Improve Process – Page 11 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

April 26, 2022

Instinct

Instinctively, I don’t like being paid by the hour or day. I’d much rather be paid for delivery of a service.

There are a couple of reasons for this. One is a simple dislike of being at someone else’s beck and call. The other is to do with risk.

If I am paid by the hour, and I take longer than expected to deliver the goods, the client pays more. If I take less time than expected, they gain. They are incentivised both to pay me as low a rate as possible and to have me work as fast as possible – perhaps even more hours than we agreed.

These risks are flipped if I am paid for delivery. If I have to put more effort in than I expected, I lose. If I am able to deliver with less effort, I’m the one who gains. I am incentivised to deliver a clear result in as short a time as possible. The client gets whatever it takes to complete the job.

For a business like mine, being paid for delivery makes more sense, because I am in control of the process. Over time I can expect to get better at estimating effort, and slicker at delivery, so over time, I can expect to gain.

For a business that is not in control of the process – like shipping cargo by sail for example, the situation is different. On the whole, ships prefer to be chartered, because they can’t control the weather. There is little opportunity to gain by delivering faster. Being chartered means that even though they can’t gain, they at least don’t lose.

What was counter-intuitive (to me at least) is that this arrangement might be preferable to the client who charters them. Until yesterday.

For one of my clients, Sail Cargo Alliance, the aim isn’t just to ship goods by sail, it’s to connect a worldwide community of small producers, ships, ports, independent shops and customers. For the Alliance, paying for the ship’s time makes perfect sense, because their attitude is collaborative.

OK, they take the risk of the ship arriving late, but having control over the ship’s time creates opportunities for revenue generation that don’t exist if they are simply paying for delivery. For example, they can add passengers to the trip, or if a ship arrives early, they can offer day-sailing trips, or tours, or on-board hospitality. And by sharing any additional revenues with the ship, they might just have created the best of both worlds.

Clearly my instinct is wrong. The answer is not time or delivery, but some mixture of time and delivery that minimises the downside and maximises upside for both parties. That enriches the relationship rather than simply exploiting it. Commerce without the capitalism.

Hmm. Worth thinking about for the next project.

April 25, 2022

Signals

We set up signals in our societies and our businesses to warn us when things might be going wrong.

It is possible that they go off by mistake, or due to causes we didn’t foresee. The systems we live in are complex.

But investigation is always a better bet than simply shutting our eyes.

The least that will happen is that we learn something.

April 21, 2022

Cui bono?

There’s a question worth asking whenever someone says “that doesn’t work” or “we can’t do that”, or “that’s not worth investigating”.

“Who benefits from the way things are right now?”

Those are the people you really need to convince.

April 19, 2022

You’re welcome!

I used to think that the first step in Keeping your Promise was setting up the client – getting everything in place to be able to deliver your service to them smoothly and efficiently.

How very functional of me.

Now I feel differently.

Sure, your client has enrolled with you on their journey, but they are probably already feeling a little buyer’s remorse, questioning whether this really is the right thing for them. What they need now is the reassurance that you will continue to ‘see’ them as a human being, not just as a ‘thing’ to be processed.

So, start your Keep Promise with a welcome. Get the metaphorical bunting out. Find a way to make your new client feel safe, special, and seen.

It doesn’t have to be over the top. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to be the same for everyone. It does need to be congruent with your Promise of Value.

How could you show new clients they are welcome?

April 14, 2022

Why humans love change

Listening to ‘In our time’ this morning, I heard that one of the reasons our ancestor Homo Erectus emerged could be that the Rift Valley environment around them started to change relatively rapidly and unpredictably as a result of volcanic activity.

This created a new evolutionary ‘niche’ – for a species that was able to efficiently switch between environments rather than adapt efficiently to just one. Walking upright, sociality and speech are just some of the outcomes.

In other words, we’ve evolved to live in the midst of change.

To be sure, most of us prefer our change to be evolutionary rather than sudden and drastic, but I bet there’s hardly anyone you know that hasn’t undergone some sort of major shift (changed job, changed marital or parental status, moved house) in the last five years. We are programmed to explore possibilities, see opportunities, to talk about new things, to try them out – with others if we can.

Why then do corporates have such a problem with change management?

Because we’re human. We love change but we prefer to do it ourselves, than have it done to us.

March 15, 2022

Sending and receiving

When sending and receiving, asking and getting an answer, happens asynchronously, it takes more work to get to a point where things can move forward.

This work is often invisible until you try and capture it in a Customer Experience Score.

At which point, it’s a good idea to ask: “How much of this can I make synchronous instead?”

Over the last 10 years or so, we’ve got so used to tech that allows us to operate asynchronously that we default to it.

Now we have tech that makes it much easier to operate synchronously too – even across time-zones. Perhaps that should be our new default?

March 8, 2022

And then what?

Following on from yesterday’s post…

To create the story of the Customer Experience Score you are trying to capture, start with a question:

“What happens when a client buys this product/starts this programme/signs up for this service…?”.

Make notes of the answer, until there’s a pause.

“And then what?”

Keep asking this question until you get an answer something like: “Nothing, that’s it. That’s the end.”

It will probably take longer than you think, but you’ll have your first draft. And lots more questions.

March 7, 2022

How to capture a business process: Step 6

I’ve written quite a bit elsewhere on how to capture a business process. But I left out a step.

After you’ve thought about what the point of your business process is; where it starts; where it ends; what happens through this process; what Roles are involved; what Props are needed and how exceptions should be handled, there is one more crucial thing you need to do:

Have a go.

Your first draft will be wrong. Mine always are.

Your second draft may well be wrong. Mine frequently are.

Your third draft may not be quite right. That often happens to me.

But you can’t find any of that out unless you have a first, second, or third draft to work with. It’s very hard to follow a process that’s in your head. Much easier when you see it spelt out as a map in front of you. That’s true for you and for your colleagues.

This is how great artists work. They sketch, tentatively and hairily at first. to get the idea out of their head into a form they can work on.

I’d even go as far to say feel free to start at Step 3, with the story and just get something down. Then review it in the light of Steps 1 to 5 to refine what you have in your own head before you present it to others.

When it comes to capturing how things should work for your business, the most important step is to get it out of your head, and into a form that you and others can reason about, re-design and improve.

It will never be perfect, but it will be visible. Therefore capable of being made better

Like a great artist, keep practicing, keep sketching.

In time, your sketches will look more like finished works. But they’ll always be valuable.

February 16, 2022

Are there too many managers?

That was the question asked on ‘The Agenda with Steve Paikin’ the other day.

Of course it’s the wrong question.

One real question is “How do you build an organisation that takes individual competences and creates an organisational capability”. In other words, how do you co-ordinate the activities of different people into a consistent, repeatable business activity?

Another is “How do we create organisations that are as capable of as the people inside them?”. In other words, how do you make sure that individual capabilities are not stifled/wasted in the process?

If you want your business to achieve its purpose effectively and efficiently, you have to find a way of managing that addresses both of these questions.

Managers are a solution, but they aren’t the only one. And they may not be the best.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Improve Process