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135. Mark Packard: How to Put Time on Your Side

Entrepreneurial action occurs in time. This brings uncertainty, because of continuous change. We can’t know what will be our future result, yet we must produce now in order to discover it. Are there answers to this conundrum? Yes. They’re found in action, and the timing of action. Mark Packard joins the Economics For Business podcast to share his research.

Download The Episode Resource “Mastering Time” (PDF) – Download

Kay Takeaways and Actionable Insights

There are three ways we can think about time.

Eternalism: Time goes back in the past to infinity and forward in the future to infinity. It’s a real thing, e.g., we can identify “points” in time. This is the time of physics.

Presentism: Past time does not exist, it is a memory pattern; the future is undetermined, it’s just a mental image. The only time that exists, and is real, is now. This is the time of Austrian economics.

Growing tree: The past is real, it has been determined, and there is one real historical truth (think roots and branches). The present is real and unfolding (new leaves growing every day). The future is undetermined.

Presentism is the view of time that best aligns with Austrian entrepreneurship and subjectivism. Entrepreneurs act based on their own sense of time, which can be both objective (the clock is ticking) and subjective (how I act in time and how I feel about it).

Entrepreneurial action occurs in time, which brings uncertainty.

Why must entrepreneurs deal with uncertainty? Because production takes time, and there is continuous change, so the outcomes of the production process in the future can’t be known. Even if the entrepreneur knows what demand is today, it can change over time, and can’t be known in the future. Businesses choose entrepreneurial action long before they know how it is going to turn out. Entrepreneurial uncertainty is a consequence of the existence of time.

Time is scarce, but it’s not a resource.

We can legitimately refer to time as being scarce. We often feel as though there is not “enough” of it. We’d like to be able to try to pack more effort and action into the time available to us.

When we talk in terms of scarcity, it’s tempting to think that time is a resource, akin to other scarce resources. We manage those other resources, we allocate them, we combine them, we use them efficiently.

We’d like to think the same way about managing time. But we don’t have control of it. Time just flows. It’s not at our disposal to use and allocate as we see fit. We can’t defer judgement on how to allocate our time, for example, because time keeps flowing and by deferring judgement we just did allocate some present time to not acting.

The resource over which we do have control is our effort.

We can choose how to allocate our efforts in time. Our efforts are not scarce in the same way that time is scarce. Our efforts are limitless; we can put effort into a wide range of applications. It’s because time is scarce that effort must be allocated as if it were scarce.

As time flows, customers’ perception of value changes, and entrepreneurs must follow this change process closely.

The effects of the flow of time are not exclusively limited to the allocation of entrepreneurial effort. They are also manifested in the customer’s Value Learning Process. (Mark Packard describes this in detail, and gives us some management tools: Mises.org/E4E_44Mises.org/E4E_55Mises.org/E4E_62, and Mises.org/E4E_73).

As a result of the flow of time, customer value is a process. Customers prefer the best satisfaction they can presently identify. As time flows, and they gain more knowledge and experience, what they value changes. Their preferences are different in the future than in the present. There is continuous change.

Since consumers are sovereign to the entrepreneur, it is mandatory to keep up with these changes. The continuous process of value learning never stops, and entrepreneurs must follow closely, gathering feedback, empathically interacting with this feedback, and making adaptive changes in their value propositions in response.

Sometimes, customer preferences may stabilize. Entrepreneurs may come to believe that there is a loyal cadre of reliable customers, and may invest in nurturing this loyalty and in relationship building. But they can not permit themselves to become too comfortable in these relationships. Customers are not loyal to a product or service or brand or supplier. They always seek the best satisfaction, and once new knowledge is available to them, they will change their behavior.

All entrepreneurial choices about action are made in the context of time, with significant consequences for outcomes.

Because customer preferences are continuously changing through time, entrepreneurs are faced with an uncertain decision about when to act. At what point in time do they have enough knowledge to go to market with a new value proposition, or a new or improved product or service? They know that, as soon as they act, customer preferences are going to change further (perhaps as a consequence of the action). If the entrepreneur decides that acting as the first mover in introducing an innovation gives them an advantage, they also know that competitors have an opportunity to process the new changes and overtrump that advantage as a second mover. Both are competing over the customer’s shifting sense of greater satisfaction.

When does the entrepreneur know enough? How does a business identify the narrow window in the customer’s value learning process that provides a signal to act? Timing is a big, important piece in the entrepreneurial puzzle.

There are several areas of time management where entrepreneurs can improve their skills.

While time isn’t a resource to be allocated, it provides a context for action in which entrepreneurs can subjectively make changes for the better.

Recalibration

Is your internal clock moving too fast or too slow? Do you find that you are always running late, or, alternatively, arriving too early and consequently “wasting” time (i.e., burdened with time periods you can’t fill with appropriate action)? If so, it’s time to recalibrate. Change the pace at which you do things. The world proceeds objectively at clock time, but your internal clock is subjective. You may need to align the clocks better. Change your schedule or rearrange your tasks to make your internal clock better aligned with real clock time.

Better time planning

Sometimes we simply err in assessing how much time to allocate to each of our various tasks. Each one takes longer than we planned, and by the end of the day, we’re several tasks “behind” and some will remain undone. If that happens over and over again, if there is regularity in your mistiming, you should change your mode of planning. Allocate different — more realistic — amounts of time to the completion of each task. Allow for delays. Don’t “lose track of time”.

Fix your prospective memory

Do you put tasks on your to-do list for the future and then forget them? This is a failure of prospective memory — your memory of the future. Prospective memory is your recall of the schedule you had planned out for yourself. One answer is to use mechanical or digital aids. Write down your to-do’s on a calendar. Enter them into your phone. Set an alarm as reminder.

Whatever, happens, don’t be the bottleneck.

Time management is not trivial. For entrepreneurs, being late, missing meetings, missing deadlines, or experiencing delays is likely going to cost you dearly.

Don’t be the bottleneck, don’t be the one causing the problems, for your colleagues, your partners, your customers, or any collaborators. Fix your own timing issues.

Additional Resources

“How to Master Time” (PDF): Download PDF

“Value is a Learning Process” (PDF): Download PDF

20. Dr. Keith Smith on How Austrian Economics Helped Me Innovate

Dr. Keith Smith is an anesthesiologist and founder of both the Surgery Center of Oklahoma and the Free Market Medical Association. Surgery Center of Oklahoma has innovated in healthcare with a completely free market offering of transparent pricing with no hidden fees, with a radically patient-centric organization and different and better patient and doctor relationship protocols. Free Market Medical Association is a movement to encourage medical practitioners throughout the country to pursue a similar pathway of radical innovation. Dr. Smith took inspiration from Austrian Economics principles. Here are the seven principles he talks about on the Economics For Entrepreneurs podcast:

1. Subjective Value

This was the first Austrian principle that Dr. Smith learned from reading Menger and Mises. He applied subjective value thinking to the healthcare industry by asking, “Who is the customer?” and “Are health care industry participants focused on creating customer value?”

He realized that, since the patient is not paying the anesthesiologist or the surgeon, then there was no value exchange between the customer and the service provider. Therefore, there is no market relationship. The customer was not in a position to evaluate the quality and efficiency of the medical service that Surgery Center Of Oklahoma and its surgeons provided.

When a third party payer is paying the fees, the patient is not acting as the customer. The fee from the third party can never represent the right price — the one that properly reflects customer preferences — and much of what is dysfunctional in the health care system stems from this arrangement. The industry can not accommodate the fact that patients who wish to consume medical services value different aspects of the service in different ways. Some will pay any price to experience the value of immediate service: surgery today. Some will defer service to a later date to pay a lower price. Some want a surgeon that spends a lot of time with them before and after surgery. Some prefer speed and efficiency. All individuals create value in their own minds, and should be able to decide what price they will pay for that value. Subjective value theory guides Dr. Smith to run his surgery center to serve patients’ preferences.

2. Preference Rankings

The idea of preference rankings may sound theoretical, but Dr. Smith has found a practical way to make them a tool for building an organization.

When the patient and the surgeon are both customers of the surgery center, it can be hard to align the interests of both without conflict. Dr. Smith calls this desired outcome “accommodating all interests with boundaries”. Both the surgeons and the patients can make unreasonable demands that can’t both be accommodated in the service of good care. How to accommodate both? Just ask them what their preferences are and how they rank them. Many times, just having the conversation is a revelation — it reveals considerations to the patient or surgeon they had not appreciated before. For example, if a patient demands a local anesthetic and the doctor reveals a preference against it, the reasons for the surgeon’s ranking may bring new information to the patient and may change their preference.

Preference ranking provides an organizational tool to help Dr. Smith build his team of surgeons. A surgeon that frequently shows up late, or habitually takes an excessively long time for a procedure, may be revealing a preference for revenue over patient quality. By observing behavior, it becomes easy to identify a doctor (or a hospital) that is revenue focused compared to one that is truly focused on value, taking the long-term view and making every value exchange mutually beneficial. If a surgeon is observed acting in a way that is not in the patient’s best interest, Dr. Smith does not want him or her on the team. Asking preference ranking questions — what is important to you and how do you rank it? — is a good way to get to know someone you are considering for your team. It’s a troublesome thought process for some, and an enlightening one for others.

3. Self-Examination

Preference ranking can be applied in self-examination. Dr. Smith says, “I scour myself for inconsistencies”. He found one when he realized he was filing Medicare insurance claims that were paid with government funds which, he declares, is like “receiving stolen goods”. That, he realized, was inconsistent with his free market principles. And so he abandoned the practice and now treats Medicare patients at no cost. The acceptance of the market is the determinant of his business success — “to hug us or crush us”. Dr. Smith’s preference is to be consistent in his commitment to free market practices.

4. The Errors of Interventionism

The refusal to accept government money was just one step in expunging the corrupting and distorting effects of government intervention in the health care market. Dr. Smith examines every element of government intervention in the market and attempts to eliminate it from his business, to make sure his business does not benefit from it. He scrutinizes one situation after another and attempts to eliminate them all.

5. Dynamic Flexibility.

Austrian Capital Theory — and the Resource-Based View of the firm that derives from it — prescribes extreme flexibility of capital assets and resources to enable shuffling and recombining in response to changing consumer preferences. Dr. Smith describes the process of continuously looking for more knowledge, more learning and more flexibility as “radical entrepreneurship”. He looks for texts like Peter Klein’s The Capitalist And The Entrepreneur to provide new ideas and new initiatives. Continuous learning is part of Dr. Smith’s recipe, and he is always searching out readings that will change his mind.

6. Time Preference

Time preference is a core concept in Austrian economic theory. Entrepreneurship takes time. It requires patience, and the elevation of long-term goals over short term goals. It also requires foregoing present opportunities in order to pursue future benefit. What are you willing to forego in order to be an entrepreneur?

Dr. Smith found the most striking discussion — “jaw-dropping” in Dr. Smith’s words — of time preference in Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed (i.e., the relevant passage starts at the very beginning of Chapter 1).

He found an immediate application in the business model for Surgery Center Of Oklahoma. As surgeons get older, their time preference changes. They want to monetize their ownership position in the partnership — to “cash out”. This often leaves junior surgeons “holding the bag”, because the partnership (or an intervening VC) may buy the departing surgeon’s position, but this is paid for out of the future earnings of the remaining partners. Through his understanding of time preference, Dr. Smith was able to anticipate this situation and organize his surgery center like a law firm — no partner pays anything to join and receives no exit payment when they leave. They also don’t own the real estate. So there is no opportunity to monetize on exit, which “saved SCO as a business” and brought stability by de-fanging an activity that doctors are known for.

7. The Austrian Way of Thinking

As important as any principle of economics is the Austrian Way of Thinking: rigorous reasoning based on logic and a priori axioms; being aware of assumptions and always examining them; respect for how others value things; understanding the difference between risk and uncertainty, and looking uncertainty in the eye; and generally exerting more logic and less emotion in conducting business.

Economics is the study of human behavior. Humans move from A to B because they prefer B to A. Understanding the logic of human action — and the motivation behind it — provides a lens through which to observe what is going on around you and to see it more clearly, obscuring distractions and perceiving conflicts of interest you might not see without the lens. The Austrian Way of Thinking brings confidence, decisiveness and calm. Physicians — and anyone — can benefit.

 

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