December 15, 2023
Renewal
“The worker at bench or loom must put something of himself into his work, and as constantly draw upon his … Read More “Renewal”
Category: Efficiency
December 7, 2023
Props
As soon as you see the deerstalker hat, the meerschaum pipe and the magnifying glass, you know exactly who the … Read More “Props”
November 6, 2023
Performance
Performance = Potential – Interference. Sometimes. for example in sportspeople, which is where this formula comes from, the interference is … Read More “Performance”
October 25, 2023
Where does leadership sit?
Here’s an interesting debate on leadership and where it fits, kicked off by Michele Zanini. Not just in the article he refers to, but the comments also.
Everyone can be a leader. Most people are already leaders, somewhere in their lives. Just not at work.
But with all the crises we face, don’t we need as big a team as possible of “everyone in the organization who can make amazing things happen”?
Where does leadership sit in your business?
Where could it sit, if you enabled it?
Discipline makes Daring possible.
October 23, 2023
Standard Operating Procedures
I don’t know about you, but that phrase “Standard Operating Procedures” makes me cringe. I completely get why they are needed in certain contexts – manufacturing, engineering, military, – anything where you’re dealing with things, or beings that you treat as things.
But as soon as human beings become part of the equation, there can be no such thing as standard – from either side of the operation.
If you’re a business that focuses on delivering a service to humans, by humans, consistency is what you want, not the uniformity of standardisation. However your service is being delivered, and whoever is delivering it, it should feel consistent with your Promise of Value. Since humans are involved, that inevitably means variation – of the kind that standardisation stifles. The kind that allows your people to over-deliver on your Promise and delight individual clients – even when things go wrong.
So, as you design and document the services that enable your business to deliver though others, remember to empower that ability to vary in your team.
Not only will it make for more delight and flexibility, it will be the means by which you discover new needs and desires in your client base.
In manufacturing and engineering, variation is deviation. But for humans and other living beings, and the businesses that serve them, it truly is the spice of life.
Discipline makes Daring possible.
October 12, 2023
Grrrr….
One of the things I really dislike about Microsoft Windows is the way updates barge in and trample all over my setup, like the wombat in the comparethemarket commercial. The convenience of auto-updates is more than offset by the work I have to put into getting everything back in order.
Why can’t there be a protocol for signifying which apps are critical so that any incoming update or install can avoid overwriting their registry details?
I appreciate that I may be asking the impossible, but if nobody asks, nothing will change.
So why not me?
October 11, 2023
Why Muri matters
Absorb. Adapt. Transform.
If you’ve ever experienced some kind of shock to your business – like your server being hit by lightning, or a pandemic lockdown – you’ll recognise these three phases of response, even if you went through them unconsciously.
1: Absorb: It’s all hands on deck – you double down, work harder, get people to do overtime, call in retired people, pull in help from fellow businesses or family. Whatever it takes to withstand the first effects of the shock.
2: Adapt: Things are different now. The old ways of doing, the old roles, locations and certainties don’t apply any more. Work-arounds are what’s needed, and you and your team find them.
3: Transform: Now the worst is over, you all take a breath, and think how best to change how your business works, so when a similar shock happens in the future, you’ll be ready for it. Some of your work-arounds will become part of the system, others won’t. It’s worth remembering that not all shocks are inherently undesirable – a rush of new customers from referrals is just as much of a shock to the system as a lightning strike. So it pays to think up some other possible shock scenarios and re-design and re-equip your system to cope with those too. Or at least plan how you will be able to absorb it enough to give you time to adapt and transform.
Which brings me back to the point.
Muri matters, because if people, machines and systems are already operating at 100% or over when a shock hits, it’s extremely hard to respond effectively. And only people can make systems work at over 100%. With no room to absorb, how can you possibly move on to adapt or learn to thrive in the new world by transforming? Muri destroys resilience.
My way to prepare for this is to share everything about how your business works with everyone in it.
- Document your customer experience with an OurScore , so everyone can see the context.
- Have individuals play multiple roles and deliver multiple aspects of your business promise.
- Give them the autonomy to develop solutions to exceptions as they occur.
- Make sure everyone shares their findings.
In other words, introduce the ultimate level of redundancy – make everyone a Boss.
Discipline makes Daring possible.
Ask me how.
September 28, 2023
Switching context
One of the overlooked and most pernicious effects of being overburdened is the way it shrinks the world around you, narrowing your vision to just what’s in front of you and your horizon to just what’s next.
There are some who are clearly well-served by this situation (Tim Gurner merely said it out loud).
If you’re not one of them, here’s a tip:
Switch context. Put yourself in a different place. Even if it’s only for an hour. It doesn’t have to be a restful place, just different. The idea is to broaden your horizon, take in new stimuli, get your brain out of the rut it’s in.
And if you employ people, encourage them to do it too. Do it with them. Sometimes the discipline you need is to step away from the business and do something else instead.
Daring will follow though.
I’m switching context for the next few days, to refresh my body and my brain. I’ll be back next Monday.
Take care.
September 27, 2023
What will it do?
What will it do?
When we start our businesses, we don’t really know.
We know what we want to do. More of the things we enjoy, less of the things we don’t, with no interference from the boss.
We have an inkling that left to ourselves, we can probably produce something much more in line with what the customer wants than we were able to as a small cog in a big machine.
Or we hope that having experienced a problem and found a new solution, there might be others who will welcome what we’ve discovered.
In truth, we don’t really know who they are, what they want, or how they want it.
That’s fine.
The job of a startup is to find that out. We need to be observant, flexible, opportunistic, open to a different who, a different what. A certain amount of thrashing is inevitable.
But once we do know who and what, thrashing no longer serves. Now we need to concentrate on how. Hand-crafting a consistent customer experience, ‘doing things that don’t scale’ until we’ve really hit the mark.
Until finally, we’ve answered the question “What will it do?”
You’re no longer a startup.
And the next challenge begins.
Because if you really have hit the mark for a significant number of people, the next question is “How can I do it like this for more people?”, “How do I replicate my actions through other people or through software so that I can reach more of the people who want what I can offer, in the way that I offer it?”
You don’t have to scale of course. You can stick with a handcrafted service and a select clientele. Just make sure they are paying you full value for that.
But if you want to reach more people, have an even bigger impact, you need to think about scaling up the system you’ve inadvertently designed.
Scaling up starts with treating it as a design, rather than a happy accident- soon to be overtaken by the next.
Which means starting by writing your design down. So there’s a reference point, a specification, an intention.
So that from now on, everyone knows what it has to do.
Otherwise how can you work how best to share the work? Or how best to automate it? Or whether the solutions you’ve chosen actually do the job? How do you know where to be flexible and where to stay firm? Or where you can leave it to the people on the ground to decide?
It doesn’t mean the design can’t change, it just means that every change is in service to what everyone knows it has to do.
And as we’re discovering with HS2, waiting until its half-built to decide exactly what it’s meant to do, is an expensive way to fail.
Discipline before you start building makes real Daring possible later.
August 16, 2023
Letting go of the tiger
During that tiger-riding phase of growing your business, when you’re growing fast, when new opportunities are coming at you thick and fast, and it feels right to take as many of them as you can; it can feel like everything is out of control. It can feel like nothing is working as it should, so you have to be everywhere, supervising everything, checking everything, or the tiger will run away with you.
You might think that this would be the worst time to start writing down your Customer Experience Score.
You’d be wrong.
Because, by giving yourself space to get your music out of your head, you also give yourself space to think about how ‘doing things right’ can be made easier to achieve. Sometimes ridiculously so, with a ridiculously simple change, such as creating a Prop for others to use that literally helps them see through your eyes.
Because, as you write down what till now has only been playing inside your head, you see how the part you wrote for the violins is very close to what the violas will need, and the oboes, and with a few more tweaks, the clarinets. Suddenly, the job of getting it all down is much smaller than you thought.
And because, as you write the first few parts, and see how easy it is to get your Orchestra to play them beautifully, even when you’re not in the room, you realise that the next part you write is likely to work just as well, and the one after that, and the one after that. Suddenly, the job of getting it all down is far less urgent than you thought.
And so you realise that you can loosen your hold. That the tiger isn’t going to run away with you. That you can spend time building her a generous and beuatiful reserve in which she can flourish.
You’ll never be done of course, but now you know how easy it is, you can enlist your team to help you.
And once they know as much as you do about how your business should work to make and keep its promises to customers, you can step back and enjoy watching your tiger become a streak.
Discipline makes Daring possible.
It also makes it easier.