Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Responsible Autonomy

I’m an anarchist. I’m in good company.
December 15, 2022

I’m an anarchist. I’m in good company.

“My strongly held belief is that we do not need to operate our organizations with a single strong all-powerful leader perched precariously at the top of a pyramid or power operating in politically-minded ways. Instead we can create a setting in which everyone is expected to think and act like a leader.

Can this work? Commonly held beliefs in most companies would say “no!” Many would argue that having “too many bosses” will inevitably create chaos. It’s often, inaccurately, called “anarchy.” Ironically, the idea that everyone thinks and acts like a caring collaborative leader is exactly what anarchism is all about. Anarchism, despite the popular misconception, is all about organization.

When we do get people to think like leaders, to engage in the difficult work of collaboratively figuring out the right things to do, they begin to choose freely to participate in creating the organization of their future.”

That’s Ari Weinzweig, CEO and co-founding partner of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses.

A man after my own heart. Who helped Zingerman’s to scale from a single deli to a $65 million Community of Businesses by applying anarchist principles to capitalism.

Check out the Zingerman’s Press website.  Or get a taste from this article from Corporate Rebels.

Their newsletter is well worth subscribing to.

If you’d like a little more ‘anarchy’ in your business – whether that’s to enable it to scale or simply to make it a happier place to be, give me a call.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

How to build the business of your dreams
December 13, 2022

How to build the business of your dreams

How to build the business of your dreams:

  • Start by handcrafting the product or service of your customer’s dreams.
  • Then help them live that dream so they will tell you more.
  • Grow customer by customer until it hurts.
  • Then work out which parts you need to automate to get big AND keep the handcrafted feel.

This is my TL:DR of the first episode of Reid Hoffman’s ‘Masters of Scale’ podcast.  “Do things that don’t scale”.

I love it because it focusses on the ‘handcrafted’ nature of extraordinary customer experience.   It takes time to do this as a startup.  It takes hard work.  It takes getting your hands dirty.  It hurts.

I also love it because of the way it talks about automation and scaling.

To scale, automate the bits that make delivering the customer experience hard.   Automate the admin, not the experience.   So, for example, Airbnb makes it easy for a host to be an extraordinary host, not by taking them out of the equation, but by making everything else in the equation disappear into the background.

It’s well worth a listen – or a read of the transcript if you’re in a hurry.

I’d love to know what you think of it.

Of course I would add:  Share how to create the handcrafted part of the experience with your team through a Customer Experience Score – and make sure that’s a floor. With no ceiling. A springboard, not a ball and chain.

Discipline makes Daring possible

Ask me how.

The day the earth caught fire
December 8, 2022

The day the earth caught fire

Last night I watched “The day the earth caught fire” a 1961 film about what happens when mankind, pursuing their own petty rivalries, makes an irreversible and deadly change to the only planet they have.  I enjoyed it, not least for recognising a young (and uncredited) Michael Caine as a police constable.

But for the situation we’re in now – where mankind, pursuing their own petty interests, have made an irreversible and deadly change to the only planet we have, there’s a much better film.

“Beyond Zero” tells the story of how a carpet manufacturing business turns itself from “a plunderer of the earth and a legal thief” into a highly succesful circular business that gives back more than it takes.

It’s inspiring, hopeful and above all, practical.   I thoroughly recommend finding a way to watch it.  Preferably with your team, your business peers and maybe even you community.

It’s not too late, but we need to take action now, and we need to take it together.  This film shows one way we can.

Supported Display
December 7, 2022

Supported Display

I took a lot of photos on my visit to the Museum of London at the weekend.  Some, because I liked the thing I was looking at, this one because I liked the way the display system worked.

It’s a very simple system.  A regular grid of holes at the back allows supports to be positioned in a variety of ways to suit what’s being displayed, from a single bronze shield found in the Thames, to a mix of bronxe daggers and swords, to these flint hand tools.  It’s highly structured, yet flexible and very effective.

But what I really liked about it was the way it’s been designed to foreground the objects, providing each one with reliable support, allowing them to seem to float; putting each one in the spotlight, so that you can appreciate the differences between them as well as the similarities.

You know where I’m going with this.

With the almost invisible support of a Customer Experience Score, your people too can shine in the spotlight – both as individuals and as part of the whole that is your business.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

A medieval carved head of a smiling woman in a wimple.

This I just liked, because it reminded me of Geraldine McEwan.

Hoarding
December 6, 2022

Hoarding

Around 2,000 years ago, someone buried their cash. Did it do them any good that way? Almost certainly not. Could … Read More “Hoarding”

Trespassing
December 5, 2022

Trespassing

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been intrigued by the use of the word ‘trespass’ in the King James version of the Lord’s prayer – “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us”.

Why not ‘sin’, ‘wrongdoing’, ‘misbehaviour’, ‘offence’, ‘crime’?

The word ‘trespass’ has a very specific meaning – to cross a boundary into a space that belongs to someone else.   So why pick this word?

Perhaps because, in 1611, at the very dawn of capitalism, the authors wanted to remind us of the mutuality of our existence.   The fact that any rights we have as individuals must be bounded by the rights of others.

I am free to do whatever I like, as long as that doesn’t impinge on anyone else’s right to do whatever they like.   Which means in practice, that I must constantly consider others, present and future, in everything I do.

It seems to me that’s as true of a business or organisation just as much as an individual.

Where energy goes
November 30, 2022

Where energy goes

As humans, we spend our energy and our creativity on the things that matter to us.   For you, as the boss, that’s your business.   For your team?  Well, they may prefer to grow perfect peppers.

So the challenge for a business owner is how to infect the people you work with (and indeed the people you seek to serve) with the same enthusiasm as you have.  Because that’s the only way they’ll agree to put in anything like the same energy and creativity.

Coercion doesn’t work.  Reminding them that they are dependent on you for survival doesn’t work either.  Money doesn’t work that well once people have enough, and giving them less than they need or what seems fair just dampens any enthusiasm.

So what does work?

Giving them the means to achieve what they really want as human beings in work as well as outside of it:

  • 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.

All the things you wanted when you set up your business then.

Make everyone a boss.  Blend yourself in.

Human Feedback 3 – suggestions
November 28, 2022

Human Feedback 3 – suggestions

If you make it easy for people to log ideas as they go, you’re more likely to get useful ideas for improvement, because its when they’re actually doing the job that people feel the friction.  This could be as simple as a shared google doc, or as fully functional as Slack or Trello.  Whatever works for you and your team.

Logging ideas is just the first step of course.   The next is to review them.   This is where its helpful to have dedicated time set aside.   Get everyone together to review, ponder the consequences and choose which ideas to incorporate next.

Then create a schedule for implementing these improvements, seeing how they affect things, and rolling them out or back as a consequence.

If this is starting to look a bit like software development, that’s because in a way it is.  Like software, your business is a system – for making and keeping promises.

We’ve learned a lot about how to improve software systems while customers are actually using them.  It makes sense to apply that know-how to your Promise System too.

It involves building in good habits of observation, selection and listening to feedback.   And like admin, it works best when it is as much as possible a side-effect of doing the job.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Level 5 Leadership
November 25, 2022

Level 5 Leadership

One of the things I love about LHL Fridays is that I always learn something new.

Today Tim Bicknell told me about ‘Level 5 leadership’, so of course I had to google it.

And then I found this in the Harvard Business Review:

“When you look across the good-to-great transformations, they consistently display three forms of discipline: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.”

Discipline makes Daring possible.

And you don’t have to wait to be corporate to apply it.

Just talk to me.

Can’t wait to find out more.

Autonomy
November 24, 2022

Autonomy

It’s easy to assume that having autonomy simply means being able to do what we want.

It’s probably more accurate to say that we get to make our own decisions about what we do.

With that autonomy comes responsibility:

  • To properly inform ourselves before we make a decision.
  • To live with with the consequences of our decision (until we make another that will change them).
  • To make sure that our decisions don’t impinge harmfully on anyone else’s autonomy.

Responsible autonomy is hard work in life and business.  Made easier and more joyful by collaborating with each other.

Well worth the effort though.  Just ask the women of Rojava.