Scaleability – Page 37 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

November 28, 2019

Zebras

We’ve all heard of unicorns. Businesses that disrupt entire markets, even create entirely new ones, often with a view to create a monopoly.

You may not have heard about zebras. I hadn’t until this week, but I recognise the species. I’ve met and worked with many of them over the years.

Zebras are businesses that balance profit and purpose, that aim to solve real problems and make the world better. Zebras aim to be systematically better, not just bigger. They look out for their people and their community as well as their shareholders. They are in it for the long term.

The great thing about zebras is they are real. And they are more numerous than we think.

Time to dazzle.

November 26, 2019

The power of promise

Your Promise of Value drives everything you do, and the way you do everything.

Today, I can’t think of a better way to emphasise this than to share an example:

Hiut Denim Co. makes jeans. They aim to make some of the best jeans in the world, employing some of the best jeans-makers in the world, for creative people around the world.

Everyone in Hiut Denim Co. knows who they are for. They know why they are in business. And that drives how they do everything.

Watch the power it gives them.

Including how they attract shareholders.

November 25, 2019

Plumbing

Building a business is hard. From a standing start, with much stalling, and a lot of trial and error, you understand what you have to offer, who your ideal customers are and what they value most. You eventually arrive at a fair balance between the value you give out and the value you get back.

You know you’ve got it right, when you’re able to keep everything going without giving value away for nothing. You know you’ve really got it right when your customers become your allies and start to pass more business your way.

Now what? You want to take time away from it. You want to grow it. You might even want to sell it. But you can’t. You’ve built this business around yourself. You are at its heart. Even if you employ other people, everything revolves around you, and depends on you. In a real sense, the business is an extension of you. Only now it feels like a trap.

The way out is to see your business for what it really is. A system. A system for making and keeping promises. A system where value is generated by the people who work in it, flows through the business to your customer and back again to you and your team. A system where all the pipes were originally installed to flow through you.

All you have to do is reconfigure the plumbing and you’re free.

October 30, 2019

Packaging

Your Promise of Value is unlikely to change much over time. That is the point of it after all – to encapsulate the thing your business is here to do for the people you serve. By the time you can get clear on that, it isn’t going to change.

How you deliver on that Promise will vary however, not only over time, but also within any one time.

Packaging allows you to offer your Promise in a format that will suit a particular kind of customer with a more specific need from you – a litre of whisky is for drinking at home or with friends; 35ml of whisky in a golf-ball shaped bottle is for giving, or collecting as part of a set.

Packaging lets people try you out before they take a bigger risk with you – a free sample, a test-drive or a trial period lets me check whether you’ll deliver on the promise you’re making.

It’s also how you evolve as a business in step with the people you serve – someone who has just bought a puppy is not ready for a dog-walking service, but they will appreciate puppy visits; one copy of a book is for my own reading, several copies are for giving away.

Packaging helps people to recognise themselves, their situation and their need instantly. Embrace it. It’s not about you.

It’s about your customer, and making it easy for them to buy from you. Or not.

An hour as a package makes no sense.

October 28, 2019

Purpose

If there is one thing that human beings like better than making their own individual dent in the universe, it’s being part of something that promises to make an even bigger dent.

We crave purpose and meaning in our lives, and if we don’t get it from work, we look elsewhere for it.

‘Work’ becomes merely the means of achieving some of our ‘hygiene factors’ – a roof over our heads, food on the table – the things that enable us to pursue our purpose elsewhere. In which case, ‘work’ probably doesn’t get our full attention, or our best energy.

One response is to starve people into spending more and more time ‘in work’, in order to simply acquire the basics. That’s how you end up with a productivity paradox.

Much better, for everyone, to offer work with purpose.

October 8, 2019

Juggling

Jugglers make life difficult for themselves on purpose. For our entertainment. So we can marvel at their coordination and dexterity.

Business owners juggle because they haven’t realised yet that the balls can be self-powered and self-organising.

Or that enabling this is an even more impressive act.

October 3, 2019

Consistency

Good Services principle number 9: A good service is consistent. I like this principle particularly, because consistent doesn’t mean uniform. Your services

September 18, 2019

Growing up

The thing my mum hated most about her role in our family was that she was the one who nagged us. To tidy our rooms, do our homework or put our clothes in for washing.

Because, as all grown-ups know, getting things in good order doesn’t happen by accident. There is no ‘housework fairy’ that does it all by magic.

There isn’t a book-keeping fairy either. Although many small business owners seem to think there is. There’s only your poor accountant trying to drag the information out of you in time for the deadline, or ploughing through that jumbled bag of receipts you’ve handed in, trying to make sense of them for your tax return.

One of the best things my mum did for us was to go on strike. It helped us grow up and take responsibility for keeping our own order.

Perhaps its time accountants did the same. Because keeping your business in order is far more important than housework. It’s the foundation for growing up.

September 13, 2019

Infrastructure

Those country lanes we love to drive down in summer were mostly built back in the 1920s and 1930s.

They were an investment in the future, both as physical infrastructure that opened up the countryside to new markets and as employment for men and their families who would have otherwise starved.

They have lasted much better than most canals and railways, because they are less prescriptive about what can travel on them, or for what purpose, which means they can cope with all kinds of traffic, from milk-cart, to ramblers to country commuters.

They form a network, combining direction and connection with flexibility. They enable autonomy.

Pretty good characteristics to aim for in a business infrastructure too. Expensive to build, but well worth the investment.

September 9, 2019

Embracing variation

Nature loves variation.

Small errors, mishaps and mistakes make a species stronger, not weaker. They make the system antifragile.

Fine china does not love variation. Even the smallest of mishaps can cause irrecoverable damage.

If you want a business that lasts, its better to design it to be more of a system than a dinner service. But that doesn’t mean formless.

Build a strong core of values, purpose and ethos, embodied in simple high-level processes that describe ‘what’ not ‘how’, and you too can get to love variation.

And variation is what leads to evolution.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Scaleability