The world has changed since the last time you did this.
Before you get going again, take another look.
Knowing what you do now about the resources you have to deliver what you really want; what the people you serve really want and what the people you work with really want, which version of better are you aiming for this time?
Once you’ve accepted what is, it’s time to take stock of the resources you have available to you.
Obviously, the physical resources – cash; credit; working capital; stock; work in progress, the available working hours of your team.
Also the intangibles – your Promise of Value, your ‘way we do things round here’; your know-how and expertise; the willingness/ability of your team, clients and suppliers to support you through changes.
Less obviously perhaps, its time to take stock of what matters. Because that will almost certainly have changed, for you, your clients and your team. And that may open up whole new futures, and close some you thought you had available.
Possible futures are resources too. It’s worth taking stock of them before you decide which ones to explore.
Over the weekend, as well as reading, I listened to wise words from Scott Perry, of Creative on Purpose:
“Acceptance of what is opens the door to what is possible.”
It’s difficult to avoid grieving over what you’ve lost, which includes the future you thought you were going to have.
It is lost. There is nothing we can do about that.
But other futures are open to you. Different futures. Better futures. Because you can make them so. At least, you can do your best to make them so.
The first step in a process of recovery is to accept what is, now.
When, towards the end of last year, I decided to publish a book, I had an idea in my mind, a mental picture if you like, of what it would be like.
I envisaged something like a Ladybird book. A small format, portrait, made up of double-page spreads, with text on the left hand page, and an accompanying photograph on the facing page. Simple, easy to read, slightly nostalgic (for people of a certain age), and perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek.
I knew I couldn’t put this together myself, so I asked Rob Key at Studio Change to help.
Rob had a different mental model. Still small, still two-page spreads, still text plus illustration, but completely different.
He showed me what my book would look like according to his model and I was blown away.
The thing about models, is that they are all approximations, they are all wrong.
But some models are much more useful than others. And you’re unlikely to come up with all of them yourself. So you need to share your models, be open to new ones and be willing to improve your own.
Model interactions is how we learn to do better.
Why do I need process if I have good people?
Because making good people reinvent the wheel over and over again is a shocking waste of talent.
Talent that could be used to invent better wheels, or more interesting uses for them.
Many years ago I had a job interview for Booz Allen. Almost the first thing the interviewer said to me was “You’re a bit of a butterfly aren’t you?”
They were wrong. I was just following a normal pattern for someone with my appetite for change.
In work, I’m motivated by evolution rather than stability, and every 3-5 years or so I feel the need to make a big shift. I’m not unusual, that’s how most people like to operate at work.
My interviewer was possibly in a different camp. I asked them how long they’d been with Booz Allen. “20 years.” Clearly in the ‘I like things to stay the same over a long period of time’ preference. Or perhaps their motivational kicks came from working with an international consultancy firm – if the job involves the required level of variety, there’s no need to switch jobs to get it.
I’ve also met people at the other extreme, who are motivated by constant change and uncertainty, and who will pivot almost every year.
The point here is that even without a crisis, it’s worth understanding your own and other people’s appetite for change. People will be de-motivated, under-perform and eventually leave if they aren’t getting what they need from the job they are in.
In a time of crisis and uncertainty this is even more important. A few will thrive on it. Most will find it uncomfortable, unsettling, but bearable. A few will find it almost intolerable.
Bear this in mind as you shake down to remote working. Of course the priority is to get things working and keep going. But if this situation lasts, or you decide to change your way of working altogether it’s worth adjust things in line with these preferences.
It may well be that moving people into different roles will help them and you get through it better.
PS the man swapping hats with Charlie Chaplin is Harry Lauder, a music hall (variety) star in his day, and according to Gibbs family tradition, a relation of ours.
I’m fascinated by the way people differ in their ‘working style’ – how they like to operate at work. One … Read More “Going with the grain”
After a stressful and uncertain week, with many things still to be resolved before we can all adjust to the new normal, it will do us good to take a break.
Even if all we can manage is 5 minutes. Even if that 5 minutes is at some strange time of night.
Switch off from the news. Log out of email and social media. They aren’t helping.
Find a place to sit where you can be as near to fresh air as possible. Even if that’s just an open window.
Sit.
Breathe.
That feeling in your stomach? The butterflies? The anxiety? You’ve had it before. And you got through before. You got the job. You learned to drive, swim, ride a bike. You did the parachute jump.
That feeling isn’t only fear. It’s excitement.
Things will never be the same again. They will be better if we dare to make them so.
Like many people, I guess, I’m finding it harder to write every day during this crisis. Who wants to listen to me? What have I got to say that is worth saying? I’m not famous. I’m not powerful. I don’t feel relevant.
But.
I can read, and learn and think, and listen. And I can pass on stuff I think will help.
So here are 3 things I learned this morning that I think are worth sharing:
“Reaction five: Recovery
But the fifth, and crucial stage, is the one we need to already anticipate, however, overwhelmed we now feel. This will be the recovery stage, and although that might seem a long way off at present (and the wait may well seem interminable) it will happen. When it does, there will be at least as many problems as there or now, and in the immediate months to come. These need to be planned for, and good accountants will be doing that very soon.
Picking up a mothballed business and returning it to a thriving state is not easy. It demands a lot of working capital. Many businesses will have almost none. As a result, all the usual problems from overtrading will rear their ugly heads remarkably quickly when the recovery begins, and those businesses that might have made it through the immediate crisis might then discover that they cannot make it to the end of the year unless they begin to plan now.
Many of us are facing enforced time at home, with too much Netflix for company. My suggestion is that anyone with responsibility for a business should use at least some of this time to think about their plans to reopening their activities when this crisis is over.
Deciding what goods, services, outlets and staff are key to that process, and working out how to phase the returns to normal is critical to survival. In particular, new product mixes, ways of delivery, supply chains and customer interactions all need to be thought about if success is to be likely.
This is not the time to sit and do nothing if businesses are to survive. There’s a massive amount to do. And now is the time to do it.”
So that gives me my theme for the next few weeks or months. How to use the unsettlement of the current crisis to think differently about how we do things, and lay the foundations for a more secure, sustainable and profitable future business.
Phew! I can feel useful again.
PS Seth Godin is right. There is no such thing as writer’s block. You just have to write.
With teams suddenly dispersed, all that tacit knowledge of ‘what it is we’re trying to do, and how to do it’, is much harder to access. You can’t simply shout across the office “How do I do X again?”
It will be very tempting to start automating everything. But you need to think about what you’re automating first, else you can get trapped in the software manufacturer’s model of how your business should work.
So here ‘s a quick guide to capturing ‘What we do round here’ that will work over Zoom, Skype etc.
Key Principles:
How to go about it:
Follow the rapid improvement cycle:
Repeat until you have a work instruction/procedure/process that can be run reliably by anyone who needs to.
Automate the bits humans shouldn’t be doing. Then let the humans get on with the rest.