“Design your business, or it will be designed for you.”
In other words, if you don’t decide ‘how things get done around here’, other people will decide that for you. At best it will be your team, but it could end up being your toughest suppliers, or your most demanding customers.
You didn’t start your business to dance to someone else’s tune.
Better get your own written down then.
The genius of a composer like Mozart, is that no matter who plays his music, or what they play it on (even a synthesiser), you know it’s Mozart.
The genius of a musician like Grappelli or Menhuin, is that no matter what they play you know it’s Grappelli or Menhuin.
A genius musician playing a genius composer amplifies the experience of both. And shows other musicians and composers what can be achieved.
It’s the score that makes this amplification possible.
Every musician get’s told what notes to play, what mood to create. No less, no more. The how is completely up to them – as long as it delivers the required experience, or better.
Discipline makes Daring possible.
In a business, striking the right balance between control and freedom is hard.
We want the serendipity that freedom brings. To be open to emergent behaviour or trends. And increasingly, we want our workplaces to be human, places where people can exercise their natural powers of creativity, collaboration and problem solving to the benefit of the customer and the company.
But emergence without direction or foundation simply turns into entropy.
The answer is to make sure the culture doesn’t only live inside people’s heads.
Document your Promise of Value as a compass to guide everyone on your journey.
Install a floor through which nobody can fall.
Capture the high-level process as the clue that will get everyone (especially newbies) through the labyrinth safely.
Then set your people free.
“It is known that, when we learn or train in something, we pass through the stages of shu, ha, and ri. These stages are explained as follows. In shu, we repeat the forms and discipline ourselves so that our bodies absorb the forms that our forebears created. We remain faithful to these forms with no deviation. Next, in the stage of ha, once we have disciplined ourselves to acquire the forms and movements, we make innovations. In this process the forms may be broken and discarded. Finally, in ri, we completely depart from the forms, open the door to creative technique, and arrive in a place where we act in accordance with what our heart/mind desires, unhindered while not overstepping laws.” Endō Seishirō
You want your entire team to get to ri.
That’s impossible while the shu is only in your head.
Discipline makes Daring possible.
HT to Carlos Saba for the thought. And to Claire Perry-Louise for creating the space where it can be shared.
Sometimes, a process that looks like it could be a pattern isn’t.
If the same thing happens in the same way every time, and it’s performed by the same Role using the same Props, then what you have isn’t processes that are alike. You have the same process, repeated exactly as part of several larger processes.
As an example, take dealing with a visitor to your office. Often this is the responsibility of a particular Role. They greet the visitor, take their coat, show them to a waiting area and offer them a drink. It makes no difference why the visitor is here, what happens afterwards or who deals with them next, the process is exactly the same whether the visitor is a client, a prospective employee or a tax inspector.
In this case, it’s better to define the process once, and include it in the Customer Experience Score wherever it occurs. You could call it ‘Receive Guest’, define it the first time you identify it (for example as part of your ‘Enroll Prospect’ process) then refer to it elsewhere (for example, in Handle Tax Inspection, Recruit Team Member, Hold Social Event).
Identical twins, triplets, even quintuplets are a wonderful thing in humans. We don’t mind that they make more work because they’ll each grow to be unique human beings.
You don’t want them in your Customer Experience Score though. The extra work they create there is pointless.
“The trouble with the sunshine” laughed the shop assistant, “is that it shows up how dirty the windows are.” “Tell me about it! What’s your secret for cleaning them?” I replied.
“I bring in my own e-cloths from home. I use one wet – just water- then the other to dry off. Works perfectly every time.”
That was a great tip (I tried it, it does work perfectly), but the thing that really struck me was the “I bring my own e-cloths in from home.”
People want to take pride in their work.
If you think they don’t, you might be what’s stopping them.
Recently I’ve been thinking about (and remembering) why being ‘The Boss’ is no fun. Or at least not for me.
It’s not the hard graft, or the long hours, or the uncertainty of income. Nor is it the responsibility to clients, or the need to exceed expectations. We knew this was part of starting a business, it’s actually what we wanted – the possibility to get more out of work than the means to live.
Being your own boss is fine. It’s being boss of others, directly or indirectly, that’s difficult. Because although you can now share the physical or mental work involved in delivery, you’ve at least doubled the emotional labour, and emotional labour is harder to share out.
The first step is to recognise that it’s a big part of what gets done. Probably the most important part too.
The next step is to make it explicit, and cover it in the manual.
“Here’s your welcome treat” says the email. Inside, a code for a 10% discount on my first purchase, as a reward for signing up to the mailing list. Lovely.
Except that I’ve already made my first (hefty) purchase, which is how I signed up to the mailing list in the first place.
Now I’ve been given a discount code I’m unlikely to use. I don’t feel special, or welcomed, I feel cheated.
If you have more than one way for people to end up on your mailing list, make sure the reward for doing so works properly in every case.
It’s not rocket science. Just meaning it.
Patterns are a shortcut to previous experience. They enable us to see similarities beyond a mass of detailed differences. We enjoy repetition and sameness – as long as there are enough differences to stimulate us, and keep our eye moving.
The same goes for processes. Sameness is good. A pattern is easy to grasp and easy to remember. That gives us freedom to fill in the details differently when needed.
The trouble is, when we try to communicate a process to other people, we tend to focus on the detail, not the pattern. We feel we have to capture every exception, every flourish and curlicue, every nuance. The result is a mess, that takes too long to untangle and so languishes unused and ignored. Or an unwieldy encyclopedia of micro-patterns – forms, checklists, procedures that makes it impossible to see the patterns that matter.
So if you’re trying to capture process in your business, try looking for the pattern first. Imagine you’re up a level from the process you’re trying to describe, above it, rather than in it, seeing the path through the woods rather than the immediate undergrowth.
Here’s a brilliant example of someone doing that in a completely different context, to free people from the tyranny of recipes or ready-prepared meals.
The Discipline of pattern is what makes Daring possible in execution.
Thanks to The Intuitive Cook for the inspiration.
“Good Services” principle number 12 is “A good service encourages the right behaviours from staff and users.”
The “right behaviours” are up to you. They are the behaviours that live up to the Promise you have made to prospects and clients. You can encourage them to happen by building in reminders of why an Activity or Process gets done, and by making sure the right things are measured and rewarded – or more importantly, that the wrong things aren’t.
An old example: A Chinese emperor offered a financial reward for dead rats. The intention was to reduce the population of rats plaguing the country. The outcome was that people started breeding rats to get the reward.
A recent example: Under Tony Blair, GPs were given a target of no more than 48 hours waiting time for an appointment. The intention was to have GP practices create more capacity. The outcome was that it became impossible to book an appoint more than 48 hours in advance, and almost impossible to get an appointment at all.
A financial example: CEOs of listed companies are often rewarded through share options. The intention is that by prudent management and investment, the business generates more value for shareholders. The outcome is often a slow decline followed by a sudden collapse of the business, as CEOs find ‘easier’ ways to raise the share price that actually damage the viability of the business.
We humans are lazy AND ingenious. If you want people to do ‘the right thing’, you have to make that the easiest and most rewarding option. You have to build processes that go with the grain.
Designing those processes takes thought and effort. It means cycling through some difficult questions:
…and back again to the beginning.
It’s hard work, that requires going against the grain. But the payoff is well worth it, for everyone.