Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Systems Thinking

‘Tech’
March 30, 2023

‘Tech’

Some people like to push the idea that ‘tech’ will be the answer to all our woes.

And they’re right.

Just remember that ‘tech’ isn’t necessarily their tech.

Breeding deep-rooted perennial wheat and rice is ‘tech’.   Wind-powered ships are ‘tech’.  Permaculture and agro-forestry are ‘tech’.  Line-fishing is ‘tech’.  15-minute cities are ‘tech’.  A circular economy is ‘tech’.   Flint knives are ‘tech’.   Bark-cloth is ‘tech’.   All of these technologies have been used in the past and are being used right now.  We don’t even need to invent them.

But the ‘tech’ that will really save us is our imagination.   If we use it to design ways of being that will work with our planet instead of against it.

We’ve done that before too.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

HT to Dave Foulkes for the prompt.

De-growth
March 28, 2023

De-growth

‘De-growth’ is a word bandied around like some kind of bogeyman, to frighten us into accepting the status quo for a little longer.  As if giving up on fast fashion, disposable vapes and bottled water is the end of civilisation, the dawn of a new dark age.

The irony is that we already spend much of our time in ‘the safe and just space for humanity’.  We just don’t recognise it.

Take a look around at all the things people in your area already do to make life worthwhile for themselves and others: repair shops, special riding schools, non-league football clubs, befriending groups, charity shops, quilt groups, allotment gardeners, art clubs – the list is endless.

What these all have in common is that they are regenerative and distributive, mainly focused on enriching lives through human interaction rather than extracting value.

All we have to do is make those kinds of activities the drivers of our economy instead of profit for profit’s sake.

Then growth can be good again.

Never be ashamed of reading fiction
March 23, 2023

Never be ashamed of reading fiction

I’m never ashamed of reading fiction, and I read a lot of it, usually multiple times – everything from detective stories,  myths and legends, 18th-century epistolary novels to sci-fi and historical romances, with children’s fiction and classics along the way.

Fiction teaches me at least as much, if not more than non-fiction.

I put myself in another’s shoes, see things from multiple perspectives, hear the same things said in a plethora of different ways, experience new and different worlds I’d never encounter in real life.

Non-fiction is great, I love the new information and ideas it gives me, the different ways of interpreting how the world works.

But it’s fiction that gets me practicing the empathy and imagination I need to apply my information and ideas wisely and humanely.   Almost withour realising it, because I’m having so much fun.

I’ll never be ashamed of reading fiction.

Long may I be able to do so.

Human capital
March 22, 2023

Human capital

According to the minister at yesterday’s funeral, if you were to turn an average human body into usable products, you’d end up with goods worth about £10.

The minister’s point was that trying to put a monetary value on a human life is silly, impossible, even blasphemous.

But we do it all the time – when we set a wage or salary level, when we decide how much support to give someone in need, when we decide that non-earners are not worth saving in a pandemic.

The irony is that it’s the infinite potential of living human beings that gives money capital its value.

For tens of thousands of years, we lived perfectly well without looking at the world through dollar signs.  We could again.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Thinking together
March 20, 2023

Thinking together

“Think for yourself, but not by yourself.”

My ear caught the phrase on Radio 4 this morning and I was intrigued.  It’s from Julian Baggini’s new book “How to think like a philosopher”  (on my shopping list already, of course).

I don’t know about you, but I am all too often guilty of thinking by myself.   Working things through on my own, running off down blind alleys, diving into rabbit holes, only to end up at a conclusion I could have looked up.

I’d have got there much quicker if I’d talked to other people.

It’s not that other people necessarily know more than I do, it’s that they might, and even if they don’t, going through my thinking out loud, to a group of people with shared values and different perspectives is bound to clarify my workings.

Luckily, when you run your business with a team, you have that like-hearted thinking club ready-made.  Encourage everyone in it to think for themselves, then do your important business thinking together.  You’ll like the results.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

Lottery
March 15, 2023

Lottery

For an Athenian man who didn’t want to be an idiot, the answer was to put yourself forward for public office.  Appointment was by sortition – a lottery.

The Athenians built lottery machines like this kleroterion to ensure selection was random, because a) they believed all men were equally capable of making decisions with others, and b) they valued the diversity of perspective that diversity of occupation, status, and income would bring.

They also knew that the best way to preserve the Athenian Promise of Value, was to ensure maximum active participation in maintaining it.

Of course they left some people out – women and slaves didn’t count as citizens.  But the mechanism was fair and very explicit and could easily have accommodated this kind of social change, given time.

We small businesses (and modern states) can learn from the Athenians, without making their mistakes.   If everyone in our business believes in the same Promise of Value and knows how to Share it, Keep it and Improve it like a ‘Boss’, from their own and others’ perspectives, we can trust each and every one of them to do the right thing for the people we serve.

That doesn’t just lighten the load for us.  It improves the experience for our clients and our teams.  And most importantly of all, it keeps our businesses truly alive, thriving and able to adapt to whatever new perspectives come next.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Giant leap
March 9, 2023

Giant leap

Once your team are running the business alongside you, it’s time for them to own it alongside you too.

Discipline makes Daring and Longevity possible.

Ask me how.

Start here
March 2, 2023

Start here

Years ago, after a holiday in the North East, where we saw the Great North Run kick off, I decided I wanted to join in.   I’ve never been a runner, and had no clue how to begin training or where to even start.

After a bit of searching I found a handy spreadsheet online (yes it was that long ago), that would take me from 0 to 5k in about 12 weeks.

The first step was to go out, run for 30 seconds, walk for 90 seconds, run for 30 seconds, walk for 90 seconds – and repeat till 20 minutes was up.

Gradually, the proportion of running to walking stepped up, until by the end we were running for the full 20 minutes, and eventually, for forty minutes.  I could run 5k without stopping.

If contemplating 40 minutes of non-stop running when I couldn’t run a step was daunting, imagine the thought of getting everything about your Ideal Customer Experience written down as a score.  Paralysing.

Luckily, you can just get going with with a tiny part of it.   Here are some ideas of where you could begin:

  • With something really simple, almost ‘trivial’, like how you open for business each working day, and how you close.  You’ll be amazed what a difference a clear, shared routine makes for everyone.
  • With the most painful part of your Customer Experience.  Where you get most questions from clients or team members, where you have to intervene most often to put things right.
  • With the easiest part of your Customer Experience.  Where writing it down will enable you to delegate the process to others quickly, so you get the headspace to think about the more painful parts.

Like learning to run, it gets easier as you practice, especially if you have a coach alongside you correcting your stance and your style.

But the most important thing is to start.   Here.  Now.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Transforming knowledge into know-how
February 27, 2023

Transforming knowledge into know-how

“Once you publish something, the convention is that whatever you wrote was what you thought before you wrote it. These were your ideas, and now you’ve expressed them.

But you know this isn’t true. You know that putting your ideas into words changed them.

And not just the ideas you published. Presumably there were others that turned out to be too broken to fix, and those you discarded instead.” Paul Graham

This is why composing your Customer Experience Score matters, and why it works.

You aren’t simply transferring your ideal Customer Experience onto paper, you’re (re-)defining it. And then sharing it.   And what you create can be further refined and honed – re-designed if necessary if it doesn’t work or when circumstances change.

That thing you currently carry around in your head can become a tool you and all the people you employ can use to make your business 100 times better than it is now.

 

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Avoiding infection
February 22, 2023

Avoiding infection

I spotted this from Michele Zanini (co-author of ‘Humanocracy’) back in 2021:

“Our research suggests that the longest-lasting competitive advantages come from innovation in management systems and practices, not from business or operating model innovation.  So diligently pursuing management innovation pays off handsomely.” 

It’s still worth thinking about.

Especially if you’re a small business that hasn’t yet been infected with old-style management structures.

What if you could grow your business without adding overhead?

And take as much time away from it as you wished?

A different way of managing makes it possible.

Ask me how.