Responsible Autonomy – Page 38 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

August 2, 2021

The devil is in the detail

Except when it isn’t.

Often, the devil is in the big picture. The model you’re working to. Unquestioningly, perhaps even unconsciously.

That’s what Julian and Andrew realised at Matt Black Systems. After a decade of attempts to turn around their business, with LEAN consultants, re-organisations, and efficiency drives, none of which worked, the devil wasn’t in the fine detail of processes, nor was it in the employees. It was in the model the business was built on – top-down, hierarchical, siloed into specialisms, command and control.

Alternative models aren’t necessarily easy, but they give you the opportunity to choose your problems:

“The organisational design you adopt will determine the set of problems you have to live with. Often the design is considered a ‘given’ its problems unavoidable. We chose to change our model because the problems we had were threatening our business. We wanted a better set of problems.”

Once Andrew and Julian had realised this, it took just 18 months to transform their business to the point where productivity had increased by 500%; customers were delighted, and staff found their work rewarding personally and financially, without killing themselves in the process.

Julian and Andrew could leave the building, never to return.

Of course, business-threatening problems are a great spur to radical change. But you don’t have to wait till then.

You could pick your problems early, and walk out of your business when you choose.

July 30, 2021

Pruning for productivity

When you grow a tree for a productive canopy (of shade, or fruit, or flowers, or air-cleaning properties), just letting it grow straight up is rarely the most effective approach.

Instead you let the main stem (the leader) grow up nice and strong until you’ve got the height you want.

Then you take it out, to encourage as many side shoots as you can, because that’s where production happens. From then on, every would-be leader is ruthlessly pruned out.

Every tree needs a strong leader at the beginning of its growth.

Once it’s the right shape though, its better to redirect that energy to where it’s really needed – the productive boundary.

July 28, 2021

How does it work?

Ever since I first saw the water clock above the Neal’s Yard wholefood shop, I’ve enjoyed the work of Tim Hunkin. Probably for the same reason I liked to be called a software engineer. I love finding out how things work, and making them work better.

So I was delighted to discover his remastered ‘Secret Life of‘ series on YouTube.

When you know how something works, it stops being ‘some kind of magic’ and becomes a tool to support what you’re really trying to achieve. You can even start to play with it a little, bend it, re-purpose it to create even more value.

What would ‘The Secret Life of <Your Business>‘ reveal to the people who have to use it?

Here’s the episode about the photocopier:

https://youtu.be/FKVO28gTu-g

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?

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.

July 9, 2021

Concentrated learning

As aboriginal Australians know, the way to deepen learning is to make it immersive. They also know that practising scenarios before you encounter them speeds up the process.

We small businesses have our own form of immersive learning. We call it ‘throwing them in at the deep end’.

Somehow, we hope that through this experience, newbies will learn to make and keep promises on behalf of the business as well as we do. Of course, many don’t, and some just drown.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be happy if pilots learned by being ‘thrown in the deep end’. I prefer what actually happens. They learn in a simulator. A safe space – the paddling pool if you like – where they can be immersed in what if feels like to fly a plane, and systematically run through all the scenarios they may have to cope with – taking off, landing, turbulence, bid strikes, engine failures, and so on.

You and I can feel safe getting on a plane because pilots have literally been through all these experiences many times before they get anywhere near a real cockpit, at the head of a tubeful of passengers and crew.

Why not do the same for your prospects and clients? Build a simulator for your business, program it with likely scenarios and use it to train new people, or practise new services before you deliver them, or explore how you could do things differently. Make it a psychologically safe space and it will be fun, team-bonding and surprisingly productive. It will become a practise space people use regularly to improve your customer experience score.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

July 7, 2021

Atomic

With a few exceptions, atoms don’t like to be alone.

They prefer to join with other atoms. They can’t help themsleves, they’re just built that way.

If they stick to their own kind, together they make an element. A useful building block. When they combine with different atoms, they create a compound, generating properties none of the constituents have on their own.

Almost all the interesting things in our varied world are the result of atoms combining with atoms that are different from themselves, repeating the process until something durable emerges.

Inter-connection with different others is our natural state.

We can’t help ourselves, we’re just built that way.

Atom by atom.

July 6, 2021

While the cat’s away…

…the mice will continue with whatever processes are in place.

Do you want them to be yours or theirs?

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.

July 2, 2021

Even brilliant businesses fail in the end

A butcher’s shop Deptford is closing down soon.

No big deal you might think.

Except this butcher’s is a family firm that’s been going for 192 years. Their pies, home-made, filled with succulent chunks of meat and delivious gravy are legendary. Their T-bone steak has topped the leaderboard of the Steak Society’s ‘T-bone Tour’ since 2018. And it’s all surprisingly good value too.

It will disappear just when the market for it’s wares is growing as Deptford gentrifies.

But the current owner, Bill Wellbeloved, needs to retire, and couldn’t find anyone to take over the business.

Even brilliant family businesses fail in the end, if they don’t find a way to last longer than their current driving force.

That’s why Gibbs & Partners exists. So brilliant businesses can carry on for as long as their clients need them.