Options and Procedures

I must apologise to regular readers.   I’m about to mention, yet again, one of my favourite business books.

The brilliant “Words That Change Minds”, by Shelle Rose Charvet is both a guide to the different ‘working styles’ people bring to a given context (in this case work), and a guide for using what you learn about these to communicate appropriately.

Some of the dozen dimensions she explores are familiar, such as whether people are motivated ‘towards’ a goal, or ‘away from’ a situation, but others are a bit more unusual, such as how much people are motivated by change, and what kind of change they enjoy; or how people get convinced.

Another interesting dimension is how motivated people are by having a procedure to follow (Procedures) vs making up their own way of doing things (Options).

At the extremes, both styles are difficult – an extreme ‘Procedures’ person needs something they can follow like white lines on a road, and will be completely thrown by missing steps or exceptions.  An extreme ‘Options’ person will get nothing achieved, because they are forever reinventing the wheel before they use it.

As you might expect, entrepreneurs are, almost by definition, towards the ‘Options’ end of the scale.  After all they’ve identified a better way of doing things, and experimented with that untill they’ve turned it into a successful business.

What they may not realise is that the people they employ aren’t necessarily the same.  Which can lead to frustrations on both sides:

“Why don’t you just do it?”,  “Why am I the only one that thinks of these things?”,  “Why am I re-doing everyone else’s job?”

“Because you’ve never told me what it is you trying to do.”, “Because you never told me how it should be done.”, “Whatever I do, you’ll change it, so why should I bother?”.

Fortunately, most of us fall somewhere in the middle of these extremes, so it’s possible to accommodate everyone’s individual working style without having to delve too far into what they are (although I do recommend using this book to create a ‘brief’ for a role, and recruiting for the critical dimensions).

Here’s how you do that:

• Create a high-level map of how your business makes and keeps its Promise to the people it serves.   A Customer Experience Score, that tells people what has to happen when, but leaves the details of how to do it to them.
• Document important detailed techniques separately, in a kind of ‘Enquire Within upon Everything’, so it’s available anyone who needs it, either as a day-to-day guide, or an occasional memory-refresher.
• Where it’s really useful, signpost relevant techniques from the Score.

For example:

Images copyright DogKnows Ltd.

With a score like this, people know the outcome they are aiming for, and can be given full responsibility and autonomy to achieve it (or over-achieve it), in their own unique style.  Or to simply follow the process, if that’s how they roll.

Discipline makes work more enjoyable for everyone.  Including you.

Which is what makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.