Culture – Page 20 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

March 20, 2020

Learning together – online

Following on again from yesterday’s post, if you know your business is going to be quiet for the next few weeks or months, here are some courses I recommend (I’ve done most of them, some of them more than once).

They could be for you or for your team.

A whole bunch from Akimbo Workshops (Seth Godin and friends)

The Bootstrappers Workshop, ideal if you are still getting your business idea off the ground (which in my case was 5 years after I’d started!)

The Marketing Seminar, will make you think really hard about who you are for, and what you really do for them. Highly recommended.

The Podcasting Workshop, a brilliant thing for graduates to do instead of an internship, and for experts too. (I haven’t done this one, you can probably tell!)

The Freelancers Workshop, Seth calls himself a freelancer, so you’re in good company.

The Story Skills Workshop, with Bernadette Jiwa, a master of daily storytelling.

And if you’re really looking to use this downtime to hit the ground running later, there’s the AltMBA, as it suggests a leadership and management workshop, that is more intense that the others.

You’ll never be the same after any of these workshops. And the brilliant thing about them is that you aren’t doing them alone. The format requires you to interact with your fellow students, to help each other, constructively critique each other and encourage each other. By doing so, you learn far more yourself. And they are not expensive.

If you prefer to work on your own, many of these are also available on Udemy.

Last but by no means least, here’s something a little more local, but equally good: Seeds to Success from Anwen Cooper, of Get Fruitful Marketing starting April. I’ve been working with Anwen for about a year now, and the difference she has helped me to make is enormous.

March 11, 2020

Participation

Last week I heard of some interesting research about consumers. Which is that people don’t like to be thought of as consumers.

They want to be participants. They don’t want to be one side of a transaction, they want to be pulled into a dance; enrolled on a journey. They want to connect and create a bond between themselves and the people they buy from.

That’s good news for ventures like Sail Cargo Alliance, who are in the business of building communities of producers, shippers and consumers.

Even better news for accountancy firms, because that’s just the change that’s needed to build a thriving practice and a thriving community of small businesses.

March 3, 2020

Measuring what really matters

Today the ICAEW is calling for accountants to rally to the cause of sustainable cost accounting: “All stakeholders have to … Read More “Measuring what really matters”

February 18, 2020

The Status Quo

We like to stick with the status quo, believing that if we do nothing, nothing will change.

But in a complex evolving system things are always changing. All we can do is try and shape those changes. To make possible new status quos that are better than the one we have now – and now – and now.

This is an almost impossible task. But not to be given up.

Because if we don’t choose the shape of the next possible status quo, someone else will do it for us.

Or against us.

“What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be.” ~ Antonio Gramsci

February 12, 2020

Repetition

I own a few thousand books, all of which I have read multiple times.

Why do I do this?

Because every time I read a book, I’ve changed since the last time I read it, so my interpretation of it changes. I see different things in it, notice different character traits, or different ways of using words than I did before.

I also own several editions of the same works.

Why do I do this?

Partly for practical reasons. Some editions fit more easily into a pocket than others. But mainly because the experience of the physical book is different in each case. Some have fine, almost transparent pages of thin, crisp paper. Others are thick, rough-textured. Some even have edges cut by the book’s first reader. Typefaces vary. The smell and heft of each edition is different.

You may think I’m weird (I know I am), but I bet you’ve re-read a book, or re-watched a film, or watched a remake of a favourite. You will have heard different versions of the same song, and sometimes preferred a cover to the original. I bet you’ve eaten the same dish at different restaurants, or at the same restaurant at different times. Not because you want it to be identical, but because ‘the same but different’ is interesting.

Repetition is comforting, reassuring. Repetition with variation is comforting, reassuring and enriching.

Something customer experience designers could learn from.

January 31, 2020

Measuring what matters

Every day, every news programme reports the level of the FTSE 100. Here’s a question (actually three): What does the … Read More “Measuring what matters”

January 29, 2020

Sanity

Listening to Start the Week on Monday, I heard Grayson Perry give a brilliant definition of sanity:

“Sanity is being all of yourself, to everyone, all of the time. Not schizophrenic or chameleon-like.”

Authenticity follows on from this: “Authenticity means bringing all of yourself to bear on a topic” – in other words, bringing your whole self to the work.

So, if it feels like your job might be driving you insane, you could be right.

January 24, 2020

An antidote to the news

It would be easy to get depressed if all I saw was the news. It would be easy to feel helpless against the natural and human forces that seem to be sending the world to hell in a handcart.

Fortunately I get out quite a bit and meet other ordinary people like me. People who are trying to make the best living they can in the best way they can. And what I see is a different take on what ‘best’ means, what ‘wealth’, ‘prosperity’, ‘growth’ might mean, and a willingness to act on that, each person rippling out from the centre of their own small circle.

Those ripples will meet, join up and create a larger change – probably before anyone in the news has really noticed.

January 21, 2020

Civilisation

Once people had seen a wheel, they didn’t have to invent it. They used it to improve a process – moving heavy things, hunting, war, playing.

Once people in England had seen a brick house, they didn’t have to invent it. They used it as a model for building new, bigger, more comfortable houses. Then they used it as a model to build more comfortable and permanent houses for more people.

Once people saw the internet, they didn’t have to invent it. They used it to re-invigorate old processes – shopping, talking, sharing information.

Once you have a process for doing something, you don’t have to invent it. You can build on it to regenerate old processes you want to keep, or to create new processes that were not possible before. You can use it to come up with a much better version.

Our civilisation is built on streamlining processes to make room for inventing new ones.

Many people see ‘process’ as restrictive, stultifying, oppressive.

That’s not because it’s process, it’s because people are inventing the wrong things.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Culture