Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Customer Experience

Bleak House – a never-ending story
May 29, 2020

Bleak House – a never-ending story

The young engineer was sitting, legs dangling into the inspection chamber, looking disgruntled.

“What are you up to?”  I asked him.

“Installing fibre-optic cabling.”

“Ooooh!  Does that mean we’ll be able to get fibre to the home?”

“Yes, eventually.   But I don’t know how long that will be.   There are just so many blockages.”

“Well, it’s old wiring round here isn’t it.” I was thinking metaphorical blockages.

“It’s not that, it’s literally soil, blocking up the conduits.   A pressure washer would clear it, or maybe they’ll have to dig.   I just want to install it, and I can’t.”

Half an hour later, he and his mate have gone, leaving nothing changed apart from a few more spray marks on the ground.

This is at least the second time the installation engineers have been in our street this month.   Each time they’ve been unable to achieve anything, because the process of upgrading the network has been divided up like Adam Smith’s pin factory.   Only where the pin factory contained the whole process, each step involved in this one has been outsourced to a different specialist company, so nobody sees, let alone owns the whole process.

In the old days, you used to see a gang of workmen round a single hole, some of them idle.    Now I know why.   Some of them were there to deal with the unforseen complications that might turn up once the surface was broken.   If a conduit needed clearing, they were there to do it.   And because they all worked for the same company they knew they could do take that responsibility.   That’s called slack, leeway, resilience.    It’s how you keep a complex process on track.

But what we’ve replaced that with is far more wasteful.   At least all the workmen got paid, even if they didn’t get the satisfaction of doing their job.    I wouldn’t be surprised to find those two young men have earned nothing from their work this morning.   They’ll be on piece-work, paid on completion.

Add to that the fact that each specialist company has to make a profit, and allocates its resources to maximise that, who knows when the next favourable conjunction of BT, Openreach and Instalcom will come around?    Our street is still waiting for the gas upgrade that we were told to expect 2 years ago.

Divvying up a coherent process into independent chunks may be profitable for some, but its not efficient.

Why am I reminded of Jarndyce v Jarndyce?

DIY, with help.
May 28, 2020

DIY, with help.

People like to do things for themselves.

They also like to have a go at working things out together.

When they can’t, they want someone to be on hand to help.

It seems to me that this is a productive way to think about how to empower people, whether they are clients, users or colleagues:

  1. Aim to enable them to do everything themselves.
  2. Create an environment that allows them to support each other easily.
  3. Appoint people to be on hand to help for both the above.

If you do the first two well, the third will be relatively easy.  In fact, you can probably recruit from the people you’re empowering.   That’s how the Akimbo Workshops work, and I think it’s at least partly why they work so well.

It’s also how you learn to do the first two better, so don’t be tempted to leave it out.

Investment
May 19, 2020

Investment

We’ve got used to thinking of investment as a purely financial thing, undertaken by shareholders in a company.   A risk taken in the hope that the return will be worth it.

We’ve also got used to the idea that capital investors are the most important investors, and that returns to them should be kept high and constant, because otherwise they’ll take their capital elsewhere.

‘Investment’ carries another meaning though – to put on clothes, especially the ceremonial clothes of office.   In other words to publicly adopt the roles and responsibilities associated with that office.

Looked at this way, there are certainly other investors in a business.  The founders, workers, suppliers, and customers who take a risk with their time, energy and belief, in the hope that the return will be worth it.   These (along with some personal capital investors to be sure), are the people who adopt the roles and responsibilities associated with it.   Who clothe themselves in its values, purpose and ways of doing things.   Who may even wear its uniform, badge, or logo publicly and with pride.

Money isn’t the only thing necessary for the long-term success of a venture.   It certainly isn’t sufficient.

What if we focused our dividends accordingly?

Subject, Consumer or Citizen?
May 15, 2020

Subject, Consumer or Citizen?

Subjects are defined by their relationship with the people who are ‘over’ them.  The word ‘subject’ literally means ‘thrown under’.

Much of what we call history is about groups of ‘superiors’ fighting for control of subjects.   For the subjects, it didn’t matter who you were ‘thrown under’, your life was much the same – nasty, brutish and short.

Consumers, on the other hand, are defined by a repetitive act that embodies their relationship with producers.   Producers make, consumers ‘use up’.   Consumers can come into being once subjects are able to get beyond the basics of subsistence and think about choice.  Consumers make mass production possible.

Citizens are defined by the fact that they share their space with many other people, and by the fact that doing so requires shared values, constant negotiation and active participation to be effective.   Even more so now, when we’re no longer tied to a specific location, but are like Diogenes, ‘a citizen of the world’, whether we like it or not.

It seems to me that being a subject or consumer is perhaps an easier role to play, but rather passive and ulitmately unsatisfying, when you consider that we only have one life.

Citizenship on the other hand, is hard work, but work that is fulfilling both in the short run (because through it we can grow), and in the long run (because done well we make it easier for people in the future to grow).

I know which I’d rather be, and I’m clearly not alone.   It seems we are all heading that way, if we’re allowed to.

This model works at many levels, from a single family to the entire world.

We could make a start with all the companies we’re in.

 

Many thanks to Anwen Cooper for pointing this out to me:

https://medium.com/new-citizenship-project/subject-consumer-or-citizen-three-post-covid-futures-8c3cc469a984

Self checkouts are great for social distancing
April 9, 2020

Self checkouts are great for social distancing

I now by preference use the self-checkout at my local Co-op, out of consideration to the person behind the counter.

But it also feels much better to use the self-checkout when I know the next person in the queue is two metres away –  I feel somehow less pressured, less rushed.

Will this change of feeling last beyond the crisis?   Who knows?  On my part I doubt it.

But I may not have the choice.

There may not even be a supermarket.

We really are living in interesting times.

Switching focus
March 31, 2020

Switching focus

It’s been amazing to see how quickly many businesses have been able to switch to some sort of online delivery model over the last week or so.

Continuing my musings on ‘Working Styles’, here’s something to bear in mind though, especially for your sales team.

To be good at sales, or customer service, or support, people need to be get some of their motivation from other people – they need to be externally focused.

So far, so good.   But the context of sales can vary, and individuals can have very different working style preferences and still be excellent sales people – as long as the context they are in remains congenial.

For example, a good salesperson can have a reactive preference – that is, they act on things that happen, rather than initiating events.   That’s perfect for physical retail, where customers don’t want to be pestered, yet want attentiveness when they ask for it.      People with a proactive preference, on the other hand are more suited to a field sales role, where they have to go out and find clients, or for pulling in customers through promotions outside the premises.

Bear these preferences in mind as you switch to online.   Working against the grain of their preference will be more difficult for both proactive and reactive people.  You could, for example have the reactive people man your chatlines and customer service lines, while the proactive people do online networking and phone calls.

To find out what preferences the people in your business have, I recommend “Words that Change Minds” by Shelle Rose Charvet.   I’ve used this approach many times, to help with franchisee recruitment, and to help individuals identify what they should be looking for in a job or career.   It can be done in 20 minutes, via a telephone interview.

Now would be a great time to find out what makes your people tick.

How to quickly capture a business process/procedure/work instruction
March 25, 2020

How to quickly capture a business process/procedure/work instruction

With teams suddenly dispersed, all that tacit knowledge of ‘what it is we’re trying to do, and how to do it’, is much harder to access.  You can’t simply shout across the office “How do I do X again?”

It will be very tempting to start automating everything.   But you need to think about what you’re automating first, else you can get trapped in the software manufacturer’s model of how your business should work.

So here ‘s a quick guide to capturing ‘What we do round here’ that will work over Zoom, Skype etc.

Key Principles:

  • Assume competence.
  • The quicker you test it, the quicker you can improve it.
  • If it feels like you’re trying to fit too much in, you probably are.
  • It’s a prompt, not a novel.
  • Practice makes perfect.
  • It’s about the process not the people.

How to go about it:

  • Start with the most critical process.
  • Get someone else to help you.
  • Sketch the whole thing as a series of bubbles – 7  plus or minus one should cover it.
  • Start with the 80% case.
  • Start at the very beginning.
  • Carry on right to the end.
  • Think ‘Get Outcome’.

Follow the rapid improvement cycle:

  • You tell a colleague how it works, they write it down
  • They do it, following what you told them.
  • You observe, and where it goes wrong, between you, you modify the instructions to get the outcomes you want.
  • You clarify how it really works (not how you think it works).
  • They suggest ways to make it easy for them to do.
  • They write up the improved version.
  • Save the latest version where everyone can get at it.

Repeat until you have a work instruction/procedure/process that can be run reliably by anyone who needs to.

Automate the bits humans shouldn’t be doing.   Then let the humans get on with the rest.

It’s good to talk
March 23, 2020

It’s good to talk

As a small business, micro-business or self -employed person right now, there is one person you should be talking to, because they can almost certainly help you to get through this situation.

Your accountant.

There’s far more to them than year-end accounts or tax returns.

Give them a call.

Kudos to all those accountants out there who are already showing what they are made of.