Promise of Value – Page 6 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

February 20, 2023

Off the shelf

When you buy off the shelf, you’re buying from someone who’s producing for people who do what everyone else does, the way everyone else does it. That’s what ‘mass-market’ means.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy off the shelf. Just that when you do, you should be clear that whatever you’re buying really does serve what you do, the way that you do it.

Otherwise you’ll end up having to act like everyone else.

A shame when there are other options available.

February 16, 2023

Impacting people

If what everyone really wants is something like this:

Agency – to make their own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
Mastery – to learn and master (even teach) new skills.
Autonomy – to be free to choose how they make their dent.
Purpose – to do this for something bigger than themselves, that has meaning beyond the sale.
Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.
- Status – to know (and for others to know) where we stand in our communities.

Then your impact on people is about how much you help or hinder them in their quest to achieve it.

Do you enable people to earn enough to rise above meeting basic needs? Do you free their time to focus on finding and following their purpose? Do you help them to master skills and capabilities that will increase their agency and autonomy? Do you help them connect to a community that values them?

How could you measure these things?

A good place to start might be to look at what changes when it works. What are the symptoms of that change? How few of them could you measure to tell you the effect your business has had?

Of course you’ll want to measure these things for your clients.

Remember to measure them for your team and yourself too. You’re all involved.

February 14, 2023

Measuring impact

The final component of feedback that matters for your business, is the impact it makes. On your clients, your team, your family, your friends, your community and your planet.

Impact is probably also the hardest kind of feedback to measure.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

What ripples is your business pebble responsible for?

January 25, 2023

Contribution

As a musical instrument, the triangle is often regarded as a bit of a joke. A bit ridiculous. Not to be taken seriously.

Yet a composer includes it in their orchestration for a reason – because it’s unique sound contributes to the experience they wish to convey. Without it the composer’s promise couldn’t be kept.

When times are hard, it’s tempting to strip back on our offer. To cut down on the details of our customer experience.

Just remember, it’s your promise you’re really stripping back. Eventually it will show.

Use your natural ingenuity to find a better way to keep it instead.

January 13, 2023

Regulation is feedback too

It may not feel like it, but regulation is simply another form of feedback for your business. It just happens to be the kind of feedback you are not allowed to ignore.

Think of it as feedback from your industry. Lessons learned by others that can save you grief. Of course not all of it is designed to help your business, sometimes it’s the result of bigger players flexing their muscle in the market, to make it harder for businesses like yours. Even that is useful feedback – telling you where the bigger players feel vulnerable. Use it to your advantage.

Since you can’t ignore regulatory feedback, it pays to have a really clear Promise, and plenty of the other kinds of feedback coming in regularly, so that you can make sure the requirements of regulation can’t unduly distort your unique way of making and keeping your Promise to the people you serve.

That means that as far as possible, compliance, like admin, needs to be a side effect of doing what you’re here to do, not the other way around.

Of course you need to be compliant, but the regulator shouldn’t come first.

They’re not your customer.

November 7, 2022

Running repairs

One aspect of life you rarely see in on-screen dramatisations of Jane Austen and other period fiction, is mending. Yet when you read the novels, it’s obvious that women of all ages and classes spent a lot of their time doing it.

Mending is necessary, but has never been sexy, so if we can get away with it, we’ll do a quick running repair, so we can get back to the interesting stuff. Until suddenly our mending no longer resembles the elegant well-fitting garment we first created for ourselves. We’d be ashamed to wear it anywhere in public.

It’s the same when it comes to our Customer Experience. As a one-man band we create an elegant, well-fitting experience that closely reflects our vision and values – ‘the way we do things round here’. But over time, we patch it up, let it out or take it in to suit a particular expediency – until suddenly we find it’s looking rather shabby.

Much better to embrace the need for repair. Make sure all repairs enhance the original garment and you can proudly leave them visible. Part of it’s history and evolution.

Not shabby. Just the most comfortable thing you can wear.

November 4, 2022

Who is it for?

Bonfire night in Lewes is a sight to behold. But in my view, the most interesting thing about it is how it has resisted commercialisation.

Unlike Halloween, which has become yet another excuse to produce and consume yet more pointless stuff, Bonfire in Lewes is about Lewes and Bonfire. It commemorates local martyrs by raising money locally and spending it locally. Lewesians young and old get involved all year round raising money, creating displays and effigies, finally, celebrating the day itself with marches, music and spectacular fireworks.

No concessions are made to tourists or spectators. It always takes place on November the 5th, unless that falls on a Sunday. There are no safety barriers, no interpretation boards, barely any interaction beyond the collection bucket. It’s not for them.

Bonfire in Lewes is for Lewes. It’s not about production or consumption. It’s about something much bigger than that.

It’s about culture. It’s about continually recreating Lewes as a radical, self-aware and connected community with a mind of its own. A place and culture where Tom Paine would still feel comfortable.

No wonder the authorities want to ban it.

Your business has a culture too. Who is it for? And what are you doing to continually recreate it, on purpose?

October 28, 2022

Imposter syndrome

If you ever feel like an imposter, check out Jára Cimrman.

If he could, you can.

Everything we achieve is made up in our heads first. That’s part of what makes us human.

October 26, 2022

Should’ve got an Uber

“It’ll be ten minutes”, said the despatcher.

30 minutes later I call the cab office: “It’s been half an hour and I’m still waiting.”

“They’re in XXX gardens, and will be with you in 5 minutes.”

“Well if they aren’t I’m walking instead.”

“I can assure you they’ll be there in 5 minutes.”

9 minutes later the driver calls: “I’m 2 minutes away.”

“Sorry, you’re too late, I’ve started walking”.

I’d have been happier if the cab firm had said it was going to be forty minutes at the start. Then I could have made my decision to walk instead immediately. What irked me was the breaking of a promise made. The feeling of being lied to. As a result the driver missed out on a fare and wasted a journey.

“Should’ve got an Uber“, you say.

Maybe.

The way Uber solves this problem for the customer is to have a surplus of cabs available in the area. That means drivers are systematically under-employed. Which might mean it’s harder to earn a decent living. I’m not sure I want promises kept to me at the expense of the people doing the work.

Which is why in the end, I prefer travelling under my own steam.

October 21, 2022

Why it’s good to have people on trains

My Great Western Railway train to Penzance was delayed by half an hour. Someone had been taken ill on a train in front of us. The tannoy kept us informed, and let us know that we would be able to claim compensation via the train operator’s website.

So far, so standard.

But here’s the difference a real-life, flesh and blood human made:

Knowing that some of the passengers would have missed their connection to Newquay, the train manager asked them to identify themselves as he walked through the train, so he could arrange alternative transport. Having worked out what their actual needs were, a bus was arranged to pick most of them up from St Austell, while for one person, a taxi was booked to get them to Newquay airport in time to make their plane. All at no extra cost.

Because the train manager saw their job as getting people to their desired destination as near on time as possible, not merely to carry them from A to B.

How very different from ‘rebel’ brand Virgin, who will happily chuck passengers off a train well short of their destination, to avoid the costs of further delays down the line, leaving them to scramble onwards as best they can.

I’ve supported the rail strikes since the beginning. I support them even more enthusistically now. Even though my Penzance trip was a day later than booked because of them.

These people aren’t just fighting for their jobs, they’re fighting for the kind of service I for one want to receive. A human one.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Promise of Value