Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Scaleability

A missed opportunity
July 28, 2020

A missed opportunity

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.

What a resource that would have been!

Niche if you want to scale.
July 23, 2020

Niche if you want to scale.

For a long time I misunderstood why any business owner would want to restrict their marketing to a ‘niche’. Especially when what they do can work for any kind of business.

Then I learned what real marketing is.

Real marketing isn’t selling. It isn’t transactional. It isn’t manipulative. It doesn’t persuade people to buy what isn’t good for them.  Real marketing enrols people on a journey taht will help them get to where they long to be.

Real marketing takes time, effort and empathy. Empathy is easiest when you start with people like you, but it means you need to do some hard, soul searching work.  You need to work out your own values, behaviours and goals, so that you can identify who you can best serve, because you share values, behaviours, and sometimes goals.    This is your true niche, the psychographic, not the demographic.   It describes the kind of person you want to work with, rather than their business size, location or industry.

But still this niche is too big to be useful.  These ‘people like me’ are everywhere, in all walks of life.   How on earth do you help them find you?   Especially nowadays, when marketing means showing up day after day, giving value, demonstrating to the people you serve that they are understood, seen, recognised as human beings, laying a groundwork of trust in blogs, videos, podcast, newsletters, before you even get near a pitch.

It’s extremely hard work to pay anyone and everyone the attention they are due, in the hope of attracting the ‘right’ ones.

This is where a traditional demographic niche starts to make sense.  Think of demographics as the pools you fish in because you know they are likely to hold enough of the kind of people you serve.  Finding these pools takes effort of a different kind, research rather than soul searching.

Good places to start are pools that are ignored or under-served by your competitors or alternatives.   Or those where the inhabitants are going through a particularly painful set of circumstances, that you are well-placed to help with.  Or even a pool you have a lot of experience with.

But, counterintuitively, keep it small and specific to begin with.   Narrow, but deep enough to keep you going for a while.   Like flying a single route, or offering makeovers for blondes, or making jelly babies for vegans.

Because keeping your promise is the hardest part of marketing.  You want to make sure you get that spot on before you take on more of it.

Once you’ve cracked that, you’re on your way to scale.

Manifesto for a Disappearing Boss
July 20, 2020

Manifesto for a Disappearing Boss

I’ve decided to embrace my inner revolutionary and write a Manifesto.

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

Whatever you think of it.

  • Does it work?
  • What do you like?
  • What don’t you like?
  • What do  you want to do after reading it?
  • Does it help you do that?

Thank you for reading it.

“Not with the people I’ve got” Or, how to waste talent efficiently.
July 13, 2020

“Not with the people I’ve got” Or, how to waste talent efficiently.

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.

That’s an efficient waste of talent.

Thinking about flywheels, again.
July 8, 2020

Thinking about flywheels, again.

I’ve been thinking about flywheels again.

Here’s one I drew to illustrate what I can do for a business:

A business freedom flywheel

Does that make sense to you?

Do let me know.

Why do we have managers?
July 7, 2020

Why do we have managers?

I’ve only ever met one person who wanted to be a manager.    Most other people want to be technicians (because that’s what they were in the company they left), and some are genuinely entrepreneurs.

So why do we have managers?

According to the e-myth, managers sit between an entrepreneur with a vision and the bunch of technicians who make the thing the business sells.  Managers organise technicians to deliver the vision.

It doesn’t have to be like this.   Take an orchestra.    An orchestra is a bunch of technicians, delivering the vision of someone who’s usually dead.   The nearest thing to a manager is the conductor, and that’s stretching it a bit.   The conductor doesn’t organise, they interpret, co-ordinate, keep the tempo up.

So what makes an orchestra possible?

The score.   The talent, skill and ability of the players.   Lots of practice.

If you want more impact just add more players.    If you want to play at more venues, assemble more orchestras.     The score tells everyone what they need to know.  No interface needed, no managers required.

All the extra spend goes in front of the camera, where the audience will experience it. Less overhead, more profit.  In other words, scale as opposed to growth.

Since scale is what everyone looks for, modelling a business to be more like an orchestra might make a lot of technicians and entrepreneurs very happy.

Amnesia
July 2, 2020

Amnesia

We’ve all suffered from it.  Corporate amnesia.   You call a company you’ve done business with for years, and give them your name, address, and inside leg measurement 3 of 4 times before you get to the point of the call.

A more insidious form of corporate amnesia forces a team member to recall the process before they perform a task, instead of having the system remember it for them.

This kind of amnesia results in variation over time and between team members.    Sometimes the variations will be improvements, but most often they are an ever-worsening copy of a long-forgotten original, void of life or meaning.    Any improvements are forgotten, because the organisation has no way to capture them or remember them.

This isn’t just amnesia, its also akrasia – doing one thing when you should be doing another.

Because if you’re too busy remembering what’s supposed to happen, you aren’t making it happen.

Flywheels
June 30, 2020

Flywheels

If you’ve ever started up a spin bike, you know about flywheels.

They take a lot of effort to get going, but once they’re off, the energy you put in is released, making it much easier to keep momentum going for longer.

That’s a pretty good metaphor for building a system for making and keeping promises.   It takes effort to get up and running, but once it is, it can keep going almost forever.

Long after you’ve jumped off the bike.

Re-distribution – things to learn from Macaria
June 23, 2020

Re-distribution – things to learn from Macaria

Raphael, the explorer who describes Utopia to Thomas More and his friend, hasn’t only been to Utopia.

“To these things I would add that law among the Macarians – a people that live not far from Utopia – by which their king, on the day on which he began to reign , is ties to an oath, confirmed by solemn sacrifices, never to have at once above a thousand pounds of gold in his treasures, or so much silver as is equal to that in value.   

This law, they tell us, was made by an excellent king who had more regard to the riches of his country than to his own wealth, and therefore provided against the heaping up of so much treasure as might impoverish the people.    He thought that moderate sum might be sufficient for any accident … but that it was not enough to encourage a prince to invade other men’s rights.   He also thought that it was a good provision for that free circulation of money so necessary for the course of commerce and exchange.”

This law is about re-distributing wealth to keep it circulating within an economy, which is where value is generated.

It could equally well apply to responsibility.    Responsbility, distributed and circulated within a business, is able to generate more value than if hoarded at the top.