Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Discipline makes Daring possible

Recognition
June 10, 2020

Recognition

Occasionally, Keith Brymer Jones, a judge on ‘The Great Pottery Throwdown’ will shed a tear over someone’s work.   Making Keith cry is to aspiring potters what a Hollywood handshake is to aspiring bakers.

But what is it exactly that makes Keith cry, or Paul Hollywood put out his hand?

It isn’t the idea they put into their make, both judges only ever react to a completed product.

It isn’t the effort that goes into the making either.   All the contestants work hard.

It isn’t the style of the finished work, very different styles of work can provoke the same reaction.

I think it’s that the person in front of them truly understands their materials; has mastered the skills needed to make those materials express their idea perfectly, and has put their whole self into the process of making, without making the whole thing mere self-expression.

The product they make stands alone, ready for a customer to claim it.

I think what makes Keith Brymer Jones cry is recognition of a Promise truly kept.  That touches the heart.

 

A little bit of Mintzberg
June 9, 2020

A little bit of Mintzberg

I’m a big fan of the Corporate Rebels blog, so I was interested to receive this post yesterday, about what managment might look like after Coronavirus.

In it they discuss Mintzberg’s Continuum of Management:

 

 

The blog is an instructive read, so I won’t reproduce it here.  I’d just like to make a few observations of my own:

  • Most organisations I’ve worked in, have barely made it past a ‘participative’ style.
  • Mintzberg and the Corporate Rebels believe that ‘No managers’ is not a viable option.  I disagree.
  • Having a clear Promise of Value, and a Score for how you deliver on it, helps any organisation move from left to right along this line. All the way to the end, if you want.

Sorry

Sorry

Yesterday, I forgot to blog. For the first time in over 19 months.

I am sorry.   I got engrossed, editing the next episode of the Pioneer Accountants Podcast.

To make up for it, there’ll be another one later today.

Thank you for sticking with me.

Witch-hunts
June 5, 2020

Witch-hunts

Famously, a common test of whether you were a witch or not, left you dead either way.

If you floated when thrown into water, you were a witch, ripe for burning.   If you drowned you were innocent.

That must be pretty much how the sub-postmasters using The Post Office’s Horizon system must have felt, when they discovered discrepancies in their accounts.    They could either make up the difference themselves (again and again, as the error repeated itself), or stand accused of theft.   Either way they lost everything.

The difference is that this is 2020 not 1620.   Computer systems are human artefacts not gods.   Blind faith in them is unforgiveable.

 

PS.  This very angry post is my 400th.

If you’d like to help these people get justice, you can support them.

New paths
June 4, 2020

New paths

It’s easy to talk about ‘a new way of doing things’, a ‘new normal’, but unless we actually make it happen, it’s all too easy to drift back into the old, familiar ways.

So, here are a few of the people I know of, some of whom I know, who are actually doing a new normal.   Showing us that not only is there another way, but that new ways work, often better than the old way:

Some of these people have been doing things their new way for years.

Maybe ‘new’ isn’t so new after all?  Not untried, not unsuccessful,  just unfamiliar.

My workflow problem
June 3, 2020

My workflow problem

I’ve long had a problem with ‘workflow’.   It’s taken me a while, but I think I’ve finally worked out why.

Workflow is the application of a pin factory model to service businesses, to professions.   It breaks a process into tiny, individually repetitive steps that can be done faster and faster over time, making the whole process more efficient.

This is great for pins, and was a leap forward when Adam Smith wrote about it in 1776.   Back then, “See a pin, pick it up, then all day you’ll have good luck.” made sense.  A pin was valuable.  You were lucky to find one for free.

Nowadays, we don’t have a shortage of pins, or of other simple things that can be efficiently made using the factory method.   We have made enough garments to clothe the next 4 generations of the entire human race.

We do have a shortage of what’s needed to thrive in the face of enormous  and challenging complexities: empathy, creativity, imagination, judgement and flair.

You can’t make any of those in a pin factory.

Empathetic Magic
June 2, 2020

Empathetic Magic

One way to make rain, is to pour water through a sieve.   The idea is that by imitating something like rain ourselves, real rain will fall.

We call this sympathetic magic, and the more people involved, the better.   If we all ‘make rain’ together, “The Rainmaker” is bound to respond.  This kind of group rainmaking is probably the origin of the myth of the Danaides.

There is a better kind of magic.  Where we all act as if we are the kind of people we’d love to live with.  Seeing our neighbours and fellows as human beings, very like us, yet not us, and all the more interesting for that, even when they are being ‘difficult’.

That’s empathetic magic.   It works.  And the more people involved, the better.

Imagine a country
June 1, 2020

Imagine a country

“Imagine a country. . .

Close your eyes, and put your fingers in your ears and shut out the angry chaos for a moment.     Now take a deep breath and imagine a country you want to live in, a country you wish existed, a country where you’d truly feel at home. . .”

This book is a collection of some of the imaginings.   In 500 to 800 words (or an illustrative alternative) within a month.

It’s well worth a read.  But an even better idea would be to do it.  To share this prompt with family, friends, colleagues, neighbours, networks.   Then to discuss those imaginings.   And decide how they can begin to be made real.

I don’t know about you, but several times over the last few years, I’ve wondered about moving.   To a different part of the country, or even to a different country.

This book reminds me that it’s better to improve than move.   And that I am responsible for the home I live in.

 

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.