Discipline makes Daring possible – Page 91 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

July 23, 2020

Niche if you want to scale.

For a long time I misunderstood why any business owner would want to restrict their marketing to a ‘niche’. Especially when what they do can work for any kind of business.

Then I learned what real marketing is.

Real marketing isn’t selling. It isn’t transactional. It isn’t manipulative. It doesn’t persuade people to buy what isn’t good for them. Real marketing enrols people on a journey taht will help them get to where they long to be.

Real marketing takes time, effort and empathy. Empathy is easiest when you start with people like you, but it means you need to do some hard, soul searching work. You need to work out your own values, behaviours and goals, so that you can identify who you can best serve, because you share values, behaviours, and sometimes goals. This is your true niche, the psychographic, not the demographic. It describes the kind of person you want to work with, rather than their business size, location or industry.

But still this niche is too big to be useful. These ‘people like me’ are everywhere, in all walks of life. How on earth do you help them find you? Especially nowadays, when marketing means showing up day after day, giving value, demonstrating to the people you serve that they are understood, seen, recognised as human beings, laying a groundwork of trust in blogs, videos, podcast, newsletters, before you even get near a pitch.

It’s extremely hard work to pay anyone and everyone the attention they are due, in the hope of attracting the ‘right’ ones.

This is where a traditional demographic niche starts to make sense. Think of demographics as the pools you fish in because you know they are likely to hold enough of the kind of people you serve. Finding these pools takes effort of a different kind, research rather than soul searching.

Good places to start are pools that are ignored or under-served by your competitors or alternatives. Or those where the inhabitants are going through a particularly painful set of circumstances, that you are well-placed to help with. Or even a pool you have a lot of experience with.

But, counterintuitively, keep it small and specific to begin with. Narrow, but deep enough to keep you going for a while. Like flying a single route, or offering makeovers for blondes, or making jelly babies for vegans.

Because keeping your promise is the hardest part of marketing. You want to make sure you get that spot on before you take on more of it.

Once you’ve cracked that, you’re on your way to scale.

July 22, 2020

Labour

This week, work started in earnest on our new extension. I’ve spent quite a bit of time already, observing it.

Not, I hasten to add, because I’m eyeing up young, fit workmen, but because I’m fascinated by the process.

How stop-start it is. How much shuffling around of stuff is involved. How much collaborative problem-solving it involves. How many adjustments are made. How ad-hoc it seems. In other words, how Agile it is.

Of course this is just the beginning, when the team are getting to grips with the actually existing terrain, so they have a lot to find out, on the fly, before the more systematic parts of the process can kick in. Agile is completely the right approach.

It’s a privilege to watch. And the essence of why humans beat robots any day.

Despite all the hype.

July 21, 2020

Rationing

I was already thinking about rationing when I saw this tweet:

Image of a tweet from @TwistedDoodles aka Maria Boyle

Predictably for the time of year, grade inflation was in the news. It seems that universities are awarding more and more firsts and 2:1s to graduates, which some feel undermines the reputation of the sector.

If you want to make something like ‘intelligence’ scarce, how do you do it? You can’t make individuals less intelligent, obviously. The answer is a normal distribution of the evidence of intelligence (Degrees, A levels, GCSEs):

Individuals test results are placed within this distribution. Those at the top are awarded the highest grades, those at the bottom the lowest. Most people are somewhere in the middle.

This means of course that grades are dependent on relative position within a given set of individuals. Someone who would have a got a first in one year will get a 2.1 in another, and vice-versa.

In other words, high (and low) scores are rationed.

Why? Because, as all marketers know, scarcity is one way to create a perception of value.

Intelligence isn’t the only resource we ration artificially. Money is another.

The question to ask is ‘are they scarce?’

Followed by (as always) ‘Who benefits if they are?’

HT to @TwistedDoodles for the loan of her tweet.

July 20, 2020

Manifesto for a Disappearing Boss

I’ve decided to embrace my inner revolutionary and write a Manifesto.

I’d love to know what you think of it.

Whatever you think of it.

Does it work?
What do you like?
What don’t you like?
What do you want to do after reading it?
Does it help you do that?

Thank you for reading it.

July 17, 2020

Flipping

This week, the problem with my broadband connection was finally sorted. After 4 months.

On the first visit the engineer ran some tests and did something with the connection at the bottom of the pole. He also checked the socket in my house and gave our arrangement the thumbs up. The speed went up again, but the fix only lasted a day. Whenever anyone called on the landline, it went down again.

On the second visit a new engineer ran some tests and did something else with the connection at the bottom of the pole. He also replaced the socket in my house with a new one. He explained that the reason why the fix didn’t last was because the system is set up to reduce the speed to keep the connection stable. Fair enough. The speed went up again, but only lasted a day. Whenever anyone called on the landline, it went down again.

On the third visit another engineer tinkered with the connection at the bottom of the pole. He ran some more tests, which determined that the fault was somewhere between the top of the telegraph pole and the outside of my house. Nothing changed. Terrible speed, and the line kept dropping.

On the fourth visit a different engineer tested the line from my end, inside the house. He then went to the cabinet half a mile away and tested the line from there. He identified that the fault was somewhere between the top of the telegraph pole and the outside of my house. So he looked for a likely location, got his ladder out and looked at the box that connects the line to the outside of my house, near the roof.

Bingo! The box was full of water. He changed the box, replaced the connectors, and everything was fine. And stayed fine.

I am delighted of course, and have nothing to complain of regarding any of the individuals involved either from my provider or from Openreach.

But I can’t help thinking that the process could be better.

I get that in a network, you have to be systematic in your search for a fault. I’ve done it myself.

Usually, you test the connection at one end, then the other, starting with the extremes. In this case, the exchange, and my socket. Then you repeat the test, working inwards through pairs of connecting nodes until you’ve narrowed down the location of the fault to a single length of wire.

But I wonder if the application of experience could shorten the process?

Maybe the answer would be to start with the shortest length of wire – between my socket and the connection at the top of my house – and work outwards from there? After all these are the parts most exposed to the elements, and most likely to fail.

It would be just as systematic and in the worst case take no longer than working from the outside in. But it could well be better for the customer as well as being quicker and cheaper for Openreach.

Or perhaps it would be even quicker and cheaper just to replace that external box every time, because it’s the weakest point in the chain and also the most accessible? That way you’re renewing the network as you go, for pence.

I don’t know. I’m not a telephone engineer. Just a process geek, who happens to be a customer.

July 16, 2020

My kind of self-checkout

This is where I was when I should have been writing yesterday’s blog. Picking up my shopping. Olive oil, almonds and honey from Portugal, chocolate from Trinidad via Cornwall, Coffee and sugar from Colombia, sea salt from Brittany.

There was plenty more on offer – olives, tapenades, lupini beans, pinto beans and more. All more or less direct from small producers, transported under sail.

I even got to meet 50% of the supply chain: Gareth from Raybel Charters through whom I ordered, and Guillaume who captains the ship.

That’s my kind of self-checkout.

PS If you’re in Faversham or Whitstable over the next couple of days, look out for the Thames barge Dawn the ‘van’ for onward local deliveries

July 14, 2020

Give it up.

You start your own business to take back control. To be at nobody’s beck and call. To do what you think is right by your clients.

Once you get good at that, you outsource key functions, take people on to help you deliver, and suddenly, you’ve lost it. The control has gone. You’re at the beck and call of clients, or team members, or suppliers, and it seems impossible to get people to do things the way you would.

A natural reaction is to tighten your hands on the reins, supervise more, intervene more, even to redo the work.

Micromanagement doesn’t work. You only end up working harder, being a nag, and training your people to give up trying.

Instead, give control away as soon as you can.

Not by abdicating, not even by handing it over to superstar colleagues, but by installing your DNA into the way the business works, so that it works the way you want it to when you’re not in the room.

Strangely, creating this kind of control is liberating:

For your people, because they know the outcomes they are aiming for, and what needs to happen to achieve them, plus they have the freedom to do that with flair and personality.
For you, because you can relax your vigilance, and concentrate on growing and evolving your business.
For your business, because its no longer dependent on the individuals who happen to be there at any one time.

We call this writing your Score. Because once you’ve written it, the music you and your orchestra are creating now can last forever, no matter who plays it, or how.

If you want to take back control, start by giving it all away.

July 13, 2020

“Not with the people I’ve got” Or, how to waste talent efficiently.

Back in the 70’s there was a TV series called ‘The Troubleshooter’.

Each week, captain of industry Sir John Harvey-Jones would visit an ailing British manufacturing company, and advise them on how to turn around their fortunes.

One of his insights really stuck in my mind. It goes something like this:

“These people working for you, have a rich life outside work, where they build complex systems, run clubs, manage budgets, research everything there is to know about their particular interest, invent things. You make them leave all of that at the door. What a waste!”

Whenever I tell people about Matt Black Systems, a manufacturing company with no managers, no administrators, and almost no overheads, the reply I most often get is “I couldn’t do that, not with the people I’ve got.”

It’s not the people that are the problem, it’s our model of what a business is. 50 years on from ‘The Troubshooter’, we’re using AI and automation to track and reward attendance, not contribution.

That’s an efficient waste of talent.

July 10, 2020

“What would happen if we removed all Managers?”

Lisa Haggar started a lively discussion on this topic on LinkedIn today:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lisa-haggar-540a68117_whatnomanager-selfmanagement-timesarechanging-activity-6687251785352024065-esUl

Of course I had to join in.

Why not join in too? I’d love to know what you think.

July 9, 2020

Presenteeism

As many have discovered during lockdown, being in the office where you can be seen, isn’t necessary for getting results.

But for a long time, in a corporate environment, sitting at your desk was a proxy for working, with predictable effects. Some people stayed late, to look like they were working hard. Some used being present to cover for getting very little done.

At one place I worked, this was really easy to do, because everyone worked in their own Dilbert-style cubicle. Nobody could see whether you were working or sleeping – especially through the fog of cigarette smoke that hovered constantly over every cubicle.

The cubicles hid more than a hangover snooze. This was also the place where if you left your cubicle for half an hour, someone cannibalised your computer for spares while you were gone. So you couldn’t get anything done even if you wanted to.

But the worst case of presenteeism I came across was as part of a youth employment scheme back in the early 80s. It was interesting work. A small team of us researched and wrote papers for schools to use as additional resources for lessons. We wrote about local history, local firms and local places of interest.

We had a boss, but we were left pretty much to our own devices, which suited us fine, because the boss did nothing. Literally nothing. He sat in a different office, at his desk, staring into space and smoking. All day.

At the time we thought this was scandalous, but looking back I think it was actually marvellous. We managed ourselves. We worked in our own shared room. We chose our own projects, did our own research, collaborated with each other to produce, illustrate, print and in at least one case publish our papers. We believed in what we were doing, we had fun, and we produced good work. What’s more, we learned how to do it again. We didn’t need to be watched over.

The only downside was for the organisation that employed us all – they could have saved themselves some overhead, and employed a couple more researchers instead.

We have managers, because we don’t believe people will work unless they’re made to, then surveilled to make sure they are.

But is that really true? We know it doesn’t work for some people, and for the rest it isn’t needed.

There is a better way. And I think it looks like this:

Backed up by a clear Promise, and an empowering Score.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Discipline makes Daring possible