My last post was a brief introduction to Blue Chip You – using the models, techniques and frameworks that have driven corporate strategy for decades for personal development. The core principle here is that we consider ourselves CEO of a Fortune 500 blue chip business – You Inc. In this post I shall go into some more detail the mindset we need to get ourselves in to make the most of these concepts.
Let me introduce Bob. He is an office worker who spends his spare time playing golf, and running a golf blog. He is married with two children, and lives in a suburban house with a generous garden. There are bits of all of us in him, which makes him a suitable mannequin for Blue Chip You.
When we are first trying to understand a business, point one on the list is “What is the group structure?”. By doing this we get a snap shot of the organisation and can consequentially understand the interactions between the various parts. Simplistically we can split the group structure into two parts:
1) Business Units – these are the numerous different areas in which the business operates. They often have some overlap, but are predominately stand-alone entities which are how the business get what it does done.
2) Head Office – Head Office functions are tasks, or operations that overlay all the Business Units. They are things that are best done in one go rather than for each Business Unit individually.
So how does this apply to Bob Inc.? His Business Units are pretty clear – they are the separable things he does in his life:
- Office work
- Playing golf
- Blogging about golf
- Being a husband
- Being a father
- Upkeep of his house
- Upkeep of his garden
These would be similar the Roles and Responsibilities in GTD, or Roles and Goals in 7 Habits of Effective People for example. By identifying what it is you do during your day, you are then able to use tools to help you do them better, stop doing them, or do other things instead.
Bob Inc. has a number of Head Office functions that are likely to be in common with most of us, for example:
- Finances – his income, bills, taxes, investments and spending.
- Health & fitness – exercises, illnesses, and diet.
- Core functions – personal development, spirituality, and religion.
- Marketing – how you portray yourself to the outside world.
These Head Office items are operations that effect our Business Units in a consistent manner – for example, a decision to be more thrifty in Finance would mean taking a packed lunch to work instead of buying it there, making do with cheaper golf balls, not upgrading to the new WordPress theme, cooking a nice meal for the wedding anniversary rather than eating out etc.
This is a high-level view of how we split our being into manageable buckets, but it will enable us in future articles to apply tools and thought processes to these to help us get the best out of each of them, and more importantly, the best out of ourselves.
