Discipline makes Daring possible – Page 86 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

October 8, 2020

I’d lose control

The only way to scale a business that is built around you is to embed the ‘you’ into the way the business works, so that everything about it reminds your prospects and clients of you, even when you are not in the room.

That means enabling and empowering other people to do what you do, as well as or better than you do it. That isn’t losing control, it’s just putting the control in a different place – into the fabric of the business, instead of one or more people’s heads.

Perhaps what’s really behind the worry of ‘losing control’ is the fear of becoming less important to the business. After all, if it can get on perfectly well without you, where does that leave you, the founder, the originator of the vision? The irony is of course, that the more you dig your actual self into the business, the less able it will be to survive without you. All too often, an amazing little business fizzles out with the life of its founder. To my mind, it’s almost criminal to let that happen.

Done well, composing your Customer Experience Score puts you right where you belong – embedded into the heart and soul of the business, without actually having to be present day to day. It’s not just your prospects and clients that will be reminded of you every time they interact with your business, your people will be reminded too. Even those who haven’t joined yet.

Dale Carnegie has been dead a long while, but the business he founded carries on as world-wide empire, with his vision and philosophy firmly ensconced at its heart.

Isn’t that something worth giving up hands-on control for?

October 7, 2020

No one else is doing it

Of course ‘Nobody else is doing it‘, is really an observation about risk, not isolation. Most of us don’t like to go first, for fear of looking stupid. Unlike my beloved, who, faced with a marquee-full of Cornish pasties and cream teas at the grand opening of the Eden Project, boldly stepped forwards with the words “My mum would expect it of me” – and broke the ice for everyone else, hesitating hungrily on the periphery.

So the real answer to ‘Nobody else is doing it‘ is ‘What’s the worst that can happen?‘. The best that can happen is that you get results that the waiting others couldn’t dream of, and you get them first.

If you do what everyone else does, you’ll get what everyone else gets, maybe less. Provided the downside isn’t too damaging, it’s worth taking the leap. Then the very best that can happen is that you break the ice for the others, and everyone benefits from your lead.

October 6, 2020

I have really good people

Of course, you’ve surrounded yourself with really good people.

How are they actually spending their efforts? Delighting clients, or dreaming up new, better ways to deliver on your Promise of Value?

Or are they re-inventing the wheel? Teaching new recruits the ropes? Trying to remember what they did the last time that rare, but surprisingly regular occurrence cropped up? Finding ways to get around the software system that actually makes their job harder? Looking for another job?

Every member of an orchestra knows how to play their instrument. They don’t need to be told where to put their fingers. But they do appreciate having a score to follow. A score means they don’t have to think too hard about 80% of the job, freeing up energy and imagination to deal with the 20% that makes all the difference to performance. That 20% is what keeps clients happy, loyal, willing to pay extra and eager to tell their friends about you.

But the real power of a score is that it enables your team to bring their whole selves to bear – time after time, performance after performance.

And that’s what keeps your team engaged, aligned and proactively taking responsibility.

Really good people can be even better with a score.

October 5, 2020

It would take too long

We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that changes have to be big, hairy, audacious, and fast. Sometimes that is what’s needed. But most often it’s not. Long-term change takes a different kind of energy. A crash diet is disruptive and hard to stick to, and if you’re not careful leads to the loss of more muscle than fat. Much better to lose half a kilo a week for a year, changing your eating habits along the way, so you live better for longer.

On average, a business has around 50 business processes that make up its Customer Experience Score, depending on how many different services are on offer. It’s tempting to make that a big deal, to throw everything up in the air while change is going on. To disrupt the status quo before you have anything to put in its place. A ‘big bang’ is dramatic, but as we all know, it rarely leads to real change.

It would be possible to re-engineer a business in 6 months, but I’ve always found it better to go for a steady ‘one-process-a-week’ approach.

I usually start with the simple, uncontested, but often forgotten process of opening and closing for business each day. It’s a good warm-up to get everyone used to working together, an introduction to the notation, and a gentle way to get thinking about how much what happens every day can contribute to the process of making and keeping promises to clients:

When does the day really start? When does it really end? Who opens up? Who closes up? When are the phones tested? When is the internet tested? What happens if they fail? Where do the kitchen provisions come from? How do we make sure we don’t run out before a client meeting? How do you set the scene for visitors? How are they welcomed?

Each week, my job is to ask the stupid questions, get people thinking about the things they take for granted, hold the processes to account against the business’s Promise of Value. In essence to get the business delighting its clients on purpose, systematically, repeatedly.

Once we’ve started there’s a rhythm to it. Review last week’s captured process (always wrong the first time round), then start the next most important process. We move forwards steadily, with the simple aim of making the business work the way you really want it to. The way you would want it to work if you were a client.

Like dieting, the benefits accrue right from the beginning. The change in lifestyle is gradual and relatively painless, relatively easy to stick to. Until suddenly, by the end of a year, you realise you’ve made a radical change. You’re a new business, more confident, more energetic, more fun to be around and able to look forward to the expected lifetime of a Galapagos tortoise, rather than a hare. And looking back, it didn’t seem to take long at all.

Making deep, lasting change is a marathon, not a sprint. And even marathons go more quickly than you think.

October 1, 2020

I don’t have time

The only way to make time is to invest it in setting up systems that mean you use less of it.

The later you leave it, the more time you waste.

Or, as someone once told me:

“Never give up on a dream because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”

September 30, 2020

I don’t know how

Of course you don’t know how to capture your Customer Experience Score. You’ve never done it before.

There are many things you’ve never done before, but if you decided you wanted to learn one of them, you would know how to go about it wouldn’t you?

You might get yourself set up with whatever kit you need and have a go. That’s hard to sustain, because even before trying to acquire whatever skill you’re trying to master, you have to know what you don’t know. Years ago, I thought I’d learn to play the melodeon. I bought the wrong sort, which made it more difficult to play the tunes I wanted to learn, which in turn made it even harder to get my fingers in the right places. I didn’t last long.

Or, you could find someone who does know, check out their track record of doing it, and ask them to teach you. There’s nothing quite like learning by doing, accompanied by someone showing you how, explaining why it’s done this way and holding you accountable for doing it. That’s how I learned to speak Spanish and to do Pilates, skills that have stuck with me ever since. It’s by far the quickest way to really learn.

Of course, once you’ve acquired your new skill, the best way to carry on developing and improving it is to pass it on, and teach the others.

September 29, 2020

Despotism

You might feel that writing down the Customer Experience Score for the business you founded is a bit, well, dictatorial, despotic even.

But I can tell you, having a score I can consult myself, whenever I need to is more liberating than whatever is currently locked inside your head, expressed only as “I can’t exactly explain it to you, but I know it when I see it, and right now I see you’re getting it wrong.”

Especially when you add that the first, prescriptive draft is just the beginning. Once defined and shareable, the Customer Experience Score belongs to the business, not you. It becomes open to critique, discussion, improvement by everyone.

A long time ago, we worked with a shop owner. He was adamant about the way customers should be treated when they came into his shop, lavishing attention on them to make them feel welcome and supported. Until we demonstrated that by treating one customer this way, he was actually being extremely rude and unwelcoming to whoever came in next.

Whatever it looks like, your Customer Experience Score is much better for your business outside your head.

September 28, 2020

Exhausted

I spent the weekend looking for a cooker hood. I don’t like them, I’ve never had one, and I’d rather not have one now. But I am obliged to put one in my new kitchen, so have one I must.

Finally, after hours of searching online, I find one I can live with. It’s available all over the internet, under different brand names and SKU codes, from at least a dozen retailers, some of whom are clearly using the same database and software to present their goods. Every one of them is the same price. Competition here is clearly an illusion.

But what is really infuriating is that not one of those dozen retailers sells the associated carbon filter I will need to make the thing actually work. Nor do they give the manufacturer’s model number that would enable me to find the correct filter elsewhere.

More hours of detective work follow, to track down the ‘manufacturer’ (actually just a ‘brand’) and therefore find the model number I need to find a filter that will fit. Spares sites tend to be independent, and restrict what they ‘stock’.

Finally, I manage it, and get both things safely ordered. All in all, it’s cost me a day and a half to buy a simple cooker hood and carbon filter online.

But what else should I expect, when this is how most companies see ‘the buying process’?

High streets are struggling, we are told. IMHO , all they need to do is offer a truly helpful, rather than a merely ‘convenient’ service, even if only as a front end for an internet purchase – imagine Argos with expert human beings and the best possible product database.

After all, it’s the front end that really matters.

September 24, 2020

It’s your attention

Today, I’m sharing this video from the RSA – from someone who used to work at Google:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSaybP1UivQ

For me, the most shocking thing in it is this:

“Steve Jobs did not let his children use the i-Pad.”

We know, marketers better than anyone, what people really want:

Agency – to make our own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
Mastery – to learn and master new skills.
Autonomy – to be free to choose how I make my dent.
Purpose – to do this for something bigger than myself, that has meaning beyond the sale.
Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.
Status – to know where I stand in that community.

Consumerism exploits our need for these things, converting our impulses towards autonomy, agency, community and status into the purchase of unsatisfying stuff, or the squander of our attention and energies into fruitless activities.

Our purchasing power is just about the only power truly left us, but it is powerful. If we can be more picky, more discriminate, more intentional; reserving our attention – the only truly scarce resource right now – for what really matters, and for people delivering what really matters, we can create a world where everything flourishes.

Systems

Of course I had to share this from Seth. A bonus post to make up for missing yesterday’s:

https://seths.blog/2020/09/when-can-we-talk-about-your-system/

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Discipline makes Daring possible