Jewellery World Magazine - August 2021

DDCA NEWS
Rami Baron
President, Diamond Dealers Club of Australia
rami@ddca.org.au
It’s too easy to spend the money with the best
of intentions and convince yourself that the
reason why you haven’t executed the project
in a reasonable timeline is because you were
busy with other things. That’s normally a
cop-out.
It’s hard to make changes. It’s harder to be
accountable, especially to yourself. It’s even
harder to admit you have made a mistake and
it wasn’t a good investment.
There is a time when you literally need to cut
the cord and admit openly that it was mistake
and write off the expense.
Last year, we invested in developing a
new piece of software which incorporated
AI. The people behind it were extremely
accomplished and experienced. We had a
clear timeline, we had our other programmers
participate in the integration, and twice
we revised the delivery date. That’s still
acceptable if things are moving forward.
On the day we were given the run through, it
was clear that the software could not deliver
the results. It was suggested to me that we
should look to see what we could salvage,
because we had made a considerable financial
investment. My response - “the only thing we
salvage is the experience of what not to do
next time”. We tried, we had clear objectives,
we had clear timelines and it failed.
The question we need to ask ourselves is
that when we embark on a new project or
employ a new person, whom we have spent
a considerable amount of time and money
training, at what point do we admit failure or
that they are not working out.
Employing new people, is an incredibly
expensive process. Not only financially, but
the time it takes for everyone to help train this
person. What do your current employment
contracts say? Three months or six months
trial? I personally think that if you can’t be
sure in three months that the person is right,
you’re wasting your time.
There needs to be some sort of deliverables
or skills that the person is displaying that gives
you confidence that they are a good fit within
your company.
The biggest problem we have is that often
we like someone, but that doesn’t mean that
they are the right person for the job. Next
time you employ someone, think about setting
them three goals that are measurable within
the three-month timeframe. They need to be
clear goals, so if it doesn’t work out it’s not a
personal attack, but based on black-and-white
key performance indicators.
Running a business isn’t easy, otherwise
everyone would do it. We have finite
resources of time and money. Sometimes
you need to be hard and more importantly,
honest. Especially with yourself.
Developing the business skills of knowing
when to stop spending money on a lost cause
could well be the difference between staying
in business and not.
Trade well,,, Rami Baron.
August 2021 17