Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Culture

One system to rule them all
June 5, 2023

One system to rule them all

It seems to me that our besetting sin as human beings is that we are always looking for silver bullets, the simple solution, the one true answer to everything.

We blind ourselves to the systems that surround us, and in so doing, destroy them.

Why?

Because it’s impossible to monopolise complexity.

So we reduce the world to silver bullets, and destroy the systems that actually enable our lives and others, to maintain a system we created and imposed upon the world.

A system we imagined and could easily re-imagine.

Capitalism.

Not markets, or making and selling things, or money.

Capitalism – ever-increasing profit for profit’s sake, regardless of the damage done along the way.

It’s not too late to change things.

But we’d better start soon.

Pour encourager nous autres
May 30, 2023

Pour encourager nous autres

On reflection, I’d add one more thing to Ari Weinzweig’s definition of Good Profit:

“Good Profit, I will now say, appears when multiple ecosystems are all benefited at the same time:

  • Our inner ecosystem
  • Our client’s inner ecosystem
  • 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”

That makes some Bad Profits easy to spot:  sell addictive and harmful substances, wrapped in plastic, powered by lithium and destined to litter the streets, to people who are desperate, or bored.  Vapes, alcohol, gambling, ultra-processed food, toxic social media.

These industries are clearly making Bad Profits at all levels except perhaps one: “The ecosystem of the organization in which the profit is produced”.  Even this is questionable – how must it feel to work for one of them?

Business making Good Profits are not as easy to spot, perhaps because one aspect of Good Profits is that they tend to be lower (which is also Good, because too much money in the hands of too few people distorts the system). So it’s important that we share them when we find them, so they can grow.

Here are a couple of examples I know:

  • New Dawn Traders:
    • An alliance of regenerative producers, sailing ships, allies at small ports and like-minded customers.  Customers buy from port allies near them .  The port allies place orders with the broker.  The sailing ship collects cargo from the producers, cares for it at sea, and delivers it to the various small ports.   Everyone gains – producers are paid better, access new markets, ships earn extra income, broker and port allies get their share and customers get top quality at fair prices. Nobody’s exploited, the earth is cared for, almost no carbon is released. Every ecosystem is nurtured.
  • Earth Runs and the 1% club:
    • People get active, trees get planted. The right kind, where needed. Carbon is captured, jobs created.  So far they’ve “planted over 130,000 trees, got over 1,750 people active, provided 1,900 days of fairly paid work for our tree-planting communities and kept the equivalent of 783kg of unwanted medals out of landfill.” Every ecosystem is nurtured.

 

You know some small businesses making Good Profits.

Please share – “pour encourager nous autres”.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Good profit, bad profit
May 25, 2023

Good profit, bad profit

The idea of ‘de-growth’ is often presented as a backward step for us, a return to a life that would be ‘nasty, brutish and short’.  What would happen if we no longer had industry making new stuff, or businesses could no longer make profit?  It all seems pretty negative.

No wonder people aren’t rushing to change their ways.

So I was really pleased to read Ari Weinzweig’s newsletter today, in which he splits ‘profit’ into ‘good profit’ and bad profit’.

“Good Profit, I will now say, appears when multiple ecosystems are all benefited at the same time:

  • Our inner ecosystem
  • 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”

As I’ve said before, we had businesses, markets, and profits before we had capitalism, and for sure some of those profits were bad. I’m not advocating a return to feudalism.

But what this tells me is that there is a way to think about addressing the climate crisis that can fit with our needs as small businesses.

Simply strive always to make Good Profits – that actively benefit as many of these ecosystems as we can.

I thoroughly recommend Ari’s newsletter.  The Zingerman’s Community of Companies is an inspiring and interesting ecosystem, that has thrived by going their own way.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Circular economies
May 23, 2023

Circular economies

Humans have lived in circular economies for an awfully long time, and recognised that fact in their art, thinking and rituals.  The ancient Egyptians knew that dung beetles ensure that every day, the sun rises on a world in balance, neither knee-deep in dung, nor barren rock.

It’s only since around 1500 CE that we fell into the living linear trap required for the perpetual growth of profits – take, make, consume, waste.

Perpetual growth of what really matters – health, wellbeing, community, creativity, ingenuity, beauty, equity etc. etc. – the possibilities are literally infinite – is best served when we think in circles and eco-systems instead of  assembly lines and machines.

We’ve done it before, we can do it again.

How much better could we do it knowing what we know now?

Many people, businesses and organisations are already finding that out.

What are you waiting for?

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Dead space
May 22, 2023

Dead space

This weekend my husband and I crossed another thing off our ‘to-visit’ list.  We went to Canning Town and had a bit of a wander.  Steve was looking for where the Bridgehouse used to be (a pub he used to visit for  live music in the 70s) as well as the housing development site he worked on as a student in the late 80’s.  The pub is long gone, but the housing is looking nice, low-rise, semis and terraces with neighbourly gardens, set on the edge of the park that replaced the old victorian streets.

While we were there we took a look at the shops in Barking Road, then down to City Island, a brand new development nestled in a loop of the river Lea.

What struck me was the contrast between the two.  Barking Road is scruffy, some might say run-down, but lively and full of little independent shops (including a Portuguese shop and cafe that made its own pasteis de nata) and some impressive former local authority buildings.   City Island is brand new, high-rise, colourful, but samey.

And strangely dead.

A pedestrianised area goes through it, and there are shops, restaurants, a yoga studio, nursery and gym, with typical ‘city’ planting.

The space looks public, but isn’t.

The shops and restaurants are almost anonymous, the only branding the London City Island E14 logo.  The windows are dark, so you can’t see in, or tell whether they are open.  It’s a sunny lunchtime, but nobody’s around.

There are green spaces, but nowhere to sit in them, and certainly nowhere to play.  The last thing the landlord wants is to leave money on the table, and it shows.  Like a theme park, every experience is predetermined, everything is ‘provided’, but only at a cost.

“They’re just warehouses for people,” my husband said, “you’re only really meant to sleep in them, handy for your job in the city.  They’re not for living in.”

I’ve noticed the same about a lot of new places in London – Canary Wharf, Canada Water, Woolwich Arsenal, the South Bank, Elephant Park, Deptford.

The marketing literature likes to call these places, ‘Vibrant‘.

Hmmm.

Pretty bleak, I’d call them.

I know where I’d rather live.

Blackmail – the new business model?
May 17, 2023

Blackmail – the new business model?

Is it just me, or is anyone else worried/annoyed/infuriated by the rise of ‘Clubcard Prices’, ‘Nectar Prices’ and the like?

I keep a pretty good track of prices in my head, and from what I could see, ‘Clubcard Prices’ weren’t lower than the usual prices elsewhere.  It was simply an opportunity to put ‘normal’ prices up, by quite a percentage.

Harmless enough, until every other member of the supermarket cartel joins in of course.

To me it feels very much like ‘Give us your loyalty, or you’ll pay extra for everything’.

Since when has blackmail been an acceptable business model?

Where power is
May 4, 2023

Where power is

“We may not like to admit it, but most organizations–even those with “nice” cultures–are authoritarian by design“ – from Michele Zanini’s post yesterday.

Of course they are.

Because they are founded on a fundamental asymmetry of power.

If an employable person doesn’t work, they starve.   That’s not true for their ultimate employers.

Enclosures, Poor Laws, Vagrancy acts and witch hunts were the weapons used to bring about this asymmetry, following a hundred years or so of peasants getting ‘above themselves’ after the ravages of the Black Death.

‘Austerity’, ‘inflation control’, ‘reforms’ to education, healthcare and the welfare state are being used to reinforce it today.

Now, we’re not even allowed to protest about it.

It’s why government doesn’t really like small business, despite what they say, because small businesses are often more equitable (because here, employer and employee are more or less in the same boat – if they don’t work, they starve).

The good news is that this puts power in our hands.  Because as small businesses we can choose how we grow, and so start to tip the balance back again, by growing differently.

Purpose-led.  Equitably organised and rewarded.

The way we naturally want to be.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

The cat’s out of the bag
May 3, 2023

The cat’s out of the bag

I see City bosses are clamouring for a return to office working again.

I wonder why?

Are they worried about rents on empty offices?   Those are effectively a sunk cost.

Are they worried about their teams’ jobs or wellbeing?  I doubt it.

Are they worried about ‘losing control’?  Are they bullies then?

Is it about status?  What’s the point of being a boss when there’s nobody around to see it?

Or could it be that when frontliners demonstrate that they can achieve better results without supervision, intervention and commutes, it’s the manager’s job that’s redundant?

Hmmm…

It seems to me that for a long time, traditional corporate management has been about pushing risk and accountability downwards to the people who do the work, without giving them the rewards to match.  Now the cat’s out of the bag.

It’s going to be hard to put it back.

Better then to follow through instead, and give people what they really want:

  • Agency – to make their own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
  • Mastery – to learn and master (even teach) new skills.
  • Autonomy – to be free to choose how they make their dent.
  • Purpose – to do this for something bigger than themselves, 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.

Supported of course, just not necessarily in the form of management.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

What do you think?

Dig deeper
April 27, 2023

Dig deeper

“Practical tips for talking to your employees about stress and worry.” – the title of an email that landed in my inbox this morning.

I couldn’t help thinking: “What if you made sure you are never the direct or indirect source of stress and worry in the first place?”.

Work doesn’t have to be a means of squeezing the joy out of life, it can be part of creating that joy.

If your business isn’t doing that, dig deeper.

Change the system, before it gets changed for you.

Discipline makes Daring possible