RIWO

I’m making the attempt to define how I want to run my business. Mine is still just operated by a single individual – me – and it exist amongst literally millions of other businesses. I have to look at what other people do to figure out how to do it myself.

 

As an former employee of EB-Games – Later, after the merger, GameStop – I learned about the FIFO model. It wasn’t a part of any curriculum, my Area Manager just happened to blurt it out one day. As he was guiding me through some new guidelines for applying advertisement based merchandise in the store I was managing. He said I had to throw out old stuff to make room for the new. Easy lesson. One that that I already knew. Old posters were taken down. New posters were hung up. First In – First Out… FIFO

 

I learned that the way the company treated actual products was almost the same as how they treated advertisement. Old games were sold out on purpose to make room for new titles. This was necessary of course, because in the games industry, like in many other sales based industries, only new items has any interest… those are the only products which customers buy in sufficient quantities to keep the chain of stores afloat.

 

As operations revolve around a constant cycle of new products, it specializes itself to a point where it cannot longer exist outside the cycle. It becomes dependent on the cycle and when the cyclic motion decreases in speed, which it inevitably will because no cycle is constant, the company is effected negatively.

 

I cannot allow myself to be dependent on a First In – First Out principle. The model needs to be improved. I will try an evolved principle, and I will call it the RIWO model. Random In – Worst Out.

 

In a fresh cycle that coexist around the initial cycle of business, like a moon around a planet, this flow of new personnel and new stock will be added to the business. It will be, like the moon, a force of gravity that continuously pull in the dynamics of the company. Fresh flow adds new ideas and new way of doing things and some of these additions will prove worthwhile.

 

When a group of people are comfortable as they are, amount wise and task wise, the inflow of recruitment to that group will stop. Only when said group of people are strong enough to acknowledge themselves as a team, will they be managed. It won’t be management viewed with twentieth century optics. It won’t be a management of personnel, but a management of information. The manager will be a courier – an information specialist who makes sure that the ideas and products of the team are easily accessible to every other member of the company.

 

If the team fails, the members of the team will be added to the natural rotation of new additions in the company. They stay, but the get to prove once more that they are worth keeping while on a minimum wage. New entries must prove themselves on a minimum wage. No exceptions. One of the most debilitating problems in companies today is that people are receiving high salaries even when they’ve stopped earning them.

 

This part – disintegration followed by immediate reintegration – won’t work without some measure of counterbalance. On it’s own, it’s too harsh. An employee can reach a Protected Position where creativity no longer is the main drive, but experience and culture. Protected Positions are only for the worthy – the ones who makes the company a better place for employees to thrive.

 

I’m a little torn on the last paragraph I want to add – how to place responsibility. Mistakes that cause actual property damage can be placed on individuals, but what about mistakes that only cause financial damage? Will that be the responsibility of the upper managements, and not individual employees? I can’t predict how much of an outcome this has. Need to reflect on it some more.

 

Tell me what You think.