If a business is what it does – a set of interacting processes designed to make and keep promises to the people it serves, then the last thing you want to do is introduce management structures and reporting mechanisms that get in the way of that. They are just spanners, slowing things down, sabotaging the business’s ability to do what its really here to do.

The processes already tell you what has to happen and in what order. There’s no need to have a human replicate that activity. The processes also tell you where a prospect or client is in their experience of your Promise. So there’s no need to have a human replicate that activity either.

In fact there’s no need to have managers at all. The ‘management’ can be partly in the processes and partly in the people running them. And if push comes to shove, the human trumps what the process says every time, as long as the Promise is kept.

Which means that actually everyone is a manager – of themselves and the processes they run. Which means that everyone can be in charge of making and keeping the firm’s Promise.

Which means that everyone can be a Boss.

‘The Boss’, is after all just a Role. Not an identity.

More next time.

Discipline makes Daring possible.