Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Enabling Framework

Infrastructure
September 13, 2019

Infrastructure

Those country lanes we love to drive down in summer were mostly built back in the 1920s and 1930s.

They were an investment in the future, both as physical infrastructure that opened up the countryside to new markets and as employment for men and their families who would have otherwise starved.

They have lasted much better than most canals and railways, because they are less prescriptive about what can travel on them, or for what purpose, which means they can cope with all kinds of traffic, from milk-cart, to ramblers to country commuters.

They form a network, combining direction and connection with flexibility.  They enable autonomy.

Pretty good characteristics to aim for in a business infrastructure too.  Expensive to build, but well worth the investment.

Good design is long-lasting
September 5, 2019

Good design is long-lasting

“It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated.   Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.” Dieter Rams Design Principle number 7.

When a service process captures the ‘what has to happen’ without getting too bogged down in the ‘how it happens now’, it lasts.  It stays meaningful, and as a result stays useful, and used.

This is possible because human beings are very good at grasping an overall structure, and very good at flexing themselves around it to deal with a specific situation.

So let them.   In a service business, variation is information.

What makes a good Process? A Map and a Compass
July 18, 2019

What makes a good Process? A Map and a Compass

A good process is a map, guiding the person running the process to the desired destination, allowing some flexibility of route to get there.

A good process also has a compass built in.

It regularly reminds the person running it of the Promise of Value they are delivering on, so that when they find themselves lost and in the dark, they know the kind of action that will get them back on track and heading in the right direction.

What makes a good Process? Clarity of purpose.
July 16, 2019

What makes a good Process? Clarity of purpose.

A good process has a crystal clear purpose.  It is dedicated to achieving a single, customer-meaningful, business-meaningful outcome.

This outcome can be big and abstract at the top level (Keep Promise), increasing in granularity (Walk Dogs) until you reach the lowest practical and concrete level (File VAT Return).

This means that the person running the process knows exactly what they are trying to achieve, and they (and you) know exactly when they’ve achieved it.

Why do I need good people if I have process? Evolution.
June 21, 2019

Why do I need good people if I have process? Evolution.

Why do I need good people if I have process?

No process can be designed to deal with every possible scenario, exception or eventuality.

Without good people a process-based business gradually fossilises and becomes irrelevant, or worse, gets completely out of step with its environment.

Good people can handle exceptions appropriately when they occur.   They can also identify when those exceptions are due to environmental changes that need to be dealt with by adjusting the process.

Good people spark off constraints (such as a process), they ad-lib, improvise, invent workarounds, dream up ridiculous scenarios that open up new opportunities.

With a solid framework to play in, good people bring a business to life – they make it human.

Process
May 30, 2019

Process

People are ambivalent about ‘process’.

For some it feels like a way to ensure consistency, a helpful prop to support them in what they have to do.

For others, its a straitjacket, that turns people into robots.

I prefer to think of it as a springboard.  Something with enough give to be able to support different people, and enough resistance to help them really take off.

Oh no! What have I done?
May 16, 2019

Oh no! What have I done?

I thought, as the Head of Research completed his 20 minute rant on why he hated the IT department; how he thought we were all a waste of space and how he would only use us because he had no choice.

It was my second day in my new job, as part of the IT team supporting the Research Division. I’d already had to find my desk from the gloomy basement of a building half a mile away, then bring it back to the portakabin we called an office.

And now this – our customers hated us!

But in the next breath the Head of Research taught me one of the most valuable lessons of my working life. He gave us an overview of the process by which his team worked to discover a new drug.

My Head of Research was very public in his rant, but thankfully he was equally public in setting context.

“If that’s what you’re trying to do”, I thought, “I can see where I can help.”

A more common reaction by a business leader to her team’s inability to do things ‘the way she wants’ is to micro-manage them, imposing an ever more detailed level of instruction that is expensive to implement and leaves them feeling squashed, hampered and resentful, and herself no more satisfied than before.

The answer isn’t more detail, its context.

Most people in a job know how to do that job well. What they lack is the context in which they are doing it – where a particular day-to-day activity fits into the process of delivering a promise to a customer.  In other words,  why they are doing it, why they are doing it then and how that fits with what the rest of the team are doing.

Given the context, and responsibility for their part in delivering it, people will go further than delivery, they’ll find ways to improve things that you would never have thought of.

Of course, human beings can’t operate without context, so left without one, they’ll create their own.

An earlier version of this post was originally published on LinkedIn.

Second Nature
April 11, 2019

Second Nature

Do you remember your first driving lesson?

I do.   At the end of it I wondered how on earth I was going to be able to remember everything – never mind watch out for pedestrians and other traffic!

But after several lessons I got the hang of it, and eventually of course driving became second nature.   To a point where some nights I got home from work almost without realising it.

We humans are able to make a lot of things second nature.  Walking, driving, playing the cello, or rugby, or chess.

We do this by repeating certain combinations of actions until they become habit.   We no longer need to think about them.    That frees us up to to concentrate on the exceptions – those things outside the habitual that are going to prove interesting or dangerous.

But too much reliance on pure habit can also be dangerous.   I bet you’ve had to go back to your car after half an hour of shopping because you can’t remember locking it, even though you’re sure you did.

That’s why pilots have checklists.   To make a habit of the actions that must be done, and then to make sure they perform those actions consciously every time.

What’s the relevance of this for business?   Well, you need to actively create this interesting tension between habit and consciousness:

  • If you want people to develop a particular set of habits (rather than their own), you need to specify what those desired habits are, and get people to practice them.
  • If you want to ensure that certain key actions are always done, you have to find a way to make people aware they are doing them.

Then you can happily let them play with the exceptions.

Discipline makes daring possible.