Discipline makes Daring possible.

New driver

New driver

My veg box supplier has been growing really fast.  I’m not suprised, it’s a great scheme.

Today’s veg box has gone AWOL.  It’s been delivered to someone else by mistake.

I’d bet an artichoke that there’s a new driver.

And no Customer Experience Score.

Interference

Interference

Last Friday, the materials for our new roof were delivered.  Tiles, ridge tiles, clips, battens, everything the roofers would need to start the job the following day.

Except, I spotted, the membrane that goes between joists and tiles.   Without that the job couldn’t even start.   To be honest, we’re relaxed about the schedule, but I knew our building company prides itself on being ahead, rather than behind, and our choice of tiles had taken time to source, so they were only just ‘on track’.

I could see the delivery driver had a pallet-load of it on his truck, so I asked the question, just in case.   It wasn’t on his delivery sheet, so he called the office.  They didn’t have it in the order either.

“Well I’ve got a pallet load here, so I’ll take a roll off and we can sort out the order with our client back in the office.  That saves me coming back later if it is missing.”

When I told our project manager, she said that’s why they always use that building supply company, because they focus first on foremost on taking care of their clients and end-users, rather than sticking rigidly to procedure.

I’d interfered in the process wrongly, as it happened.    The membrane wasn’t missing.   When the roofers turned up next day, they brought a big roll of it with them, and put it back in their van once they saw it wasn’t needed.

Obviously what was really missing was a clear understanding of who’s responsible for what, apart from inside the project manager’s head.  Does it always work this way?  Or does that depend on the roofer?   If everyone (including the client?) knows it’s always the supplier’s job to supply everything, this sort of mix-up wouldn’t happen.

What could remedy that?   A Customer Experience Score.

Not a procedures manual to consult every five minutes and follow slavishly.  Rather, a high-level picture of ‘what happens when’ that can be quickly and easily learnt by each new person or business that comes on board.  Something that says “This is how we do things, so if you join us, you need to understand this too”.  That way everyone is empowered to make sure things happen as they should, even if they don’t actually work for you.

In this case the mix-up happened the right way round.   The roofers finished at 10pm on Sunday, having worked their socks off for two days.   Our build is back on schedule, and I’m happy to recommend our building company to anyone.

But I’m also going to suggest a little composition.

Autumn Cleaning

Autumn Cleaning

My mother, who’d been taught housework by a female version of Felix Ungar out of ‘The Odd Couple‘ (a regime that soon collapsed in the face of 7 Oscar Madison-like children), loved to collect books about ‘women’s work’.   Perhaps to see how the men who usually wrote them imagined these things should be done.

Two of these books stick in my memory.  One was ‘The Mechanical Baby’, a history of childcare from ancient times onwards, I don’t remember the title of the other, but it might have been simply, ‘Housework’.

The housework one sticks because in it, the author applied all sorts of efficiency measures, taken from the workplace.    For example, he suggested replacing the big Spring Clean, with an Autumn Clean.   After all, Summer is when we fling windows open and let in all the dust, debris and insects from the garden.   It’s also when all the spiders build their cobwebs in various corners of the house, so that by September, it looks like we’ve left up last year’s fake snow from Christmas.   Or is that just my house?

Anyway, I think he had a really good point, but I’d recommend both, and go for Equinoctial Cleans, one as Winter turns to Spring, and the other as Summer turns to Autumn.   Spring for de-cluttering, opening up and airing everything, Autumn for cleaning down, tidying away and mending, ready for the long haul of Winter.    Both are a kind of fresh start, but with a slightly different emphasis.

Of course, both can apply to business too.

What’s the plan for your business Autumn Clean?

Trivial Pursuits

Trivial Pursuits

When we learn effectively we learn in stages.   First we learn the rules.  Then we interrogate and question ‘the rules’ to arrive at an interpretation that is meaningful for us.   Finally we apply our interpretation of the rules to performance, at which point we find out if whether we have been able to communicate that meaning to our audience.

In the olden days these three stages were called Grammar, Dialectic and Rhetoric, collectively known as the Trivium, ‘the three’.

‘Trivial’ originally meant simply belonging to these three.   It took on the meaning of ‘lesser’, ‘not serious’, ‘unimportant’ in contrast to its big brothers, the Quadrivium – the four other liberal arts of Astronomy Mathematics, Geometry and Music – the arts that could be said to provide ‘the facts’ behind ‘the rules’.

Of course these pursuits are not at all trivial.  They are essential for effective performance.   They all have to happen.   Blindly accepting rules stifles creativity and progress.   Questioning needs to lead to action, otherwise what’s the point?  Action needs to be meaningful, not just for the individual but also for the audience, the community.

They also have to happen in the right order.  It makes no sense to dive into performance without knowing what you are trying to communicate through that performance.   It makes no sense to question before you know what the rules are supposed to be – you end up questioning everything, which makes any kind of performance almost impossible.

We know this, even though we no longer formally learn it.   We see the trivial arts in operation all around us, whenever people undertake a creative endeavour, especially a collaborative one, such as putting on a play or concert, making a film, staging a ballet, creating a video game or putting up a building.

A business is another collaborative creative endeavour, that seeks to create profitable, repeat performances that delight and expand its audience.   The problem for us business owners is that we have no tradition of looking at them in this way, which leads to some common problems:

  • In big businesses, ‘the rules’ get written down alright, but they are focused internally, not on the audience.   In the worst cases, those rules become fossilised, unquestionable.  Performers are given no real opportunity to use their skill and experience to interpret, to deliver outstanding performances and learn from them.  The result is a classic bureaucracy: “We ignore it when we can, circumvent it when we must, destroy it if we are able.”  Dee Hock.
  • In micro businesses, that ‘more or less abstract representation of proposed reality’ stays firmly inside the originator’s head, and never gets written down into a script, or score, or blueprint.   That makes it very difficult to grow beyond a one-man-band or a small, tightly-knit group of friends, especially if the only alternative we’ve experienced is the bureaucracy we escaped from.

It seems to me that one solution is to learn something from the other creative endeavours we know, where the ancient trivial pursuits of Grammar, Dialectic and Rhetoric are alive and well, even if we call them something different.

So, if you had to imagine your business was some other kind of creative, collaborative production, what would it be?

Instrumental

Instrumental

“The product you make is not your website, it’s not the travel, its not even the delightful experiences, the product is the organisation that brings stakeholders together to produce those outcomes.”  Eric Reis to Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.

“In a humanocracy, the organization is the instrument – it’s the vehicle human beings use to better their lives and the lives of those they serve.” Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini in “Humanocracy”.

If all organisations are instruments, tools for making and shaping people and things, you have to ask:

“What kind of things does my business shape?” and “What kind of people does my business make?”.

The answer might seem obvious, but I’m not sure the obvious answer is always the ‘real’ one.   Especially for business-to-business firms and professional services.   The ‘real’ answer for you will be driven by your view of the world, but I think it’s worth exploring, because it opens up a different way of thinking about what a business is for.

For example, does an accounting practice make sets of accounts? Or does it make businesses?  And in the process, does it help shape the people who work for it and with it?

I don’t know, but I can help you find out.

Rules, interpretation, performance.

Rules, interpretation, performance.

Performing a piece of music isn’t simply a matter of reproducing a score (not even with a computer).

An orchestra rehearsing a piece will first read the score together; question it; interrogate what’s behind the notes to understand the composer’s intention and find better ways of expressing it.    They’ll use their technical expertise to try different approaches – trying to bridge the gap between the person who wrote it and the people who will be hearing it.  They’ll try out different interpretations, then agree on the interpretation to be performed.

Practising the chosen interpretation gets everyone in sync, but they will only really know if it worked through performance.

Performance is the source of useful feedback.   Everything else is conjecture.   The last night is unlikely to sound exactly like the first.   The interpretation and it’s delivery will have been tweaked, to take account of the actual audience.  The audience shows their appreciation in enthusiastic applause, repeat visits and recommendations to friends.

All creative endeavours – plays, films, dance, businesses – where people take a more or less abstract representation of proposed reality and make it real, go through a similar process.

It starts by learning the ‘rules’, proceeds through interrogation, questioning, trial and error into interpretation and performance.   Every performance feeds back into future interpretations.

2 things to bear in mind if you’re looking to generate profitable, repeat performances through your business, that expand your audience:

  1. The ‘rules’ can be sketchy, but it’s almost impossible to create outstanding performances intentionally, repeatedly and consistently without any.
  2. Documenting the ‘rules’ is the beginning of the process, not the end.

Eulogy

Eulogy

Yesterday, I found out that one of my favourite authors, the anthropologist David Graeber had died suddenly, unexpectedly and too soon, the day before.

I am gutted.  Not just because I was looking forward to learning from him for a lot longer, but because he also seemed to be such an entirely admirable person.   Intelligent, articulate, active, radical.  As an anarchist, highly critical of human institutions. As an anarchist and anthropologist, utterly fond of human beings.

Some well-known people give mankind a good name.  For me, David Graeber was one of them.

Avoiding Bureaucracy

Avoiding Bureaucracy

For Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini the opposite of ‘humanocracy’ is ‘bureaucracy’:

“In a bureaucracy, human beings are instruments, employed by an organization to create products and services.   In a humanocracy, the organization is the instrument – it’s the vehicle human beings use to better their lives and the lives of those they serve.”

Here’s a quote from Dee Hock that I think, sums up nicely how we get to ‘bureaucracy’:

“We grow to detest any societal organization in which we have no secure place and can find no meaningful life.  We ignore it when we can, circumvent it when we must, destroy it if we are able.  An organization that does not provide a secure, equitable, meaningful place for each person of which it is composed is not civilised at all; it is to a greater or lesser degree, tyrannical and barbaric.”

In truth, all organisations are instruments, consciously or unconsciously wielded.  As Eric Reis observed to Airbnb’s Brian Chesky:

“The product you make is not your website, it’s not the travel, its not even the delightful experiences, the product is the organisation that brings stakeholders together to produce those outcomes.”

The questions to ask are:

  • Whose lives are you bettering?
  • At what cost to the rest of the world?

It seems to me, that if we want to build a truly successful enterprise that will carry on without us, we should maximise the answer to the first, and minimse the answer to the second.

Fortunately, we’ve invented several ways to do that.   One of which is mine.

Humanocracy

Humanocracy

This arrived yesterday evening (see why I need an extension?).

The promise is to “show you how to create an unstoppable movement to create an organization that’s fit for the future and fit for human beings.”

I’m looking forward to reading it, although I suspect it won’t go far enough for me.

I’ll keep you posted.

There’s nothing new under the sun

There’s nothing new under the sun

A coal mine isn’t the kind of place that springs immediately to mind when you think of innovative, even revolutionary forms of management, but as the Corporate Rebels shared today, that’s exactly what Eric Trist found at Haighmoor Colliery, way back in the 1940s.

The article is well worth a read, but what really resonated for me were these highlights:

  • “Miners were recognised for ‘cycle completion’: meaning being jointly responsible for the whole extraction process.”
  • “The miners not only ran the mining job. They also took care of selling the coal they mined. They were responsible for the product they produced.”
  • “a reward policy based on a basic wage and a bonus linked to productivity of the group throughout the extraction cycle, rather than a single shift.”
  • “Each miner at Haighmoor could handle a half-dozen jobs. That meant each could take on multiple team roles.”
  • “All teams were multidisciplinary.”
  • because the miners could influence their own work, they continuously innovated.”

Observing these work practices, Eric Trist and his former coal miner colleague, Ken Bamforth, called the whole thing practising “responsible autonomy”.

Sound familiar?

Which begs the question:

If we already know that responsible autonomy works, why aren’t we practising it more often?