Entropy vs. E-commerce

This weeks email is covering mankind’s age old archenemy: Entropy.

Ever wondered why when things are let alone, that with the passage of time they eventually regress, atrophy and turn to nothing?

For example, let’s say you’ve set up your customer service team to manage inbound enquiries. You have installed a new customer relationship management software which directs and centralises all of your inbound communications to one central interface.

You’ve trained your customer service reps as much as you can, so feel confident in letting things sit for a while. This means no management, checking in or oversight at all.

You decide to let everything ‘be’ for a few weeks. All is fine. There was one slight issue with one of the reps, you decided to let it be, confident in the thought that it’ll work itself out.

You decide everything seems to be running just fine, so you don’t check in for another 6 months. And then a year.

After 12 months, you check back in on your carefully crafted customer service operation.

This time, it’s in pieces.

Your net promoter score (reviews) have dropped from 5 stars down to 2.3/5.

There’s inbound emails stacking up into the 1000’s.

For some reason, one of the API integrations into your Facebook Messenger had stopped working due to a software update.

4 of your original 5 customer service reps have left.

You have one fiercely loyal staff member remaining, and she’s struggling with demand, clueless o how to fix the API system. She is stressed and looks like she’s aged 10 years. After a quick exchange, she promptly hands her notice in, crying. She just ‘can’t take it anymore’.

Sh*t.. you say to yourself.

What went wrong?

In a word: Entropy.

What, you ask, does this have to do with business?

One of my key paradigms is that in life; 'Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken’.

Law, to some degree can largely be negotiable, but not physics.

Physics and mathematics work in perfect harmony from a quantum level to a universal scale.

We are all bound by the same laws of nature, and to go against them is futile.

The concept of Entropy is that over time, all things tend towards chaos and disorder. Entropy, a measure of disorder, explains why life seems to get more, not less, complicated as time goes on.

In a nutshell: All things trend toward disorder.

Entropy is the hidden force that complicates life.

When applied to our customer service analogy here, it’s clear to see that when items are let alone, small bad things will happen.

If not tended to, those small things will have knock on effects on other related matters, compounding the problem and ultimately leading to complete disorder.

To bring this point home, if you leave things be, weather in business or day to day life, things will decay.

If you’ve ever seen a zombie post-apocalyptic scene set 3-10 years after a global catastrophe, you’ll see that the cities are falling apart. They’re crumbling. Nature has reclaimed them.

Just like the ancient egyptians, any structure with low entropy either now doesn’t exist, or it’s in a hyper fragile state.

Nature has taken it back.

When carefully architected items are let alone for an extended period of time and not cleaned, maintained or upgraded they will ALWAYS regress back to their base materials.

Likewise in business, if you’re not keeping on top of all the moving parts (there’s a lot), or paying attention to greasing the proverbial functional components that keep the figurative wheels spinning, you’re leaving yourself wide open for problems.

Even though these problems may not be directly your fault, as CEO it is your responsibility to anticipate and get out ahead of this.

When not on the offensive (building, creating or selling) your title is chief anti-entropy operating officer. CAEOO.

The solve-all solution here is to make sure you develop of set systems and/or management processes to check in regularly for bugs, issues and decay.

Just like an environmental health officer scans a property for structural integrity or mould, you need to be on the lookout for bugs in the system. when let alone, they will compound and lead to eventual ruin.

It can be tempting to brush small matters under the carpet and hope they work themselves out. Don’t bury your head in the sand.

More importantly, you need to ACT on the bugs, or potential bugs in the system, because if left alone under the carpet, these will multiple, come back and bite you in the ass. Big time.

As humans, we have a unique ability to locally reverse entropy.

On a micro level, when you get a papercut, your skin fully heals and restores itself.

As we age, we’re able to hold off the effects of aging by taking control of our controllables, namely: diet and exercise.

Where the body wants to start breaking down because you’re technically surpassed your sole function on the planet to survive long enough to procreate, decay sets in.

We have a unique ability to slow down the aging process, this holding off entropy. In the end, we’ll always lose, but there’s magic in this knowledge.

Instead of being governed to, as business owners, we are empowered to build and hold off or at least slow down entropy.

We’re able to take control and command of our health by making health conscious decisions, such as limiting alcohol or smoking or drug abuse.

It is our responsibility to take care of our own health (physical and mental) and take proactive steps every day to optimize yourself.

Remember: People don't have business problems, they have personal problems that reflect in their business. The reverse statement is also correct.

Once you’ve taken control of your personal problems, installed new upbuilding habits then it’s simply a copy and paste, control + V into your business.

The key is to try and anticipate issues.

Fix them the moment they happen.

Check in, or have management processes for regular check ins to look for any signs of business decay.

Expect things to fall through, it’s all part of the process. Business is a long game and if you take your eye off the ball too frequently for too long then it only ends one way.

Be a founder, not a flounder.

To your unstoppable success,

Lou Antonio

Feeling stuck in your business?

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This is designed to be the resource that I wish existed when I first started out on my business journey. It would have saved me countless years and 100,000’s unnecessary mistakes.

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