Taking it for granted

Life skills

Do you know any kidults? Kidults are aged 18 - 24 and still live at home. And if you have one, you'll know they cost, on average, $678 per week each, or $32,000 a year to support.

Scott Pape is the Australian financial literacy phenomenon otherwise known as The Barefoot Investor and, in his book for families (which outsold the last Harry Potter book in Australian presales!), he lists 10 Money Milestones that he believes a ‘kidult’ should achieve before age 18.

Here are a few: #1 Open a zero-fee high interest savings account. #2 Buy and sell something secondhand. #3 Learn to cook two nutritious, low cost family meals. #5 Work out how to save $100 in household bills. #7 Get a part time job and #8 Obtain a glowing reference from your boss.

At age 18, I could do 3 out of Pape’s “Barefoot 10 List”; my son Jasper is almost 15, and has just learned #2 and #3, and I’d love him to do all ten by the time he’s 18.

Question: What significant life capabilities do you think all kidults — and therefore adults too — should learn?

Demolishing assumptions

Who was Shakespeare? A former client, Stuart Kells, swapped his vocation as a senior public servant for his avocation as a bibliophile, and he’s now written a dozen brilliant books.

And, one of them, “Shakespeare’s Library” completely challenged my concept of who the iconic playwright was. Kells argues that if Shakespeare was a solo genius playwright, he should have had a library. And, if so, we should be able trace at least some of the books within it. Problem is, we can’t. There’s not one book in existence that belonged to Shakespeare.

Instead, Stuart argues that Shakespeare was a hustler. A brilliant hustler. An unparalleled observer of the human condition. But not an ivory tower literary maven, but more an entrepreneur who would be familiar to many of us today. He pillaged previously published works, hustled with theatre owners and actors, and put out huge volumes of work. It was only after his death, that editors brought together the oeuvre we know today.

The important footnote to of all this is that, according to Kells, Shakespeare didn’t ‘curate’ his own work and therefore wouldn’t recognise today’s collections of his own works.

Question: What do we assume to be ‘fact’ but could instead be shown to be assumptions?”?

Feel the quality

A client asked me last week how they should judge their documented strategic directions. I look at hundreds of strategy documents in detail every year and I have four criteria:

1. Differentiation: It clearly outlines what makes you unique, or at least distinctive.
2. Selectiveness: Out of dozens of possible priorities, a clear argument for why you have settled on those that will make the biggest difference to your results.
3. Buy in: Staff, community, funders / investors can see their interests represented.
4. Executability: They are framed in a way which enables teams to develop subsidiary plans and report achievement against these.

Question: How would you rate your current strategic statement against these?

I’m always pleased to know that you’re pleased to read, so do click the 'like'. It keeps the LinkedIn minions chortling away too.

Go out in the world this week and challenge assumptions while judging other’s productions rigorously. And, I’ll look forward to being with you again next Friday!

Andrew