#5. Human stratagem is not without flaws.
#6. Anybody can be a winner; anybody can be a loser too.
#7. You don’t have to be perfect to occupy an office you just need to sell yourself to the people, organization or nation that you are the best candidate for the job.
#8. The predictability / probability of an event occurring is not a dictate / determinant of the media.
#9. Leave room for God / space for the maker. In Yorubaland, we have certain group of men referred to as the “Afobaje – King maker / Installers of royalty”; Becoming a king is not the making of the afobajes. With the presidential endorsement of Madam Hilary, she still couldn’t bring her luggage into the “White House”.
#10. Winning is not same as sustainability. Have you ever heard the statement, “power must change hands”? it can actually change hands and be given up when the right things aren’t propagating or happening. Do the right thing.
A plunderer saved the life of a king; and so a time came when the knights came for the life of the plunderer, should the king give [the plunderer] up? – A Nigerian political scenario.
In the movie Revolver (2005), the character Jake Green made a profound statement, “The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look”(—Julius Caesar 75 BC). [in a later conversation]…While playing, Avi says “you know what is so elegant about this little game, Jake? No-one knows where the enemy is. He’s inside of every one of their heads. And they trust him, because they think they are him. If you try to destroy him to save them, they’ll destroy you to save him.”
Often times, people fail to question their very own thinking / philosophy.
So, question your thinking. Your thought might be the enemy hindering your own progress. If the thinking is your enemy, kill the enemy before it kills you.
