Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Automation

Rocks in the road
April 26, 2019

Rocks in the road

When a big change comes along, imposed from outside, we tend to view it as a problem. A rock thrown in our path – unnecessarily, we think.

But its possible to view it as a welcome opportunity, a chance to pause on the road and reflect on what we’re doing, why we are doing it and who for.

If I was an accountant, now that the first part of MTD is out of the way, I’d be asking myself:

  • What is the job of an accountant?

  • Who can I best serve?

  • What do they really want?

  • How does MTD and its ramifications help me put the answers to these questions in place?

That rock might just be a signpost to a better path.

Wasted effort
April 17, 2019

Wasted effort

It’s easy to get very excited about increasing efficiency through digitalisation, automation and AI.

But in the excitement we can forget that by ‘increasing efficiency’ what we are really trying to do is reduce ‘waste’, or to put it better, ‘wasted effort’.

In Lean, ‘wasted effort’ falls under 3 categories:

  1. ‘Mura’ or wasted effort due to variation
  2. ‘Muri’ or wasted effort due to overburdening or stressing the people, equipment or system.
  3. ‘Muda’ also known as the “seven forms of wasted effort”

Muri seems like the kind of wasted effort we should always try to eliminate (and interestingly, is the least talked about).

Otherwise, what makes effort wasted?

Quite simply that the customer is not willing to pay for it.

This seems blindingly obvious. Less obvious is the necessary implication – that if a customer is willing to pay for effort, it is not wasted.

So if a certain type of customer is happy to pay extra to be treated differently, this is not Mura. If a customer is willing to pay to have their papers picked up in person, this is not Muda.

The customer’s perception of value is your source of profit. Don’t throw it out with the bathwater.

Leverage
March 28, 2019

Leverage

“Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the Earth”.

We tend to focus on the lever, but the ‘place to stand’ is just as important.

Without sure footing, the lever can’t get purchase.

When you know the essentials are being done consistently, you can experiment at the edges to make things better.

Discipline makes daring possible.

Process
January 30, 2019

Process

What springs to mind when I use the word ‘process’ in conversation with people is something boring and robotic – … Read More “Process”

Self Checkout
January 3, 2019

Self Checkout

“I can see you’re waiting, why don’t you use the self checkout?” asked the shop assistant.

“Because I don’t want to leave the store angry.” I replied.

“Is it because people have lost their jobs?”

“No, often there are more jobs created fulfilling online orders.”

“So what is it then?”

“Well, first of all they’re slower, they go wrong (or I get it wrong), so I get annoyed, and I don’t want to get annoyed. But fundamentally, it’s because the supermarket is telling me that I am worth less to them than an online shopper, and that gets rubbed in every time I have to use a self-checkout. “

“Oh.”

I’m off to the farmers market.

Automating computers
January 2, 2019

Automating computers

This fact is not as well-known as I think it should be:

The world’s first business computer was developed for J Lyons & Co. Ltd., to streamline and automate the analysis of the masses of data they collected every day, through which they could accurately predict demand in their chain of tea shops.

What is even less well known, is that the machine, installed in 1951, was the culmination of 20 years of business design by John Simmons and his team.

In other words, they didn’t just throw new technology at the business. They worked out what was the best way to do things, put those processes in place, tested and tweaked them and only then used LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) to automate parts of them.

It’s an approach worth reviving.

PS. If you’d like to find out more – “A computer called LEO” is a good read.

PPS. The ‘computers’ were the chains of female clerks who cumulatively added up the daily numbers received from tea shops. One of Simmons’ ambitions was to release people from this kind of mental drudgery.