Promise of Value – Page 20 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

August 13, 2019

Unsung Innovators

We’re fond of the oddball genius, the outsider who sees possibilities that nobody else could, the creative destroyer that starts with a clean sheet, cross-fertilising industries or disciplines to generate a great leap forward.

But there is another breed of innovator, just as valid. One who combines deep knowledge and understanding of what’s gone before with an openness to novel solutions that enhance that past rather than destroying it. Driven by a straightforward desire to make things better.

Unicorns and racehorses. We need both.

August 5, 2019

Fluff

A metaphor for the relationship your business creates with its clients could be seen as fluff. A nice marketing touch. Something to hang a campaign on, to help people choose you over others.

But it can and should go much deeper than that.

Blue Rocket Accounting used their metaphor (“we are Mission Control to your space mission”) to standardise their services, to define the Roles people working in the business play for clients and to design how they deliver on that promise. The metaphor becomes shorthand for the purpose – ‘what we do for the people we serve’.

That’s not fluff. That’s the foundation.

August 2, 2019

Increasing revenues

Profit = Revenue – Cost.

So if you can reduce cost, you can increase profit. And if you can increase revenue you can also increase profit.

So how do you do that?

The classic answer is that there are only 4 ways:

Sell to more customers
Sell more at a time to each customer
Sell more frequently to each customer
Put your prices up

This is of course true, but it misses a vital point. Nowadays, whatever business you are in, there are hundreds of options for customers to choose from. Why should they buy from you? Why should they pay you more than the next business?

Unless you are operating in some unfortunate part of the world, nobody really needs anything any more. For example, we all need to eat, but do we really need 25 different kinds of cornflake? Do we really need cornflakes at all?

No.

The truth is that you’re not selling anything. You’re making a promise. A promise to help the people you serve become who they really want to be. That’s what people are willing to pay for. The bigger and better the promise, the more it will be worth to the right person. That’s how you increase revenues.

The hard part is working out who is the right person, and who it is they want to become.

And the hardest part is keeping the promise you make.

July 19, 2019

What makes a good Process? Let the person be the judge

A good process is a prompt, not a prescription. Like a musical score, or a set of building drawings, it tells people what to produce, not how to do it – they already know that, that’s why you hired them.

That means you can leave the details of execution and judgement to the person running the process. You don’t need to spell out every decision, or identify every possible scenario, or include every last detail of the ‘how to’.

You’re not programming a robot, you’re supporting an intelligent human being to take responsibility and use their own skill, experience, empathy, creativity and judgement to deliver what they, as a part of the business, have promised to the people the business serves.

So to recap, a good process is:

clear about the outcome it is designed to achieve
the responsibility of a single role, ensuring all required resources are available when and where they are needed
both map and compass, helping the person running it to get to the right destination in all circumstances – even those you couldn’t predict
a prompt, not a prescription

These things make for a process that people will actually use; that doesn’t need to be changed with every new piece of software or equipment; that is easy for new people to learn and even internalise, that allows the person responsible to ‘just get on with it’.

A process that is as simple as possible, but no simpler.

July 18, 2019

What makes a good Process? A Map and a Compass

A good process is a map, guiding the person running the process to the desired destination, allowing some flexibility of route to get there.

A good process also has a compass built in.

It regularly reminds the person running it of the Promise of Value they are delivering on, so that when they find themselves lost and in the dark, they know the kind of action that will get them back on track and heading in the right direction.

July 11, 2019

It might not work

You’ve done your research, you’ve talked to people, you’ve tried to get inside the heads and hearts of the people you want to serve. You’ve come up with something you think they’ll want.

But no matter how much of that you do, you can never be sure that the product or service you’ve invented is going to take with its intended market, and no amount of fettling and polishing is going to tell you whether it will or not. The only way to find out is to go for it and put it out there, accepting that it might not work.

This can feel like you’re courting failure, but actually, you’re inviting information. Whatever happens to your product after launch, you can learn from it and work on something better.

The Pioneers launched yesterday. I wouldn’t say it was conclusive, but it’s looking promising, and I’m definitely learning.

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.

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.

July 3, 2019

Research

I’ve been researching the history and theory of accounting, and I have to say I’m finding it fascinating, not least because it leads off into some very interesting side-alleys.

Along the way I found the Digital Commons Network, an excellent resource.

But the best thing is finding that I’m not wrong about some of the questions I want to ask.

What questions would you ask of Accounting?

July 2, 2019

Be more Pirate

I vividly recall one networking meeting where, one after another, 6 accountants stood up and pitched themselves with “You all know what I do, I’m an accountant. I’m looking for anyone who needs an accountant.”.

No wonder accountants have a reputation for being boring.

They aren’t of course, but until now they have been a key part of the compliance necessary for anyone running a business, which means that in the whole, they haven’t needed to market themselves, let alone differentiate themselves from other accountants.

Now that meeting compliance is being eaten away by automation, forward-thinking accountants are looking for new ways to make themselves necessary, this time based on what the customer wants and needs, not what the regulator requires.

That’s why I’m launching The Pioneers, a club for accountants who want to ‘be more pirate’.

If you know anyone who you think would like to be part of it, please pass this on.

Thank you.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Promise of Value