Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Systems Thinking

Re-balancing
March 24, 2020

Re-balancing

In times of crisis, everything goes out of whack.   Work, home, society.

Things we thought were indispensable are jettisoned, things we thought were unthinkable become acceptable, things we believed were impossible become normal.

Some of these will be good things, others not so good, others downright bad.

The important thing will be to keep the changes we found were good after the crisis is over, and reverse those we didn’t.

Which means we need to think and talk about about them during it.

Life will never be the same again.  At least let’s change it as far as possible on purpose, in a direction that’s better for everyone.

Quiet reading
March 19, 2020

Quiet reading

Following on from yesterday’s post, here are some suggestions for reading when things are quieter.   Hopefully the weather will also be fine enough by then to do this out in the fresh air:

  1. What to Do when It’s Your Turn (and It’s Always Your Turn).   Seth Godin.  Available from Porchlight books.
  2. The Three Ways of Getting Things Done.  Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy in organizations.   Gerald Fairtlough.  Available from the Triarchy Press.
  3. Change the Game: Share the Work. Building a business that works better for everyone (especially you).  Kirsten Gibbs.  Available from The Endless Bookcase.  Or come to my virtual book launch on the 7th April, and get your own signed copy!
  4. The Checklist Manifesto. How to get things right.   Atul Gawande.   Available from Profile Books.
  5. Holacracy.  The revolutionary management system that abolishes hierarchy.  Brian J. Robertson.  Available from Penguin.
  6. A Beautiful Constraint.  How to transform your limitations into advantages, and why its everyone’s business.  Adam Morgan & Mark Barden.  Available from Wiley.

Especially though I like today’s post from Corporate Rebels.  The Ultimate Remote Work Policy?

Everything above is about supporting and enabling that, on both sides.

Looking ahead
March 18, 2020

Looking ahead

The first priority in times like these is to keep afloat, and help keep others afloat as far as we can.

But there will come a time, not too far away, when what’s needed is to look ahead, and think how to build more resilience into our businesses, so that when the next shock comes, we’re more able to withstand it, or even thrive on it.

Tinkering around the edges won’t cut it.  Business recovery plans, and business continuity plans won’t be enough.

Once we’ve been forced to see what can work, we’ll choose to move to new ways of doing things, that might just be better for everyone.

Look out for the paradigm shift.

The revenge of Muri
March 13, 2020

The revenge of Muri

When times are good, or you think nobody will notice, it’s tempting to overload systems, processes and people.

A little cut here, a small increase in workload there.  A freeze on recruitment, a delay of re-equipping or upgrading.   It has no visible effect on the bottom line.  You get away with it.   So it becomes tempting to do it again.   To ‘keep it lean’, ‘cut no slack’, ‘lean in’, give 110, 120, 150%.   And again, and again.

But, when you’ve cut everything to the bone, and built your entire system on just in time, lowest cost, no slack, it doesn’t take much to bring the whole thing crashing down.

It’s not rocket science.   We live in a system.  All of us.   And overloading it is not sensible behaviour.

Out of touch
March 9, 2020

Out of touch

Before mobile phones, you had no choice about being out of touch outside working hours.   You either got everything done during the working day or you didn’t.   Even if you worked late, you could properly relax at home.

If you knew you were going to be away from your desk for a few days, you left it so that someone else in the office could pick up a call and handle things in your absence.  You could concentrate on the job you were actually doing.

If you needed to get a report written or a complex spreadsheet set up, you deliberately took yourself out of reach of the banter, ‘quick questions’ and interruptions.  You could give the job the attention it deserved.

All of this made us more productive, not less.  And we were probably less anxious and stressed too.

Now, putting yourself out of touch has to be intentional.

And it’s a skill worth learning, for everyone’s sake.

Be more mushroom
March 5, 2020

Be more mushroom

A mushroom is a metaphor for a short-lived momentary thing, that springs up quickly and dies just as quickly.

Yet this mushroom behaviour is deceptive, because the mushroom is founded on something much bigger and more durable.  A mycelium.

A mycelium is a wonderful thing.   It connects each and every mushroom within its network to every other, across space and  time.  They share a common genesis, even through they may pop up in very different habitats.

What’s more, each mushroom (if not picked early) throws out spores, also invisible, that spreads the network even further, until you have something like the mycelium in Nevada that covers over 800 hectares of ground, and is over 2,000 years old.

Not a bad model for a movement, or for a business that aspires to become a movement.

Be more mycelium.

It’s easier to do than you think.

Huge thanks to the open food network UK for letting me borrow their metaphor.

Cheap Labour
March 2, 2020

Cheap Labour

Over the last 4 decades I’ve visited quite a few cotton mills that have been preserved as museums.  The thing that always struck me was how old the machinery was.   Often it had been in place for 90 -100 years.   Had nobody invented better machines during that time?

Yes they had.  But if you can find cheaper labour to mind your old machines, you can get away without upgrading them.   And that had worked for a good while on our textile industry.  But sooner or later a more efficient business (or one with access to even cheaper labour) will take you out.

In a service industry value is generated by people rather than machines.  If you’re in it for the long term, its going to pay to invest in them, to support them with more efficient tools and processes, to upgrade, re-equip and refresh the source of your profits.

Or are you planning to keep the same ones for 100 years?

For the want of a nail
February 27, 2020

For the want of a nail

We like to blame disasters on the failure of equipment – the horseshoe nail, the cladding, the electrical wiring.   Or we like to blame people – the farrier, the cladding manufacturer, the maintenance department.

But neither of those things are really to blame when things go disastrously wrong.   It’s the processes that have failed, and often much further back than the site of the problem.    The rider didn’t check his horse’s shoes (or maybe the farrier ran out?), the specifier chose inappropriate cladding (or maybe the budget was too low?), management reduced the capacity of the maintenance department (or maybe the maintenance team had caught coronavirus?).

It’s what we do – the processes we run – that delivers results, good or bad.  If we want to minimise the bad and maximise the good, we all need to see them clearly and take responsibility for keeping the whole in good working order.