Dear Chris
Trying to get the main ideas into 7 elements has proved more difficult than I expected!
The Burgess Method ... The Seven Elements:
1 ... Cost, price and profit;
2 ... Value metrics for triple bottom line (people, profit and planet);
3 ... People and community focus not only the organization;
4 ... Activity level analysis and accountability;
5 ... Data that are independent and acquired from everywhere;
6 ... Metrics for progress, efficiency and effectiveness; and
7 ... Priorities emerge from the bottom of the pyramid.
What do you think about this set?
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Tuesday August 17
The main framework
1 ... Land ... natural resources
2 ... Labor ... people, human resources
3 ... Capital ... money, financial resources
4 ... Capacity ... infrastructure, production capacity, organization,
governance and know-how
5 ... Plan ... establish priorities, do budgets, organize resources;
6 ... Execute ... deploy resources, undertake activities, measure
performance and report; and
7 ... Account ... evaluate progress and performance, report to stakeholders.
These 7 fall into 2 sets according to accountancy concepts:
Balance Sheet: land, labor, capital, capacity
Operating Statement/Activity Accounts: plan, execute and account.
I drafted this into a one-pager as follows based on the above:
The Bugess Method is a way to acquire, organize and analyze data to
inform decision makers and all stakeholders about the progress and
performance of society.
Borrowing ideas from business accountancy, data have two main
characteristics:
(1) those that relate to balance sheet; and,
(2) those that relate to activity accounts.
The balance sheet elements are
(1) ... Land ... natural resources;
(2) ... Labor ... people, human resources;
(3) ... Capital ... money, financial resources; and
(4) ... Capacity ... infrastructure, production capacity, organization, governance and know-how.
The activity account elements are
(1) ... Plan ... establish priorities, do budgets, organize resources;
(2) ... Execute ... deploy resources, undertake activities, measure performance and report; and.
(3) ... Account ... evaluate progress and performance, report to stakeholders.
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Wednesday, August 18
The Burgess Method is independent from government (the public sector),
organizations (the private sector), the nation, the project and the
process.
The Burgess Method pulls in ideas from everywhere:
1 ... Classical economics
...... Land, labor, capital ... the invisible hand of the market ...
resource scarcity.
2 ... Keynesian economics
...... Linkages between public and private sector, savings, investment
and employment, money and banking, fiscal and monetary policy.
3 ... Accountancy
...... Double entry, assets and liabilities, balance sheet and income
and expenditure accounts, costing with standard costs, analytical
accounting and information technology ... relational database,
journals and the organization of transactions.
4 ... Engineering, science and technology
...... Measurement, control theory, thermodynamics, flow theory,
systems approach, experiments, materials.
5 ... Management
...... Project management, PERT, CPM, etc. ... industrial management
(Taylor, time and motion, etc) ... MBA financial management and EVA
6 ... Religion, Humanities, Sports, Culture
...... Right and wrong ... beauty ... fulfillment ... purpose ...
spiritualism ... etc.
7 ... People, Community, Society
...... Nearly 7 billion people ... millions of communities ... a
global society with huge differences and potentials.
These 7 elements came together after you had observed that many of my
ideas are already in play ... and yes, they are. But as far as I know
nobody is trying to have a system that pulls ALL of these ideas into
one place and independent of any of the controlling entities that, I
would argue, are the problem and need independent assessment.
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I tried another set of 7 ...
The 7 things needed to get started with the Burgess Method!
1 ... Mindset
...... Think about your program from a value perspective
2 ... Budget
...... Rework your budget with both money flows and value flows
3 ... Start a journal
...... Start to compile information about what is going on with value
in the project, organization or community
4 ... Standard values
...... Build your own set of standard values ... choose any item you
value and quantify at 1000, then value other things relative to that
value.
5 ... Needs
...... What are the needs of the community ... of the people in the community
6 ... Resources
...... What are the resources of the community ... especially the
human resource in the community
7 ... Reporting the value outcomes
...... Start to summarize the value proposition every month ...
activities by month and by month cumulative, and the balance sheet
month by month to show change.
This is done in response to an organization in Haiti that has asked me
to advise on her activities. She is doing HIV-AIDS work in the camps.
Not sure when I will be at the computer again ... I am planning
another 48 hours in PA Friday and Saturday building shelves and
sorting documents! Back for church on Sunday and the event at CHR on
Tuesday evening. I hope you will be able to help with some video stuff
... but not exactly sure what that involves!
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