Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Community

Sweetgrass
August 25, 2023

Sweetgrass

I’m slowly working my way through “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer.   Enjoying a story or two before I go to sleep is a great way to unwind and bring myself back to my proper place in the world.

Two things stood out from last night’s reading:

The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, or ‘the words that come before all else’, the words that begin every meeting, every negotiation, every celebration.  Here’s a video of it, recorded for Earth Day.

and

“In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition.”

What would happen if I read that Address at the start of every day?

What would happen if we all did?  Whenever we gather?

 

Something good I think.

Which makes it well worth sharing.

Humanity
July 28, 2023

Humanity

Today’s recommendation is to read ‘Humanocracy‘ by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini; to follow them on LinkedIn, and to subscribe to their YouTube channel, ‘The New Human Movement‘

 

Yes, they are talking about big organisations.

They are also in many cases old organisations, who have lasted this long often at the top of their industry.

They are also in many cases big, old organisations who have managed to survive by changing how they run themselves.

 

What they all have in common is that they view the business as a great big collaboration of talented people, rather than a machine.

 

How big could your business get if you looked at it this way?  How long could it last?

 

You have an enormous advantage over these organisations – you haven’t gone corporate yet, so you don’t have to undo that first.

 

Take it.

 

“This is what is possible when you treat human beings like they are actually human beings”. John Ferriola.

 

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Unusual perspectives
July 25, 2023

Unusual perspectives

Today, I’m recommending Jason Fried’s blog.

As I’m sure you know, Jason wrote “It doesn’t have to be crazy at work“, a book well worth reading if you haven’t already.

Jason writes from the perspective of a business that is ‘big enough’, doesn’t need to be bigger, and is primarily a vehicle for improving the lives of its customers and employees.

Nowadays that’s quite the radical view, and it gives him a very different perspective on all the things businesses do, or are told they should do which is really refreshing and always makes me think.

If you’d like an even more radical perspective on what business could be, I also recommend Ari’s Top 5 by Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses.

And if you’d like to create your own, more rounded perspective on business and it’s place in the world, I recommend the Wolf Tool from Bev Costoya.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

This week, I am mostly going to recommend…
July 24, 2023

This week, I am mostly going to recommend…

Blogs and books to read, people to follow, ideas to think about, actions to take.

My first recommendation this week is a blog “Funding the Future” by Professor Richard Murphy.

One of todays posts is chilling, which is why I am recommending it.

Richard pulls no punches:

“The threat created by climate change is now bigger than that which was created by Covid.

It is bigger than the threat created by the global financial crisis in 2008.

It is also likely that the threat is now at least as big as that created by the Second World War because as many people as then are now at risk from democidal governments.”

 

I don’t always agree with him, but his posts always make me think about how things could be different.

The first step to changing things is to talk about how they are, how they could be, and how we could help them change in a direction that works for all of us.

The more of us that do that, the better, because we need to move fast.

Repeating ourselves
July 10, 2023

Repeating ourselves

It looks as though humanity (actually only a small part of it) is about to repeat one of our gravest and most frequent mistakes – to start exploiting a vast and almost completely unknown resource without thinking seriously about the possible consequences.   In pursuit of materials that may well prove to be redundant in a few years.

We did it with whale oils, we did it with America’s great plains, we’re still doing it with rainforests and wetlands everywhere, and now we plan to do it with the mid-ocean ridges.

What makes it worse, is that the benefits will accrue to a few, while the harms will accrue to many, for generations to come.   We won’t even recycle the materials we extract – why bother when it’s cheaper to mine, for as long as the true cost is never accounted for?

It’s not quite too late to stop this, Greenpeace has a petition you can sign, but maybe the best thing is simply to make yourself and others aware, so they can sign too.

We humans are ingenious creatures, we don’t have to go on repeating ourselves.

We could force ourselves to think of better alternatives by making promises to our planet and our future selves.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

The future belongs to tadpoles
July 5, 2023

The future belongs to tadpoles

What if people didn’t have to work for a living?   How would you attract people to work in your small business?

Pay would be the obvious first thought, but when people don’t have to worry about survival, money isn’t the motivator we think it is.  Not on its own.

So what would motivate someone to work with you?

Probably, good work, that enriches:

  • The ecosystem of the organization in which the profit is produced
  • The ecosystem of the community of which that organization is a part
  • The greater ecology of the planet

And also enriches:

  • Their inner ecosystem
  • The client’s inner ecosystem

By enabling each person to achieve more of what we all really want:

  • Agency – to make our own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
  • Mastery – to learn and master (even teach) new skills.
  • Autonomy – to be free to choose how we make our dent.
  • Purpose – to do this for something bigger than ourselves, that has meaning beyond the sale.
  • Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.
    • Status – to know (and for others to know) where we stand in our communities.

 

Businesses that do all this don’t look like Amazon, Google or Coca-Cola.   They look more like Nucor, or Michelin, or Haier, or Buurtzorg.

But these are the big players, the mighty toads in the big business pond.

What if you’re just a tadpole?

That’s excellent news, because you can jump into this future right now, as a Disappearing Boss.

You might even make this future happen sooner.

 

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

Coming soon, The Disappearing Bosses Club.

Beyond a Survival Economy
July 4, 2023

Beyond a Survival Economy

As you know, I like a book that takes a different perspective, that opens up new possibilities, that offers a different mental model for how the world could be.

“Beyond a Survival Economy” by David Foulkes is one of those books.

I haven’t finished it yet, and I’m not going to save you the job of reading it, because I really think you should, but there was one quote that stuck in my mind as I read it yesterday:

“Payment is always forward oriented…when you are buying something, you are ordering its continued production and sale.” Götz Werner

That is how we as consumers continually re-create the world we currently inhabit.

Which means that one of the ways to create a different kind of world, is to buy it into existence.

To look behind the marketing and decide whether the world this brand is actually creating is what we want for our seventh-generation grandchildren.

And if it isn’t look for something else, or do without.

To put our money where our mouth is.

Not because this will change the world on its own, it won’t.

But we can use it as one way in to changing the system, while we tackle it from another direction elsewhere.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

Small is beautiful
June 12, 2023

Small is beautiful

I wish I’d read this book 50 years ago.

Although, to be fair, I probably wouldn’t have understood that much of it back then.

Still I do wish I’d read it 20 or 30 years ago.

It explains where we are so clearly and simply.

We’ve been living off our capital. And now it’s running out, fast.

There is still time to change our spending habits, but we need to start now.

If you haven’t already read it, do.

Then remember that we were warned 50 years ago.

It’s not our fault nothing’s changed.

@just.stopoil are right.

How to tame the tiger
June 1, 2023

How to tame the tiger

Growing your small business from you, to a few and then a few more people can feel like riding a tiger.  Unpredictable, challenging, dangerous even.

New customers, new employees, new ideas, new ways of doing things that don’t match the customer experience you carefully crafted on your own.  Trying to match increased costs with an increase in income.  It can feel like everything just gets wilder.

The answer isn’t to cage the tiger, or to beat her into submission.

Instead, make sure she shares the values you value, tell her what you want her to do to make and keep your promises, give her a safe enclosure to roam in, and let her get on with it.

Get off her back.

Because she’s not actually a tiger.

She’s a team of people like you, who want to do the best they can, like you, in a space that gives them agency, mastery, autonomy, purpose and a feeling of community, like you.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.