Time Is Of The Essence
Maybe this is a bit of a rant
The executive summary is that if you procrastinate you will cripple my ability to give you what you need. Procrastinate? Not responding to me for hours days, weeks or even months.
ADD? Working with me. My attention is what you want, use it or lose it.
I work in real-time see footnote (i). Given that most of my work involves working with computers as tools of my trade I have borrowed the term which in the Oxford English Dictionary is defined below at said (i).
So for example when I am hired to provide my thinking I do this with immediacy, footnote (ii).
I will engage in conversation (iii) to solve immediate problems and to plan how I think it is best to proceed, often with several choices and always with different thinking, apparently.
These ideas can NOT survive delay, indeed rarely can any advice; it is pretty much all has time of the essence. They are ephemeral. Immediate. As I said “time is of the essence”. Add to that that reporting and payment deadlines directly impact all plans and advice.
For example I spend several days creating a plan based on the information provided. Clearly the information is the foundation of the solutions I come up with. These will be unique to the circumstances and will fail without attention and action. So when I make contact and get no immediate response then I have to change my attention to other matters.
My attention, my focus, is what is being paid for, so to lose it is to waste money as regards its true value. I am not a computer and I cannot be “suspended to continue later where you left off”. It may be that you can do this, but you have hired me because I think differently and for that hidden difference you need to behave differently, which is likely in any case to be the first small step in solving your matter. If you have multiple matters then all this is the more important because they will all be interlinked.
Any matter will have stages and your attention to these directly affects the experience you will have. For example one of the greatest complaints the profession hears is “they took far too long”. Upon enquiry this is all too often because the information provided is incomplete and the work cannot be finished. The missing matters are not provided for several months and yet the time taken to do the work is measured from the initial provision of information.
Case study (1) In a recent example I produced the trial balance within a day and I asked for clarification about director’s loan transactions, while expecting to finish the accounts the following day. Many weeks later I am still waiting and that “job” is long forgotten in my mind. Any advice I may have had or have been generating is gone. That “job” involves 17,000 transactions; I simply can not carry that sort of information in my head for any length of time, let alone complex time dependent financial ideas.
Case study (2) A very worried man comes to me. I find in these circumstances such a person is finding it very difficult to think clearly. They need to be told what to do, to be given procedural instructions. The first thing that becomes apparent is he has no grip at all on his or his business’ finances and his accountants are providing reactive compliance work only, which is perfectly normal at their very cheap price and he never asks. Using “instant messaging” he has to be driven by me to push for the information needed for me to even start work.
So I ask him for basic information on 21 July. I give him the words to send to his accountants. I consider this information to be “basic data” anyone in business (“on their own account”) should have immediately to hand, such as copies of tax returns and calculations for years gone by, also their payments of tax even if reference to their online HMRC account(s) is needed so as to be exact or close to it.
It takes him until 7th August to collect the required data, and the data is not ideal (faulty). That is 17 days. I am not surprised he is stressed to there and back. He is catastrophising. Inventing all sorts of awful scenarios based on imagined “what if” circumstances without having any accurate or complete information.
He tells me he is desperate. I am not surprised. I have said my guidance can vary according to the level of desperation.
I provide my preliminary sets of plans for various scenarios that depend on choices he makes. All of his matters are alive in my mind ready to solve his issues and offer peace of mind.
I have placed no limits as to time of day or weekends when I am available.
His response? Defers conversation with me for several days. Maybe not so desperate, just saying it to generate my sympathy. Actions speak louder than words.
It is as if he wants to get the most extreme advice (which is to engage an insolvency practitioner, not me) thinking he can then decide what to do. That is terrible thinking and demonstrates his lack of understanding of how things work. Things are not black or white, they are ever changing shades of grey.
How “alive” will his matters be in my mind when he eventually contacts me? Remains to be seen. My sympathy? There was never any on my part, which is normal, to me this is just work. Wilful incompetence is not pretty. However, I do not judge, I collect the information that makes the choices pretty obvious. I suppose the worse their case, the easier are the solutions.
Case study (3) A self-build value added tax recovery claim. Several hundred invoices and many very specific rules to be complied with. The case is full of individual transactions that need consideration as well as a list that needs much attention. The matter requires a few hours work by them to complete before seeking construction completion certification. Suffice to say many months indeed years later, with tens of thousands at stake, they have not completed the work. I am at a loss as to why. And they ask me a question based on one of those transactions about which I have given advice. At the time I could have given immediate and effective advice. Several months later? Not really. I give the standard compliance response about VAT fraud and some links, but my real-time quality of service is simply not possible. Very frustrating to have my abilities frustrated like this.
I hear the professional cry “file notes!” Sure, but these are not at all the same as real-time attention, focus and conversation.
(i) OED Chiefly Computing, but…
A. n. The actual time during which a process or event occurs, esp. one analysed by a computer (or me), in contrast to time subsequent to it when processing may be done, a recording replayed, etc (I am exploring the use of recordings) . Frequently in in real time (which technically is not correct use, for example a romantic couple do not spend “real-time” together but they do or would like to spend “real time” with each other, but OED records actual use of English) : performed or occurring in response to a process or event and virtually simultaneously with it.
(ii) OED a. The quality or condition of being immediate; freedom from intermediate or intervening agency or delay; direct relation or connection; directness.
(iii) OED 7. a. Conversation: Interchange of thoughts and words; familiar discourse or talk.