This week's members-only Commonplace post is about a syllabus for learning to run a business.
Conversation
As with most career-skills, business is difficult to learn because there isn't really a syllabus. You have to construct one for yourself.
But when a believable practitioner points out a resource, you better sit up and pay attention.
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I wrote about one at the end of my Business, The Octopus Game piece: i.e. you could take 's checklist for businesses and invert that into a set of learning goals.
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Permanent Equity's checklist is remarkable for all sorts of reasons. The biggest thing is that they're extremely believable.
permanentequity.com/writings/table
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If you run a business, go through the checklist and measure yourself against the ideal picture they paint. And then scroll to the bottom and evaluate how you fare against the majority of businesses they've seen.
It's wonderful.
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Each of the items in this checklist represents something that you have to master. Some of them will lead you to a whole skill-tree (do you know how well your marketing is working? for instance) + others are simple to answer but take years to do (thoughtful incentive plan).
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I find myself returning to their checklist every couple of months, ever since I discovered it a few years(?) ago. I have a copy saved on my hard drive. I can't recommend it highly enough.