A Pending Append

Was it 94% or 95% billing efficiency? I'd need my spreadsheet at hand to say definitively but the actual percentage is irrelevont. Suffice to say, last week, May 1-May 8 belonged to our man Hiroki or "Heroki" as some have dubbed him. Because last week Hiroki "out billed" all comers company-wide.

Hiroki, our resident man of logic and sequential reasoning, defender of rationale and rational analysis. Hiroki, our objective, object-oriented, open-source programmer. Hiroki, our intermittent profit center and roving IT designee. Hiroki and his left-biased brain, a counterweight to a firm comprised almost entirely of decidedly right-oriented brains.

A Digression

Now regarding Hiroki's objectivity. While objectivity serves Hiroki well in his passion for generating "impeccable code" (as he once soberly described his own work), his objective approach is often found lacking when applied to social coding.

For example, one day last week, in an ostensibly sincere effort to convey a compliment, Hiroki selected a single word to express his impression of his supervisor's business suit. His chosen word:

Blocky.

On an another occasion that same supervisor received an "Amish" classification regarding her floral patterned Summer dress.

Whereas such words uttered by anyone else might provoke a sharp retort, she has learned to accept these remarks as supreme compliments from young Hiroki.

Young:
Hiroki has perused this Earth for somewhere around 23 to 27 years.

I am 45.

Hiroki is young.

End digression

Relevont Appending

Append? Yes, append. You see, my standard billing efficiency report reflects my own penchant for a good objective number devoid of any inherent meaning beyond it's own face value. So my recognizing Hiroki's accomplishment is at worst unique and at best, significant in that Hiroki's out-billing every other profit center company-wide is tantamount to Spud Webb jamming over Shaq. It's just not probable.

We are a strategic branding firm. Our profit center folks (potentially billable associates) are charged with keeping as billable as possible as often as possible. It's a matter of functional necessity.

Hiroki on the other hand applies his many talents to activities such as keeping our servers running, interfacing with outside IT vendors, re-coding the next generation release of our intranet, troubleshooting issues of technology at large--both in and out of his sphere of knowledge.

Oh, and yes when a creative or a customer or an interactive designer, etc. is in need of deep scripted code or "impeccably" structured websites or...you know, technically billable stuff, Hiroki is the man. He is at once quasi-administrative and pseudo-billable.

Out billing the billers--that's notable. And so, I'm appending an otherwise dry report with a juicy anecdote, at least in our little economic microcosm. It's even funny--and neat--and relevont and profitable. Like an unexpected windfall, worthy of reflection and always welcome.