Keep your eye on the ball

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“Show me the money.”

—Jerry Maguire

If you want a career in in professional services — to make handsome fortune from the comfort of an ergonomic chair, with beanbags, a soft play area, free taxis home after nine and no need for the benign protection of a human resources department, just keep your eye on the ball.

The ball

What is the word for a “shibboleth” that is an ancient principle, only for good reason?

Things that tap deep roots in the cultural layer; that speak to fundamental biological and societal needs and that can’t be derived away. This is the “ball”.

The “ball” is not the upshot of the employee survey, the mentoring program, pay parity, ESG credentials, workplace satisfaction, community teamworks — these things will come and go, and their administration will doubtless vouchsafe some lucky chancers a decent living — but the basic business of sensibly deploying capital in pursuit of sustainable return.

The things without which — you know — there is nothing.

Activities that satisfy the kind of needs that have not changed since the Industrial Revolution — since the Agricultural Revolution. Since the invention of the wheel.

The collection, allocation and application of scarce resources.

One ancient proxy for all of these activities.

This time is not different.

The information economy

Much of the modern professional services economy in second-order, and third order, proxies. Health and safety inspectorate may have been automated and, ceteris paribus, human resources will, insh’Allah, have been whacked in the meantime, but if what you do (aside from all that) is to look after is the prudent allocation of real capital to real risk —and if you are good at it — then nothing the information revolution can throw at you will hurt.

For the most part the information revolution is a revolution of delivery.

Amazon can deliver products to you more effectively and efficiently than a high street retailer. eBay puts you in touch with public sellers of goods in a way that classified advertisements and auction houses could never do.

Neither the network nor the algorithm changes the basic facts of commerce: there is demand, and supply, and commerce is the business of connecting it. The information revolution may make the various wheels of commerce that must turn more reliable and more efficient, but it5 has not altered the fact: goods must be transferred from seller to buyer, and value exchanged in return.

The abstract articulation of value: money. Hence, the enduring importance of those skilled in financial services.

“Pure play” technology businesses may be different, but only by degree. In some sense, traditional media has been disrupted by the network: it is now supremely easy to gather and repackage “content,” but at some point quality control, and authentication by real experts with real experience does make a difference.

Quality, ultimately, prevails.

Allocating capital in the hope of an acceptable return has not been changed by the information revolution. The allocation of land to resources, the manufacturing of physical goods, the manufacture, purchase, sale and conveyance of commodities is barely changed by the metaverse. People must eat. People need shelter. The resources of the planet are scarce and growing scarcer. These are fundamental truths which millenarian thinking cannot falsify. These are age-old concerns, they are not fashionable, but they are enduring. Get good at meeting them, and you will always be needed.

Make yourself needed.

Don’t be a bureaucratic passenger

The things that can change are delivery, administration, law, regulation, audit, monitoring and control. Regulatory change. Netting compliance. These are transient. They create confusion and second-order properties effects.

These are pastimes for bureaucratic passengers. They are problems that can and, if important enough, will be, solved. Adeptness at solving them is, in the short term, an opportunity, but in the medium to long-term, a vulnerability. You can’t take this expertise with you. Once the problem is solved, it becomes stale.

Having to weaving delicate fabrics by hand was a transient problem. It was solved. If you were a hand-weaver, you became redundant with the Jacquard Loom. But producing fabrics has not been solved. It still requires capital. Allocating capital will involve risk. It is a perennial problem.

The problem of putting food on people’s tables and rooves over their heads will not be solved.

Find activities which involve a genuine, ongoing, risk of physical or monetary loss, and specialise in that.

See also

• This time is different
• Capital allocation