Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Keep Promise

Good Design makes a product understandable
September 2, 2019

Good Design makes a product understandable

It clarifies the product’s structure.  Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition.  At best, it is self-explanatory.   Dieter Rams, Design Principle number 4.

How many times have you pulled at a door that was meant to be pushed?  Or pushed a door that was meant to be pulled?

There are 4 simple design solutions that would prevent that tiny but all too frequent source of wasted energy and frustration:

  1. Put a flat plate on the ‘push’ side and a handle on the ‘pull’ side.
  2. Allow the door to swing both ways, and have a flat plate on both sides (because both are now ‘push’).
  3. Allow the door to swing both ways, and have a handle on both sides (because both are now ‘pull’).
  4. Have the door open automatically as someone approaches it.

1, 2 and 3 make the door understandable, 4 makes it self-explanatory.

 

We live and work among millions of designed products every day, from doors to roundabouts and office blocks to business processes, organisational structures and governments, many of which provide all too frequent sources of wasted energy and frustration.

How would you re-design them?

Stakeholders
August 30, 2019

Stakeholders

I found this on the Corporate Accountability Network‘s site the other day: “The Corporate Accountability Network thinks that every company, … Read More “Stakeholders”

The beauty parade
August 14, 2019

The beauty parade

The problem with forcing yourself to conform to a particular ideal of ‘beauty’, as an individual or a business, is that over time and space, what constitutes that ideal changes.  Plus of course it is an ideal, never actually seen in nature.

Of course this is the point.  No one can possibly keep up, but they will spend time, money and energy trying.  Time, money and energy that could be spent on things that are more dangerous for the status quo.

Yet, as humans, we find beauty in the things we love.  Whatever the beloved looks like, becomes by definition, beautiful.

That means there’s no need to define yourself by another’s standard.   Live up to your own.

The right people will see your beauty.

Of course I had to try it
July 10, 2019

Of course I had to try it

I mentioned Tony’s Chocolonely 100% slave-free chocolate in an earlier post this week.   So, of course I had to try it.

It’s good.  Very near in taste to my favourite brand.

Which means I can happily carry on eating chocolate.

Phew!

Because the alternative was giving it up.

Trust
July 9, 2019

Trust

There’s a visible gap between the hands of the free-falling trapeze artist and those of her companion coming up to catch her.   A gap that makes my stomach lurch just looking at it.

That gap is filled with trust.  Trust that a promise made is a promise kept.

What happens, when trust gets eroded?   When we discover that institutions and corporates aren’t keeping the promises they made?   That the ham we’ve just bought that doesn’t actually contain ham?  The car we’ve just bought puts out more emissions than we were sold?   The pension we were relying on has been appropriated by the firm we’ve worked for for 40 years?  The news we read on social media and in the papers is fake?

When trust disappears, we stop taking risks.   We narrow our perspective.   We lower our expectations.   We start accepting worse instead of expecting better.   Cynicism starts to poison everything.

The only antidote is to make our own promises, the biggest we can, in spite of that stomach-lurching gap, and keep them every time.

Why do I need process if I have good people? Emotion.
June 18, 2019

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

Most modern businesses, large and small, involve interactions of some kind – with other employees, customers, and suppliers.

These interactions require emotional labour – listening; empathising, being present to the other person as well as intellectual labour – pattern-matching, imagining potential scenarios, reviewing possible solutions etc..

Without a process interactions become harder than they need to be, because every interaction is treated as unique, where in fact they fall into common patterns, with unique features.

Process captures what has to happen in the common patterns, giving your people a framework to work from that doesn’t need much thinking about.

Process frees up intellectual and emotional energy to be spent on the unique and personal aspects of regular interactions, and on the exceptions that either prove the rule, or highlight the start of a new pattern.

With their heads cleared of the routine, your good people can use their hearts to exceed your promises.

Bananarama
June 13, 2019

Bananarama

“It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.  That’s what gets results.”

I disagree.

“The way we do things round here” clearly reflects the culture of an organisation or institution.   So does “What we do around here”  – the things an organisation or institution chooses to do, and the things it decides to leave out.

So what really gets results is to be clear about the promises that are being made, and intentionally design the ‘what’ to deliver on that in a way that embodies the ‘way’.

Not to be a straightjacket or monorail, just so it isn’t only in the heads of the people who happen to be around right now.

Thanks to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day for inspiring this one.

Spoiled
June 11, 2019

Spoiled

We bought a new sofa on Saturday.  We visited the Soho showroom and spent a good hour or so trying various models out, measuring them, discussing how we would get them into the room, and then ordered one.

We were helped by a very pleasant assistant who took us through creating an account so we could track our order, then placing the order for the sofa we wanted.   All this was done via a large tablet – so essentially, we could have been anywhere – except that we got to print a postcard of our sofa, so we could look at it while we waited the 14 weeks for delivery.

All good.   We left the showroom and went off to have a celebratory pint and a proper sit-down in the pub across the road.

That’s when they spoiled it.

The first thing I saw when I looked at my phone was an email from the sofa company, triggered by creating the account: “£10 off your first purchase with this code.”, followed by another email “Thank you for your order.”

Now, I am very happy with the sofa I’ve ordered, I liked the showroom experience, and found every person we spoke to extremely helpful.  And £10 is no big deal given the price of the sofa.

But still I felt cheated.  Because the way ordering worked in the showroom meant I couldn’t see that discount offer until it was too late.   Better then, not to have made it, or to have applied it automatically.

As the money being poured into emotional AI shows, companies are very aware that humans are feeling beings, who can easily shift and be shifted between emotions.

It would be a pity for all that money to be thrown into making promises, not at keeping them.

 

Metamorphosis
May 15, 2019

Metamorphosis

Finally, it seems, technology can enable accountants to transform themsleves into what they and most of their clients want them to be – seers and prophets, rather than backward-looking bean-counters.

For around 25% of accountants, that is great news.

And around 46% of clients will have to get their act together to take advantage of it.

Here’s to revolution.

 

*source “The Practice of Now 2019”, Sage, 2019