Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Responsible Autonomy

Out of touch
March 9, 2020

Out of touch

Before mobile phones, you had no choice about being out of touch outside working hours.   You either got everything done during the working day or you didn’t.   Even if you worked late, you could properly relax at home.

If you knew you were going to be away from your desk for a few days, you left it so that someone else in the office could pick up a call and handle things in your absence.  You could concentrate on the job you were actually doing.

If you needed to get a report written or a complex spreadsheet set up, you deliberately took yourself out of reach of the banter, ‘quick questions’ and interruptions.  You could give the job the attention it deserved.

All of this made us more productive, not less.  And we were probably less anxious and stressed too.

Now, putting yourself out of touch has to be intentional.

And it’s a skill worth learning, for everyone’s sake.

Silver lining?
March 6, 2020

Silver lining?

I wonder how many people will be working from home over the next few months?   And how many of the professional service businesses they work for, like accountants, solicitors, surveyors, architects, will realise that this is a completely practicable way of working?

Of course, it will focus the minds of everyone in the business on what really matters on measuring performance – deliverables and results rather than attendance or time spent, and it may require support tools to be put in place (nowadays easily and cheaply available on the cloud).

But if they do this, many businesses will realise that they can trust their teams to do what’s needed, when it’s needed, without surveillance, and that may mean they start looking at how they can support responsible autonomy even more effectively.

That could be a deep silver lining to the coronavirus cloud.

Be more mushroom
March 5, 2020

Be more mushroom

A mushroom is a metaphor for a short-lived momentary thing, that springs up quickly and dies just as quickly.

Yet this mushroom behaviour is deceptive, because the mushroom is founded on something much bigger and more durable.  A mycelium.

A mycelium is a wonderful thing.   It connects each and every mushroom within its network to every other, across space and  time.  They share a common genesis, even through they may pop up in very different habitats.

What’s more, each mushroom (if not picked early) throws out spores, also invisible, that spreads the network even further, until you have something like the mycelium in Nevada that covers over 800 hectares of ground, and is over 2,000 years old.

Not a bad model for a movement, or for a business that aspires to become a movement.

Be more mycelium.

It’s easier to do than you think.

Huge thanks to the open food network UK for letting me borrow their metaphor.

Working to a pattern
February 28, 2020

Working to a pattern

It’s hard to imagine making any garment successfully without having a pattern to work to and a picture of what the finished product should look like.

Yet we expect our teams to do exactly that every day.

With predictably ill-fitting results.

The Status Quo
February 18, 2020

The Status Quo

We like to stick with the status quo, believing that if we do nothing, nothing will change.

But in a complex evolving system things are always changing.  All we can do is try and shape those changes.  To make possible new status quos that are better than the one we have now – and now – and now.

This is an almost impossible task.  But not to be given up.

Because if we don’t choose the shape of the next possible status quo, someone else will do it for us.

Or against us.

“What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be.” ~ Antonio Gramsci

Extending the franchise
February 13, 2020

Extending the franchise

Enfranchisement: verb (used with object), en·fran·chised, en·fran·chis·ing.

  • to grant a franchise to; admit to citizenship, especially to the right of voting.
  • to endow (a city, constituency, etc.) with municipal or parliamentary rights.
  • to set free; liberate, as from slavery.

Franchising creates a business within a business, where the management of a branch of the original business is outsourced to a third party, who pays for the privilege.

Franchising works because it balances autonomy with responsibility.  If I buy a franchise, I own that business, I get to keep most of the profit, I manage my branch as I see fit.   At the same time I have a responsibility to the parent business and my fellow-franchisees to maintain and even enhance the brand.

For this reason, good franchisors recognise that they need to communicate ‘how their business works’ to franchisees.  Not just technical stuff, such as how to put together a pizza or prescribe a pair of glasses, but the customer experience stuff too.   Sometimes, if my potential franchisees are unlikely to be business owners already, even how to monitor business performance.   Then they let the franchisee get on with it.

A good franchise takes a lot of effort to set up, but once set up it is relatively straightforward and quick to replicate and expand.  Done properly, franchising is a brilliant way to grow a business without killing yourself in the process.

It’s possible to give yourself a head start.

Enfranchise the people inside your business first.

Externalities
February 7, 2020

Externalities

Wikipedia tells me that “an externality is a cost or benefit that affects a third party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.”

If I have a flu jab, to protect myself from flu.  I decrease the chances of the people around me catching flu.  That’s a benefit.

If I go to work full of cold, I increase the chances of my colleagues getting a cold, that’s a cost.  If I stay at home, that’s a benefit.

The point about externalities is that they aren’t measured.  They are literally not accounted for in a business.   We metaphorically shrug our shoulders and say “Not my problem.  I’m just trying to make a profit.”

Yet the consequences don’t go away, just because we ignore them.    If I go to work with a cold, and my colleagues catch it, everyone’s productivity is lowered.

We live in a series of systems, and ultimately a closed system – planet Earth, and sooner or later the consequences will come back to bite us.

Time then to take responsibility for all the results of our actions, not just those we choose to see.

Climate change needs to be on the balance sheet.

Outbound Triage
February 5, 2020

Outbound Triage

One key way to reduce the volume of interruptions you receive, is to consider before you interrupt others.

Following on from yesterday’s post, here is another simple triage:

  • Is this something you could find out yourself with a little research?  Could you look it up rather than asking someone else?   If people are constantly asking each other the same questions, you’ve got something missing – FAQs, or a system that holds frequently referenced information, or what you do have isn’t easy enough to use.
  • Could you phone rather than email/text/whatsapp?   Talking is often quicker than typing.  And you have to be sure the other person will see it.  It’s easy to think you’ve dealt with it because you’ve sent your message.  But it isn’t dealt with till you’ve arrived at an answer.
  • If you’re dealing with a colleague, could you go to their desk and talk to them?  That way you get the benefit of whole communication.
  • Could you use a message to schedule a call or a meet?  Then you know its convenient for both of you.

Respecting other people’s time helps them to respect yours.