Systems Thinking – Page 30 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

July 7, 2022

More thoughts on packaging your Promise – Format

The function of your Package is to enable the transformation the client desires.

Its format is about delivering that transformation effectively, in a way that suits their motivation and ability.

Some questions to ask:

Could it be a product?
Could it be a service?
Could it be ‘self-service’, ‘on-demand’ or ‘do-it-yourself’?
Could it be live? In-person? Virtual? In a cohort or community?
Could it be a combination of any or all of these?
Could clients support each other? How?

The underlying questions for all of these are:

How can you make it as easy as possible for them to do, so they don’t give up along the way?

How do you make it as easy as possible for you to deliver, so that you can scale?

July 6, 2022

Some more thoughts on packaging – Function

What does your Packaged Promise have to do? How far does it go to help your client get from where they are now to where they want to be?

Some questions to ask:

Can I do the whole job in one go?
Is that really doable, by me and by the client?
If not, how do I break it up so that the client can see progress, without being overwhelmed by the size of the task in front of them?

And an insight from that last question:

If there is progress, there must be a process. So what is it? How do I get my client from where they are now, to where they want to be?

Can I describe that as a process in a way that makes sense to the client?
Where are the ‘natural’ breaks in that process? Can I match Packages to those?
How can I keep the client motivated to continue the journey?

Sharing the process with the client before they start their journey, helping them to locate themselves while they are on it and celebrating milestones as you go can all help.

And a final question prompted by a conversation with Adam Forbes:

How small could you make those Packages?
How could you turn each step on the journey into a tiny or atomic habit?

After all, as any pub landlord or fountain owner could tell you – those single, small denomination coins soon add up.

Hmmm.

July 4, 2022

A tender impact

Patrick Hurley takes a huge blank piece of paper, thinks about what he wants to draw – ‘It’s going to be a ring, I want it to have depth, it will be made of squares‘ – marks a few points for guidance.

Then he draws. In a single continuous line.

From a distance the result has impact. There’s a clear structure, a vision – you might almost say a purpose to it.

Up close, you feel tenderness for the humanity of it. The wobbles, the inconsistencies, the variation, the failure to keep to the ‘perfect’ alignment.

‘It’s like life,‘ says Patrick ‘You can only go forward, if you make a mistake, do better next time, or do something that atones for it.’

Yes.

Work is part of life. So why not approach it this way too? Create a framework with clear boundaries, a goal and a method for achieving it. Then let everyone add their own humanity.

Impact with tenderness.

Find Patrick and more of his work on instagram: @hurleyman03.

June 30, 2022

Love/Hate

There is much about being in charge of a company that every owner loves:

being part of a team,
working towards a common purpose
camaraderie
feeling that you’re not on your own
seeing ideas come up from others – better than any you could have dreamed up
seeing people grow and develop as a result of working with you – not just at work
Seeing your vision come to life.
The feeling of ‘I made this’.

There is also much about being in charge of a company that every owner seems to hate:

telling people what to do
making sure that they are doing it
worrying about whether they will do it properly
checking that they have done it properly
doing it again yourself when they haven’t
telling them they didn’t do it properly
telling them (again) how you want it done
dealing with disappointed clients
performance reviews
finding and hiring the right people
seeing them go
being the last to leave
being the last to have a holiday
being the last to be paid
not getting to do any of the ‘real’ work

What if you could have the bits you love, without the bits you hate?

You can, if you think about where the bits you hate come from.

If you were building an office block, or putting on a play, or making a film, you would have something that told people exactly what it is you’re trying to create. You’d have plans, a script and stage directions, a storyboard. If you were writing a symphony you’d have a score.

These things don’t just describe the outcome, they document how it is arrived at.

It’s not the bricklaying or the carpentry you’re worried about, you know your team know how to do that. What you’re worried about as an owner is the look and feel of the thing, the experience the audience – your client – will have of the finished article.

When you started your business you lovingly and painstakingly handcrafted the client experience yourself, in collaboration with the people who ‘got’ what you can do for them.

You expanded your business first by freeing up more of your own time – by handing over specific jobs that require specialist skills – bricklaying, joinery, accountancy, hr, phone answering. These are generic jobs, with their own rules that specialists learn. But there comes a point where you have to hand over parts of the customer experience itself, whether that’s sales or delivery.

This is where the problems start.

The solution is startlingly simple.

Create a description of the customer experience and how to deliver it, that ensures everyone starts from the same level of understanding as you.

That way everyone gets what they love.

June 29, 2022

In common

When everyone feels divided, when it seems that group is set against against group, right against right, and politicians openly sow discord, I find it helps to remember that we have a lot of things in common.

The biggest of which is our place in the ecology of the planet we share. A place we are jeopardising by our own short-sighted actions.

Its not too late to reverse that jeopardy. If we recognise that despite all our differences, we have this vulnerability in common, we’ll find we also have the power to reverse it.

In common, shared, to be used together.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

June 24, 2022

Kaleidoscope

It was almost a throwaway remark from Paul Smith.

“What AI is interesting for at the moment is to generate starting points for your own creativity.“

Clink.

The pieces in my kaleidoscope shifted slightly.

We see the world through the lenses of what we know, what we believe and what we feel. We can’t help that.

So it is lovely to have someone nudge the kaleidoscope occasionally, and give us a change of view. Especially when that view is of something you are slightly fearful of.

That thing you’re worried about for your business? Have a conversation with an enthusiast, and see what happens to your kaleidoscope.

It can’t hurt. It might help. It will definitely change your view.

June 23, 2022

Regenerating business

What is it that people want?

Agency – to make their own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
Mastery – to learn and master (even teach) new skills.
Autonomy – to be free to choose how they make their dent.
Purpose – to do this for something bigger than themselves, that has meaning beyond the sale.
Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.
Status – to know (and for others to know) where we stand in our communities.

We want to be citizens. Collaborating with purpose on something bigger than ourselves.

What if, instead of building our businesses to sell stuff – that might create a fleeting sensation of one or more of these things, we built them as a means to enable people to genuinely achieve these things?

We could repair and enrich our world instead of impoverishing it.

It’s not too late for Disicpline to make Daring possible.

June 22, 2022

Subjects, Consumers, Citizens

If humans are naturally empathetic, flexible and co-operative, how come it feels like we’ve lost that?

Because we fall for stories. Stories where our empathy and flexibility can be used against us.

I’m into the last of my 4 new books: ‘Citizens‘ by Jon Alexander and Ariane Conrad, and I’m so glad I’m reading it after Sarah Hrdy’s one.

According to Jon and Ariane, we’ve trapped ourselves in certain stories – stories that we didn’t create, but which had enough advantages for us in them to be accepted.

The first is the Subject story – one man at the top of our tribe has the right to tell everyone else what to do. The rest of us are subject to his will, whether we like it or not. The deal is meant to be that in return, the man at the top will take care of us, make sure we are fed and housed and can live our little lives. The downside of this story is that there’s not much room for movement. Your place is fixed and you know it. The upside is that you can sneak in quite a private life on the side. For an interesting exploration on how this story might have come about, I recommend ‘On Kings‘ by David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins.

The second is the Consumer story – we are not a subject, we are a free person! Free, that is, to choose between whatever options are given. The deal here is that we can be whoever we want to be, as long as it involves buying stuff. The more, the better. We aren’t encouraged to think about how that stuff is made, by whom, or what effect it might be having on other people and the planet. We aren’t encouraged to think at all. Our job is simply to consume. The Consumer story likes community, likes tribes. Tribes encourage people to compete with each other in buying stuff. The upside of this story is that as a Consumer we can fully express our indivduality in a myriad of ways. The downside of this story is that we feel disconnected, lonely, unfulfilled somehow, and there’s only so much stuff you can fit into one lifetime.

The third story is the Citizen story. In this story we are empathetic, co-operative, flexible. We recognise that we are part of something more than a community or a tribe, that we are individuals who are also part of a society. A society we make, and could just as easily make differently. In this story we make and re-make society from the bottom up, collaboratively, deliberately, consciously. The downside of this story is that it takes a lot of effort, it means taking responsibility not just for ourselves, but for others, and it means participating with others in a messy process. The upside is that this is our natural story, and the more we practice it, the better we get at it.

How do these stories play out in your business?

Are your clients or customers simply Consumers? Or are they Citizens, helping to shape the little society that is your business?

Are your people Subjects? Knowing their place. Living their ‘real life’ outside the workplace, doing just enough to keep you happy? Or are they Citizens, helping to shape the little society that is your business?

And you? Are you a King, worrying about who’s after the top spot? Or are you a Citizen, building a little society that will both outlast you and remember you as its founder?

Citizenship makes Daring possible.

June 21, 2022

Connections

Back in 1978, me and my family were entranced by this BBC series in which James Burke explained how rather than being a simple forward march of progress towards some future pinnacle, history was actually a web of connected accidents. People built new ideas and inventions on the ideas and inventions of others, who had created these things for completely different reasons. Connections made that were never ‘meant’ to be made leading to new connections, and new inventions. Often with what seemed like spookily appropriate timing.

Fast forward 50 years, and I’m enticed into a little online group called ‘Connect the Carbon Dots’ by a mention of this TV series.

In our group, we’re taking the facts, issues and solutions in the soon to be released Carbon Almanac, and connecting them to each other, in a visual, interactive web. So that someone interested in ‘how to store carbon in soil’ for example can see why that’s a good thing for global warming AND how it also impacts food security, erosion, and pollution.

Looking back, that documentary may have been the start of my life’s work!

Everything’s connected. Everyone is connected. Everything’s a process.

You never know what’s going to happen next, but there’ll be an interesting thread to follow.

And life is actually more joyful when you look at it that way.

PS it’s not too late to join in!

June 20, 2022

Going with the grain

We’re often told that left in a ‘state of nature’, humans would end up fighting a ‘war of all against all’, leaving life ‘nasty, brutish and short’.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen any evidence of that, not even in the dodgiest part of Manchester in the high-unemployment, welfare-cut-ridden 1980s.

This story is used (has been used for millenia) to justify hierarchy. ‘Someone needs to be in charge, because otherwise everying will go to pot.‘ And with hierarchy comes inequality. ‘I’m at the top, so I deserve more‘.

As I’m working through Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s ‘Mothers and Others‘, it’s becoming clear that flexibility, empathy, mutual care and co-operation aren’t just useful human traits, they are literally the traits that made us human. These behaviours evolved before our bigger brains, before language. They made our bigger brains possible. Without these behaviours, we would still be great apes, or extinct.

So a flexible, co-operative mindset based on empathy and care for others, including those currently ‘unproductive’ comes naturally to us. Anything else goes against the grain.

Suppressing our nature isn’t just bad for people’s mental health, it’s bad for business, and right now it’s sending us down the road to extinction.

We’ll need to mobilise all our natual proclivities for teamwork, ingenuity and mutual aid to prevent this.

And we’re out of practice.

That’s where small businesses come in.

Where better to get practicing empathy, co-operation and mutual support than a business that already feels more like a family than a corporation?

Who better to kick off this transition in the UK than the 1.2 million ‘bosses’ of family-sized businesses?

When better to start than now, when it’s not too late?

And why not, when you can grow your business with the grain instead of against it? Giving your business an evolutionary advantage, enabling scale without adding overhead or stress or losing what makes it unique?

Discipline really does make Daring possible.