Culture – Page 17 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

January 14, 2021

Fractals

I was delighted to see Matt Black Systems feature again in this week’s Corporate Rebels blog. I’ve told their story so often, since I visited them back in 2012.

I’m even more delighted to see that they offer consulting on how to apply their fractal model for businesses.

The fundamental thing that makes that model work, as I discovered on my visit, is responsible autonomy. Enabled by process. Rewarded by profit.

That makes it a natural model that can work in any business.

They’ve also published a book. It’s been ordered. Of course.

January 13, 2021

The problem with empowerment

The problem with ’empowering’ people, is that it implies a transfer of power from someone who has it to someone who doesn’t.

Why don’t they have it already? How come you have it to give? Where did yours come from? How is it maintained?

Everyone has power. They don’t always have the autonomy to exercise it.

Autonomy is much more powerful than empowerment. Which is why it’s scary for the currently powerful. And it’s a fairer bet for everyone.

HT to Gustavo Razzetti for the prompt.

January 12, 2021

Meeting Spec

Specifications highlight the difference between value creators and value extractors brilliantly.

Value creators treat specifications as minima. They’re always looking to see far they can go above and beyond, within the time and financial constraints they face. For them the spec is a starting point.

Value extractors, on the other hand, view specs as maxima. They’re always looking to see how little they can get away with, how much they can bend the definitions, while still being able to say they’ve met the specification. For them the spec is the bar, and they’re always trying to lower it.

Extractors win in the short term. But the future belongs to the creators. Especially if they collaborate with each other.

The picture is 2 days worth of lunches for a Finnish schoolchild during lockdown last year.

December 14, 2020

Taken as read

Clearing out my inbox today, I found an email I’d missed from Dale Carnegie with this headline:

“Research reveals importance of honest leaders to UK workforce – Read the full report!”

What else needs to be asked that we used to take as read?

November 23, 2020

Constructive interference

We don’t know what we don’t know. Neither do we know what our clients and colleagues don’t know. And we often take for granted the things we do know.

So, a useful thing to do every day might be to ask:

“What do I take for granted that I know, that the people I serve don’t or may not know?

How could I best share that?

It’s a ripple in a pond, but who knows where it might end up?

November 5, 2020

Foraging

Mushrooms seem like fleeting things. Ephemeral. Fragile. And they are. But the mycelium that throws them up is long-lived, non-stop … Read More “Foraging”

November 2, 2020

Spell it out

I chuckled to myself as I approached the till, after waiting in line for a while.

“I’m laughing at myself” I explained to the woman sat behind it, “because you can’t see me smiling at you.“

I’d forgotten that I was, of course, wearing a face covering.

“No.” she replied.

“Well I am smiling at you.“

She laughed back at me.

Sometimes, it really helps to spell it out.

October 28, 2020

Maintenance

Maintenance. None of us want to do it. Most of us don’t even want to know it’s being done. We hide it. We put it off, and off, and off again, even though we know that ‘a stitch in time, saves nine’.

Why is that I wonder? Animals and birds seem to do maintenance instinctively. Birds pop food in one end of their nestlings, then tug poop out of the other. Nests and dens are rebuilt or cleared out regularly. How have we humans lost this?

Maintenance of all kinds is what keeps our systems and ecosystems going, but we don’t value it. We don’t even want to see that it’s being done. We hide it in basements and cupboards, offsite, even offshore. And we certainly don’t value the people who do it, we turn them into quasi-servants, invisible, ‘low-skill’, and therefore deserving only low wages.

Until something breaks. Then we love them, applaud them, can’t thank them enough. 5 minutes later, we’re ignoring them again.

Maintenance isn’t sexy, but it is essential. It’s high time we got better at it.

As a start, perhaps we should all do more of it ourselves?

I’m off to clean the oven.

October 21, 2020

This was last weekend’s reading.

Strangely enough, they are related. I recommend reading them together.

September 24, 2020

It’s your attention

Today, I’m sharing this video from the RSA – from someone who used to work at Google:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSaybP1UivQ

For me, the most shocking thing in it is this:

“Steve Jobs did not let his children use the i-Pad.”

We know, marketers better than anyone, what people really want:

Agency – to make our own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
Mastery – to learn and master new skills.
Autonomy – to be free to choose how I make my dent.
Purpose – to do this for something bigger than myself, that has meaning beyond the sale.
Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.
Status – to know where I stand in that community.

Consumerism exploits our need for these things, converting our impulses towards autonomy, agency, community and status into the purchase of unsatisfying stuff, or the squander of our attention and energies into fruitless activities.

Our purchasing power is just about the only power truly left us, but it is powerful. If we can be more picky, more discriminate, more intentional; reserving our attention – the only truly scarce resource right now – for what really matters, and for people delivering what really matters, we can create a world where everything flourishes.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Culture