Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings on people, process and responsible autonomy for small-business employers.

Month: June 2021

Conversations
June 30, 2021

Conversations

I love conversations.  Proper conversations, that sometimes get passionate, even heated.  Where the interplay of light shed by multiple perspectives allows new insights to appear between us.   Where I can feel new creases forming in my brain as I change my thinking.

A philosophical workout, if you like.

Good conversations allow new knowledge and wisdom to emerge.

Great conversations do it on purpose, with questions that are designed to bring out the participant’s wisdom, and a structure that helps that wisdom emerge in a coherent form.   Discipline makes Daring possible.

Having them recorded is priceless – you can pick up on insights you missed in the thick of things, and of course, share them with others.

 

I was lucky enough to be part of one of these recently with Scott Perry of Creative on Purpose.   Our conversation isn’t available yet.   You can look out for it here.

Why not enjoy some of his earlier conversations while you wait?

Planning to disappear.
June 29, 2021

Planning to disappear.

It’s well known that being employee-owned is good for a business.

But why stop there?

Why not make your business employee-run too?

Enable every employee to be ‘a Boss’ with a Customer Experience Score.

You business will be scalable, replicable, durable.

And you can plan to disappear.

Showing your work
June 28, 2021

Showing your work

I used to wonder how potters could charge so much for their pots, until I took up pottery.

Then I saw how much work went into producing a pot fit to sell.   Not just the work of potting, but also how many pots get thrown away because they broke or cracked in the kiln, or because the glaze didn’t work.  Or even because the idea itself just wasn’t good enough.  I wondered then how they could charge so little.

A brilliant way to help your prospects and clients understand the value you bring is to show your work.    To share the process by which you create that value.

It’s easier when that process is clearly, genuinely focused on them.

Getting better
June 25, 2021

Getting better

At this morning’s Like Hearted Leaders, Ruth Polden made a beautiful point “We all think we have to do something well, and that puts us off starting. We can all do something, so why not do it? Not to be the best, or even good, but because we want to.”

Sonnets
June 24, 2021

Sonnets

I accidentally listened to Melvyn Bragg and guests on ‘In our time’ this morning.    I’m glad I did, because they were discussing Shakespeare’s sonnets, one of my favourite collections of poetry.

For me, the most interesting thing in this morning’s was not about the content of the sonnets (controversial, complex, certainly not all sweetness and light), but about their form: 14 lines, divided into 3 lots of 4 (quatrains) and a final two lines (couplet).  With rhymes.  An extremely tight box within which to work as a poet, and a box which was already old-fashioned by 1609.

Yet Shakespeare used this structure to express content that was new in language that was unconventional, to create a collection of poems that has outlasted most others of his era.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

PS. Guest professor and poet Don Paterson made a really interesting point that I think is worth sharing.  To paraphrase:  we humans get bored quite quickly when reading poems, somewhere between ines 8 and 9.  So it helps to create some sort of turn or twist at that point in your sonnet, to re-pique the readers attention and interest, and carry them through to the end.

Something to think about for my next blog post.

Cacophony
June 23, 2021

Cacophony

A hedgeful of birds makes a right old racket.  To our ears at least.  But for the birds, each species hears what it needs to hear loud, clear and beautiful.

A Customer Experience Score describes a client journey into and through your business.   It’s an end-to-end process, ideally run by a single individual.

Of course clients don’t arrive in sync, and they all take individual paths through your business.   That means that as you take on clients, and people to serve them, the sound of your Score being played becomes a right old racket.

To your ears, maybe.   For the client, it’s music, loud, clear and beautiful.

So resist the tempation to ‘tidy up’ what you hear from the inside.   Beauty is in the ear of the listener, and it very much depends on where you’re standing.

Morrissey
June 22, 2021

Morrissey

Yesterday, my husband was working his way through his record collection.

As always, Morrissey stood out:

“I am human and I need to be loved – just like anybody else does.”

Something worth remembering as we build our business processes.

Acumen
June 21, 2021

Acumen

Acumen:  Sharpness.  The ability to get right to the point, to the heart of the matter.

Acumen is something Jaqueline Novogratz obviously has in spades, because she realises that the people at the bottom of the pile have it too.

And that the best way them to help them is to enable them to apply it to help themselves.

Bottom up, ripple out.  That’s the way to do it.

No need for you to be there.

 

Work/play
June 18, 2021

Work/play

Why do we enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons?

Because we know the rules.  We know the world we’re operating in.   We know our own capabilities.  We know there is randomness, provided by the dice.  And we know that the people we’re playing with know all that too.

Within that framework, each one of us can play freely with the skills we’re given and the attributes we acquire.  We can collaborate, go it alone, or switch between the two.  If we’re Dungeon Master, we can even change the rules.

Nothing is predetermined, there’s room for the unexpected, yet everything is coherent.    It’s a safe space enclosing the perfect balance between constraint and freedom, between box and creativity, between process and play, between community and individual.

Life can’t be like this.

But work can.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue
June 17, 2021

I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue

The joke hidden in the game of ‘Mornington Crescent’, played to inscrutable rules on ‘I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue’ –  is that actually there are no rules.   The teams make them up as they go along.

It’s an old parlour game, a jolly hoax played by a group of friends on a newcomer.    Hilarious for the friends.  Bewildering for the newcomer.

And it’s probably what joining your business feels like.