Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Responsible Autonomy

Humanity
July 28, 2023

Humanity

Today’s recommendation is to read ‘Humanocracy‘ by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini; to follow them on LinkedIn, and to subscribe to their YouTube channel, ‘The New Human Movement‘

 

Yes, they are talking about big organisations.

They are also in many cases old organisations, who have lasted this long often at the top of their industry.

They are also in many cases big, old organisations who have managed to survive by changing how they run themselves.

 

What they all have in common is that they view the business as a great big collaboration of talented people, rather than a machine.

 

How big could your business get if you looked at it this way?  How long could it last?

 

You have an enormous advantage over these organisations – you haven’t gone corporate yet, so you don’t have to undo that first.

 

Take it.

 

“This is what is possible when you treat human beings like they are actually human beings”. John Ferriola.

 

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Serendipity
July 27, 2023

Serendipity

Today I’m recommending two platforms that exemplify serendipity – the finding of interesting things you weren’t actually looking for.

The first is Wikimedia Commons, a library of images, sounds and videos available to use for free, usually under a creative commons license.   I get almost all of the images I use for my blog from this platform, so I look here every day.

This morning, a picture of rather beautiful countryside in the Western Caucasus intrigued me, so I clicked on it.  Having read through the Wikipedia entry, I clicked on another link and ended up at the Circassian Genocide, an event I’d never heard of.   Sadly, just one of many.

Wikipedia is brilliant platform for a bit of mental flânerie, The information it contains is so interconnected, you never know where you might end up, or what you might learn.  Well worth allowing 10 minutes a day for.

The second such platform is Connect the Carbon Dots, a project that came out of The Carbon Almanac.

Connect the Carbon Dots is a platform that shows the interconnectedness of the climate emergency with other pressing issues for humanity, but more importantly the interconnectedness of solutions for those issues.

Because if you can see the system, you can change the system, especially if you get together with other to do it.

We’re currently looking at ways to make it even more useful. Have a look, explore, see where it takes you.

Richness
July 26, 2023

Richness

One of the ways those who benefit most from the status quo try to put us off doing anything effective about the climate crisis is by telling us that our lives will be poorer as a result.

The truth is our lives will be different.  In the same way that my life now is different from that of my parents, and even more different from their parents before them.

Here’s my counter argument:

Humans beings are extremely creative.  We can find enjoyment, art and pleasure in the most unpromising of surroundings and the most minimal accoutrements.  We will invent (are inventing) new ways of doing the things we enjoy.

We already have lots of things to play with.  Things we’ve already made, that can be passed around, recycled, and repurposed in so many ways. People are still listening to radios their grandparents and great-grandparents listened to. We will find (are finding) ways to keep them from polluting our environment any further.

We can grow and make lots more things.  They may not be the same things we grew before, and we will have to make them in different ways, that don’t damage our chances of survival on the planet, but we are extremely creative we will find (are finding) multiple ways.

We’re being offered a form of minimalism.  We don’t have to accept it.

Which is why my recommendation for today is to take a look at Kaffe Fassett to see just how wonderful more can be.

The ability to enrich our lives doesn’t depend on money.

It depends on how we look at things.

A bit of Discplined looking can make Daring possible.

Unusual perspectives
July 25, 2023

Unusual perspectives

Today, I’m recommending Jason Fried’s blog.

As I’m sure you know, Jason wrote “It doesn’t have to be crazy at work“, a book well worth reading if you haven’t already.

Jason writes from the perspective of a business that is ‘big enough’, doesn’t need to be bigger, and is primarily a vehicle for improving the lives of its customers and employees.

Nowadays that’s quite the radical view, and it gives him a very different perspective on all the things businesses do, or are told they should do which is really refreshing and always makes me think.

If you’d like an even more radical perspective on what business could be, I also recommend Ari’s Top 5 by Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses.

And if you’d like to create your own, more rounded perspective on business and it’s place in the world, I recommend the Wolf Tool from Bev Costoya.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

This week, I am mostly going to recommend…
July 24, 2023

This week, I am mostly going to recommend…

Blogs and books to read, people to follow, ideas to think about, actions to take.

My first recommendation this week is a blog “Funding the Future” by Professor Richard Murphy.

One of todays posts is chilling, which is why I am recommending it.

Richard pulls no punches:

“The threat created by climate change is now bigger than that which was created by Covid.

It is bigger than the threat created by the global financial crisis in 2008.

It is also likely that the threat is now at least as big as that created by the Second World War because as many people as then are now at risk from democidal governments.”

 

I don’t always agree with him, but his posts always make me think about how things could be different.

The first step to changing things is to talk about how they are, how they could be, and how we could help them change in a direction that works for all of us.

The more of us that do that, the better, because we need to move fast.

There is no such thing as Admin
July 19, 2023

There is no such thing as Admin

If I ruled the world, there would be no such thing as admin.

 

No doing the job, and then recording that you’ve done the job.

No doing the job, then trying to remember how long it took you.

No working out how far you are through doing a job.

No going looking for the things I need to do the job.  They would simply appear when I need them as a result of another job, done by me or someone else.

No raising invoices for a job done, days or even weeks after it was done. Getting paid is an intrinsic part of doing the job.  It can also take place in parallel.

No starting a job without finishing it.  Or at least leaving it in a clearly defined and safe state.

 

There would be reporting.  It just wouldn’t be me doing it.   Doing the job would produce this information as a side-effect.  No need to create extra ‘work about work’ to do that.

There would be feedback too.  From the system to me, that tells me where I am and how I’m doing.   From other humans to me and from me to other humans about how we could make doing the job easier, faster, cheaper, more effective – for the benefit of the people we serve.

 

Let software do all the admin.  Leave the difficult, unpredictable, interesting bits of doing the job to me please.   I’m better at them than any machine.

 

My world is not so hard to achieve.  It’s possible right now.

 

All you have to do is think differently about what a job is.

Ask me how.

 

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Revisiting the past
July 18, 2023

Revisiting the past

Today seemed like a good day to revisit this blog post, inspired four and a half years ago, by Seth Godin:

“In the last fifty years, thanks to Deming and Crosby and others, we’ve gotten significantly better at creating perfect outputs that don’t rely on heroism and luck. Design a better system, you’ll get better outputs.

I’m grateful every day for the nearly invisible perfect things that I count on… but, and I feel spoiled to say this, I take the perfect for granted.

I’m way more interested, and spend far more time and money on the imperfect things, the things that might not work, the ideas and services and products that dance around the edges.”

I agree. Over time, the perfection of processes has freed ever more of us up to spend ever more time on the interesting, edgy things – telling stories instead of fetching water, making art instead of travelling for days on end, discovering new things instead of cooking, connecting with and trusting strangers instead of only dealing with people we already know.

But I also disagree with Seth’s implication that you can only have one or the other, perfect process or interesting edge, invisible clockwork or flesh and blood.

For me the fascinating challenge is to how to combine both.

How do you put enough process in place to make sure that what should be invisible stays invisible, without restricting the free exploration that discovers new edges?

How do you ensure that clockwork-like perfection supports and enables flesh and blood to dance around the edges, making things more human, more emotional, more daring?

If a process framework is like a musical score, how do you make it more jazz than classical?

I didn’t have a perfect answer, then, and I don’t now, but I am getting closer.

  • It’s about defining a floor (even better, a springboard), ‘the least that should happen’, along with strict guardrails – your Unbreakable Promises, that constrain possible actions to what fits with your Promise of Value.
  • It’s about defining ‘what’, not ‘how’.
  • It’s about maps, not GPS tracking.
  • It’s about embracing uncertainty for its potential upside, while making sure any downside won’t kill you.
  • It’s about automating drudgery, to free humans to be human, and play.

Above all, its about giving human beings the context, the tools and the authority to think for themselves and take the consequences, good as well as bad.

It’s about freedom.  Freedom that recognises every other’s right to the same.

Discipline makes Daring possible

Ask me how.

Harmony
July 17, 2023

Harmony

Harmony isn’t only everyone singing or playing the same tune at the same time, powerful as that kind of harmony is.

Harmony can also be an active fitting together of differences so that together they sound more than the sum of the parts.

The first kind of harmony is easy to take part in.  Just sing or play along wth everyone else.

The second takes more effort, to hear what’s going on around you, keep time and co-ordinate your own music making accordingly.  An active fitting together of differences to create a much richer sound experience.

You can teach people to make the first kind of harmony just by getting them to practice.

For the second, you need a score.

Which means you have to become a composer, not an instructor.

 

Discipline makes Daring possible

Ask me how.

 

HT to Bettany Hughes for prompting this one.

There’s something about Muri
July 14, 2023

There’s something about Muri

In Lean, ‘wasted effort’ is categorised 3 ways:

  • ‘Muda’ – effort that does not add value for the customer.
  • ‘Mura’ – wasted effort due to variation.
  • ‘Muri’ – wasted effort due to overburdening or stressing people, equipment or systems.

Muda is the most talked about form of waste, sub-categorised into 7 further types:

  • Transport – excess movement of product.
  • Inventory – stocks of goods and raw materials.
  • Motion – excess movement of machines or people.
  • Waiting.
  • Overproduction.
  • Over-processing.
  • Defects.

Mura is often a result of Muda, and the solution to many of these issues is to standardise processes and relocate resources so they are available ‘just in time’ when and where they are needed.

The problem with this of course, is that whether an activity is Muda depends on where you draw the line around the system.  Biomass boilers are eco-efficient, as long as you don’t count the lorries trucking pellets around a country – a clear case of Transport Muda when you look at the bigger system.

What I want to think about today though, is Muri.  Wasted effort due to overburdening or stressing the people, equipment or system.

There’s something about Muri that makes it the Cinderella of Lean.

It isn’t glamourous, fixing it doesn’t attract the kind of kudos Muda does.  Perhaps it’s just harder to measure.

Whatever the reason it gets left to pick up all the dirty work.

Muri is often caused by too much attention to Muda.  Redundancies are stripped out the system, leaving no room for slack.  Everything is expected to run at 100% capacity all of the time.  People are expected to do more with less, both at work and at home.

The result?

Look around you and what I think you’ll see everywhere a massive case of Muri.  People and systems – including our planetary system – stressed and overburdened to breaking point.

As a small business owner, you can’t fix it all.  But you can fix it in your business.

What if you let people work a 4-day week? or a 13-day fortnight? Or take a 2 hour lunch break?

What if you put together a flexible plan of working hours for the year that accounted for busy times and quiet times?

What if you set the example yourself by working only your official hours, having your weekend and taking a couple of weeks off every now and then?

You could do all of this, even in a service business, by paying a little attention to Muda and Muri (but not too much):

Start by writing down your Customer Experience Score , so that everyone can play it consistently.

  • Automate the parts that are drudgery for humans.
  • Leave room for variations that will delight the customer.
  • Then give people the responsibility and autonomy to get on with it, at a sensible level of capacity.

You’ll all work less hard for greater rewards.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Hiding in plain sight
July 13, 2023

Hiding in plain sight

Orange Oakleaf Butterflies confuse their predators on purpose, hiding in plain sight.

In the dry season, they pretend to be a dried out dead leaf.  In the rainy season they pretend to be a damp dead leaf.  The birds, ants, spiders and wasps that eat them, already have a mental model of what a dead leaf is.   That model doesn’t include being edible.  So they ignore this leaf and carry on looking for their next meal.

 

We humans are the apex predator par-excellence.   We don’t have to pretend to be anything other than we are to survive.

Still, we confuse other people all the time.   Sometimes on purpose, most often by accident.   Because we constantly assume that our mental models are the same as everyone else’s.  We think everyone knows what we know, believes what we believe and wants what we want.

 

Take a small business:

For a shareholder or investor it’s a machine for generating dividends on their capital.

For founders it’s a way to make their unique dent in the universe.

For their accountant it’s a set of connected accounts that need to balance.

For their operations manager it’s a set of loosely related functions, one of which they probably consider to be more important than the others.

For some employees it’s simply a means to enjoy life outside work. For others it’s means to survive. For others still, play.

For customers it’s a solution to a problem, a status enhancer, a community they value or a purpose they believe in.

All these different mental models can pull a business in different directions, leading to confusion.

And as we know, a confused mind says ‘no’.

 

The answer is to get clear about what your business is here to do as soon as you can, and to present that as an explicit model everywhere.

Choose a model that is simple, easy to communicate and effective in delivering what everyone wants.

Design your business around that model, so that the way it works clearly reflects the concept behind it.

Share that model in your marketing materials, shareholder reports, filed accounts, operations manual, help guides and status reports, so that it becomes utterly familiar, whatever your role or relationship to the business.

 

That way, nobody’s confused.

Some may not like it, but they will leave you alone.   The ones that do like it will be more than happy to help you bring it to life.

 

If you’re a small business employer, looking for a model to adopt, you’ll be pleased to know that you already have one, hiding in plain sight.

And I can help you reveal it.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.