Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Discipline makes Daring possible

The day the earth caught fire
December 8, 2022

The day the earth caught fire

Last night I watched “The day the earth caught fire” a 1961 film about what happens when mankind, pursuing their own petty rivalries, makes an irreversible and deadly change to the only planet they have.  I enjoyed it, not least for recognising a young (and uncredited) Michael Caine as a police constable.

But for the situation we’re in now – where mankind, pursuing their own petty interests, have made an irreversible and deadly change to the only planet we have, there’s a much better film.

“Beyond Zero” tells the story of how a carpet manufacturing business turns itself from “a plunderer of the earth and a legal thief” into a highly succesful circular business that gives back more than it takes.

It’s inspiring, hopeful and above all, practical.   I thoroughly recommend finding a way to watch it.  Preferably with your team, your business peers and maybe even you community.

It’s not too late, but we need to take action now, and we need to take it together.  This film shows one way we can.

Supported Display
December 7, 2022

Supported Display

I took a lot of photos on my visit to the Museum of London at the weekend.  Some, because I liked the thing I was looking at, this one because I liked the way the display system worked.

It’s a very simple system.  A regular grid of holes at the back allows supports to be positioned in a variety of ways to suit what’s being displayed, from a single bronze shield found in the Thames, to a mix of bronxe daggers and swords, to these flint hand tools.  It’s highly structured, yet flexible and very effective.

But what I really liked about it was the way it’s been designed to foreground the objects, providing each one with reliable support, allowing them to seem to float; putting each one in the spotlight, so that you can appreciate the differences between them as well as the similarities.

You know where I’m going with this.

With the almost invisible support of a Customer Experience Score, your people too can shine in the spotlight – both as individuals and as part of the whole that is your business.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

A medieval carved head of a smiling woman in a wimple.

This I just liked, because it reminded me of Geraldine McEwan.

Hoarding
December 6, 2022

Hoarding

Around 2,000 years ago, someone buried their cash. Did it do them any good that way? Almost certainly not. Could … Read More “Hoarding”

Trespassing
December 5, 2022

Trespassing

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been intrigued by the use of the word ‘trespass’ in the King James version of the Lord’s prayer – “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us”.

Why not ‘sin’, ‘wrongdoing’, ‘misbehaviour’, ‘offence’, ‘crime’?

The word ‘trespass’ has a very specific meaning – to cross a boundary into a space that belongs to someone else.   So why pick this word?

Perhaps because, in 1611, at the very dawn of capitalism, the authors wanted to remind us of the mutuality of our existence.   The fact that any rights we have as individuals must be bounded by the rights of others.

I am free to do whatever I like, as long as that doesn’t impinge on anyone else’s right to do whatever they like.   Which means in practice, that I must constantly consider others, present and future, in everything I do.

It seems to me that’s as true of a business or organisation just as much as an individual.

Ephemeral, permanent
December 2, 2022

Ephemeral, permanent

There is something glorious about ephemeral art – elaborate and carefully worked sandcastles, pavement art, papier-mâché effigies. 

All the love and care that goes into creating them, just to be burnt or washed away.    As if we are celebrating our unique human ability to imagine and build a new world within our world every day.

We don’t necessarily think of our businesses as temporary.  We build the version of the world we’d like to see, assuming that we will be around tomorrow to repair or tweak.  Until suddenly, we’re gone.  And all too often our creations die with us, or not long after.

We forget that we too are ephemeral.

Maybe this is how it should be.  But it takes more than one lifetime to change the world.  So if that’s what you’re trying to achieve, you need to build your business around something more permanent than you.

Luckily, it’s possible to retro-fit the framework you need.

Discipline makes permanence possible.

Ask me how.

The politics of value
December 1, 2022

The politics of value

“The ultimate stakes of politics, … is not the struggle to appropriate value; it is the struggle to establish what value is. 

Similarly, the ultimate freedom is not to create or accumulate value, but the freedom to decide (collectively or individually) what makes life worth living. 

In the end then, politics is about the meaning of life.” David Graeber*

 

When you start your own business, you get to decide what value is.  And as long as you can find enough people who agree with you, you can grow.

That’s how we small businesses change the world, without even realising it.

Imagine what we could do if we did it on purpose!

 

*from ‘Toward an anthropological theory of value – the false coin of our own dreams.’

 

 

Where energy goes
November 30, 2022

Where energy goes

As humans, we spend our energy and our creativity on the things that matter to us.   For you, as the boss, that’s your business.   For your team?  Well, they may prefer to grow perfect peppers.

So the challenge for a business owner is how to infect the people you work with (and indeed the people you seek to serve) with the same enthusiasm as you have.  Because that’s the only way they’ll agree to put in anything like the same energy and creativity.

Coercion doesn’t work.  Reminding them that they are dependent on you for survival doesn’t work either.  Money doesn’t work that well once people have enough, and giving them less than they need or what seems fair just dampens any enthusiasm.

So what does work?

Giving them the means to achieve what they really want as human beings in work as well as outside of it:

  • 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.

All the things you wanted when you set up your business then.

Make everyone a boss.  Blend yourself in.

What if it was never about the things?
November 29, 2022

What if it was never about the things?

First nation peoples and clever marketers have known for a long time that Sharing your Promise is never really about selling the thing.  It’s about how that thing affects our relationship with ourselves and with others.  So what you’re really selling is a change of relations.

Which means of course, that when it comes to Keeping your Promise, you’re not really delivering the thing.   You’re delivering the shift in relationships signified and caused by the thing.

Which means that’s what the Customer Experience should be all about.

Which means that’s what should be in your Customer Experience Score.

And why keeping it human matters.

Human Feedback 3 – suggestions
November 28, 2022

Human Feedback 3 – suggestions

If you make it easy for people to log ideas as they go, you’re more likely to get useful ideas for improvement, because its when they’re actually doing the job that people feel the friction.  This could be as simple as a shared google doc, or as fully functional as Slack or Trello.  Whatever works for you and your team.

Logging ideas is just the first step of course.   The next is to review them.   This is where its helpful to have dedicated time set aside.   Get everyone together to review, ponder the consequences and choose which ideas to incorporate next.

Then create a schedule for implementing these improvements, seeing how they affect things, and rolling them out or back as a consequence.

If this is starting to look a bit like software development, that’s because in a way it is.  Like software, your business is a system – for making and keeping promises.

We’ve learned a lot about how to improve software systems while customers are actually using them.  It makes sense to apply that know-how to your Promise System too.

It involves building in good habits of observation, selection and listening to feedback.   And like admin, it works best when it is as much as possible a side-effect of doing the job.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Level 5 Leadership
November 25, 2022

Level 5 Leadership

One of the things I love about LHL Fridays is that I always learn something new.

Today Tim Bicknell told me about ‘Level 5 leadership’, so of course I had to google it.

And then I found this in the Harvard Business Review:

“When you look across the good-to-great transformations, they consistently display three forms of discipline: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.”

Discipline makes Daring possible.

And you don’t have to wait to be corporate to apply it.

Just talk to me.

Can’t wait to find out more.