Time is money....

Posted by Jordan on 18 December 2007 | 0 Comments

...dog eat dog.... it's a jungle... lunch is for wimps....

As we rapidly approach another Yuletide (time and tide wait for no man) holiday season the concept of time passing is perhaps more considered than at other months in the year. Questions often posed on personal achievement, balancing work and life, success at work, resolutions to do better all have the idea of time teetering precariously at the back of mind.

It's no different for Oomph. Time has played some sort of warped trick by suddenly presenting us with the fact that we are about to close on our 2nd full financial year. What we have achieved has been (mostly) outstanding and funnily enough, quite fun. We're still on good speaking terms with our parents and the kids all seem to get on quite well. Cue sound of backs being slapped. This blog itself was meant to follow the arrow of time and record a sort of potted history of our development - clearly the pressures brought on by our old lag, (sic) time, have significantly increased the level of pottedness to said record.

I have one thought on time as we exit 2007, inspired by a couple of things. An article in the FT today posed the idea of spending time thinking and still seeing it as valuable - in relation to the time saved by the high speed UK rail link to Paris. I like that 'spending time thinking' notion. A few weeks ago we visited a client whose business was importing French wine and I was presented with a wonderful example of encouragement to spend time thinking - a meeting room that also served as a dining room with chef-cooked food provided to all (about 40) staff and a dedicated lunch hour in which to eat it. And yes, people still answered the phone and considered their customers. This is a very successful, fast growing business with a family mentality at its heart that did not get in the way of returning value to customers, staff and shareholders.

Whilst apparently someone has done a study a few years ago and proven through research that 'time actually is money', we can be pretty certain that spending time thinking will more often have a much richer creative outcome than the 10p per minute time was seemingly worth in 2002.

So the thought is this. In 2008, spend your time wisely. Have a think.