Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Responsible Autonomy

Security
April 28, 2021

Security

A child, confident that her parent will be there when she needs them, is willing to leave their side, to explore and try new things.  This is how she learns to be independent.  Having an anchor you can rely on is important.

Children put into a big space and simply asked to play stay close together more or less where they’re put.  If, however they are told there are boundaries to their space, and where those boundaries are, they range more widely in their play – often right up to the boundaries.  Some of them may even test how firm those boundaries are.    This is how children learn to be creative.  Boundaries are important.

I’m not sure I’d want my business to behave literally like a family, but it is possible to give it some of the same structure to create a community.  Your Promise of Value and the processes that are driven by it are both anchor and boundaries.  Everyone can fall back on the anchor in times of stress, and push the boundaries of the system when they’re feeling adventurous.

In the space between, let them play.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Comfort
April 26, 2021

Comfort

I recommend this Vittles article by Dr Andrea Oskis:  Different Food, Same Blanket.

I loved it.  It warmed my heart, made my mouth water and gave me food for thought.

It also made me wonder – could we apply some of this thinking to how we explore familiarity and innovation at work?

Disappearing
April 14, 2021

Disappearing

There are two ptarmigans in the picture.  Did you spot them?

There’s more than one way to disappear.

The obvious way is to take yourself out of the picture.   The less obvious solution is to blend in.

Not by matching yourself to the background, but by making yourself indistinguishable from the others around you.

What if, like Spartacus, you could enable and inspire everyone else in your team to behave as if they were you, the original?   You would no longer stand out.   In fact you’d no longer even have to be there.

It starts by thinking differently about what your business is.

Issue 2 of The Disappearing Boss is out today.

Blind man’s buff
April 13, 2021

Blind man’s buff

Working away from the office has been uncomfortable for many people.  Not least leaders.

We’re so used to the panopticon of open plan, together with the richness of non-verbal communication that enables ‘management by walking about’ – the ability to dip in and help where it’s needed with feedback and encouragement.

Remote working has made leading feel like a game of blind man’s buff.

It feels like we should become more like old-fashioned managers – telling people what to do then trying to assess where they really are through regular progress reports or software.   None of these things tell you what you really want to know – whether people are struggling, or have misunderstood what’s required, or are simply missing something – all the things you used to be able spot really quickly when everyone was together in the office.

It’s an interesting problem, that existed long before before lockdown and work from home.  What do you do when people struggle but don’t ask for help?

For some the answer is more surveillance, and more checklists.  For others it’s mandating a return to the office.   But I wonder if framing the problem differently might work better?

What if we looked at our people as students, rather than workers?  What if instead of asking ‘How do I know they are where they should be?’ we asked ourselves ‘How do I know they are learning?’.

The answer to that question would I’m sure lead to a different way of organising how teams are supported.

And from my experience we could do worse than look at how Akimbo does it.

Freedom Rules
April 12, 2021

Freedom Rules

“Freedom … is the tension of the free play of human creativity against the rules it is constantly generating”  ‘The Utopia of Rules’, David Graeber 2015

Without rules, we get nothing done.

With only rules, we get nothing done.

The interesting challenge is to create a set of rules that enable the creativity that will in turn makes new rules necessary, while at the same time ensuring that each cycle of new rules never becomes stifling.

It seems to me that’s only possible when everyone shares in the work of creating the rules and breaking them.

Teams
April 9, 2021

Teams

The team you’ve built for your business will have things in common.   There are reasons you decided to hire them and they decided to work with you.   There are reasons that you’ve stayed together.

Some of those reasons will be around shared values, behaviours and principles.  Some of them will be to do with an alignment of vision and purpose.

Some will be entirely to do with their own personal preferences, aims and desires – perhaps proximity to home, an easier commute,  a less demanding job or even friendships formed.

Are those reasons enough for you to entrust them with the client experience?  I hope so.

But it might be better to be explicit about the values, behaviours, principles, vision and purpose.

That way you’ll both know for sure.  And be able to act accordingly.

Pride
February 24, 2021

Pride

“The trouble with the sunshine” laughed the shop assistant, “is that it shows up how dirty the windows are.”  “Tell me about it!   What’s your secret for cleaning them?” I replied.

“I bring in my own e-cloths from home.  I use one wet – just water- then the other to dry off.  Works perfectly every time.”

That was a great tip (I tried it, it does work perfectly), but the thing that really struck me was the “I bring my own e-cloths in from home.”

People want to take pride in their work.

If you think they don’t, you might be what’s stopping them.

Big questions for accountants
February 12, 2021

Big questions for accountants

I like to ask big questions of accountants in my podcast.

Professor Richard Murphy has some interesting answers.

This video of his proposes a new way of financial reporting for ‘public interest entities’ – the big corporates we all depend on for infrastructure, food supply etc., that looks at the interest of all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

I think reporting this way, even if you aren’t legally required to, could give a real advantage to some smaller, more forward-thinking businesses. 

If they dared to take it.

I’d love to know what you think, especially if you’re an accountant.

PS Professor Murphy has an even more interesting vision for audit.

Emotional labour
February 10, 2021

Emotional labour

Recently I’ve been thinking about (and remembering) why being ‘The Boss’ is no fun. Or at least not for me.

It’s not the hard graft, or the long hours, or the uncertainty of income.  Nor is it the responsibility to clients, or the need to exceed expectations.  We knew this was part of starting a business, it’s actually what we wanted – the possibility to get more out of work than the means to live.

Being your own boss is fine.  It’s being boss of others, directly or indirectly, that’s difficult.  Because although you can now share the physical or mental work involved in delivery, you’ve at least doubled the emotional labour, and emotional labour is harder to share out.

The first step is to recognise that it’s a big part of what gets done.  Probably the most important part too.

The next step is to make it explicit, and cover it in the manual.