The Say-Do Ratio
Our managing editor Sarah recently put together a podcast series featuring a cast of characters from our Permanent Equity team, talking about best practices and hard-won learnings when it comes to building a meaningful, rewarding career. There’s something in the episodes for everyone, but I’d particularly recommend them to anyone just starting out.
One of the bedrock principles of Permanent Equity is that we try to do what we say we are going to do, when we say we are going to do it. Since that’s also great professional advice, Sarah devoted a whole episode to “having a high say-do ratio.”
I listened and thought it was great, but then thought about it some more and realized something was bothering me. That’s because you don’t want a high say-do ratio, you want a low one. If you say you are going to do 100 things and you only do one of them, then your say-do ratio is 100 and that’s bad. If, on the other hand, you say you are going to do 100 things and you do all 100, then your say-do ratio is 1 – and that’s good.
I pointed this out to Sarah with the caveat that I might be being too picky. She noted, rightly, after looking at the change, that “low say-do ratio” or “high say-do conversion rate” didn’t carry the same punch as “high say-do ratio” even though they’re more accurately what you want.
After talking it through, we agreed that this was one of those times we shouldn’t let facts get in the way of a good story, and so I’ll just invite you to give our new Orbit Shift series a listen. It’s full of them.
Have a great weekend.
– Tim
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