ASSESSme 1p1

I have always loved the play of the interpretation of accounting figures and business activities but rarely find both balance of structure and creativity in accounting. When I have seen both structure of delivery of service with process like accounting and measuring systems and creative decision making in action together, it’s a synergise that I love to watch unfold. The reality of measuring with numbers as a concept of the cold interpretation of reality that at times distorts price and structure of values is fascinating to me. I love the interwovenness of learning the history of systems and the intricate building of ideas that have shaped our understandings of the world around us. Concepts being built on top of each other over time such as the building blocks of double entry bookkeeping. The building on the processes of decision making of the past to create complexities of the world we are a part of now.

This subject of accounting and online communication blurs for me the larger systems of communication once only used for individuals so quickly interwoven between business and individual decision making. Accounting is an entirely conceptual idea of transactions of monies which have become drivers of whole community decision making. Even when we cannot eat or grow money other than the perceived value, we as a society create within the 1’s and 0’s can create blind spots to other forms of values not easily detected with accounting transactions. The fascination I have that brings me back to accounting and business each time is, even though, I have disorganised thinking at the best of times and my personal values are rarely quantifiable with numbers, it is the systemising structure and adultness that money measures to the success of ‘adulting’ and lays out cold facts regarding our personal and shared histories. The imbalance of powers and impending threats to societal values is quantifiable with the pursuit of money and childlike and selfishness that others extrapolate to building with money ‘blocks’ and money ‘piles’. Concepts that are entirely make belief but our entire existence of our modern communities are built on the abstract concepts of measuring everything we do with numbers which of themselves is conceptual thinking and learnt language it plays not real value other than our agreed upon terms which we decided on in generations past and continue at times the absurdness of measuring our lives by counting numbers and measuring everything. Such as the phase ‘bean counters’ counting the lowest number of beans it takes to keep a person alive in war times or more recently Qantas removing an olive from their salads to increase profits.

During this first week readings I reflect on how many systems known to me and more importantly unknown I must navigate to prove my measurement of success in a given unit? And why am I being resistant to such learnings? I feel the frustration rise as I navigate yet another system not directly inline with the course work. I love the big picture ideas that flaot to my thoughts and the narrowing down to actionable steps forward. However, the fussy factors overwhelm me at times the simply unknowns of the course units where in fact all the indirect learnings are made. Switching thinking, linking concepts and looping through mixed ides to build confidence in critical thinking and redefining my limiting beliefs around money concepts and the measurements of what is agreed upon success.

Accounting is the practical measurement between agreed value and an organisations structure. In the past as I have trained others in budgeting and budgeting systems and say with tongue and cheek that ‘it is the measurement of adulting and numbers unlike any other value system shows your history of decision making at times in a rather confronting way’ if you are to find a relational or compulsive behaviour issue it will show in the budget. In some ways I would love to see some more larger cumbersome systems of accounting measurements be simplified or processing reviewed to make way for more innovative ideas that explore the measurement of success more holistically. However, in this week’s reading I am reminded again of the typewriter and the reasons systems rarely shift entirely is a personal challenge for me to reflect on. I don’t like doing work that is arbitrary something of value must have agreed upon value personally for me. I’ve completed and partly completed bookkeeping units in the past. I find the structure of accounting decision making daunting to my beautifully disorganised thinking knowing that flexing to frameworks of journals, transfers, trial balances and profit and loss statements will in fact make me a stronger advocate between those who speak this language and those who like me, inherently place very little value on money or the measurement of it. The reason I keep coming back to accounting and it’s measuring of adultness of life skills and the strange ways we build concepts of success and capital value. It is the very fact I don’t like blurry unrelatable ideas that numbers give a sense of sensibility to the randomness on my thinking. Even though accounting at higher levels of understandings above bookkeeping is interpretive it is based on perceived risk which is individually motivated and assessed at best. I am reminded of a dad who after watching his children play higher and higher risk taking with Monopoly decided to with draw real money and play with actual hard cold cash, the decision making was entirely different when his children playing the same game with the same rules given real live cash. In fact they became considerably more conservative in their decision making and even community minded in their behaviours in lending and forgiving debt.

Warren spoke about black and white thinking and shades of grey. I think in hues of colour and the thought my ideas can be mapped in numbers has in the past felt devaluing. Until recently I have come to view my own limiting ideas have held me back around the outdated concepts of what makes me a success. Many of the primary ideas of learnings I have learnt previously in accounting, particularly bookkeeping units such as owner equity, assets, liability debit and credits and the practical skills in building books. I feel leads to the contracting of amoral decision making through companies using poorly the separation of person to person transactions to business profits. This has brought about amoral business practises that accounting has been swept up into contributing tobut is not the primary cause of it. In the past, not as its primary focus but more as a side distract to the break down in trust and community. Now that whole companies are putting dollar values to social values in frameworks we have never seen in history. Like the dollar value on historically ‘free’ commodities such as air and water. We begin to see a greater importance to measuring transactions of accounting than ever before. This is where the synergy of creativity and systems excite me.

Accounting is rather the boundary measurements of current and past decision making of trust with in our communities and their agreed values. Either individually or communities as a whole including whole global communities of transactions. My surprise and excitement of this subject is the pairing of communications technologies within systems of growth such as blogging and Peerwise and other frameworks of community discussions. This pushes conceptions of accounting into expression rather than the interpretation of thought to numbers.

I was aware of my very resistant to Peerwise and saw very little value in the 5% on offer. However, after a question relating to learning I actually have found the true value in it’s construct that while the 5% marking is rather insignificant in contrast to the other assessment tasks I can already see that it is the underpinning value of the course content being realised. This is the hidden factors that accounting can do when structure is paired with creativity. It creates opportunity for critical and new learning that build trust and confidence in learnings new concepts. Bring on the answers which is answered in the question “Learning is changing as a person”. Now let the fun begin.