{"id":1358,"date":"2012-03-24T12:14:31","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T12:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=1358"},"modified":"2012-03-24T12:14:31","modified_gmt":"2012-03-24T12:14:31","slug":"march-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=1358","title":{"rendered":"March Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Whether we like it or not we are\u00a0driven by\u00a0a triumvirate\u00a0of\u00a0celestial clocks.\u00a0Our daily cycle is\u00a0the result of the rotation of the Earth; the ebb and flow of the tides\u00a0is\u00a0caused by the interaction of the\u00a0orbiting Moon and the\u00a0spinning Earth;\u00a0and\u00a0the annual sequence of seasons is the\u00a0outcome\u00a0of the tilted Earth\u00a0circling\u00a0the Sun.\u00a0\u00a0The other planets, stars and galaxies appear not to have much\u00a0physical influence – despite what astrologists would have us believe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hares are said to\u00a0behave oddly in the month of March – as popularised by Lewis Carroll in Alice’s Adentures in Wonderland\u00a0<\/em>– but there\u00a0is another form of March Madness that affects people – one that is not celestial and seasonal in origin – its cause is fiscal and financial. The madness that accompanies the end of the\u00a0tax year.<\/p>\n

This fiscal cycle\u00a0is man-made\u00a0and is arbitrary –\u00a0it could just as well be any other month and\u00a0does indeed differ from country to country – and the reason it is April 6th in the UK is because it is based on the ecclesiastical year which starts on March 25th but was shifted to April 6th when 11 days were lost on the adoption of\u00a0the\u00a0Gregorian calendar\u00a0in\u00a01752.\u00a0 The driver of the fiscal cycle\u00a0is taxation and the\u00a0embodiment in Law of the requirement to present standard annual financial statements for the purpose of personal taxation.<\/p>\n

The problem is that this system was designed\u00a0for a time when the bean-counting bureaucracy was\u00a0people-pen-paper based\u00a0and to\u00a0perform this onerous task more often than annually would have been counter-productive.\u00a0 That is the upside. The\u00a0downside\u00a0is that an annual fiscal cycle shackled\u00a0to a single\u00a0date creates a feast-and-famine cash flow effect. The public coffers would have a shark-fin shaped\u00a0wonga-in-progress chart!\u00a0\u00a0And preparing for the end of the financial year creates multi-faceted March madness: annual cash hoarding leads to delayed investment decisions and underspent budgets being disposed of\u00a0carelessly; short term tax\u00a0minimisation strategies distort long term investment decisions and financial targets take\u00a0precident over quality and delivery goals.\u00a0Success or failure hinges on the\u00a0the financial equivalent of threading the eye of a long needle with a bargepole. The annual fiscal policy distorts the behaviour of system and\u00a0benefits nobody.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It would be a better design for everyone if fiscal feedback\u00a0was continuous – especially as the pace of change is quickening to the point that an annual\u00a0financial planning cycle\u00a0is painfully long .\u00a0The good news is that there are elements of\u00a0fiscal load levelling\u00a0aleady:\u00a0companies can choose\u00a0a date for their\u00a0annual returns;\u00a0sales tax is charged continuosuly and collected quarterly; income tax is collected monthly or weekly. But with the ubiquitous digital computer the cost of the bureaucracy\u00a0is now so low that the\u00a0annual fiscal fiasco is technically unnecessary and\u00a0it has become more of a liability than an asset.<\/p>\n

What would be the advantages of scrapping it? Individuals\u00a0could change their tax review date\u00a0and interval to one that better suits them and\u00a0this would\u00a0spread the bureaucratic burden on the inland revenue\u00a0over the year;\u00a0the country\u00a0would have a smoother tax\u00a0revenue flow and less ]need to\u00a0 borrow to fund public expenses;\u00a0and publically funded organisations could budget on a trimester or even monthly basis and\u00a0become more\u00a0responsive to financial fluxes and\u00a0changes in the system. It could be better for everyone –\u00a0but it would require radical redesign. We are not equipped to do that – we would need to\u00a0understand\u00a0the\u00a0principles of improvement science that relate to elimination of variation.<\/p>\n

And what about the other annual cycle that plagues the\u00a0population –\u00a0the\u00a0Education Niggle? This is the one that requires everyone with children of school age to be forced to take\u00a0family holidays\u00a0at the same time: Easter, Summer and\u00a0Christmas – creating another batch-and-queue feast-and-famine cycle.\u00a0This fiasco originated in the early\u00a01800’s when educational reformers believed\u00a0that continuous schooling was unhealthy and institutionalised when the\u00a0Forster Elementary Education Act of 1870 provided partially state funded schools – especially\u00a0for the poor – to\u00a0provide a sufficient supply of educated workers for the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. Once the expectation of a long summer vacation was established it has been difficult to change.\u00a0\u00a0More recent evidence shows that the loss of learning momentum has a detrimental effect\u00a0on children not to mention the logistical problems created\u00a0if both parents are working.\u00a0Children are\u00a0born all year round and have\u00a0wide variation in their abilities and rate of learning and to impose an arbitrary educational cycle is clearly more for the convenience of the schools and teachers than aligned to\u00a0the needs of children, their\u00a0families or\u00a0society.\u00a0 As\u00a0our required skills\u00a0become more\u00a0generic and knowledge focussed the need for effective and efficient continuous education has never been greater. Digital communication technology\u00a0is revolutionising this whole sector\u00a0and individually-tailored, integrated, life-long \u00a0learning and continuous assessment is now both feasible and more affordable.<\/p>\n

And then there is healthcare!\u00a0 Where do we start?<\/p>\n

It is time to challenge and change\u00a0our out-of-date no-longer-fit-for-purpose bureaucratic establishment designs – so there will be\u00a0no shortage of opportunties\u00a0or work for\u00a0every competent and capable\u00a0Improvement Scientist!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether we like it or not we are\u00a0driven by\u00a0a triumvirate\u00a0of\u00a0celestial clocks.\u00a0Our daily cycle is\u00a0the result of the rotation of the Earth; the ebb and flow of the tides\u00a0is\u00a0caused by the interaction of the\u00a0orbiting Moon and the\u00a0spinning Earth;\u00a0and\u00a0the annual sequence of seasons is the\u00a0outcome\u00a0of the tilted Earth\u00a0circling\u00a0the Sun.\u00a0\u00a0The other planets, stars and galaxies appear not to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “March Madness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,35,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-reflections","category-why"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}