Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Culture

This week, I am mostly going to recommend…
July 24, 2023

This week, I am mostly going to recommend…

Blogs and books to read, people to follow, ideas to think about, actions to take.

My first recommendation this week is a blog “Funding the Future” by Professor Richard Murphy.

One of todays posts is chilling, which is why I am recommending it.

Richard pulls no punches:

“The threat created by climate change is now bigger than that which was created by Covid.

It is bigger than the threat created by the global financial crisis in 2008.

It is also likely that the threat is now at least as big as that created by the Second World War because as many people as then are now at risk from democidal governments.”

 

I don’t always agree with him, but his posts always make me think about how things could be different.

The first step to changing things is to talk about how they are, how they could be, and how we could help them change in a direction that works for all of us.

The more of us that do that, the better, because we need to move fast.

Harmony
July 17, 2023

Harmony

Harmony isn’t only everyone singing or playing the same tune at the same time, powerful as that kind of harmony is.

Harmony can also be an active fitting together of differences so that together they sound more than the sum of the parts.

The first kind of harmony is easy to take part in.  Just sing or play along wth everyone else.

The second takes more effort, to hear what’s going on around you, keep time and co-ordinate your own music making accordingly.  An active fitting together of differences to create a much richer sound experience.

You can teach people to make the first kind of harmony just by getting them to practice.

For the second, you need a score.

Which means you have to become a composer, not an instructor.

 

Discipline makes Daring possible

Ask me how.

 

HT to Bettany Hughes for prompting this one.

Repeating ourselves
July 10, 2023

Repeating ourselves

It looks as though humanity (actually only a small part of it) is about to repeat one of our gravest and most frequent mistakes – to start exploiting a vast and almost completely unknown resource without thinking seriously about the possible consequences.   In pursuit of materials that may well prove to be redundant in a few years.

We did it with whale oils, we did it with America’s great plains, we’re still doing it with rainforests and wetlands everywhere, and now we plan to do it with the mid-ocean ridges.

What makes it worse, is that the benefits will accrue to a few, while the harms will accrue to many, for generations to come.   We won’t even recycle the materials we extract – why bother when it’s cheaper to mine, for as long as the true cost is never accounted for?

It’s not quite too late to stop this, Greenpeace has a petition you can sign, but maybe the best thing is simply to make yourself and others aware, so they can sign too.

We humans are ingenious creatures, we don’t have to go on repeating ourselves.

We could force ourselves to think of better alternatives by making promises to our planet and our future selves.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

The future belongs to tadpoles
July 5, 2023

The future belongs to tadpoles

What if people didn’t have to work for a living?   How would you attract people to work in your small business?

Pay would be the obvious first thought, but when people don’t have to worry about survival, money isn’t the motivator we think it is.  Not on its own.

So what would motivate someone to work with you?

Probably, good work, that enriches:

  • The ecosystem of the organization in which the profit is produced
  • The ecosystem of the community of which that organization is a part
  • The greater ecology of the planet

And also enriches:

  • Their inner ecosystem
  • The client’s inner ecosystem

By enabling each person to achieve more of what we all really want:

  • Agency – to make our own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
  • Mastery – to learn and master (even teach) new skills.
  • Autonomy – to be free to choose how we make our dent.
  • Purpose – to do this for something bigger than ourselves, that has meaning beyond the sale.
  • Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.
    • Status – to know (and for others to know) where we stand in our communities.

 

Businesses that do all this don’t look like Amazon, Google or Coca-Cola.   They look more like Nucor, or Michelin, or Haier, or Buurtzorg.

But these are the big players, the mighty toads in the big business pond.

What if you’re just a tadpole?

That’s excellent news, because you can jump into this future right now, as a Disappearing Boss.

You might even make this future happen sooner.

 

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

Coming soon, The Disappearing Bosses Club.

Beyond a Survival Economy
July 4, 2023

Beyond a Survival Economy

As you know, I like a book that takes a different perspective, that opens up new possibilities, that offers a different mental model for how the world could be.

“Beyond a Survival Economy” by David Foulkes is one of those books.

I haven’t finished it yet, and I’m not going to save you the job of reading it, because I really think you should, but there was one quote that stuck in my mind as I read it yesterday:

“Payment is always forward oriented…when you are buying something, you are ordering its continued production and sale.” Götz Werner

That is how we as consumers continually re-create the world we currently inhabit.

Which means that one of the ways to create a different kind of world, is to buy it into existence.

To look behind the marketing and decide whether the world this brand is actually creating is what we want for our seventh-generation grandchildren.

And if it isn’t look for something else, or do without.

To put our money where our mouth is.

Not because this will change the world on its own, it won’t.

But we can use it as one way in to changing the system, while we tackle it from another direction elsewhere.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

Vanity
June 23, 2023

Vanity

‘He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity’

(Ecclesiastes, 5.10).

Ever since we’ve been human, we have understood the damage that can be done by the monopolisation of wealth and power.  From earliest times we developed ways to prevent it in our communities – burying it with the owner, holding regular debt jubilees where everyone went back to a baseline, taxing the marginal income of the extremely rich at rates that made further accumulation pointless.

Profit for profit’s sake is vanity.

It’s also destroying our ability to live well.  Even our ability to live at all on this world.

Are you happy with that?

If not, and you’re wondering where and how to get started, this tool I helped to build will help you see the system, so you can change the system:

Connect the Dots.

Discipline makes Daring possible

A tool for thinking
June 21, 2023

A tool for thinking

Writing your Customer Experience Score makes you think:

About how you really want your business to work.  How it can best make and keep its Promise to clients.

About why you started it in the first place.  What it is here to do.  How it will help you leave your mark.

As you write, you use your Score to communicate your thinking to your team.

 

Also to help them think:

About how they really want to work.  How they can best make and keep their Promise to themselves.

Why they joined your business in the first place, what it is here to do.  How it will help them leave their mark.

How they can help you make your business work even better at making and keeping its Promise to clients.

 

Before long, it isn’t your business.

 

It’s our business, designed by you, refined by us.

 

You’re one Boss among many.

 

So when it’s time for you to leave.

It will be safe in our hands.

 

Discipline makes Daring possible.

A brilliant tool
June 16, 2023

A brilliant tool

A good tool tells you what it’s for.   So that it’s simple to understand, and simple to use.

A good tool is powerful.  So that it can be used at multiple levels of granularity.

A good tool is also simple to make.  So that it becomes accessible to everyone.

Some of the best tools are also tangible.  So that mind and body work together to embed mastery.

My friend Bev Costoya has invented a new tool that is simple, powerful, accessible and tangible, to help people like us to fully evaluate the impact of ideas on the ecosystem that surrounds us, so that we can change the world in the right direction, on purpose, instead of by accident.

It’s called the Wolf Tool,  and it is absolutely brilliant.

Words and meanings
June 13, 2023

Words and meanings

control (kənˈtrəʊl)

noun:

  • the power to influence or direct [other] people’s behaviour or the course of events.
  • the ability to manage a machine, vehicle, or other moving object.
  • the restriction of an activity, tendency, or phenomenon.
  • the ability to restrain one’s own emotions or actions.
  • a means of limiting or regulating something.

verb:

  • determine the behaviour or supervise the running of.
  • maintain influence or authority over.
  • limit the level, intensity, or numbers of.
  • remain calm and reasonable despite provocation.
  • regulate (a mechanical or scientific process).

 

hierarchy (ˈhʌɪərɑːki)

noun:

  • a system in which members of an organization or society are ranked according to relative status or authority.
  • the clergy of the Catholic Church or of an episcopal Church.
  • the upper echelons of a hierarchical system.
  • an arrangement or classification of things according to relative importance or inclusiveness.
  • the traditional system of orders of angels and other heavenly beings.

 

chaos (ˈkeɪɒs)

noun:

  • complete disorder and confusion.
  • the property of a complex system whose behaviour is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions.
  • the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe.
  • the first created being, from which came the primeval deities Gaia, Tartarus, Erebus, and Nyx.

 

anarchy (ˈanəki)

noun:

  • a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.
  • the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism.

 

The interesting thing about all of these definitions (from Oxford Languages), is that all but one are descriptions.

That odd one out is an opinion.  From someone further up the hierarchy, used to being in control of people other than themselves.

Voluntary cooperation is a form of control.  It’s just that each participant gets a say in in defining what it means (sometimes as they go along), and agrees to join in.

We do this all the time, mostly without noticing.

As a child, I called it play.

And it could be how we work.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Small is beautiful
June 12, 2023

Small is beautiful

I wish I’d read this book 50 years ago.

Although, to be fair, I probably wouldn’t have understood that much of it back then.

Still I do wish I’d read it 20 or 30 years ago.

It explains where we are so clearly and simply.

We’ve been living off our capital. And now it’s running out, fast.

There is still time to change our spending habits, but we need to start now.

If you haven’t already read it, do.

Then remember that we were warned 50 years ago.

It’s not our fault nothing’s changed.

@just.stopoil are right.