Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Improve Process

The best way to learn
May 21, 2020

The best way to learn

It’s said that the best way to learn is to teach.

I’ve had a couple of conversations recently that have got me thinking about this.  The first was around training people remotely, the other was about franchising.

I think it’s true.

The thing about teaching is that your students don’t know what you know.

They aren’t in your head, and they haven’t been working next to you for the last umpteen years.   In terms of your business, your unique system for making and keeping promises, they know nothing.

That means they ask stupid questions: “What’s one of those?” Why do we use that?” “Why do we do it that way?” “What if we did that instead”.

Good students point out contradictions, anomalies, blind spots.  Things you should have seen, but have never had time to look at.  things you never imagined could be done, that come naturally to them.    This can feel threatening, but really what’s happening is that the value is passing both ways.   They learn from you, you learn from them.   A better business results.

Having to explain something forces us to think about it.   Teaching forces us to make habits explicit, to surface reasoning that we just take for granted, to make our assumptions visible.  It forces us to write down our score, so someone else can learn to play it.   Writing it down allows it to be questioned, validated, improved, until suddenly we are no longer the only people who know how it goes.   Even better, new people take our score and riff on it in new and exciting ways.

You don’t need new students to do this.   You already have them working with you in your business.

Teach them, then let them teach you back.

Process vs People
April 16, 2020

Process vs People

Why do I need process if I have good people?

Because making good people reinvent the wheel over and over again is a shocking waste of talent.

Talent that could be used to invent better wheels, or more interesting uses for them.

Connecting
April 15, 2020

Connecting

Last night I discovered Johann Hari and his work on depression, anxiety and addiction.

His findings are fascinating, and chime very much with my beliefs on what motivates people, and how you help them to be happier and more productive.

Humans have fundamental physical needs – food, clothing, shelter, sex.

We also have fundamental psychological needs – autonomy, mastery, agency, purpose and above all connection with other people.  We need to be seen and valued.

I’d be interested to know what the current situation is doing for those needs right now.   I suspect that some of the psychological needs are being better met for some people, while for others some of the physical needs are under threat.

If Covid-19 is an opportunity for a reset.   It’s going to be worth thinking about what comes back after the reset button is released again.

How can we ensure that more people have more of their fundamental needs met intentionally and consistently, without killing ourselves or the planet in the process?

It’s a big question.  But we can start small, with where we belong – with our own families, friends and businesses.

Here are the TED talks:

https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_this_could_be_why_you_re_depressed_or_anxious

 

https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong

 

Managing blind
April 3, 2020

Managing blind

If you know about Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), you’ll know that people have preferred channels of communication and expression.   Some people lean towards images, others towards words, others towards feelings.

Not surprisingly, these preferences apply to how people take in the information that convinces them of something, for example, whether or not someone is doing a good job.

Try it.  Ask yourself  “How do I know someone’s doing a good job?“

Is it by seeing them do it?  Is it by reading a report they’ve produced?  Is it by hearing someone tell you?   Is it by doing it with them?

The preferred channel isn’t the whole story though, we also have a preference that relates to time and frequency – how many times we need to experience the signals of a job well done, in order to be convinced that the person doing it can be safely left to themselves.

Some people are immediately convinced, they only need to see/read/hear/do once, and they are happy to let the person carry on.

Others need a few instances before they are convinced.

Yet others need to keep receiving the evidence because they are never quite 100% convinced, no matter how many times they see/hear/read/do.

Clearly this has implications for what might be appropriate roles for the individuals in your team, depending on the kind of business you do.   And there are dangers in it, as I’ve talked about before.

It is of particular relevance if you are a manager or business owner, when one or more of the usual channels are not available.

The first part of the answer for most businesses, is to switch to measuring outcomes, not work.

The second is to run spot-checks at a reasonable frequency, which can take different forms.

For example you could arrange to ‘accompany’ someone as they perform their job.   You give notice, so they are prepared, because you are not so much checking what they are doing as monitoring the reactions of the people they interact with as they do it.

Or you can ‘mystery shop’ – the non-creepy equivalent of observing covertly, from a distance.   Better yet, get a professional to do it for you on a regular basis.

And you can give everyone a stake in success, by truly sharing ownership.

The point of this post, and some of the others I’ve written this week, is to show that there may be reasons beyond the immediate crisis that are making you and your team feel uncomfortable and demotivated.

Of course the priority now is get set up just enough to survive.

But there is no need for things to be worse than they are, and soon you will have some time to invest beyond survival.

By taking the time to understand individual working styles, so you can work with the grain of every member of your team (including yourself), you’ll come out of the other side stronger.   And you’ll have showed your team you care.

Here’s the book reference again: “Words that Change Minds”, by Shelle Rose Charvet.    Check out the website too.

Learning together – online
March 20, 2020

Learning together – online

Following on again from yesterday’s post, if you know your business is going to be quiet for the next few weeks or months, here are some courses I recommend (I’ve done most of them, some of them more than once).

They could be for you or for your team.

A whole bunch from Akimbo Workshops (Seth Godin and friends)

The Bootstrappers Workshop, ideal if you are still getting your business idea off the ground (which in my case was 5 years after I’d started!)

The Marketing Seminar, will make you think really hard about who you are for, and what you really do for them.  Highly recommended.

The Podcasting Workshop, a brilliant thing for graduates to do instead of an internship, and for experts too. (I haven’t done this one, you can probably tell!)

The Freelancers Workshop, Seth calls himself a freelancer, so you’re in good company.

The Story Skills Workshop, with Bernadette Jiwa, a master of daily storytelling.

And if you’re really looking to use this downtime to hit the ground running later, there’s the AltMBA, as it suggests a leadership and management workshop, that is more intense that the others.

You’ll never be the same after any of these workshops.   And the brilliant thing about them is that you aren’t doing them alone.  The format requires you to interact with your fellow students, to help each other, constructively critique each other and encourage each other.   By doing so, you learn far more yourself.    And they are not expensive.

If you prefer to work on your own, many of these are also available on Udemy.

Last but by no means least, here’s something a little more local, but equally good: Seeds to Success from Anwen Cooper, of Get Fruitful Marketing starting April.  I’ve been working with Anwen for about a year now, and the difference she has helped me to make is enormous.

Out of touch
March 9, 2020

Out of touch

Before mobile phones, you had no choice about being out of touch outside working hours.   You either got everything done during the working day or you didn’t.   Even if you worked late, you could properly relax at home.

If you knew you were going to be away from your desk for a few days, you left it so that someone else in the office could pick up a call and handle things in your absence.  You could concentrate on the job you were actually doing.

If you needed to get a report written or a complex spreadsheet set up, you deliberately took yourself out of reach of the banter, ‘quick questions’ and interruptions.  You could give the job the attention it deserved.

All of this made us more productive, not less.  And we were probably less anxious and stressed too.

Now, putting yourself out of touch has to be intentional.

And it’s a skill worth learning, for everyone’s sake.

Measuring doughnuts
February 17, 2020

Measuring doughnuts

In an earlier post, I asked why it’s deemed important to report on the FTSE 100 index at every news on the radio, and what relevance that index has for most ordinary people.

There are alternative things to measure, that matter more to most people, and I think Kate Raworth’s doughnut pretty much captures them all.

What if instead of the FTSE, we had a daily snapshot of our impact as a nation on overshooting the ecological ceiling, or undershooting the social foundation?   What if we could see every day how well we are doing at keeping within “the safe and just space for humanity”.

Like the FTSE and other indices, this snapshot would be made up of data from millions of enterprises large and small across the country, and that means that each enterprise would need to measure it’s own impact too.

That’s completely doable, if we set our mind to it, with the help and support of our accountants.

Why wait?  Let’s start now.

Triage
February 5, 2020

Triage

One reason why we can feel overwhelmed at work, is that we don’t use triage enough.

Simple triage for unexpected client phone calls and emails:

  1. If you can answer their question or address their issue in 5 minutes, deal with it now, preferably by phone.
  2. If it is urgent deal with it now.   Have a clear, tangible definition of what ‘urgent’ means.  Don’t rely on the client’s perception.
  3. If it’s not urgent and you genuinely have time to deal with it now (i.e. doing so won’t delay any other client’s work or eat into your rest time), deal with it now, preferably by phone.
  4. Otherwise, schedule time to deal with it and schedule a call with them to give your response.   It helps to keep an hour or so set aside every day to schedule these into.  That way you can keep on top of the work generated, and be clear with your client when they can expect an answer.

Every customer has top priority.  That needs managing.