IV.        REPORT OUTLINE

USE FOLLOWING OUTLINE FOR MID-TERM AND FINAL REPORT

Summary checklist - By Mid-Term - http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/448/448midtermchecklist.html

Summary checklist By Final - http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/448/448finalchecklist.html

Executive Summary – 1 to 2 pages where you list the 3 main recommendations that solve several key dysfunctions in the small business, and conclude with the main value-added contribution (besides an excellent analysis & report), such as something that your team did that actually lowers costs of increases revenues during this semester.  Include total calculation of hidden costs and untapped revenues (minus intervention costs) that would result if your recommendations were implemented by the client.

Introduction – (2 to 3 pages) Explain key terms in ways your client will understand: SEAM, 3 Axis Model, 4 Leaf-Clover, Mirror Effect, 3 types of storytelling, and Virtue ethics. Please explain each of these exhibits. Use and explain the 'storytelling standpoint methodology' throughout your report, from this introduction to the recommendation and conclusions sections.

You each will use 'storytelling notebooks' in class and in all field visits with clients. Storytelling Standpoint Methodology- is defined - as the "emotional-volitional force" (Bakhtin, 1993: 34) of your storytelling consulting. Your storytelling of the small business past (its founding, its historical narrative, uncovered 'little wow moments', its living story web of relationships unfolding in the Nowness, and the antenarratives (those bets that shape the future, before a narrative locks in a path) that are the not-yet, the ought-to-be, and so forth. Storytelling standpoint is three ways of intervening in the "living, concrete and palpable (intuitable) once-occurrent whole - an event" (Bakhtin, 1993: 32) of small business life.

Hidden Costs & Untapped Revenues Charts – and explanations (2 - 3 pages). Put in the charts, and use storytelling standpoint methods (putting in representative examples of what was, what is and what-ought-to-be but is not-yet-achieved. Use the hidden costs and untapped revenue charts in your Savall et al (2008) textbook as templates. For example, Figure 5.1 (p.32) has calculation of visible and performance, hidden costs, and overall performance increases to profit margins (do this sort of calculation). Table Figure 5.3 (p. 35) includes each observed dysfunction, its estimated frequency, how it affects costs or revenues (these are estimates based on interviews with client), and the subtotals. Please make your hidden cost and untapped revenue calculation subtotal per week, month, and year. Estimates are perfectly OK to use. You get the information by asking questions: 'How often does this happen?' 'What does that cost your small business?' 'If you did this thing you are talking about, what would it add to your revenues?' and so forth.

Include Four-Leaf Clover Image with SPIRALS in you Report- What follows are basic set of questions and their explainations. Use what is most helpful in the Diagnositc (top and Bottom Leaf (and stem of untapped revenues) and left-right leaves which cover Axis C in next section. See Chapter 7 of Quantum Physics of Storytelling book.

NOTE: THIS NEXT SET OF MATERIALS CAN BE INCLUDED IN AXIS A below.

TOP LEAF: Hypertrophied Dysfunctions – I will relate each leaf in Savall et al to Karl Marx, (1867, Vol. 1 Das Kapital, on line). Savall et all are not into Marxism, but I see some important parallels to fashion in the small business.  A small business is the gathering of several handicraft processes in one workshop, and/or being handicraft set that receives inputs or sends its products and services to other small (or sometimes large) businesses in a sort of supply chain. Click here to go to top leaf questions to ask

BOTTOM LEAF: Hypertrophied Hidden Costs

• Absenteeism – Ask about what happens when someone is out? How often does it occur? How does the work get done when it happens? Then ask: what does it cost? This is the hidden cost (not reported to accountants, so no need to ask them).  Compute the cost, not only of labor to fill in or owner’s salary to fill in for absent worker, but cost of sales not made, inventory not order, other workers not getting work done because they too had to fill in. Tally up all the $ costs (use best guess estimates).
• Occupational Injuries – Similar questions: does it happen, how often, what are the consequences, what are the costs?
• Staff Turnover – Same questions, but add, cost of training new person, lost sales during time no one was doing that job (or doing someone else’s job instead of their own).
• Non-quality – This goes back to time spent on wrong things, rework time, shoddy workmanship, and time-wasted (non-value added).
• Direct Productivity Gap – See working conditions. What is the surplus value?  Where is the value-added, and the value-less?

LEFT LEAF: Atrophied Structures (aka AXIS C on 3 Axis Chart)

• Physical – Buildings, offices, partitions, work areas, location are materialities, part of structuring of physicality.
• Technological – Is it current technology? Is there better technology? What is the trade off in implementing technology? Is it instead of labor?  E.g. Big Red is a machine, and it displaces handicraft (hammer and anvil). That allows some greater productivity, but it changes the role of the human agent.
• Organizational – Job descriptions, objectives and structure for each function (unit), levels (see Work Organization in top Leaf).
• Demographic – Age of workers, customers, and owner – is this the right demographic for this small business?
• Mental – What are the mental mindsets? Is thinking/doing tree-in-the-head (linear-hierarchic) or grass-in-the-head (spiral/assemblage-webwork)? What optics (perspectives) are there in this small business? Are they right for this kind of business? What is the customer orientation?  “Many people have tress growing in their heads” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 17). One mental structure (trees in the head) is all about linear, progressive ordered antenarratives (Linstead & Pullen, 2006: 1290). Tree-in-the-head figures out the ontology (beginning state) the acorn becomes the trunk with lots of the branches, full of binary (this or that branching) until the end state is reached).  But there is another mental structure (grass in the head), a rhizome way of thinking. This is thinking like a webwork (or meshwork) that is all middles, making connections but without fixing any order (Linstead & Pullen, 2006: 1290). A small business mental structure is tree-in-the-head, grass-in-the-head, or both.

RIGHT LEAF: Atrophied Behaviors

• Individual – This relates to Aristotle’s (350BCE) virtues and to each type of ethics (see chapter on Principle-Based Ethics). What are the habits of action (thought & emotion)? Are the habits in excess or deficient (see Virtues Spiral)? Are people trained to do value-added work?  Is it value-less behavior?
• Work Group – Should there be teams? Is there coordination and cooperation between teams/units/departments/levels (see Top Leaf)?
• Professional Categories – What is the division of labor? Are their worker specialties (aka professional categories, such as clerical, technical, journeyman, apprentice, administrative, etc.)?
• Pressure Group – This includes internal and external (unions, community groups, political groups, etc.)
• Collective – This includes the Transorganizational networks that are key to the success or failure of the small business: referent groups (such as Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, and Optimist Club, etc.) that they need to belong to network. This is also the ‘external’ part of IESAP (see Axis B).

THE STEM (Roots and Runners/Vines): ATROPHIED ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE OF THE ENTERPRISE (Immediate Results and Creation of Potential)

Did you know that a 4-Leaf Clover is a Rhizome?

According to the Journal of Botanix: “The Four Leaf Clover has long rhizomes, which makes one think of shoelaces. Leaves that float on the water, grow from the rhizomes. These leaves are divided into 4 parts, resembling four-leaf clover. When you take the rhizomes out of the water in the autumn, small little objects are seen (it looks like small beans). It is sporocarps in which there are spores – from there the conclusion that these plants stem from ferns. The Four Leaf Clover grows in still standing water, rich in nutritive substances, on all continents, except South America” (source).

• Stem of downsurge-spiral-roots– rooted in the firm itself, in the marketplace, in the geography of place, in the nourishment of the environment where resources (materials, customers, employees, and ecology) reside.
• Roots – stem has its roots, and if a small business is not well-rooted it will not flourish. The roots draw in the nutrients, the life-sustaining vibrant material, the actants, actors, agencies. Roots in an assemblage antenarrative can sprout tubers, and those can be new business adventures. Some roots drain a small business of its resources and capabilities. They can be excessive.  Other times roots are deficient and need to be grown with careful attention. You don’t just open your doors and become a success. The small business needs its roots.
• Runners/Vines – runners and vines also sprout tubers. Networking every which way, intertwining, and moving around obstacles, growing.  Never the same. Lines of flight, but not linear (not straight lines), and making turns. And there can be too many or too few. These are visible above ground, and you can observer them, listen for them. This is where untapped potential is being found in the coursing of the runners/vines (and some of the roots), and you as a consultant can identify places, times, events, processes which will result in more revenues.
• The Stem is rooted in Multiplicities - There are connections among the processes that are diverse and heterogeneous.

Include 3-axes figure in your report, and please use Storytelling Standpoint Method examples in all three axes. See Quantum Physics of Storytelling for complete discussion.

Three Axes image

Axis A – CYCLIC IMPROVEMENT PROCESS is a "Cyclic" Antenarrative (3 to 5 pages). The Cyclic Improvement Process has four stages (or phases): Diagnostic, Project, Implementation, and Results. The thing to remember about a cyclic antenarrative is that oftentimes, the cycle does not recur exactly (stage-by-stage) and can become an upward or downward spiral.  The best diagnostic is LISTENING to narrative-past, Living stories, challenging entrenched narratives, opening path for new antenarrative possible futures (as-yet-not-achieved, & what-ought-to-be); Making Spaces for them to get told to you in your storytelling notebooks.

1. DIAGNOSIS of 6 Dysfunctions (WO, WC, 3Cs, TM, TNG, SI – see top leaf of 4 leaf clover below). The word ‘dysfunction’ has a special meaning in ‘intervention research’; it comes from Aristotle’s book on Virtues; the deficiency or excess of a habitude is a dysfunction, whereas the intermediate path is habits that are just right for the situation and virtuous ethically. Habitude in Latour’s (2005) action network terms is the habitual actions. The most important part of your DIAGNOSTIC is the MIRROR EFFECT:

Mirror Effect – And it is most important section in mid-term & final report where you put in all your Blackboard entries from your field Storytelling Notebooks (5 by mid-term, 5 more by final). Again use storytelling standpoint methodology. You collect the stories (verbatim dialogue) and you tell the stories in a Mirror Effect meeting with your client. They listen because you also share the costs and lost revenues that are happening by continuing to do just as they are doing, and all the lower costs and untapped revenue potential that comes from doing a project with you.  Mirror Effect (pp.66, 149) is defined as the direct quotes and the storytelling recorded from stakeholders (copied out of your Storytelling Notebook interview & observation verbatim quotes), your own Expert Opinions (p. 66), & hidden revenue/hidden cost.

Please use this Table in reporting MIRROR EFFECT IN Mid-Term and Final Report (it is definitely required)

(Also please see p. 55 Figure 5.2, p. 58-9, Figure 5.23 & 5.24 through p. 62 Figure 5.25.c; and in Chapter 6, p. 86 Figure 6.7, Appendix 3 & 5 for several other examples of Creation of Potential and Hidden Cost Calculation forms as templates to use in Mirror Effect if they are more appropriate).

2. PROJECT PLAN: This is co-designed with your client and is over and done by the end of the semester. It only implements a doable part of what you diagnosed. It includes your contract with the client called PNAC (see Axis C).  The intervention is designed to change the actuality of habit patterns of the actants (actors & things) that are ongoing in the small business. Please include storytelling standpoint excerpts from your storytelling notebook of the project intervention and how it was co-designed with the client.
3. (PROJECT) IMPLMENTATION: Please tell the implementation living story of your project implementation and how it is changing the dominant, entrenched narrative of the past, and initiating a new transformation, an antenarrative of future potentiality in the material conditions.
4. EVALUATION OF RESULTS: How are you measuring the results of the intervention and its action implementation in terms of changes in habitudes? Again, use storytelling standpoint methodology.

Axis B PERMANENT MANAGEMENT TOOLS – This is what you train the small business client to do (3 to 5 pages).  It seems linear, all the 6 tools in a line, but this is itself a Force of Change, and the Time Spiral whirls through this axis, and the other two, one-by-one, beginning with #1 Time Management:

1. TM (Time Management) this is a diary of time usage. (pp. 121-125), this is where the client learns to delegate) and eliminate tasks so a space can open up for strategic actions. In the words of Peter Drucker, "There is surely nothing quite as useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." (Drucker, Harvard Business Review, 1963). For Karl Marx (1867, Vol. 1, Chap 14: 360) the worker sells their time and labor-power to the owner of business (capital) and becomes unfit to “make anything independently.”  Should a machine be used to decrease the labor-time? The owner coordinates machine-time and worker’s time in one or more stages of a labor process to make products or services. In a Blacksmith workshop, one person cuts the iron, another runs the forge, another is the motive-force of a billows (if the forge has no air-machine), another hammers on an anvil (unless there is a power hammer with motive-force of electricity, water, or wind). The air-machine of the forge and power-hammer machine that substitutes for human’s (motive power) hammer blows of the hammer on anvil, saves time, so more products are made per hour, and per day. The labor process is part of the division of labor into these detail-workers (specializations of repeated time & motion of the body) with each worker using a particular tool or tending a machine. If the labor process is linear (a sequence of process phases of worker-tool-machine) when the owner can increase production (amount of products produced per unit of time) by grouping different operations together in the blacksmith workshop. Marx (1867: Vol. 1, Chap 14: p. 345) calls it turning out a “given quantum of production in a given time” and that is “a technical law of the process of production itself.”  The following is repeated from the Time Management Upper Leaf (inly needs to be in report one place, your choice of where).
   1. Requried that you draw this in your report - indicating the proportions and writing an analysis of each dysfunction.

      

      1st DYSFUNCTION: (Shift in Function) EXCESS TIME – not adding value to the small business (its sales or services); tasks or functions that needs to be abandoned, transferred, or eliminated. Included for elimination are unethical behaviors (steeling, cheating, lying, not doing the right thing, etc.).  This is where you get time to do 3 to 5.
   • 2nd DYSFUNCTION: (Regulation of Dysfunction) DEFICIENCY TIME – Time spent correcting mistakes such as rework, due to dysfunctions that could be resolved. This includes lack of good habits of action. This is also where by resolving deficiencies in quality and productivity you get more time to do 3 to 5.
   • 3rd DYSFUNCTION: (Day to Day Management) NOT ENOUGH VALUE-ADDED TIME – Time that adds value to the production of goods and services, to necessary functions. Maintain these value-added habits of action.
   • 4th DYSFUNCTION: (Prevention of Dysfunction) NO PREVENTION OF DYSFUNCTION – This is antenarrative: shaping the future processes so type 1 and type 2 time dysfunctions (excess & deficiency) are prevented from every happening again. Distracted owners who forget this one are spinning their wheels, putting out fires instead of preventing them. This needs to become a habit of action.
   • 5th DYSFUNCTION: (No Implementation of Strategy) NOT CREATING [REVENUE] POTENTIAL – This is also an antenarrative: shaping the future with strategies that enhance revenue, expand the market, build capacity, advertise, market, etc.  It is an investment of time in the future that a small business cannot due, if 1 and 2 and 4 are out of control, or no #3 (value-added) is consistently happening. It is oftentimes the most neglected area, because there is no time left to do it, if 1-4 are out of control. Again, this needs to become a habit of action.
2. SPILB (Strategic Piloting Indicators Log Book) - Your storytelling notebook has entries about how to track things and serves as your SPILB. Develop 5 types of indicators (include qualitative & quantitative) for IESAP, PAP, etc. pp. 126-129 in Savall et al (2008) book. The piloting of a small business depends on reading indicators to know if the spiral is upwards or downwards, if the business is making or losing money, if customer returns and rework is decreasing or increasing, and so forth.

• Type 1: EVERYDAY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS for SPL:

  1. Internal Activity - e.g. volume of activity in a given day, week, month, or year. Examples: number of pfoducts, deliveries, repoaris, amount of waste, delays, and each of the root-downsurge-spirals (excess salary, overtime, overconsumptin, nonproduction, noncreation of potential, & risks) (see p. 33).
  2. External Activity - e.g. scanning the business environment, being vigilent about competitors and the quality of materials from supppliers, new technologies, and other items on Axis C.
  3. The Immediate Results - Quantiative indicators like costs, revenues, direct sales revenue, costs of repiars, dysfunction costs (absenteeism, occupational injuries/diseases, staff turnover, nonquality, & direct productivity gaps) (see. p. 33).

  Type 2: CREATION OF POTENTIAL - INDICATORS for SPL:

  1. Evolution Activity - e.g. Two lists: First a list of actions that implement the IASAP in this period of PAP by specifying schedule and who will do what when, and why. Second, a list of dysfunctions to be prevented based on Axis A Diagnostic. There is a multi-skilling going on here where people in the small business are learning to identify dysfunctions, and root-stem-downsurge-spirals and to implment value-added TM, and to be vigilent with SPL. This relates to the CG tool, since some of these competencies must be learned. It it relates to Azis C, which is all about evolution activity of scanning the environment and making changes.
  2. Activity Linked to PAP - e.g. Make a list with your client of developmental actions (above evolution activity list and dysfunction list_ and specify what is to be implement by whom, when, and why on the PAP chart (see chart below).
  3. Activity directly Creating Potential - e.g. indicators of qualitative or quantitative nature of how potential is being created, how dysfunctions are being prevented, how dowsurge-spirals are being up-rooted, and how employess are being multi-skilled in SEAM tools, including TM, SPL, and PAP.
3. PAP Priority Action Plan -for one semester (a few months). This is a simple chart translating the IESAP goals to specific sub-objectives, with priority actions, and who is responsible to get it done in the small business, and when it gets done during the 10 weeks of this course. (pp. 114-117). Doing (by workers) and Thinking (by owners) can become separated. The result of this sort of division of labor is a deterioration of “intellectual… virtues” of workers (Marx, 1867, Vol. 1, Chap 14, P. 362).  PAP is a linear antenarrative (a sequence of future-shaping events). As Marx puts it “division of labor … is an effect of past, and a cause of future progress” (ibid, p. 363).  The past narrative (retrospection, backward-looking) is effect and a cause of future-shaping linear action plan. Savall et al (2008) recommend involving workers in the PAP process, which in turn sharpens their Planning and Thinking in relation to their Doing.

• This is my rendition of Savall et al (2008: 96) chart, that is required for mid-term.

  STRATEGIC AXES	OBJECTIVES	PRIORITY ACTIONS	PEOPLE CONCERNED	JAN	FEB	MAR	APR	MAY	COMMENTS
  	1.
  	2.
  	3.
  PRINCIPLES:	Spurring Energy		Decentralization	Synchronization					Enhancing Vigilance

4. CG Competencies Grid (aka Scale of Skills) - What are their strong, weak, and critical competencies before you consult (intervene), and ones needed to develop to get the level of quality, performance, capacity, market desired? (pp. 118-120 in SEAM Manual; also 96-99 & 56-59). Knowledgeable, trained, competent workers can do everything in the small business.  An excessive specialization (division of labor) is a working condition where there is no flexibility: people cannot adapt to cover each other’s functions, there is no sense of how one’s job fits into the division of labor, skill sets become too narrow to exploit new opportunities in the environment, etc. Decomposition of competencies by specialization to form repetitive low-skill labor use, at lowest possible labor cost is only value-added in making simple products or services.
5. IESAP Internal/External Strategic Action Plan - This is SAP for internal organization and external environment change. IESAP covers 5 years. It is a simple chart with 3 objectives and a 5-year implementation schedule. (pp. 112-113 in Savall et al book).
6. PNAC (Periodically Negotiable Activity Contract) - PNACs, your student-consultant contract for three objectives your project will complete with your client. PNAC is renegotiated several times during the term to keep your objectives in sync with client and instructor expectations. The PNAC builds on your contract with the client, and it goes further. Here your 3 intervention project OBJECTIVES get specific piloting indicators, you work out how the supplementary incentives for workers (its bonus etc.) work out. And you plan out the resources and means allocated by client to meet each objective (time from specific parsons, work space, copy machine, etc you need to get your intervention to happen. Note: PNAC is expected to change from the first agreements in early part of term, to the middle, and before the end. Plan on it (Savall et al, 2008: pp. 130-134).

Axis C PERIODICAL STRATEGIC AND POLITICAL DECISIONS (aka PROACTIVE STRATEGY) (3 to 5 pages): Axis C is the scanning of the environment of the small business. It also points along the Time Spiral, and a Force of Change, Main Directions (upward or downward spiral, more of the same linear strategy, repeating same cycles, reassemblage), Rules of the Game (who makes them and what is being done to change them?), Resources Redeployment (strategies need resources, where are they?), Technological and Procedural Changes (from more tools, machines, to job and department and process descriptions and procedure manuals for training), Strategic Choice: Product Market (or service); there are choices at each point in the moving spiral, Choice of Management System (more or less bureaucracy, more or less participation), and Strategic Development of Human Resources (training, recruiting talent, sharing the wealth, inviting head and hands to work participatively). Axis C is all the proactive strategies to intervene in the Structures and Behaviors that have atrophied, as presented, next, in the Four-Leaf Clover.

Conclusions and Recommendations. Tell several storytelling standpoint methodology examples to close out your report, showing what has been accomplished, and what might be the future.

APPENDIX: THE TOP LEAF DYSFUNCTIONS QUESTIONS TO ASK

• Working Conditions-   The Working Conditions of a linear process, a cyclic process, a spiral process, and an assemblage process are quite different. And you job is to sort out these differences, since these four processes can combine, be hybrid in the same small business. Wages, tools, machines, space, labor process, etc. Wages according to Marx (1867, Vol. 1, Chap 17: p. 519) are the “value of labor-power” and that needs to equal (survivance) “values of necessities of life habitually required by the average laborer” to exist in their community. And the skilled and unskilled workers set conditions for “the splitting up of handicrafts” to lower costs by sorting specialists doing detail (repetitive) work: (Marx, Vol. 1, Chap 14: p. 367) in the more linear process, and some of the stage-by-stage cyclic processes. In labor process theory, owners try to deskill workers, while increasing the linearity (tree-in-the-head) thinking of strict division of labor, each grouping of workers doing a simple low-skill task, combined with lots of automation (machines), so as to lower the costs of production. The spiral is the cyclic gone off its routine repetition of stages, and into stages no longer as predictable as once before. An upward spiral seems a good thing, adding stages, splitting off into new directions, going with the flow. A downward spiral seems more catastrophic, more deficient. Either spiral necessitates working conditions of a variety of specialties, but not all ordered, making it more likely to adapt to what is around the bend.  With (crabgrass-in-the-head) the assemblage of crafts under one small business, one farm or ranch is the working conditions of relationality, connectivity, more of a webwork (or meshwork). The excessive division of labor and hierarchy conditions is for Savall et al (2008) is inadvisable, since it is not an investment if human potential (see Axis C of 3-Axis chart).  And here Marx and Savall are in agreement, since Marx also prefers skilling, and not too much division of labor.  Here are some questions to ask and things to observe:
• Do people work in linear, or cyclic, or spiral, or assemblage (webwork-rhizome), or in some combination of working conditions?
• Are the wages fair and just given cost of living in the area?
• What is the time spent by labor (and owner) in the working day hopefully creates value (services or products to sell) in the various types of processes (linear, cyclic, spiral, or assemblage)?
• Is the work done by unskilled or skilled labor?
• Are workers using just their hands and not their brains, or both? In a division of labor, oftentimes the owner tries to be the brains, and the mostly unskilled workers are the ‘hands’? (Marx, 1867, Vol. 1, Chap 14, P. 362) makes the point that the will (volition) of workers is corrupted by limiting them to simple repetition of simple actions of dexterity, at the expense of intellectual virtues.  “Detail work [i.e. simple repetitive piece work] is distributed to different individuals” and each one in deskilling “is made the automatic motor of fractal operation” becoming a cog in the machine (Marx, 1867, Vol. 1, chap 14: p. 360, bracketed addition, mine).
• Is there a division of labor into a labor process (people doing different task specialties with different tools and machines)?
• Are there machines that take the place of labor (e.g. self-checkout machines in grocery stores; robotics in manufacturing, a power hammer instead of human use of hammer on anvil, etc.)?
• What is value-added time (time spent making the products), and valueless time (time spent on other stuff, breaks, phone calls home, & other stuff that wastes time)?
• What is balance of human, animal, and machine? The productivity of labor (Marx, Vol. 1, Chap 17: p. 520). The productivity of machines gets balanced to yield value-added to producing goods or services.  

There are two key concepts to know and implement:

• What is Surplus Value?  Surplus value is the difference between sales (minus any fixed [rent, machines] & variable costs [supplies, materials) minus the cost of labor-power [wages/salaries/commissions/payroll taxes, etc.].  Suppose you the small business is the owner (who schedules and sells) and two workers who make the products. If you were to pay $80 a day to each worker and those workers make a total of four products selling for $100 each ($400): You have $400 in sales minus your fixed costs and non-labor variable costs, say $200, and you pay $160 to labor, and that leaves you with Surplus Value (profit) of $40. Now your choices are to increase productivity of labor by getting more output, or lower the cost of labor, by paying them less, or giving them less hours.  Let’s try the increase productivity option: Pay same wages, but demand six products a day that you again sell at $100 each. Now you net $240.  Let’s try a different option: lower the cost of labor by cut in pay and cut in hours from the second worker.  Let’s assume you pay the first worker $40 and demand three products a day, and put the second work on half days at a cut in pay, $20 a day and demand one product a day. So now your cost is $60 a day for labor to make four products.  Selling them all, you net $400, less $200 in other costs, and less $60 for labor, for a Surplus Value of $140.  One problem with cheaper labor is they go elsewhere for more money, and you end up hiring someone who can produce fewer quality products (or services).
• What is Multi-Skilling? Savall et al (2008) recommend multi-skilling. Instead of training worker to do one job, with repeated time and motion, workers are cross-trained to be skilled at several different operations or phases in the labor process (division of labor) needed to make products and services. In this way the worker develops “intellectual potencies” in the “material process of production” and can attain the knowledge and skill to become independent of the shop, even open their own shop (Marx, 1867: Vol. 1, Chap. 14: p. 369-362). Fearing this result, many small businesses keep knowledge of certain operations a secret and employ half-idiotic persons” to maintain secrets of their work processes (ibid).
• Work Organization – No surveys, this is all from observations and interviews.
•  The various processes group into ore or another work organization, or some sort of hybrid, of some succession (one into another). What are differences in work organization of a linear-hierarchy-antenarrative, a cyclic antenarrative, a spiral or an assemblage antenarrative
• Is there a hierarchy? It’s a sign of tree-in-the-head thinking and doing. Is it what Marx (1867, vol. 1, Chap 14: p. 364) calls “the lordship of capital over laborers?”  This also ties into working conditions. Savall et al (2008) by contrast favor consulting that intervenes by promoting more democratic processes, less hierarchy, more horizontal and vertical teams to implement projects (to innovate), and sharing the wealth when people’s ideas bring in revenue, lower costs. For Marx, the work organization is a totally oppressive, exploitative affair because of the pressures for a labor process that deskills labor.
•  Is it too much or too little hierarchy? Too little, and the business is rudderless, chaos. Too much and it’s too bureaucratic to compete. That is, owner does one set of functions, and delegates to specialized labor functions (production, sales, accounting, information systems, etc.).  
• What is the division of labor (top and bottom, and between horizontal functions, see Marx (1867: Chap 14).
• Is it a relational and participative (webwork, meshwork of connectivity), or very top-down (do as I say, not as I do)?
• Is it bureaucratic (rules, formal procedures, job descriptions, hiring is by competencies?  
• Is it adaptive to changing conditions? The Work Organization re-presents itself, oftentimes as a narrative of historical progress and that becomes the bases for a linear or cyclic antenarrative of repeated phase of economic development (Marx, 1867, Vol. 1, Chap 14: p. 363).
• It is a particular Storytelling Standpoint  of repeating the same division of labor (skills) and the same hierarchical divisions.
• 3C’s: Communication-Coordination-Cooperation – Top-down co-ordination is quite different from assemblage-webwork connectivity. This is every kind for storytelling communication, and stories of all forms of coordination and cooperation necessary to the operation of the small business, its marketing (getting the story out to the customer), etc. Get these by observation, participation (shop), document analysis, (including web-presence), and interviews (non-structured, please no surveys, just LISTEN and take verbatim fieldnotes!).
• Is the communication top-down, bottom-up, or relationality of connectivity (webwork)?
• Is the co-ordination by hierarchy and rules, or is it by stages in a cycle, or by the turns in a spiral of what is the situation Now, and in the next Now, or some sort of connectivity of self-designing adaptive webwork?
• Is the cooperation by fiat, by open participation, or by an assemblage of negotiated periodic relationality?
• Time Management - In Savall et al (2008: chap 7, see chart p. 103) there are five types of time. Two types are about past excess time (doing the wrong things that need to be abandoned, transferred, and eliminated. You figure out each of the following by using Storytelling Standpoint Methodology (participant observation, and gathering stories, diaries of time events):
• 1st DYSFUNCTION: (Shift in Function) EXCESS TIME – not adding value to the small business (its sales or services); tasks or functions that needs to be abandoned, transferred, or eliminated. Included for elimination are unethical behaviors (steeling, cheating, lying, not doing the right thing, etc.).  This is where you get time to do 3 to 5.
• 2nd DYSFUNCTION: (Regulation of Dysfunction) DEFICIENCY TIME – Time spent correcting mistakes such as rework, due to dysfunctions that could be resolved. This includes lack of good habits of action. This is also where by resolving deficiencies in quality and productivity you get more time to do 3 to 5.
• 3rd DYSFUNCTION: (Day to Day Management) NOT ENOUGH VALUE-ADDED TIME – Time that adds value to the production of goods and services, to necessary functions. Maintain these value-added habits of action.
• 4th DYSFUNCTION: (Prevention of Dysfunction) NO PREVENTION OF DYSFUNCTION – This is antenarrative: shaping the future processes so type 1 and type 2 time dysfunctions (excess & deficiency) are prevented from every happening again. Distracted owners who forget this one are spinning their wheels, putting out fires instead of preventing them. This needs to become a habit of action.
• 5th DYSFUNCTION: (No Implementation of Strategy) NOT CREATING [REVENUE] POTENTIAL – This is also an antenarrative: shaping the future with strategies that enhance revenue, expand the market, build capacity, advertise, market, etc.  It is an investment of time in the future that a small business cannot due, if 1 and 2 and 4 are out of control, or no #3 (value-added) is consistently happening. It is oftentimes the most neglected area, because there is no time left to do it, if 1-4 are out of control. Again, this needs to become a habit of action.
• Integrated Training – Most small business training is on the job. In Marx (1867: Chap 14 p. 349) the idea is training people to be more productive so that they produce more products and services in the same time” labor-power requires different degrees of training” for different kinds of labor specialties.  In the Socio-Economic Approach, the idea is also to train to increase Human Potential (Axis C) and to have Periodic Negotiated Contract Renewal (PNAC, see Axis B) that gets workers paid more money for their increase in productivity (it is also an example of Virtue Ethics of Justice in Distribution and Equity). Some businesses exploit training, increasing productivity without sharing the rewards. The question here:
• Is it the right training for linear, cyclic, spiral, and/or assemblage processes and task?
• Does it increase quality, increase productivity (less time to make more products)? (Is spiral moving upward or downward or are cycles recurring just as before, in a rut)?
• Does it build human potential (see Axis C)? (Increase skill).
• Are rewards shared? (I.e. if there are gains in productivity, costs get lowered, etc., do workers share in the reports, or just the owners? The whole idea of PNAC (Axis B) is to negotiate rewards for getting results (the opposite of reengineering, where processes are improved but many people are laid off).
• Strategic Implementation – This is related to A to E, but has to do with having a yearly Priority Action Plan, an Internal/External Strategic Action Plan (See Axis B), as well as advertising budgets and schedules, inventory planning, marketing (all four P’s: product, price, place [distribution], & and promotion). It is also all of Axis C, doing the Proactive Strategy, and all the Structures and Behaviors in the 4-Leaf Clover approach. Some questions worth asking to sort out what kind of antenarrative their strategic implementation is? Most are hybrid-more than one type, probably all four processes of becoming:
• Linear Antenarrative: moves from past over to future-shaping linear, branching, from beginning to end, without much sense of Now-Being of the middles. Are strengths (internal to the business) and opportunities (external in market) being exploited? Are weaknesses (internal) and threats (external) being minimized?
• Cyclic Antenarrative: Small businesses have many recurring cycles of labor processes, production process phases, seasonal cycles of demand and harvest, etc. It also moves from past to future-shaping without much sensemaking of the present Nowness. Are the same cycles of (planning, doing, checking, and acting) from the past being rolled over into the proactive strategy for shaping the future?
• Spiral Antenarrative: this moves from the Now-Being once-occurrent event-ness (Bakhtin, 1993; Deleuze, 1993; Benjamin, 1999) to the future shaping. Have the small business processes left the cyclic (& linear) path of ‘repetition compulsion’? Are they on an upward or a downward turn in their spiral path? Most likely both are happening simultaneously. What is around the bend? What is their virtue spiral (i.e. what virtues/vices) are they encountered on the spiral? Spirals have direction, velocity, centering (centripetal) and decentering forces (centrifugal) forces pulling inward, pushing outward. What are they in this small business moving from Now to Now, becoming to becoming?
• Assemblage (rhizome): This also moves from present to future-shaping. Assemblages are on the move, changing, reassembling, and changing in webwork-direction as resources dwindle or blockages are encountered. Assemblages are non-linear (lines of flight), runners and roots moving every which way, all at once and reassembling as the assemblage: territorializes, deterritorializes and reterritorializes (see Boje, 2011a; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Latour, 1999, 2005; Bennett, 2010). An assemblage (Latour, 2005) is five sorts of materialities: 1) actants (material), 2) heterogeneous agencies (conduits), 3) different optics (perspectives), 4) different times (stuff made at different times), and 5) different places (stuff coming from lots of places). What is the flow of materials (raw and processed) through the small business from person-to-person, from person-to-machine-to-person, from machine-to-machine, etc.? How are the assemblages of materials actants? What are the subterranean roots? What are the above-ground (visible) vines or runners? Where are the tubers forming from runners/vines/roots taking root?  How heterogeneous is the assemblage? What happens when a barrier is encountered by a moving assemblage? (Over, under, around, or through).

NOTES:

Storytelling enacts ‘Future-Shaping-Potentiality’ (FSP) waves either from past to future, or from present to future.   Both these types of FSPs activate resonate echo waves” either a Past-Shaping-Confirmation (PSC) from future to past, or a Now-Shaping-Confirmation (NSC) from future to present. The cyclical antenarratives have determinate recurring stages or phases, such a birth, maturation, death of a product or an organization.  This BME linear and the bent line cyclical close off many other possibilities.

This is all quite practical as far as Intervention Research goes (the 3 axes) get at experience, reflection, and project/experiment, but what is the theory? For that see the section following the journal writing.

Please put your Thank you letter to client, evaluation by your client of your performance (in envelope), copy of confidentiality agreement you gave client at end of your final report.

Small Business CLIENT APPLICATION
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Confidentiality Agreement (after they agree to be client)
                                                http://peaceaware.com/448/Confidentiality Agreement.htm

Client Rating/Grading Sheet for Student's Report (at end of term)
http://peaceaware.com/448/Student Rating by Client.htm