Let us face it – finance is not easy. Whoever tells you that the commercial financial management is a steady progression job, where one gets well trained and well paid over a reasonable number of career years, is trying to lure you into something. The finance specialism requires almost a decade of training (if you count a faculty/college degree plus professional qualifications plus specializations). Plus an in-commensurable amount of overtime hours and periodical work pressures (quarterly P&L targets or year-end closings speak for themselves).
Yet, it remains a wonder to me how over-complicated most finance processes are. Take any routine activity – you would expect 90% of them to be stable and running smoothly. Yet, the more you dive, the more details and complications hide behind. Obviously, this pushes the amount of work further up. And with the increasing pressure resulting from new (or amended) regulations, from ever-shifting processes (shared services or not) and from the ever-green chase for a lower cost base, finance is becoming more complicated every day.
Yet, it should not be the case. There are shortcuts. There are tips and tricks in controlling. These shortcuts come from the most unexpected place. They do not involve compromises on the decision-making quality. And long story short, I would like to share some of them here, so that this knowledge does not get completely lost.
So stay tuned and visit doitinvest.com from time to time for more simplicient controlling tips and tricks.
Archive for Uncategorized
Simplicient Financial Controlling – 1 – Laying the Ground
It Might Be Time To Consider Taking a Cheap Mini-Holiday
If you are like many Brits, you have been struggling for the last few years just to get by. Between the bottom falling out of the financial markets and eroding retirees’ hard-earned savings while making the jobs picture frighteningly dim for the rest of us, it hasn’t been a particularly pleasant time. Now that things are looking better, however, it just might be time to think about going on holiday and letting go of some of those worries that have plagued you for such a long time. While things are still not completely back to whatever you considered normal, at least many of you might be in a position to let off a little steam. The key word here is “little”. It might not yet be time to summer in the South of France, but if you are sensible about it, a mini holiday might not be too great a stretch. Read more
Passive income sources
Today (yes, on the Christmas Day). I gave a search on my IPhone 5S for passive income apps. I wanted to see if there is any chance to make money in an automated way.
Well, you probably know the answer. If The Holy Grail would exist, somebody would find a way to sell 1M copies of it. Online. So all I found were hundreds of apps that begged for my money to show me the path. No, thanks. What was I thinking of? 🙂
Seasonal Greetings Vienna
Christmas is approaching again – and it is time to think of the beloved ones and of what makes life beautiful…
“Why Can Dead Do Such Great Things?” – by Robert Bartlett – a Book Review
Christmas is near – less than two weeks to go. And I think there comes no better time of the year to meditate about the sacred things – what makes us believe in God, what drives us ahead, why we are here. It is not that we should be more religious then we are. In the heat of our daily lives, when we run for better career prospects, increased ROIs, higher incomes, we tend to forget that other things are important.
So I decided to read laterally and do several different book reviews. The first one relates to a book called “Why Can Dead Do Such Great Things? – Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation”, by Robert Bartlett. You can hardly find a tome better suited to the Christmas period, I guess. First of all, it is a book about one of the most distinct features of the Christian religion – the veneration of saints. Secondly, “Why Can Dead Do Such Great Things?” is an academic book – it approaches the subject from a research angle. Thirdly – the book is quite impressive in appearance in writing – more on this below J. Read more
“Six Simple Rules” – A Book Review for a HBR Press Title
If there is one thing that is increasing in the modern working world, this is the entropy. Which has as synonym, among other words, “complexity”. The authors of “Six Simple Rules – How to Manage Complexity Without Getting Complicated” (Yves Morieux and Peter Tollman) have embarked on a journey to do just that. And they accomplished to write a fine book.
Both seniors in the Boston Consulting Group, the authors are seasoned warriors in this “untangling the clients’ businesses” field. This might be just the smallest reason why they embarked on creating a handbook on how to efficiently manage your business from a strategic and de-complexing level. The biggest one is that they seem to be “ideas entrepreneurs” – the kind of persons who see an opportunity to improve things via a new approach or idea – and they just go for it.
And here’s how “Six Simple Rules – How to Manage Complexity Without Getting Complicated” proposes to do: Read more
“Power Cues” by Nick Morgan, a Book Review
Sometimes the title says it all and it is just enough as an appetizer. This book’s subtitle did that job for me: “The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others and Maximizing Your Personal Impact”.
Well, this sounds like the perfect recipe, doesn’t it? It is a bit like in the one-time wonder hit song “Handlebars” – you can already imagine yourself starting low and climbing your skills to the heights of a Capitol where you lead armies of followers.
Leaving jokes aside, “Power Cues” is a really good practical neuroscience book. If you have not met the term before, neuroscience studies the way the brain influences and gets influenced by the the non-verbal language of others (among other things). “Power Cues” delivers exactly that promise – with a practical perspective. The book looks at how people respond to the non-verbal cues of others. Apparently, something that dogs are very good at, but humans – not J. Read more