Tagged With: business
Unlocking the UK
Background.
The UK needs to have a strategy for relaxing quarantine restrictions that has elements of
- Graduated / Phased unlock -some services are less/more essential than others so we need a graduated
- Balancing simplicity with detail
- Allowing flexible/dynamic lockdown/unlock as needed
Concept
There are many types of business/organizations ( and I am sure i have missed some ) I would allocate each sector a “grade” like
- A – essential for individual life
- B – good for community health
- C – nice to have
- D – luxuries that can wait
I would also define phases of lock down.
- Red = Closed
- Orange = Partial opening ( with social distancing )
- Green = Open with social distancing
People would look up which letter “their” sector is in and each week the government says which phase the different letters are in.
At the moment the ‘A’ would be green but everything else would be red. Overtime as the unlock progressed more and more sectors would go green.
I believe that sectors can be broadly split into “Services” and “Physical Goods” and that within those groups there are different types (rows) and stages ( columns )
Services
| Collages, Research & Training | Strategy & Management | Service Delivery | |
| Health / Care Services | A | A | A |
| Emergency Services( inc Police ) | A | A | A |
| Utilities | B | A | A |
| Coroner / Undertakers | B | A | A |
| Repair / Maintenance | B | B | B |
| Transport | C | B | A |
| Governments / Courts / Prisons | C | B | A |
| Finance / Insurance | D | C | A |
| News / Public infomation | D | C | A |
| Hair Dresser / Pedicures | D | C | B |
| Remote Entertainment | D | C | B |
| Construction and property sales/moves | D | C | B |
| Leisure / Sports | D | C | C |
Physical Goods
| Manufacturing/ Generation | Logistics (Storage and Distribution) | Sales / Retail | Support /Processing (Online) | WasteDisposal | |
| Food | A | A | A | A | A |
| Pharmaceutical | A | A | B | B | A |
| Clothing ( inc PPE ) | A | A | B | B | B |
| Garden items | B | B | B | B | A |
| Education and Crafts | B | B | B | B | B |
| Business items | B | B | B | B | B |
| Household items | D | C | C | C | A |
Laws and Taxation
We need to encourage businesses and society to adopt a new normal, and we need to recoup the money that has been thrown at covid. We need to balance physical health, mental health and the economy I’d make changes to taxation as follows
- I’d have a tax on “offices” designed to have companies support remote / working from home. I’d want to encourage flexible working where people could work from home or from a local hot-desk hub.
- I’d have income tax bands based on the ABCD categories listed in the tables above
- I’d say every year somebody works in the Health/Care or emergency services that the government writes off a proportion of their ( student or credit ) debt . The goal being to encourage people to work in key services for at least a few years
- I’d abolish national insurance and roll that into income tax. I’d increase VAT but ensure it did not apply to food/clothes/utilities. That way you would be taxed on “non essentials” that you purchased
Engineering mindsets
- ongoing honest evaluation of the merits and flaws of in-house and third-party technologies
- agile utilization and promotion of good technologies and planned deprecation of bad technologies
- always have a plan B
- balance engineering with sales with marketing
- understanding the relationship of vision, milestones, releases, issues and tasks
- “Not invented here” vs “Standing on the shoulders of giants”
- “Never ending redesign” vs “but we have always done it this way”
- “Short-term agile” vs “Epic fixed projects”
- “Monolithic Frankenstein” vs “Sprawling “
Business essentials
- Understand & control your costs and your market, both will evolve and so must you.
- Avoid ambiguity in communications, misunderstandings will hurt you.
- Hire the right people, use them efficiently, reward them appropriately.
- Control quality or it will control you.
- Work hard, play hard, rest hard. Forget any of these at your peril