As soon as you see the deerstalker hat, the meerschaum pipe and the magnifying glass, you know exactly who the actor is playing, don’t you?
Conversely, without these, it might take a while before you realised, unless you’d read the books.
Props are an essential part of being able to play a theatrical or film role well.
The same is true of business Roles.
Without the right Props, ready to hand when the action requires them, a player will find it harder to fulfill their Role to the best of their ability.
So part of the job of organising your business around what it does is identifying which Props are needed when. Then going beyond where they are used, to seeing where and how and when they are created, modified, replaced or destroyed. This helps to uncover more of the process of making and keeping your Promise.
In the theatre, props are physical – costume, accessories, stage furniture. In a business Props can also be virtual – a spreadsheet, a logo, a video. In fact, for a business, everything that isn’t people can be considered a Prop, from the shop or office building to the CRM or accounting software, to the mugs in the kitchen.
All of them are Props, and each and every one of them must actively contribute to enabling your people to play their Roles effectively. Otherwise, they’re just clutter. Each and every one of them must be available to your people when they need it. Otherwise, they’re bottlenecks or worse, obstacles.
Like everything else in your business, it pays to consciously think about these things, so you can start doing what you need to do on purpose, by design rather than by habit.
Discipline makes Daring possible.
