Culture – Page 22 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

August 12, 2019

Better tools

One of my favourite Seth Godin aphorisms is this one:

“Make things better by making better things.”

Making things better is what humans do. And we mostly do it by creating new, better tools – tools for making and tools for doing; tools for organising and tools for co-ordinating; tools for learning and tools for thinking; tools for connecting and tools for feeling.

For me, great tools extend human capabilities without undermining the humanity behind them or the context around them. They make us both more human and more part of the world we live in.

Our very best tool is our ability to re-imagine what ‘better’ means.

August 9, 2019

Counting

“No taxation without representation!”

We’re all familar with the demand that triggered the American war of independence.

Colonists felt it was deeply unfair that they should have no say on how they were governed from afar, but still had to pay duties on luxury goods received via that far-off government.

Nowadays there are those who would like to flip this idea around, claiming that those who pay ‘no tax’ should not be represented in government.

This is based on misinformation of course, ‘no tax’ in this case means ‘no income tax’. People who are not eligible to pay income tax still pay national insurance, VAT, fuel duty, tobacco and alcohol duties, car tax, insurance tax, and these taxes often represent a significant proportion of their income.

What those suggesting “No representation without taxation” are really saying is “You don’t count.”

Tax is far too important to merely avoid. Time to think differently about it, before it’s too late.

August 7, 2019

Do no harm

One of the books I’m reading at the moment is “Jainism and Ethical Finance”, by Atul K. Shah and Aidan Rankin.

The first vow taken as a Jain is ahiṃsā – non-violence or the desire to do no harm.

The interesting thing about this is that it extends beyond humans to animals, insects, microbes and even plants. Strict Jains are vegetarians who do not eat roots, because this destroys a plant’s ability to reproduce itself.

That is a very thought-through concept of impact, that we could all learn from.

Especially as it doesn’t prevent Jains becoming highly successful business owners.

August 6, 2019

Neighbours

Last night, on my way to my pilates class, I spotted one of my neighbours leaving the house of another.

I happen to know that she visits this neighbour every day, with a meal, with shopping, to have a chat. She’s been doing it for at least 30 years.

For no other reason than that they are neighbours.

What struck me last night was the sweatshirt she was wearing.

“Love will save us” it said.

She’s right. Nothing else will.

August 5, 2019

Fluff

A metaphor for the relationship your business creates with its clients could be seen as fluff. A nice marketing touch. Something to hang a campaign on, to help people choose you over others.

But it can and should go much deeper than that.

Blue Rocket Accounting used their metaphor (“we are Mission Control to your space mission”) to standardise their services, to define the Roles people working in the business play for clients and to design how they deliver on that promise. The metaphor becomes shorthand for the purpose – ‘what we do for the people we serve’.

That’s not fluff. That’s the foundation.

July 26, 2019

Parasparopagraho Jīvānām

I’ve just ordered “Jainism and Ethical Finance”, by Atul K. Shah and Aidan Rankin, so I thought I’d find out a bit more about Jainism before it arrives (to supplement the tiny bit I know from reading ‘Kim’).

Two phrases really stood out for me in the Wikipedia entry on Jainism – ‘Parasparopagraho Jīvānām‘, the Jain motto, which means something like “the function of souls is to help one another”; and ‘Anekāntavāda’, the doctrine of ‘many-sidedness’.

To quote the Wikipedia entry fully,

Anekāntavāda ‘states that truth and reality is complex and always has multiple aspects. Reality can be experienced, but it is not possible to totally express it with language. Human attempts to communicate is Naya, explained as “partial expression of the truth”.’

Parasparopagraho Jīvānām and Anekāntavāda seem like useful things to bear in mind as we try to communicate with each other. At least to me.

July 24, 2019

One year later.

Aged 11, late on a Tuesday night, and into the morning, I watched my dad run the payroll for the civil engineering firm he worked for.

I learned two things on that ‘take your daughter to work’ evening.

First, that computing wasn’t scary or even difficult, and the interesting bits were the bits the men did. Second, how fairness trumped everything for my dad.

My dad did this weekly overnight run for years, on his own. Not because it was scheduled that way, but because his peers always gave him the information late.

But no matter how late the inputs came in, the output was the men’s pay packets, and they needed them on Thursday morning, come what may. And as data processing manager, my dad saw at as his responsibility to make sure that happened, come what may.

Now of course, I question some of this. What did he do to try and improve the schedule? Did the company see him as a mug? But still I think of his favourite question – “What would be fair?”

What lessons did your dad teach you?

What are you teaching your daughters?

July 23, 2019

10 years old

When my dad was 10, he was evacuated to a small Durham village, to be safer than in Newcastle upon Tyne.

When I was 10, men walked on the moon.

We live through enormous changes, often not realising how enormous they are at the time.

What happened when you were 10?

July 19, 2019

What makes a good Process? Let the person be the judge

A good process is a prompt, not a prescription. Like a musical score, or a set of building drawings, it tells people what to produce, not how to do it – they already know that, that’s why you hired them.

That means you can leave the details of execution and judgement to the person running the process. You don’t need to spell out every decision, or identify every possible scenario, or include every last detail of the ‘how to’.

You’re not programming a robot, you’re supporting an intelligent human being to take responsibility and use their own skill, experience, empathy, creativity and judgement to deliver what they, as a part of the business, have promised to the people the business serves.

So to recap, a good process is:

clear about the outcome it is designed to achieve
the responsibility of a single role, ensuring all required resources are available when and where they are needed
both map and compass, helping the person running it to get to the right destination in all circumstances – even those you couldn’t predict
a prompt, not a prescription

These things make for a process that people will actually use; that doesn’t need to be changed with every new piece of software or equipment; that is easy for new people to learn and even internalise, that allows the person responsible to ‘just get on with it’.

A process that is as simple as possible, but no simpler.

July 12, 2019

The Joy of Tax

When things flow, it is sometimes possible to be wrong about their direction. Like when you’re sitting on a train at a station, and you think it’s started moving when it’s not, because the train next to you has started moving the opposite way.

When you’re operating within a system of systems, as we all are, all of the time, it is sometimes possible to misinterpret a symptom as a cause or a cause as a symptom.

It helps to take a step away every now and then and look for the bigger picture, to try and see how things might work differently, rather than trusting your assumptions.

Writers of all kinds can help us do this. Their assumptions may be wrong too of course, but at least they help us become aware that we’re making them. Sometimes, they even help us change them.

I thoroughly recommend reading The Joy of Tax, by Richard Murphy. Even if you don’t agree about the joy.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Culture