Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Discipline makes Daring possible

Good Service
November 9, 2020

Good Service

My husband pointed me in the direction of this book, and I’m very glad he did.   I’m not that far into it and my neck already aches from vigorous nodding in agreement.

On the face of it, this book might not seem appropriate for business that don’t make and keep their promises entirely online.

With a little twist in perspective, that can change:

On page 19, Lou gives this definition of a service: “A service is something that helps someone to do something.”

Our first thought is that the ‘someone‘ is the end user – me paying my car tax or filing a tax return online, via the gov.uk site.  But what if that ‘someone‘ was one of your team? And the ‘something‘ they’re trying to ‘do‘ is share your promise so potential clients find it, or deliver on that promise to clients who’ve signed up?

What if you designed your business to be an eco-system of services that help your team do things for themselves?   Without the need for supervision or management?

You’d want your ecosystem of services to follow all the principles for a good service:

  • Easy to find
  • Clearly explains its purpose
  • Set a user’s expectations of the service
  • Enable each user to complete the outcome they set out to do
  • Work in a way that is familiar
  • Require no prior knowledge to use
  • Agnostic of organisational structures
  • Minimum possible steps to complete
  • Consistent throughout
  • No dead ends
  • Usable by everyone, equally
  • Encourage the right behaviours from everyone
  • Quickly respond to change
  • Clearly explain why a decistion has been made
  • Make it easy to get human assistance

And in the process deliver these qualities:

  • It does what the user needs it to do, in a way that works for them
  • It’s profitable and easy to run
  • It does not destroy the world we live in, or negatively affect society as a whole

I would also add:

  • Expresses and reinforces your Promise of Value at every turn.

Unlike the UK government, you’re not delivering to every citizen, but to people who share at least some of your values, behaviours and worldview, and they will want to see that reflected in the way you do things for them.

This is what I call a Customer Experience Score.   The ecosystem that turns your small business into an orchestra, playing your unique music for the people you serve, with no need for supervision or management.

I’m going to explore all of these points over the next few posts or so, as I work out how to apply this for my own business and for my clients.   I think you’ll find it useful.  I hope you’ll find it enjoyable too.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to buy the book, you can order it from my favourite bookshop.

Foraging
November 5, 2020

Foraging

Mushrooms seem like fleeting things.   Ephemeral.  Fragile.   And they are. But the mycelium that throws them up is long-lived, non-stop … Read More “Foraging”

Lockdown reads
November 3, 2020

Lockdown reads

This week’s reading:

‘Human kind‘ by Rutger Bregman – an upending and uplifting book, that for me confirms everything I’ve always thought about people.

and

‘The Good Ancestor‘ by Roman Krznaric – I like ‘big picture’ thinking, but this goes further than most, and puts us humans in context.

Recommended for the start of a second lockdown.

PS The Bright Minds in Business Gamechangers Book Group returns next week with another good read for business owners.

PPS This is my 501th blog post.

Spell it out
November 2, 2020

Spell it out

I chuckled to myself as I approached the till, after waiting in line for a while.

“I’m laughing at myself” I explained to the woman sat behind it, “because you can’t see me smiling at you.“

I’d forgotten that I was, of course, wearing a face covering.

“No.” she replied.

“Well I am smiling at you.“

She laughed back at me.

Sometimes, it really helps to spell it out.

 

To Do
October 30, 2020

To Do

What is a to do list, really?

Sometimes, they are steps in a process.

More often though, they are a cross section through a set of processes you are running in parallel.

That means that prioritising to dos is easier if you can see which processes will move forwards as a result.

Turning processes into to do lists has the opposite effect.

Knowing and doing
October 29, 2020

Knowing and doing

Some books tell you something you didn’t know.   I enjoy those books.   I like feeling new connections form in my brain, even if it occasionally hurts.

Some books tell you something you already knew, in such a clear and simple way that they uplift mere ‘knowing’ into ‘know how to do’, so you actually have a go.

I really enjoy these books too.  They don’t just change me, they enable me to change the world around me too.

A couple worth reading:

One thing both of these have in common: an explanatory diagram that makes things super-simple to see.

The kind of book I plan to write next.

Maintenance
October 28, 2020

Maintenance

Maintenance.  None of us want to do it.  Most of us don’t even want to know it’s being done.  We hide it.  We put it off, and off, and off again, even though we know that ‘a stitch in time, saves nine’.

Why is that I wonder?   Animals and birds seem to do maintenance instinctively.   Birds pop food in one end of their nestlings, then tug poop out of the other.   Nests and dens are rebuilt or cleared out regularly.  How have we humans lost this?

Maintenance of all kinds is what keeps our systems and ecosystems going, but we don’t value it.  We don’t even want to see that it’s being done.   We hide it in basements and cupboards, offsite, even offshore.   And we certainly don’t value the people who do it, we turn them into quasi-servants, invisible, ‘low-skill’, and therefore deserving only low wages.

Until something breaks.  Then we love them, applaud them, can’t thank them enough.  5 minutes later, we’re ignoring them again.

Maintenance isn’t sexy, but it is essential.  It’s high time we got better at it.

As a start, perhaps we should all do more of it ourselves?

I’m off to clean the oven.

Reminders
October 27, 2020

Reminders

We like to remind ourselves of what we have ‘to do’.   But we all too easily forget the why behind them.   It’s easy to get derailed by happenstance and other people’s agendas.    This isn’t helped by systems that focus on tasks rather than outcomes.

True productivity (adding value) is driven by focusing on the why.   What if you built a system that constantly reminds people of that?

Given the why, they can probably work out the best thing to do next.

“It ain’t what you don’t know…
October 26, 2020

“It ain’t what you don’t know…

… that gets you into trouble.  It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”  Mark Twain

Imagine reading something that turns everything you ‘know’ about how the world works upside-down, simply by ignoring centuries-old dogma and observing what actually happens from a different perspective.  Copernicus, Darwin, Wegener.

Imagine then finding out that the model you’re reading about wasn’t new, but had actually been around for decades, even centuries, already?

We humans don’t like changing our minds that much.   We actually try to avoid seeing things that might do it for us.

But, occasionally, we can’t help it.   Something we read, see or hear changes how we look at the world forever.

This weekend’s reading did it for me:

Which book changed the way you see the world?

Watching other people work
October 23, 2020

Watching other people work

I must confess to having a bit of a thing about phone answering services.   Not because I dislike them, but because I think they are one of those things that can really enhance the customer experience when done well.

You can always tell when someone is using an answering service, because you get asked more questions that you often would, and you can tell there’s a process going on.  That’s a good thing, something more businesses that answer their own phones should learn to do.   It would save a lot of miscommunication.

When someone providing this service does it really well, I have a genuine conversation.   I am allowed to ramble a little about why I’m calling (the person I want to speak to knows I’m due to call and why), but they still get from me (not necessarily by asking me) the information they need to pass on the message – my name (including how to spell it), my business name, why I’m calling and who I want to speak to, and finally how they can get hold of me.

I can even have a separate conversation about the fact that they provide the service, which is how I found out who they were.

Its a pleasure to participate in someone doing their job with commitment intelligence and humanity.   Its an enjoyable experience for me as customer, prospect or supplier as well as for the person doing it.

That’s why your Customer Experience ScoreTM needs to cover everything.

 

PS the company was Take My Calls.   When my current credit runs out, I’ll be switching to them.