Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Process Design

Structuring emergence
August 24, 2021

Structuring emergence

The problem with a hierarchical management structure, is that it’s expensive – adding layers of overhead and transaction costs that have to be carried by the revenue-generating part of the business.   Even worse, it encourages everyone working within it to focus on the wrong thing – their immediate boss.  And that makes work miserable for many, especially those at the bottom of the pyramid.

Alternatives to hierarchy, such as holacracy, co-operation and teal address this by delegating much of the management and decision-making to the people at the coal-face – no longer the bottom, but the cutting edge, where the business meets its customers.

This doesn’t reduce overhead that much because in effect, as Dr Julian Birkenshaw of London Business School observes, these structures “replace a vertical bureaucracy with a horizontal one”.    Considerable interaction costs remain as people collaborate and generate consent to create emergent actions.   But at least the focus is where it matters, on the customer, client or stakeholder.

It seems to me that what’s really needed is both structure and emergence.  A structure that takes the thinking out of doing the right thing most of the time, but allows for emergence at the edges to respond to exceptions and to evolve.  The main thing is that both the core structure and the processes for emergence are focused on the same thing – the customer, client or stakeholder.

By now, you know all about my core structure:

Even hierachy works better around this.  Replace that with holacracy, co-operation, teal or responsible autonomy, and your business will fly.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Double bubble
July 21, 2021

Double bubble

What could be more energising than knowing that every action you take contributes directly to a customer’s experience?  Nothing superfluous, nothing bureaucratic, nothing but the relationship being created or maintained between you and the person you are serving.

So the perfect marriage of customer experience and operational efficiency, turns out to be the perfect marriage of employee engagement and operational efficiency too.

Double bubble.

What’s not to like?

What you do is what they get
July 20, 2021

What you do is what they get

Repoussé is a metalworking technique in which a malleable metal is ornamented or shaped by hammering from the reverse side to create a design in low relief.  What appears on the front of the object is a direct and immediate result of what is done on the back.  No more, no less.

It’s the ultimate LEAN process.  There is nothing extraneous, nothing intermediate, nothing behind the scenes.  Every action contributes directly to the result.

And as Wikimedia also says “There are few techniques that offer such diversity of expression while still being relatively economical.” 

The perfect marriage of customer experience and operational efficiency.

Something to aim for in your business?

Ma
July 16, 2021

Ma

Ma.

The gaps between things.

The pauses between words or notes.

The white space on a page.

“a holder within which things can exist, stand out and have meaning.”*

“the emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled.”*

The places where we can come alive for each other.

Let’s leave room in our processes for ma.

 

 

*from Wawaza.com

The sleep of reason
July 13, 2021

The sleep of reason

NASA engineers had noticed a problem with the O-rings used to seal joints in the boosters of the Challenger space shuttle.  When the weather was cold at launch time, the O-rings failed to seal the gaps properly.   But they couldn’t quantify the effects, so were not allowed to act on their concerns.  After all, the NASA engineering watchword was : “In God we trust.  All others bring data.”

But what if you don’t have data?  Does that mean you just leave it to God?

Of course not.

As Richard Feynman said at the enquiry following the disaster “If you don’t have data, you must use reason.” 

Our processes must allow for that.

If the sleep of reason produces monsters, imagine what wonders we create when we combine data with waking reason, driven by humanity?

Our processes must be designed for that.

 

HT to Abishek Chakraborty for the prompt.

Preserving process knowledge
July 5, 2021

Preserving process knowledge

How do you embed ‘process knowledge’ – the knowledge of how to do things – into other people’s heads across space and/or time?

Well the first step is obviously to get it out of your head first.    Then you have to communicate it to others in a way that is easily absorbed yet also ‘sticky’.

One familiar way is through apprenticeship – repeated physical practice under the eye of a master.  Great over time, although slow, harder to apply over space.

Another familiar way is to write things down – in manuals, standard operating procedures, process maps.  This solves the problem of space as well as time, but is actually notoriously un-‘sticky’.  Nobody likes reading manuals – in fact most people hate it.

So the best way is to create some combination of scribing and physical practice that combines the best of these approaches.

And that’s just what aboriginal Australians have been doing for around 40,000 years.  They preserve their culture – their ‘way of doing things’ through a complex combination of activities that includes mapping, painting and sculpture of all kinds, song, dance and actual doing, tied to a landscape that acts as both operating territory and memory jogger.

What’s interesting is how even the ‘scribing’ is so physical and multisensory – maps can be physical representations that are walked around; memorisation takes the form of songs and stories attached to landmarks.  Painting or dancing is not just a way of representing an activity, its a form of doing it.

We process mappers and manual writers could learn a lot from this approach.

Hmmm.

Watch this space.

Showing your work
June 28, 2021

Showing your work

I used to wonder how potters could charge so much for their pots, until I took up pottery.

Then I saw how much work went into producing a pot fit to sell.   Not just the work of potting, but also how many pots get thrown away because they broke or cracked in the kiln, or because the glaze didn’t work.  Or even because the idea itself just wasn’t good enough.  I wondered then how they could charge so little.

A brilliant way to help your prospects and clients understand the value you bring is to show your work.    To share the process by which you create that value.

It’s easier when that process is clearly, genuinely focused on them.

Amplification
June 14, 2021

Amplification

The genius of a composer like Mozart, is that no matter who plays his music, or what they play it on (even a synthesiser), you know it’s Mozart.

The genius of a musician like Grappelli or Menhuin, is that no matter what they play you know it’s Grappelli or Menhuin.

A genius musician playing a genius composer amplifies the experience of both.  And shows other musicians and composers what can be achieved.

It’s the score that makes this amplification possible.

Every musician get’s told what notes to play, what mood to create.  No less, no more.  The how is completely up to them – as long as it delivers the required experience, or better.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Learning from queens
June 7, 2021

Learning from queens

We had some unexpected guests yesterday.   The first I knew of it was the sound.

‘What on earth is that noise?’

I looked up from cleaning the floor, and there they were, a mass of bees madly buzzing across 3 neighbouring gardens.  15 minutes later, they were clumped together near the top of our hawthorn tree.

I looked up my nearest beekeeper on the British Beekeepers Association website, (try them before you call pest control, beekeepers will give bees a good home), and Andrew came over.

We agreed that it was too dangerous for him to try and collect the bees from the tree, so he set up a bait box, to entice them down.

While we waited over a cup of tea, he taught me a bit about bees.

A hive swarms in stages.  First the queen leaves, taking half the bees with her, to set up a new colony somewhere.   10 days later, her brood of queens start to hatch, along with the other eggs she’s laid.

It used to be thought that the first queen out killed the others, but research has found that isn’t the case.  As each new queen hatches they replicate the original queen’s behaviour – taking off with half the hive.  Only each time the half is smaller, even though the hive grows each day as new bees hatch.  So each ‘cast’ becomes progressively smaller until the last is about tennis ball sized, and will be lucky to form a viable colony that can get through the following winter.

This it makes perfect sense.  The bees are all the old queen’s children.  Why kill other queens when you only need half the available resources?  There is no scarcity, and so no competition for them.  And why kill queens when replicating a simple process maximises the chances that the colony will survive and spread?

We humans could learn a bit from bees.

 

 

PS, they’re still in our tree.  If they don’t fancy the bait box, they’ll swarm again and find a new place.  If you see them, remember to give them 15 minutes to settle down, then call your local beekeeper.

Desire lines
June 3, 2021

Desire lines

On my way to receive my second dose of the vaccine today, I used a well-worn but ‘unofficial’ route for part of my journey, at what is effectively an off-centre T-junction.

This desire-line shortened the distance by no more than 7 yards at most for people going in one direction.  Interestingly, there was no desire line going in the other direction.

Why is this?

Well, when the path was built, it was obviously more efficient to build it as a single path.  But using the path isn’t the same as building it.

For people going one way, the official path is close enough, even though it isn’t quite direct.   It feels like you’re going in the right direction.

For the other way though, the official path feels completely wrong.  You’re effectively going back on yourself before you can get in the rght direction.  So it makes perfect sense to cut the corner, even though it saves very little.

There’s a nice lesson here for designing processes of all kinds.    Obviously, you try and make the process as efficient as possible when you build it.   Then look out for the desire lines and reconfigure as appropriate.

Not all short-cuts are are the right thing to build in, but nobody should have to go backwards in order to move forwards.