Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Culture

Purpose
October 28, 2019

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 make an even bigger dent.

We crave purpose and meaning in our lives, and if we don’t get it from work, we look elsewhere for it.

‘Work’ becomes merely the means of achieving some of our ‘hygiene factors’ – a roof over our heads, food on the table – the things that enable us to pursue our purpose elsewhere.  In which case, ‘work’ probably doesn’t get our full attention, or our best energy.

One response is to starve people into spending more and more time ‘in work’, in order to simply acquire the basics.    That’s how you end up with a productivity paradox.

Much better, for everyone, to offer work with purpose.

Groupthink
October 18, 2019

Groupthink

It’s very hard to call out the obvious falsehood when everyone around you wants it to be true.   Which is why it’s often the outsider, the uninitiated, the person of no consequence that does.

And why wise leaders keep a Fool close to them.

Not just for customers
October 1, 2019

Not just for customers

Your Promise of Value encompasses how you behave as a business, the benefits you offer prospects and deliver to customers, and the relationships you create with customers over time.  In a way, it represents “what the business is here to do”.

As such, it is isn’t only for prospects and customers.   A Promise of Value also describes how the founders and their team have decided to fulfill some of their own needs for agency, mastery, autonomy, purpose and community.  And as such, it creates a framework around which people who work in it as employees can fit their own fulfillment of those needs.

The ideal for a business is to kill two birds with one stone – so that making and keeping it’s promises to customers simultaneously delivers fulfillment for the people who work in it.  But that is hard to achieve (and may not be desirable – where would change come from?)

So as a business you have to accept that not all employees will want the same thing.   Some employees will want all these needs fulfilled by work.   Others will use what work gives them (perhaps money, mastery) to fulfill other needs (perhaps purpose, community, agency) outside work.  That means that offering multiple opportunities for fulfillment that are consistent with your Promise of Value is the key to creating an engaged workforce.

In other words, your Promise of Value is not just for your customers, it’s for your employees too.   And both promises need to be kept if you want to succeed as a business.

Freedom?
September 30, 2019

Freedom?

What is freedom?

  • Agency – being able to make a ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
  • Mastery – having the chance and the means to learn new skills.
  • Autonomy – being free to choose how we make our dent.

That isn’t all we want as humans though.   We also crave Purpose – to be doing this for something bigger than ourselves; and Community – to be doing it with like-minded people.  And within that community, we also seek Status – to find our place and have others know it.

Gangs, drug rings and terrorist organisations provide these things in spades.

So could work, if we designed it to.

Hoarding
September 24, 2019

Hoarding

Money.   A means of exchange, and a store of value.

As one, it oils the wheels of commerce, industry and everyday life.  Enabling us not just to transfer value between each other, but to generate new value for each other.

As the other, it locks up not just its current value, but also all the potential value it is able to create.

Too much oil in the system can be wasteful, but not enough is catastrophic.

Hoarding is counter-productive.  Money needs to move to be really useful, and the more parts it can reach, the more useful it will be.

Gassaku
September 3, 2019

Gassaku

Gassaku, or ‘joint work’, is, unsurprisingly, a Japanese concept, where each collaborator’s contribution is celebrated and acknowledged, while recognising that the completed work transcends all of them.

In the west, we’ve become so used to the idea of the lone artist, the single originator, the star founder, that we are almost blind to joint work.   Except perhaps, when we watch a film, and see at the end the enormous numbers of people that helped to make it.

Yet all work is joint work.  We achieve nothing alone.

Everything we do is built on the work of others – not just those around us now, but those who have gone before.  Not just work that directly contributes to our achievements, but the work (not always paid) that built and continues to build and maintain all the infrastructures that enable them.

Time we acknowledged their contributions.

We
August 29, 2019

We

“What can I do?   I’m only one person.”
Find the others.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
― Margaret Mead

A short cut
August 15, 2019

A short cut

Today is ‘A’ level results day.   I hope that everyone gets the results they want.

But if you don’t, I hope that you remember that the results you wanted were only a short-cut to wherever you want to go.

That destination isn’t closed off to you, it’s just that you might have to take a more roundabout route to get there.

And we all know that travel broadens the mind.

The beauty parade
August 14, 2019

The beauty parade

The problem with forcing yourself to conform to a particular ideal of ‘beauty’, as an individual or a business, is that over time and space, what constitutes that ideal changes.  Plus of course it is an ideal, never actually seen in nature.

Of course this is the point.  No one can possibly keep up, but they will spend time, money and energy trying.  Time, money and energy that could be spent on things that are more dangerous for the status quo.

Yet, as humans, we find beauty in the things we love.  Whatever the beloved looks like, becomes by definition, beautiful.

That means there’s no need to define yourself by another’s standard.   Live up to your own.

The right people will see your beauty.