Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Month: September 2021

Art and business
September 2, 2021

Art and business

Letting ‘art’ into a business feels wrong somehow.    Surely the point of business is predictability, conformity, delivering to specification?  How can you let people ‘do art’ on this without losing these things?

The kind of precision we usually think of when we think about ‘predictability, conformity, delivering to specification’, is really only necessary for manufacturing.  Even then, the manufacturing part is only a fraction of what makes up the customer experience.

If art happens in that tense space between rules and license, restriction and freedom, certainty and uncertainty, you can at least control what happens on one side of the space.  You can specify ‘the least we should do’, with as much precision as you like.    That means there is no downside to the art that can take place, only upside.  You can predict that specification will be met at least, perhaps exceeded.

The output of artists constantly evolves, as they explore that space of tension between the rules they’ve set themselves and whatever it is that they wish to express.  Each individual work is a specific response to that tension, different from every other, but taken together, the whole body of work is coherent.  You can tell it’s all from the same artist.

The thing your business exists to express is your Promise of Value.   Everyone in the business is trying to create art in the tense space between your Promise of Value and the floor you’ve defined.  Each individual making and keeping of your Promise – or customer experience – is a specific response to that tension, different from each other, but coherent, taken as a whole.   You can tell they’re all from the same studio.   You can predict that every response will conform to your Promise of Value.

Looked at this way,  your job as business owner is not to control individual output, but to define the space – the studio if you like – where your people, your artists, can create output that delights the people you serve.

Why would you do this?  Because art commands higher prices than factory-made.    People value human.

Tension and delight
September 1, 2021

Tension and delight

Of course, inspiration on its own isn’t enough.   Inspiration needs a starting point, a constraint, something to bounce off, spark to or rebel against.

The maker of this ‘crazy’ quilt was already constrained by the assortment of odd-shaped leftovers they had.  Perhaps also by the limited colours they’d been given.   They decided to impose another constraint  – the nine square layout.  The result isn’t random.  Nor is it purely functional.   It satisfies more than the need to keep warm at night.

Why would someone do this?

We humans like order as much as we like wildness.  We desire both certainty and uncertainty, rules and license.    Pulled by these opposites, we find the tension between them uncomfortable.

So we turn it into the most delightful thing of all – art.   Capturing a fleeting, but satisfying moment of balance between the two.    The ‘right’ balance is elusive, every time we try, the result is different.  That’s what keeps artists in practice.   The ‘right’ balance is also personal.   That’s what gives each artist their own style.

If you want your business to feel human, it needs to be a place where art can happen.

You can’t dictate the artistic solutions.   But you can create the required level of tension, by imposing rules, order and constraints.

If those constraints are designed around making and keeping your promise to the people you serve – if they define a floor, but no ceiling – you’ll have created a safe, exciting and human space for everyone.

Especially you.