Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Keep Promise

Which, What and How
October 19, 2020

Which, What and How

You’d think that Keeping your Promise is easy to do.   That’s true when everything is going to plan, but when times are hard, or the unexpected happens, it may not be so easy.  It may even be impossible.

It’s at these times that questions can help you hold yourself to account for what you do and the way you do it:

  • Which parts of my Promise of Value are sacrosanct?

If you have more than one set of stakeholders (and it seems to me you’ll always have at least 5 – customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, your community), then you can also ask:

  • What’s the unbreakable promise you make to these people?  (In this podcast, Brian Chesky talks to Eric Ries about making 2 or 3 unbreakable promises to each set of stakeholders)

When you know the answers to these questions, you can ask further, practically useful ones:

  • Which part(s) of my Promise does this activity demonstrate and uphold?
  • Which part(s) of my Promise does this activity contradict or undermine?    If it does, how can I bring it into line?  Could I do something different?   Could I do it differently?

If everyone in your business is in the habit of asking these questions in the good times, you’ll be well able to do the right things, the right way, when things are bad.

Empathy, empathy
September 17, 2020

Empathy, empathy

My friend Julian Donnelly recommended this book to me.  I’m very glad he did.

I recommend it.   Don’t be fooled by the action-hero cover, what kept going through my head as I was reading it was ‘This is Dale Carnegie. This is all about empathy, and understanding motivation.”

If you’ve ever done a Dale Carnegie ‘Winning with Relationship Selling” course, you’ll recognise a lot in this book, but you’ll see it from a new angle.   If you haven’t yet, this is great preparation.

Interference
September 14, 2020

Interference

Last Friday, the materials for our new roof were delivered.  Tiles, ridge tiles, clips, battens, everything the roofers would need to start the job the following day.

Except, I spotted, the membrane that goes between joists and tiles.   Without that the job couldn’t even start.   To be honest, we’re relaxed about the schedule, but I knew our building company prides itself on being ahead, rather than behind, and our choice of tiles had taken time to source, so they were only just ‘on track’.

I could see the delivery driver had a pallet-load of it on his truck, so I asked the question, just in case.   It wasn’t on his delivery sheet, so he called the office.  They didn’t have it in the order either.

“Well I’ve got a pallet load here, so I’ll take a roll off and we can sort out the order with our client back in the office.  That saves me coming back later if it is missing.”

When I told our project manager, she said that’s why they always use that building supply company, because they focus first on foremost on taking care of their clients and end-users, rather than sticking rigidly to procedure.

I’d interfered in the process wrongly, as it happened.    The membrane wasn’t missing.   When the roofers turned up next day, they brought a big roll of it with them, and put it back in their van once they saw it wasn’t needed.

Obviously what was really missing was a clear understanding of who’s responsible for what, apart from inside the project manager’s head.  Does it always work this way?  Or does that depend on the roofer?   If everyone (including the client?) knows it’s always the supplier’s job to supply everything, this sort of mix-up wouldn’t happen.

What could remedy that?   A Customer Experience Score.

Not a procedures manual to consult every five minutes and follow slavishly.  Rather, a high-level picture of ‘what happens when’ that can be quickly and easily learnt by each new person or business that comes on board.  Something that says “This is how we do things, so if you join us, you need to understand this too”.  That way everyone is empowered to make sure things happen as they should, even if they don’t actually work for you.

In this case the mix-up happened the right way round.   The roofers finished at 10pm on Sunday, having worked their socks off for two days.   Our build is back on schedule, and I’m happy to recommend our building company to anyone.

But I’m also going to suggest a little composition.

We all make mistakes
August 13, 2020

We all make mistakes

It’s impossible to be right all the time, especially in the midst of ‘unprecedented’ happenings.

But it is entirely possible to be transparently fair all the time.   Especially if you have a compass to guide decision-making where there is no map.

So, when you see ‘mistakes’ produced by an opaque process following an invisible compass, it’s legitimate, even necessary to ask questions:

  • Why is it like this?
  • What does this say about the compass of the people who designed it?
  • Why isn’t that compass explicit?
  • What needs to change to make the process fairer and more open next time?

With a clearly visible compass and a fair, transparent process for your business, your people can’t go far wrong.   Even when they’re not right.

As-is, Should-be
August 12, 2020

As-is, Should-be

Mozart didn’t write down his music ‘as-is’ before writing it again as ‘should-be’.

Of course not.

Like all composers, Mozart started with what he wanted the audience to hear, the ‘should-be’, translating as closely as he could what he had in his head into musical notes on paper.

I doubt if his first result was the only one.

Once you’ve got your Customer Experience Score written down, it doesn’t matter that it started as ‘should be’.   The job now is to make it your ‘as-is’, then to continually evolve it in line with the best ‘should-be’ you and your people can imagine.

All-inclusive
August 3, 2020

All-inclusive

I bought a book yesterday.

No surprise there.    I do that often, which is partly why we’re having an extension built.

As usual, the book came in several different electronic formats, and for a modest additional fee, you could add a print copy.   So I did.

The link duly came through to the download page.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that ‘all formats’ includes audio.

But imagine my amazement when I saw that ‘all formats’ also includes EPUB, HTML and Kindle editions in Spanish, German, Italian, French, Russian, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Chinese, Swedish, Japanese, Indonesian, Punjabi, Turkish, Hebrew, Croatian, Catalan, Hungarian, Korean, Malay, Polish, Swahili, Tamil, Tagalog, Ukranian, Hindi, Thai and Afrikaans.

Derek Sivers doesn’t waste words.

But he sure as hell wants everyone to be able to read them.

Flipping
July 17, 2020

Flipping

This week, the problem with my broadband connection was finally sorted.   After 4 months.

On the first visit the engineer ran some tests and did something with the connection at the bottom of the pole.   He also checked the socket in my house and gave our arrangement the thumbs up.   The speed went up again, but the fix only lasted a day.  Whenever anyone called on the landline, it went down again.

On the second visit a new engineer ran some tests and did something else with the connection at the bottom of the pole.   He also replaced the socket in my house with a new one.   He explained that the reason why the fix didn’t last was because the system is set up to reduce the speed to keep the connection stable.  Fair enough.   The speed went up again, but only lasted a day.  Whenever anyone called on the landline, it went down again.

On the third visit another engineer tinkered with the connection at the bottom of the pole.   He ran some more tests, which determined that the fault was somewhere between the top of the telegraph pole and the outside of my house.    Nothing changed.  Terrible speed, and the line kept dropping.

On the fourth visit a different engineer tested the line from my end, inside the house.   He then went to the cabinet half a mile away and tested the line from there.   He identified that the fault was somewhere between the top of the telegraph pole and the outside of my house.   So he looked for a likely location, got his ladder out and looked at the box that connects the line to the outside of my house, near the roof.

Bingo!   The box was full of water.  He changed the box, replaced the connectors, and everything was fine.  And stayed fine.

I am delighted of course, and have nothing to complain of regarding any of the individuals involved either from my provider or from Openreach.

But I can’t help thinking that the process could be better.

I get that in a network, you have to be systematic in your search for a fault.  I’ve done it myself.

Usually, you test the connection at one end, then the other, starting with the extremes.   In this case, the exchange, and my socket.  Then you repeat the test, working inwards through pairs of connecting nodes until you’ve narrowed down the location of the fault to a single length of wire.

But I wonder if the application of experience could shorten the process?

Maybe the answer would be to start with the shortest length of wire – between my socket and the connection at the top of my house – and work outwards from there?   After all these are the parts most exposed to the elements, and most likely to fail.

It would be just as systematic and in the worst case take no longer than working from the outside in.    But it could well be better for the customer as well as being quicker and cheaper for Openreach.

Or perhaps it would be even quicker and cheaper just to replace that external box every time, because it’s the weakest point in the chain and also the most accessible?    That way you’re renewing the network as you go, for pence.

I don’t know.   I’m not a telephone engineer.   Just a process geek, who happens to be a customer.

My kind of self-checkout
July 16, 2020

My kind of self-checkout

This is where I was when I should have been writing yesterday’s blog.   Picking up my shopping.   Olive oil, almonds and honey from Portugal, chocolate from Trinidad via Cornwall, Coffee and sugar from Colombia, sea salt from Brittany.

There was plenty more on offer – olives, tapenades, lupini beans, pinto beans and more.   All more or less direct from small producers, transported under sail.

I even got to meet 50% of the supply chain: Gareth from Raybel Charters through whom I ordered, and Guillaume who captains the ship.

That’s my kind of self-checkout.

 

PS If you’re in Faversham or Whitstable over the next couple of days, look out for the Thames barge Dawn the ‘van’ for onward local deliveries

The best thing you can do for shareholders
June 17, 2020

The best thing you can do for shareholders

These two episodes of Eric Ries’s podcast Out of the Crisis are rapidly turning into the theme for this week.  Brian Chesky just keeps coming up with gems.

Today’s is this:

“The best thing you can do for shareholders is for the public to want your company to exist.”

How many businesses, enterprises, organisations, large or small, have you supported during lockdown, because you want them to exist?

Here’s a more challenging, perhaps painful question:

How many people are supporting your business, because they want it to exist?

Whatever the answer is, the next questions to ask, are:

Why is that?

What can you do about it?

and hopefully,

How can you thank them?

PS Hofpfisterei is a bakery chain founded in 1331.

Participation
March 11, 2020

Participation

Last week I heard of some interesting research about consumers.   Which is that people don’t like to be thought of as consumers.

They want to be participants.   They don’t want to be one side of a transaction, they want to be pulled into a dance; enrolled on a journey.   They want to connect and create a bond between themselves and the people they buy from.

That’s good news for ventures like Sail Cargo Alliance, who are in the business of building communities of producers, shippers and consumers.

Even better news for accountancy firms, because that’s just the change that’s needed to build a thriving practice and a thriving community of small businesses.