Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Culture

This isn’t my utopia
June 22, 2020

This isn’t my utopia

The thing I love about reading, is that I’m always finding new ways of saying things, from people who can say them much better than me.

This midsummer weekend, I finally got round to reading the Verso edition of Utopia, by Thomas More.  It was not More’s words that struck me, but Ursula K. Le Guin’s – in fact not always her words, but words she assembled, interpreted and discussed in the first of her essays included with this book: “A non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold place to be”.

“The activities of a machine are determined by its structure, but the relationship is reversed in organisms – organic structure is determined by it’s processes”*

“The societies which have best protected their distinctive character appear to be those concerned above all with persevering in their existence.”**

“Persevering in one’s existence is the particular quality of the organism; it is not a progress towards achievement, followed by stasis, which is the machine’s mode, but an interactive, rhythmic, and unstable process, which constitutes an end in itself.”

“Since the day of the Roman empire and the Christian church, we hardly think of a social activity except as it is coherently Organized into a definite unit definitely subdivided.   But, it must be recognized that such a tendency is not an inherent and inescapable one of all civilization.”***

I (like Le Guin) found Thomas More’s Utopia unsatisfactory.   It is founded on force and maintained through slavery.   It’s activities are determined by its structure.   It is like most utopias,“the product of ‘the euclidean mind’ (a phrase Dostoyevsky often used), which is obsessed by the idea of regulating all life by reason and bringing happiness to man whatever the cost.”****

Here’s a stab at pulling this all together into something relevant for me as Gibbs & Partners:

  • Most human beings, including business owners, are simply trying to persevere in their existence.
  • Most corporates, built as machines, where structure determines process, are inimical to this.   Which is why people, when they get the chance, retire, or leave and set up their own small businesses, often with no idea of growth, simply as a means of persevering in their existence.
  • What I’m making explicit and to an extent formalising, is an alternative, organic view of a business where process (the making and keeping of promises) determines structure.   An alternative Le Guin might call yin.
  • By formalising this structure,  I’m trying to create a blueprint for documenting the ‘laws’ of a business that enables it to be both a place where people can  persevere in their own existence and a generator of the growth, innovation and profit that will create more spaces for more people to persevere in theirs.  A place where it’s possible to enjoy both freedom and happiness.
  • I’m by no means the only person I know of trying to do something like this.  I’m part of a trend, that recognises the need for humanity to make “a successful adaptation to their environment and learn to live without destroying each other.”****

As Derek Sivers puts it:

“When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws.  This is your utopia”.

Welcome to mine.

 

*Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982). Excerpted in Science Digest (April 1982), p. 30.

**Claude Levi-Strauss, The Scope of Anthropology (London: Jonathan Cape, 1968), pp. 46-47. Also included in Structural Anthropology II (New York: Basic Books, 1976), pp. 28-30. The version here is Le Guin’s own amalgam of the two translations.

***Alfred L. Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin no. 78 (Washington, D.C., 1925), p. 344.

****Robert C. Elliott, The Shape of Utopia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970)

If you read one book during lockdown
May 18, 2020

If you read one book during lockdown

Another read-in-one-go-over-the-weekend book, I recommend.  “Lost Connections”, by Johann Hari.

Appropriate for Mental Health Awareness Week and beyond.

This is a book about what happens to human animals when they don’t get what they need from life:

  • Agency – to make my own unique dent in the universe
  • Mastery – to be continually learning and developing my talents
  • Autonomy – to choose how I make my dent
  • Purpose – to do all the above for something larger than myself
  • Community – in the company of like-minded people
  • Status – and to find my place in that community

It’s also about ways to put it right.

Luckily, for small business owners, putting it right is not that hard.

We can simply make sure everything we do in our businesses contributes at least something towards these things for the people we work with, the people we work for, and ultimately for ourselves.

It starts by reading this book.

And then maybe this one.

Subject, Consumer or Citizen?
May 15, 2020

Subject, Consumer or Citizen?

Subjects are defined by their relationship with the people who are ‘over’ them.  The word ‘subject’ literally means ‘thrown under’.

Much of what we call history is about groups of ‘superiors’ fighting for control of subjects.   For the subjects, it didn’t matter who you were ‘thrown under’, your life was much the same – nasty, brutish and short.

Consumers, on the other hand, are defined by a repetitive act that embodies their relationship with producers.   Producers make, consumers ‘use up’.   Consumers can come into being once subjects are able to get beyond the basics of subsistence and think about choice.  Consumers make mass production possible.

Citizens are defined by the fact that they share their space with many other people, and by the fact that doing so requires shared values, constant negotiation and active participation to be effective.   Even more so now, when we’re no longer tied to a specific location, but are like Diogenes, ‘a citizen of the world’, whether we like it or not.

It seems to me that being a subject or consumer is perhaps an easier role to play, but rather passive and ulitmately unsatisfying, when you consider that we only have one life.

Citizenship on the other hand, is hard work, but work that is fulfilling both in the short run (because through it we can grow), and in the long run (because done well we make it easier for people in the future to grow).

I know which I’d rather be, and I’m clearly not alone.   It seems we are all heading that way, if we’re allowed to.

This model works at many levels, from a single family to the entire world.

We could make a start with all the companies we’re in.

 

Many thanks to Anwen Cooper for pointing this out to me:

https://medium.com/new-citizenship-project/subject-consumer-or-citizen-three-post-covid-futures-8c3cc469a984

Long reads for a long weekend
May 7, 2020

Long reads for a long weekend

As human beings we are complex sytems, inhabiting complex systems.

Some of these are natural – weather, plate tectonics, ecosystems, the galaxy; some we’ve made up ourselves.  And of course, through the social systems we invent, we impact some of the natural ones.

The more we’ve understood our bodies – the physical system we inhabit – the better we’ve been able to cure, contain or prevent individual suffering and maximise the potential for individual flourishing.   The more we’ve understood the natural systems we operate in, the better we’ve been able to exploit or enhance them to our benefit.

As businesses we operate within social systems, and if we want to maximise the potential for it’s individual flourishing, it pays to understand those systems better.

They’re both a long read, but with a bank holiday weekend ahead, Capital in the 21st Century and its sequel Capital and Ideology are a great place to start to understand the social system that’s had the biggest impact on everything in our world for the last 250 years.

If reading is not your thing, Capital is available as a documentary film too.

Remember, all models are wrong, so it’s worth exploring as many as you can.   Some of them may prove useful.

Community (and status)
April 30, 2020

Community (and status)

Humans are tribal.  We know that.

We like to hang around with other people like us.   Who share our beliefs, values and ideally, our sense of purpose.

We can belong to many different, overlapping ‘tribes’ – when I was a student in Manchester, I could take you to more pubs than anyone else I knew, because I belonged to several separate tribes, who each had their own hangouts.

We also like to know where we fit within our tribes, our status.

Status doesn’t necesarily mean being at the top.   We might indeed be a ‘leader’, but we could equally be an ‘elder’, a ‘wise one’ or a ‘poet’.  We might be the ‘one everyone goes to for information or advice’.   We might even be ‘the weirdo’.   Status simply means knowing our position in the tribe, and knowing that everyone else knows it too.

Of course, our tribalism isn’t always a good thing.   And like our other motivations, if we don’t find it at work, we look elsewhere.

So maybe we should offer it at work?

And not just for the team, for customers, suppliers and associates too?

Purpose
April 29, 2020

Purpose

If there is one thing that human beings like better than making their own individual dent in the universe, it’s being part of something that promises to ma

Agency
April 27, 2020

Agency

On Saturday, I found a really good definition of ‘Agency’:

“People are ‘conscious, reflecting initiators of acts in a structured, meaningful world.’  They are not simply programmed to follow scripts defined by roles; they instigate actions, often with considerable intelligence, creativity and improvisation.”*

We see this all the time outside work.   People restore whole canals, railways, buildings.  They run clubs for all sorts of activities.  They learn difficult skills as a hobby.  They volunteer to do boring or ridiculous, dangerous things for charities.    Even more so during a crisis, as now.

It seems that people can’t help themselves.  Given the smallest chance, they spontaneously create value, as long as they feel they have a ‘structured, meaningful world’ to do it in.

Of course a workplace can be a ‘structured, meaningful world’, in which people can behave as ‘conscious, reflecting initiators of acts’, but far too often, it isn’t.

Why is that?

 

 

*Erik Olin Wright, quoting Goran Therborn.

Managing blind
April 3, 2020

Managing blind

If you know about Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), you’ll know that people have preferred channels of communication and expression.   Some people lean towards images, others towards words, others towards feelings.

Not surprisingly, these preferences apply to how people take in the information that convinces them of something, for example, whether or not someone is doing a good job.

Try it.  Ask yourself  “How do I know someone’s doing a good job?“

Is it by seeing them do it?  Is it by reading a report they’ve produced?  Is it by hearing someone tell you?   Is it by doing it with them?

The preferred channel isn’t the whole story though, we also have a preference that relates to time and frequency – how many times we need to experience the signals of a job well done, in order to be convinced that the person doing it can be safely left to themselves.

Some people are immediately convinced, they only need to see/read/hear/do once, and they are happy to let the person carry on.

Others need a few instances before they are convinced.

Yet others need to keep receiving the evidence because they are never quite 100% convinced, no matter how many times they see/hear/read/do.

Clearly this has implications for what might be appropriate roles for the individuals in your team, depending on the kind of business you do.   And there are dangers in it, as I’ve talked about before.

It is of particular relevance if you are a manager or business owner, when one or more of the usual channels are not available.

The first part of the answer for most businesses, is to switch to measuring outcomes, not work.

The second is to run spot-checks at a reasonable frequency, which can take different forms.

For example you could arrange to ‘accompany’ someone as they perform their job.   You give notice, so they are prepared, because you are not so much checking what they are doing as monitoring the reactions of the people they interact with as they do it.

Or you can ‘mystery shop’ – the non-creepy equivalent of observing covertly, from a distance.   Better yet, get a professional to do it for you on a regular basis.

And you can give everyone a stake in success, by truly sharing ownership.

The point of this post, and some of the others I’ve written this week, is to show that there may be reasons beyond the immediate crisis that are making you and your team feel uncomfortable and demotivated.

Of course the priority now is get set up just enough to survive.

But there is no need for things to be worse than they are, and soon you will have some time to invest beyond survival.

By taking the time to understand individual working styles, so you can work with the grain of every member of your team (including yourself), you’ll come out of the other side stronger.   And you’ll have showed your team you care.

Here’s the book reference again: “Words that Change Minds”, by Shelle Rose Charvet.    Check out the website too.

Switching focus
March 31, 2020

Switching focus

It’s been amazing to see how quickly many businesses have been able to switch to some sort of online delivery model over the last week or so.

Continuing my musings on ‘Working Styles’, here’s something to bear in mind though, especially for your sales team.

To be good at sales, or customer service, or support, people need to be get some of their motivation from other people – they need to be externally focused.

So far, so good.   But the context of sales can vary, and individuals can have very different working style preferences and still be excellent sales people – as long as the context they are in remains congenial.

For example, a good salesperson can have a reactive preference – that is, they act on things that happen, rather than initiating events.   That’s perfect for physical retail, where customers don’t want to be pestered, yet want attentiveness when they ask for it.      People with a proactive preference, on the other hand are more suited to a field sales role, where they have to go out and find clients, or for pulling in customers through promotions outside the premises.

Bear these preferences in mind as you switch to online.   Working against the grain of their preference will be more difficult for both proactive and reactive people.  You could, for example have the reactive people man your chatlines and customer service lines, while the proactive people do online networking and phone calls.

To find out what preferences the people in your business have, I recommend “Words that Change Minds” by Shelle Rose Charvet.   I’ve used this approach many times, to help with franchisee recruitment, and to help individuals identify what they should be looking for in a job or career.   It can be done in 20 minutes, via a telephone interview.

Now would be a great time to find out what makes your people tick.