Employee engagement – Page 12 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

November 25, 2022

Level 5 Leadership

One of the things I love about LHL Fridays is that I always learn something new.

Today Tim Bicknell told me about ‘Level 5 leadership’, so of course I had to google it.

And then I found this in the Harvard Business Review:

“When you look across the good-to-great transformations, they consistently display three forms of discipline: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.”

Discipline makes Daring possible.

And you don’t have to wait to be corporate to apply it.

Just talk to me.

Can’t wait to find out more.

October 21, 2022

Why it’s good to have people on trains

My Great Western Railway train to Penzance was delayed by half an hour. Someone had been taken ill on a train in front of us. The tannoy kept us informed, and let us know that we would be able to claim compensation via the train operator’s website.

So far, so standard.

But here’s the difference a real-life, flesh and blood human made:

Knowing that some of the passengers would have missed their connection to Newquay, the train manager asked them to identify themselves as he walked through the train, so he could arrange alternative transport. Having worked out what their actual needs were, a bus was arranged to pick most of them up from St Austell, while for one person, a taxi was booked to get them to Newquay airport in time to make their plane. All at no extra cost.

Because the train manager saw their job as getting people to their desired destination as near on time as possible, not merely to carry them from A to B.

How very different from ‘rebel’ brand Virgin, who will happily chuck passengers off a train well short of their destination, to avoid the costs of further delays down the line, leaving them to scramble onwards as best they can.

I’ve supported the rail strikes since the beginning. I support them even more enthusistically now. Even though my Penzance trip was a day later than booked because of them.

These people aren’t just fighting for their jobs, they’re fighting for the kind of service I for one want to receive. A human one.

October 4, 2022

A watched pot

Decades ago, my older brothers were given the job of breaking up concrete in the back garden so my dad could lay a new patio.

They did a morning’s work, had lunch and started again in the afternoon. After an hour or so, my mum thought “They’ve been at it a while, I better see if they need a cup of tea.”

Then walked into the breakfast room to find nothing but a cassette player running.

They’d carefully recorded themselves in the morning so they could bunk off in the afternoon.

Corporate Rebels shared a Bloomberg article today:

“More than two years after remote work and hybrid jobs became widespread, there’s still a stark divide over how it’s going: About 85% of managers worry they can’t tell if employees are getting enough done, while 87% of workers say their productivity is just fine.”

With this admonition from Microsoft: “Don’t Spy on Employees to Ensure They’re Working,“

This is the 21st century for goodness sake.

Have we not learned to measure results rather than “activity”?

I can’t help thinking it’s management that needs an overhaul.

Hint: If you’re a micro-business employer I can help you with that.

September 29, 2022

Following orders

Of course there are benefits to simply following orders. It allows people to avoid responsibility.

Which means that if you want your people to take responsibility, giving them orders won’t work.

Giving them a blank page won’t work either.

You’ll have to find another way.

September 27, 2022

Anarchy

Not many people know this.

I’m an anarchist.

I believe in autonomy and self-determination. I don’t believe that anyone has the right to tell anyone else what to do – except in rare cases where doing so might save a person’s life.

I also believe in collaboration and co-operation – the getting together of autonomous individuals to achieve something much bigger than themselves.

To co-operate successfully, participants need to know what they have to do. They need to know when it has to be done. But that knowledge doesn’t have to come from someone telling them as they go. It can come from a shared ‘document’ everyone can access, whenever they need to.

That’s why I like the idea of a business as an orchestra.

Often, when people think of an orchestra, they focus on the conductor. But the conductor isn’t there to tell players what to do, they’re there to help them keep time, and to provide hints to aid this particular interpretation. It’s up to each player to choose how to get the right sound out of their instrument at the right time. What has to happen, when, is recorded by the composer in a score.

The conductor is a role, like a cellist or percussionist, not a position in a hierarchy. In fact it’s perfectly possible to run a succesful orchestra without a conductor – you simply get people to take turns.

What really pulls an orchestra together is the score – a map of the sound experience to be created for an audience.

The person behind the score is the composer. They’re the one whose legacy lasts longest, and scales furthest.

So if you’re an employer, and like me, you have a problem with being told what to do, consider rethinking your role.

How could you make yourself a conductor rather than a boss?

Or even better, how could you make yourself a composer?

Hint: talk to me about becoming a Disappearing Boss.

September 21, 2022

Hard work

It takes a lot of work to maintain a garden like this.

And the only way to renew or change it is to uproot everything and start again.

Much better to build a garden that can evolve with little tending. Even at the cost of some untidiness.

That’s where the delightful surprises come from.

September 12, 2022

Every enterprise makes a Promise

Every enterprise, even the smallest or shortest-lived, makes a Promise. It can be summed up simply as “what we do for the people we serve“.

Unfortunately it’s rarely spelt out as clearly as it could be. If you run your own business you know it’s there, because you have clients who love you, and recommend you to all their friends.

But I bet you find it difficult to articulate clearly. And I bet your team find articulating it even harder.

It’s very hard to live something that you can’t articulate. So if you’re feeling a bit frustrated by your team’s inability to deliver on your enterprise’s Promise as well you would like, here’s something you can do to help:

Get your whole team together and ask this simple question:

“What’s brilliant about this business?”

Get everyone to spend 10 minutes answering this question on a generous pile of sticky notes, then, one by one, starting with the newest or shyest, get each person to share what they’ve written and why they wrote it.

As they do this, listen out for gems.

When asked ‘what’s brilliant?‘, people often start with clichés like ‘quality’ or ‘service’.

If you encourage them to explain why they’ve written that, they often voice values, behaviours and specific examples that are far more reflective of the value you bring to clients.

Capture these on new sticky notes as you go, and share them with your own at the end of the session.

It’s an afternoon’s work, but you’ll be glad you did it, because by answering this question with your team, you’ll not only articulate your own values and preferred behaviours, you’ll also identify values and behaviours you share with at least some of your clients. You’ll know exactly who they are. They’ll be the clients you most enjoy working with, and who most appreciate what you do for them.

What’s more, you’ll have energised your team. You’ll have discovered nuances of your Promise of Value that you didn’t know about before. You’ll have started to articulate more clearly what makes your enterprise unique.

And perhaps most importantly, you’ll have reassured yourself that you’re all on the same side.

September 2, 2022

Planning

Here’s a question for next time you feel you need to plan for a big event or outcome:

“What’s the minimum you need to do to enable your people to make it happen?”

The answer might surprise you.

It will almost certainly be less than you thought.

And leave much more room for your people to shine.

August 22, 2022

Confusions

Stick insects confuse their predators on purpose. They pretend to be a twig. A predator already has a mental model of what a twig is and how it works, which doesn’t include being edible. So it leaves the insect ‘twig’ alone.

We humans confuse people all the time. Sometimes on purpose, most often by accident. We assume that our mental model of the thing we’re building will be obvious to everyone who buys it, uses it or operates it. Yet that is rarely the case.

Take a small business. For a shareholder or investor it’s a machine for generating returns. For founders it’s a way to make a dent in the universe or their route to a coveted lifestyle. For their accountant it’s a set of connected accounts. For an operations manager it’s a set of loosely related functions, one of which they probably consider to be the most important. For some employees it’s a means to enjoy life outside work. For others it’s a lifeline, and for others still a vocation. For a customer it’s a solution to a problem.

Conflicting mental models pull people in different directions and make the thing you’re building confusing, less effective and ultimately unusable.

The answer?

Use a model that is simple, easy to communicate and effective in delivering what everyone wants.
Design the thing you’re building around that model, so that the way it works clearly reflects the concept behind it.
Share your model in your marketing materials, shareholder reports, filed accounts, operations manual, help guides and status reports, so that it becomes a joy to interact with, whatever your role.

If you’re a small business owner, you might like to use mine:

It works well, if you want to create a business that can last or that can grow.

Or both, if that’s what you want.

August 12, 2022

The war for talent

There’s a talent war going on.

Companies are spending a fortune searching for that perfect new recruit – you know, the one with 10 years experience of a 3-year old industry; who can bring fresh eyes to your business plus an intimate knowledge of how you do things; who will ‘go the extra mile’ for a bit less pay than the last person in that role, and none of the perks.

What if instead of looking for unicorns, you gave everyone in your business the responsibility and autonomy they crave, a Customer Experience Score to follow and a share of the profits they make?

You’d probably find there’s more than enough talent in your business already.

It’s just that you’re wasting it.