REPLY Investing in the field (SD6371)

[SDMAIL Jean-Jacques Laublé]

Posted by  Jean-Jacques Laublé <jean-jacques.lauble at wanadoo.fr>

Hi everybody.

A remark about the financial resources of the SD Society.
It is generally not considered as a good practice to leave, in an
organisation, resources whose destination is not clearly defined.
Are these resources assigned to eventual hard times in the future or can
they be eventually used for some special occasions etc..?
What sort of risk does a Society like SD incur?
If the resources are assigned to eventual hard times a good practice is to
take them outside the society in a special structure, so that if hard times
happen the money is still there and has not been used in the meanwhile. Any
unused resources will always be used with the time or may eventually
disappear. It is better to have a lean organisation than a fat one.

Only people that have experienced hard times know that it can exist.

If the money is contained in a special structure, it can always be decided
that it will be used for a special event, but this use will be decided and
not happen without purpose.

I say that because I have worked in a fat society for years and when the
environment became harder we first burnt the fat (it took more than 15
years) before trying to change the way we were working.
We did not feel that it was necessary to change our methods because our
reserves permitted us to wait and see. We hoped that the future would change
for our benefit without making any effort.  In fact our financial reserves
gave us a false sensation of security.
If the money (the fat) had been contained in an outside structure or even
distributed to the shareholders we would be now in a complete different
situation than we are now.
We are now lean (and at last more efficient), not by choice but by force.

A saying in French tells that the necessity is a good adviser.
Regards.
Jean-Jacques Laublé .

Strasbourg France. 
Posted by  Jean-Jacques Laublé <jean-jacques.lauble at wanadoo.fr>
posting date  Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:24:18 +0200