Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Employee Ownership

A virtuous flywheel
January 11, 2021

A virtuous flywheel

I love it when somebody else finds ways to say things better than I can.   Here’s a great post from Corporate Rebels exploring how 2 very different companies found similar ways to turnaround and then grow:

3 Principles To Run A Company Sensibly

“both were motivated to adopt their unique methodologies to rescue the struggling companies they were leading. They wanted to save the jobs of people in their organizations.  They thought this could be achieved by giving all an understanding of how the businesses were run—and then involve them in improving them.  Their way of saving jobs became a new way to create jobs.  These new jobs created new wealth. This wealth, was then shared with those who created it in the first place: all those in the company.”

In other words, they created a virtuous flywheel that didn’t depend on the bosses.

Sounds sensible to me.   Flywheels get going faster when everyone pushes in the same direction.

Related
October 21, 2020

Related

This was last weekend’s reading.

Strangely enough, they are related.  I recommend reading them together.

Legacy
June 16, 2020

Legacy

You aren’t going to live forever, but the company you’ve founded might.   And the chances are you’d like it to carry on pretty much as you envisaged it.

As Brian Chesky puts it in another gem from Eric Ries’s Out of The Crisis podcast:

“Design your company so that the wrong person running your company doesn’t ruin your company.”

One way of minimising the risk of this happening is to build it so that it makes and keeps it’s unique Promise of Value purposely, consistently yet creatively, so that even in the wrong hands, it can’t help but deliver the Promise you meant it to.

Another way is to have everyone in the company running it.

It’s hard to hijack everyone.

Investment
May 19, 2020

Investment

We’ve got used to thinking of investment as a purely financial thing, undertaken by shareholders in a company.   A risk taken in the hope that the return will be worth it.

We’ve also got used to the idea that capital investors are the most important investors, and that returns to them should be kept high and constant, because otherwise they’ll take their capital elsewhere.

‘Investment’ carries another meaning though – to put on clothes, especially the ceremonial clothes of office.   In other words to publicly adopt the roles and responsibilities associated with that office.

Looked at this way, there are certainly other investors in a business.  The founders, workers, suppliers, and customers who take a risk with their time, energy and belief, in the hope that the return will be worth it.   These (along with some personal capital investors to be sure), are the people who adopt the roles and responsibilities associated with it.   Who clothe themselves in its values, purpose and ways of doing things.   Who may even wear its uniform, badge, or logo publicly and with pride.

Money isn’t the only thing necessary for the long-term success of a venture.   It certainly isn’t sufficient.

What if we focused our dividends accordingly?

Succession planning
March 16, 2020

Succession planning

We usually take a regal, personal view of succession in a business.   An heir is selected, carefully trained, and groomed to take the helm when we leave.

This approach is fraught with difficulties.   We put off the selection, training and all that, because we’d rather not face our own mortality, and because to do all that takes time out from running the business.   The heir we choose may not wish to be chosen – even if they are family.   They may not wish to shoulder the risk of destroying their inheritance.    There may not be anyone already in the business that we want to be our heir.

There is a more rational, systemic approach.

Build a business around a clearly defined customer experience process, that gives people the confidence to know what they are doing without constraining their personality and individuality.    Give people clear roles to play and all the resources at their fingertips to play them well.   Train them to perform more than one role,  so they can have variety of work, you have redundancy in the system and the customer learns that they can happily deal with anyone in the business.

Built this way, a business more or less runs itself, giving you more options for succession, including sale at its full value.   You could even leave it to your employees.

Now there’s a legacy to be proud of.

Shopping
October 9, 2019

Shopping

Yesterday evening I picked up my second ever online grocery order from Greenwich Pier.  It was more expensive than buying the same stuff from Ocado, but not eye-wateringly so.

What I bought:

  • Coffee beans, chocolate, olives with lemon, olives with garlic, almonds and honey.
  • A contribution to the restoration of the Raybel – a historic Thames barge that will be used in future drop-offs along the Thames.
  • Support for small, organic growers and producers across Europe and in South America, so they can carry on treating their land, their crops and their people right.
  • A contribution to another income stream for the schooner Gallant and other ships like her, so that more people can enjoy sailing in her, and more people can buy goods shipped by her.
  • Support for New Dawn Traders and the Sail Cargo Alliance they are part of.
  • A contribution to another way of doing things.

We waited, in the open air for a good 10 minutes before my shopping arrived – far longer than I’ve ever waited at my favourite bugbear, the supermarket checkout – but I didn’t mind.  Funny that.

We never buy ‘just stuff’.  We buy what we think it means for us.  Sometimes what we think it means and what it actually does are the same thing.

And that makes us ‘consumers’ more powerful than we realise.

Juggling
October 8, 2019

Juggling

Jugglers make life difficult for themselves on purpose.  For our entertainment.   So we can marvel at their coordination and dexterity.

Business owners juggle because they haven’t realised yet that the balls can be self-powered and self-organising.

Or that enabling this is an even more impressive act.

Why do I need process if I have good people? Responsibility
June 19, 2019

Why do I need process if I have good people? Responsibility

Why do I need process if I have good people?

Having a process to follow while they learn, gives people confidence that they are doing the right thing.

Once people are confident that they know what they are doing, they don’t wait to be made accountable – they take responsibility.

With the confidence of a process behind them, your good people can pretty much manage themselves.

 

Art and Craft
April 30, 2019

Art and Craft

When people are given responsibility for a job, and the autonomy and resources to complete it, they impart a kind of delight to the thing they create, a delight shared with anyone who uses it.

We know this, which is why we love farmer’s markets, indy coffee shops, craftspeople and artists of all kinds.

It works for intangible creations too.