Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Keep Promise

You’re welcome!
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?

What this hooey is all about
April 7, 2022

What this hooey is all about

In this letter to Nirvana, pitching to produce their next album, Steve Albini sets out his Promise of Value for them to take or leave.

It’s not 100% applicable to a business like yours, (unless your business is actually a band) but there’s a lot that could be learned from it:

“I’m only interested in working on records that legitimately reflect the band’s own perception of their music and existence. If you will commit yourselves to that as a tenet of the recording methodology, then I will bust my ass for you. I’ll work circles around you. I’ll rap your head with a ratchet…”

“If the record takes a long time, and everyone gets bummed and scrutinizes every step, then the recordings bear little resemblance to the live band, and the end result is seldom flattering.”

“I consider the band the most important thing, as the creative entity that spawned both the band’s personality and style and as the social entity that exists 24 hours out of each day. I do not consider it my place to tell you what to do or how to play.”

“I like to leave room for accidents or chaos. Making a seamless record, where every note and syllable is in place and every bass drum is identical, is no trick. Any idiot with the patience and the budget to allow such foolishness can do it. I prefer to work on records that aspire to greater things, like originality, personality and enthusiasm.”

As the founder of your business, you’re the equivalent of Nirvana.  You’re the live band.   The customer experience you’ve carefully crafted as you grew your business is what your audience buys.

Your team, is like the records you make to get the music to more of those who want to hear it – far into the future.

Only now you are Steve Albini, and it’s your job to make sure the record delivers as if it was you:

“If every element of the music and dynamics of a band is controlled by click tracks, computers, automated mixes, gates, samplers and sequencers, then the record may not be incompetent, but it certainly won’t be exceptional. It will also bear very little relationship to the live band, which is what all this hooey is supposed to be about.”

Write your people a score, make sure they’re familiar with your sound and ethos, then let them play as human beings, not machines.

The entertainers and the sinking cruise ship
April 6, 2022

The entertainers and the sinking cruise ship

I’ve just caught the last half of ‘Life Changing’ on BBC Radio 4.

It’s a thrilling and hopefully infrequent illustration of why hierarchy sucks and free-playing, experimental and autonomously responsible human beings are the best.

After their cruise ship was holed, the captain hid and the senior managers ran away.

The entertainers worked out something was wrong, then, worried about the customers and the rest of the crew, did something about it.   They initiated processes that saved all 581 people left on board, including themselves.

Maybe they were able to do that precisely because they weren’t on the org chart?

The next step
March 31, 2022

The next step

Just because you’ve got someone over the threshold, doesn’t mean you stop guiding.   The destination may be obvious to you, but is it to your client?

The next step is difficult to take if you don’t where it is, or where it leads.

Seeing things from both sides
March 24, 2022

Seeing things from both sides

Most of the time, I model what happens in a given interaction from a single perspective – that of the organisation whose Score I’m drafting.   Most of the time, that’s been OK.

But when the organisation you’re working with is actually a collection of organisations each playing different Roles, this isn’t good enough.

For example, what looks like ‘placing an order’ from one side is ‘create a consignment’ on the other.   The only way to keep clear about what has to happen in order for each party to keep its Promise, is to model it in these terms.

It feels awkward and clunky, but clarity trumps elegance, every time.

Here’s a funky illustration of what I mean.

Makes me want to make one.

Getting paid is part of the process
March 14, 2022

Getting paid is part of the process

If you make getting paid part of the process of delivering your service, its easier to make sure it happens, on time.

Remember though, to also make it part of the customer experience.

There’s no reason why your customer shouldn’t enjoy it too.

Missing the point
March 1, 2022

Missing the point

The process is closely tracked:

But for some reason its purpose fails and the parcel never makes it past my front door.

Even though I was on the other side of it waiting for delivery.

There was no knock.   Only the faint rustle of a blank ‘no delivery’ card pushed through the letterbox.  By the time I got there the van, and my parcel, had gone.

Later that evening my husband and I walked the mile and a half to the collection point to pick it up, because it was too heavy for me to carry on my own.  That was, in part, why I’d had it delivered.

This seems to be a growing feature of our modern lives.   Every low-paid, precarious service job is surveilled and tracked to within an inch of its life, and at the same time compressed into an ever shorter timeframe, until the point becomes to satisfy the tracking system – even if that means dissatisfying the customer.

This misses the point, big time.   The purpose of process is to support human beings to be better humans.  To remove the need to remember the things we’re good at forgetting, so we can concentrate on doing the things we’re good at doing  – like focussing on the customer as another human being.   But of course, that can only happen by acknowledging that the delivery person is a human being too, not a poor substitute for a robot, who you don’t know, don’t care about, don’t think is worth decent pay, and who therefore won’t be in the job long, so can’t be trusted to do the job properly.

So in the race to the bottom, what we end up with is process as a means to consistently and efficiently deliver bad service.

We really have missed the point haven’t we?

 

Co-creation
February 17, 2022

Co-creation

I heard part of an interesting ‘teach-out’ yesterday.

In the old days, students were ‘members’ of the University – they were part of it, and contributed to its purpose, which was to create public good.   Now they are expected to be merely consumers of the ‘student experience’ it offers them.

The interesting thing is that despite the fees they pay, and the debt they incur to get to university, students don’t want to be passive consumers.  They want to participate.  They want to help co-create the public good.

The same is true of many other people.   Your clients and customers included.   Witness the enthusiasm with which people volunteer to help deliver the Olympics, support the vulnerable in a pandemic, carry out scientific research in their spare time, have their gardens dug up for archaeology.

How can you help them co-create the public good(s) you both desire?

Blame
February 15, 2022

Blame

What should you do when an important piece of data about a customer has been ‘lost’?

You tell them its their fault of course.

You send them a letter threatening them with loss of the service unless they rectify the mistake.

And since you’ve lost the same piece of data for thousands of customers, you make sure there are no extra people to answer the phone number you’ve given them.

I wonder how many customers they’ll lose as a result?

I know I’m cynical, but could ditching clients actually be the point?

It seems a pretty good way to go about it.