Systems Thinking – Page 46 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

August 13, 2020

We all make mistakes

It’s impossible to be right all the time, especially in the midst of ‘unprecedented’ happenings.

But it is entirely possible to be transparently fair all the time. Especially if you have a compass to guide decision-making where there is no map.

So, when you see ‘mistakes’ produced by an opaque process following an invisible compass, it’s legitimate, even necessary to ask questions:

Why is it like this?
What does this say about the compass of the people who designed it?
Why isn’t that compass explicit?
What needs to change to make the process fairer and more open next time?

With a clearly visible compass and a fair, transparent process for your business, your people can’t go far wrong. Even when they’re not right.

August 12, 2020

As-is, Should-be

Mozart didn’t write down his music ‘as-is’ before writing it again as ‘should-be’.

Of course not.

Like all composers, Mozart started with what he wanted the audience to hear, the ‘should-be’, translating as closely as he could what he had in his head into musical notes on paper.

I doubt if his first result was the only one.

Once you’ve got your Customer Experience Score written down, it doesn’t matter that it started as ‘should be’. The job now is to make it your ‘as-is’, then to continually evolve it in line with the best ‘should-be’ you and your people can imagine.

August 5, 2020

Transience for the long term

For as long as there have been humans, we have wanted to have the world remember, somehow, that ‘I was here’.

It won’t.

But if we embrace our transience and instead of using our energy to hoard – stuff, money, power, love – we use it to create systems that enrich people and planet, other human beings will.

For a little while at least.

August 4, 2020

Form follows Function

“Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.” Steve Jobs.

That’s true of all human artefacts, including a business.

Form follows function.

Our default business form follows its historical economic function – the concentration of capital and consequently power, to the apex of a pyramid.

If we want business to do something else, we need to give it a different shape.

One option:

July 30, 2020

Wiring

One of my favourite feeds, Corporate Rebels, shared a really interesting post today “Removing Bureaucracy and Hard-Wiring Trust”

It’s a really great read, about instilling responsible autonomy into your team, clarifying the ‘compass’ that will guide individuals, and setting a few big rules for ‘How we do things round here’ ( based around “Act In the Best Interests of the Company”)

But.

Where’s the customer?

And where’s the continuity? What happens when these particular individuals move on? How do new people learn quickly?

It’s brilliant and essential to empower your people and your teams. But it’s more sustainable to include some infrastructure too.

Some actual wiring. Built around the people you serve.

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!

July 22, 2020

Labour

This week, work started in earnest on our new extension. I’ve spent quite a bit of time already, observing it.

Not, I hasten to add, because I’m eyeing up young, fit workmen, but because I’m fascinated by the process.

How stop-start it is. How much shuffling around of stuff is involved. How much collaborative problem-solving it involves. How many adjustments are made. How ad-hoc it seems. In other words, how Agile it is.

Of course this is just the beginning, when the team are getting to grips with the actually existing terrain, so they have a lot to find out, on the fly, before the more systematic parts of the process can kick in. Agile is completely the right approach.

It’s a privilege to watch. And the essence of why humans beat robots any day.

Despite all the hype.

July 16, 2020

My kind of self-checkout

This is where I was when I should have been writing yesterday’s blog. Picking up my shopping. Olive oil, almonds and honey from Portugal, chocolate from Trinidad via Cornwall, Coffee and sugar from Colombia, sea salt from Brittany.

There was plenty more on offer – olives, tapenades, lupini beans, pinto beans and more. All more or less direct from small producers, transported under sail.

I even got to meet 50% of the supply chain: Gareth from Raybel Charters through whom I ordered, and Guillaume who captains the ship.

That’s my kind of self-checkout.

PS If you’re in Faversham or Whitstable over the next couple of days, look out for the Thames barge Dawn the ‘van’ for onward local deliveries

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.

July 1, 2020

Akrasia – doing one thing when you should be doing another

I learned a lovely new word yesterday. ‘Akrasia’. It means doing one thing when you should be doing something else.

I’m guilty of that all the time, sometimes as a form of procrastination (I know I should eat my frog, but I’ll just have ice-cream first), occasionally as a form of hiding (doing the easy thing, because the hard thing is scary).

But whole companies are guilty of akrasia too. They spend time, money and attention instructing down and reporting up the management hierarchy, when they should be making and keeping promises to the people they serve instead.

The solution is simple.

Structure your business around doing, not monitoring.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Systems Thinking