“Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow.” Shaker saying.
If I have a thousand years to live, I’m going to see the long-term consequences of my work. I won’t be able to hide behind ‘I won’t be here, it doesn’t matter to me’. I’d better be making sure my work is solid and my impact positive.
If I’m going to die tomorrow, I can’t hide behind ‘I’ll get round to that later’. I’d better be getting on with it.
Now is the only time we have to make a difference.
Luckily, making a difference is the most satisfying work there is.
It’s a really great read, about instilling responsible autonomy into your team, clarifying the ‘compass’ that will guide individuals, and setting a few big rules for ‘How we do things round here’ ( based around “Act In the Best Interests of the Company”)
But.
Where’s the customer?
And where’s the continuity? What happens when these particular individuals move on? How do new people learn quickly?
It’s brilliant and essential to empower your people and your teams. But it’s more sustainable to include some infrastructure too.
Some actual wiring. Built around the people you serve.
At one time, my office was in a business centre on a farm, on the outskirts of London. There was quite a community of small businesses there, so we kept the post office busy.
One day, I saw our regular postie had someone with him. I got chatting (as I inevitably do), and asked to be introduced.
“This is John, your new postman”, he said, “I’m retiring soon, so I’m showing him my route.”
“That’s interesting, why do you need to show him it?“
“Because otherwise he would never know that the entrance to Suite 19 is round the back and up the stairs.”
John meanwhile, is sketching a plan of the buildings on what appears to be the back of an envelope.
“Is this how every new postman learns their route?”
“Of course! How else?”
I get the point of walking the route. There’s no better way to be confident that you in the right place on your first day. And of course it’s a great way to familiarise yourself with the buildings and people you serve.
I also get that occupants change, buildings are pulled down and new ones put up, or changed in other ways that mean re-numbering.
But what I didn’t get then, and still don’t, is why each new postie has to create a new personal map from scratch. Or why that information goes nowhere beyond the postie’s head.
After all, since 1660, the post office has had literally daily opportunities to create a map that reflects what’s actually on the ground. Almost effortlessly, as a side-effect of providing their service.
According to one definition, “diagrams are simplified figures, caricatures in a way, intended to convey essential meaning”*.
That seems about right to me.
Some diagrams are so good at this, that once seen, you can’t help but assimilate the essential meaning. In an instant, it’s there, in your head forever, changing how you think from that point onwards.
This is one of my favourites:
My interpretation of a diagram from Alan Begg and Graham Williams
The explanation goes something like this. We all operate best in ‘Can Do’ mode, creative, autonomous, responsible, positive, active. But when knocked back for whatever reason, we have a tendency to slip down into one or other of the legs of the diagram.
If we go down ‘Can’t Do’, we become helpless, we freeze up, we become inactive and cautious. If we go down the ‘Won’t Do’ leg, we blame others, we feel resentful, angry, we become unco-operative, even disruptive.
The interesting thing is that all three behaviours have upsides. There are advantages to being in ‘Can’t Do’ or ‘Won’t Do’ that we may learn to exploit, and so keep ourselves there, instead of learning how to get ourselves back to ‘Can Do’, where we operate at our best.
But the key point is that these behaviours are learned. Which means we can unlearn the restricting ones, and learn to get back into ‘Can Do’ mode more quickly and easily, to the benefit of ourselves and the people around us.
I know where I go – I’m straight off down the ‘Can’t Do’ leg – but I also know how to get myself back up again quickly – and all I need to remind me how to do that is a glance at this simple diagram.
*Bert S. Hall (1996). “The Didactic and the Elegant: Some Thoughts on Scientific and Technological Illustrations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance”. in: B. Braigie (ed.) Picturing knowledge: historical and philosophical problems concerning the use of art in science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p.9
This week, work started in earnest on our new extension. I’ve spent quite a bit of time already, observing it.
Not, I hasten to add, because I’m eyeing up young, fit workmen, but because I’m fascinated by the process.
How stop-start it is. How much shuffling around of stuff is involved. How much collaborative problem-solving it involves. How many adjustments are made. How ad-hoc it seems. In other words, how Agile it is.
Of course this is just the beginning, when the team are getting to grips with the actually existing terrain, so they have a lot to find out, on the fly, before the more systematic parts of the process can kick in. Agile is completely the right approach.
It’s a privilege to watch. And the essence of why humans beat robots any day.
You start your own business to take back control. To be at nobody’s beck and call. To do what you think is right by your clients.
Once you get good at that, you outsource key functions, take people on to help you deliver, and suddenly, you’ve lost it. The control has gone. You’re at the beck and call of clients, or team members, or suppliers, and it seems impossible to get people to do things the way you would.
A natural reaction is to tighten your hands on the reins, supervise more, intervene more, even to redo the work.
Micromanagement doesn’t work. You only end up working harder, being a nag, and training your people to give up trying.
Instead, give control away as soon as you can.
Not by abdicating, not even by handing it over to superstar colleagues, but by installing your DNA into the way the business works, so that it works the way you want it to when you’re not in the room.
Strangely, creating this kind of control is liberating:
For your people, because they know the outcomes they are aiming for, and what needs to happen to achieve them, plus they have the freedom to do that with flair and personality.
For you, because you can relax your vigilance, and concentrate on growing and evolving your business.
For your business, because its no longer dependent on the individuals who happen to be there at any one time.
We call this writing your Score. Because once you’ve written it, the music you and your orchestra are creating now can last forever, no matter who plays it, or how.
If you want to take back control, start by giving it all away.
Back in the 70’s there was a TV series called ‘The Troubleshooter’.
Each week, captain of industry Sir John Harvey-Jones would visit an ailing British manufacturing company, and advise them on how to turn around their fortunes.
One of his insights really stuck in my mind. It goes something like this:
“These people working for you, have a rich life outside work, where they build complex systems, run clubs, manage budgets, research everything there is to know about their particular interest, invent things. You make them leave all of that at the door. What a waste!”
Whenever I tell people about Matt Black Systems, a manufacturing company with no managers, no administrators, and almost no overheads, the reply I most often get is “I couldn’t do that, not with the people I’ve got.”
It’s not the people that are the problem, it’s our model of what a business is. 50 years on from ‘The Troubshooter’, we’re using AI and automation to track and reward attendance, not contribution.
As many have discovered during lockdown, being in the office where you can be seen, isn’t necessary for getting results.
But for a long time, in a corporate environment, sitting at your desk was a proxy for working, with predictable effects. Some people stayed late, to look like they were working hard. Some used being present to cover for getting very little done.
At one place I worked, this was really easy to do, because everyone worked in their own Dilbert-style cubicle. Nobody could see whether you were working or sleeping – especially through the fog of cigarette smoke that hovered constantly over every cubicle.
The cubicles hid more than a hangover snooze. This was also the place where if you left your cubicle for half an hour, someone cannibalised your computer for spares while you were gone. So you couldn’t get anything done even if you wanted to.
But the worst case of presenteeism I came across was as part of a youth employment scheme back in the early 80s. It was interesting work. A small team of us researched and wrote papers for schools to use as additional resources for lessons. We wrote about local history, local firms and local places of interest.
We had a boss, but we were left pretty much to our own devices, which suited us fine, because the boss did nothing. Literally nothing. He sat in a different office, at his desk, staring into space and smoking. All day.
At the time we thought this was scandalous, but looking back I think it was actually marvellous. We managed ourselves. We worked in our own shared room. We chose our own projects, did our own research, collaborated with each other to produce, illustrate, print and in at least one case publish our papers. We believed in what we were doing, we had fun, and we produced good work. What’s more, we learned how to do it again. We didn’t need to be watched over.
The only downside was for the organisation that employed us all – they could have saved themselves some overhead, and employed a couple more researchers instead.
We have managers, because we don’t believe people will work unless they’re made to, then surveilled to make sure they are.
But is that really true? We know it doesn’t work for some people, and for the rest it isn’t needed.
There is a better way. And I think it looks like this:
Backed up by a clear Promise, and an empowering Score.
