Systems Thinking – Page 52 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

January 30, 2020

Playing with change

Aversion to new kinds of food is an instinct that kicks in for humans at around 2 years old. It’s a safety mechanism, evolved to protect the species. Just when they start toddling about, beyond the immediate reach of adults, children become extremely wary of whatever goes into their mouth.

As all parents know, this causes huge problems, when you’re just trying to get them all fed properly. This wariness can fossilise into a refusal to try anything new, leading to a choice between becoming what my mum used to call ‘A Marks and Spencer cafeteria’, or turning mealtimes into battles.

A non-stressful way to handle this wariness, is to give it its due attention, and give children time to overcome it themselves. Instead of putting new foods in front of them and expecting them to try them immediately, you introduce new foods as part of play.

Playing with carrots, broccoli, blueberries, with no expectation of having to eat them seems to release a child’s natural curiosity, and from painting with beetroot, it’s a small step to tasting it. Before you know it, your children are happy to try new things, mealtimes are enjoyable again, and you’re cooking the same meal for everyone.

Once you understand why children get fussy about what they eat and take it seriously, the right approach becomes obvious.

As I was watching this on TV, I wondered whether a similar approach might work with adults and work. Perhaps, if we can find ways of letting people play with changes, with no obligation to make them, we might unleash their natural curiosity and creativity and so not only end up with happier people, but better changes too.

January 27, 2020

Self-service

My friend Mary Jane Copps (aka The Phone Lady) sent out a brilliant tip for delighting prospects today. It got me thinking again about self-service.

When supermarkets first arrived, housewives were delighted. No more queueing at counters to be served, you could just pick and choose whatever you wanted from the shelves of one shop and check out. They could work to their own timetable. They were empowered.

The same is true of many online services. I can renew my passport, book train journeys, order print, buy tyres, whenever I want to. I’m no longer tied to someone else’s schedule – in some cases not even for physical delivery. I’m empowered in ways that I never dreamt of as a child.

There is however, one place where self-service really doesn’t work well, and that’s when things go wrong – when I make a mistake, or something doesn’t arrive on time, or I’m not sure what to type.

Cycling through frequently asked questions that aren’t my question, or being directed to a forum that shows hundreds of others with the same (un-addressed) problem is disempowering, and disenchanting. I want to follow my own schedule – I need help now. Forcing me to spend the first 60 seconds of a call to the helpline listening to instructions to visit the website is disrespectful.

Of course self-service reduces costs for the provider. If you make it obvious that’s the only reason for it, you’ll disgust your customer.

On the other hand, if you make sure it enables them to follow their own schedule in every scenario, you’ll delight them.

January 21, 2020

Civilisation

Once people had seen a wheel, they didn’t have to invent it. They used it to improve a process – moving heavy things, hunting, war, playing.

Once people in England had seen a brick house, they didn’t have to invent it. They used it as a model for building new, bigger, more comfortable houses. Then they used it as a model to build more comfortable and permanent houses for more people.

Once people saw the internet, they didn’t have to invent it. They used it to re-invigorate old processes – shopping, talking, sharing information.

Once you have a process for doing something, you don’t have to invent it. You can build on it to regenerate old processes you want to keep, or to create new processes that were not possible before. You can use it to come up with a much better version.

Our civilisation is built on streamlining processes to make room for inventing new ones.

Many people see ‘process’ as restrictive, stultifying, oppressive.

That’s not because it’s process, it’s because people are inventing the wrong things.

January 17, 2020

Step-wise

Sport has long recognised ‘Muri’ – wasted effort through overburdening people, equipment or systems. An unrelenting schedule of high-intensity training is counter-productive. Eustress, the beneficial stress of additional effort that leads to improved performance, is more than offset by injury and exhaustion, or distress. Athletes burn out, physically and mentally.

The answer they’ve found is simple: build in short periods of recovery between longer periods of intensity. That doesn’t mean the athletes do nothing, simply that they are training at a lower level that prevents distress. These short recovery periods allow bodies and minds to recover, but are not long enough to allow a slide back to the previous performance level.

The result is a series of systematic, and predictable step-wise improvements in performance, that can be planned to coincide with major targets, such as a local, national or international competition, or the Olympics.

It seems to me that businesses could learn a lot from this approach.

Huge thanks to Matthew Cunliffe for this insight.

January 9, 2020

To err is human

We all make mistakes. We misjudge, we make assumptions based on prejudice and false knowledge. We mis-time, we say the wrong thing, the wrong way. We forget the right things, remember the wrong things.

We are after all human animals, driven by hormones, emotion and primitive responses.

We are complex evolving systems, living inside complex evolving systems. There are bound to be mismatches. And mismatches are one way we learn to evolve further.

So mistakes are bound to happen. You can prevent many of them through process and a ‘golden rule’ that allows anyone to deal with unforeseen scenarios in line with your Promise, but you won’t prevent all of them.

Whether you like it or not, the way you deal with mistakes is part of your Promise. But there is a way to make errors work for you and actually strengthen your Promise.

Be human.

November 29, 2019

The irony of automation

“[t]he more we depend on technology and push it to its limits, the more we need highly-skilled, well-trained, well-practised people to make systems resilient, acting as the last line of defence against the failures that will inevitably occur”

Most businesses, even giant auto-assembly plants where robots outnumber humans, are more like orchestras than music boxes.

And it’s the highly trained, skilled and experienced people that keep them running smoothly, as this fascinating read shows.

November 28, 2019

Zebras

We’ve all heard of unicorns. Businesses that disrupt entire markets, even create entirely new ones, often with a view to create a monopoly.

You may not have heard about zebras. I hadn’t until this week, but I recognise the species. I’ve met and worked with many of them over the years.

Zebras are businesses that balance profit and purpose, that aim to solve real problems and make the world better. Zebras aim to be systematically better, not just bigger. They look out for their people and their community as well as their shareholders. They are in it for the long term.

The great thing about zebras is they are real. And they are more numerous than we think.

Time to dazzle.

November 27, 2019

The system is what the system does

Every business is a system. The same things happen repeatedly, systematically, more or less efficiently.

The question is whether what the system does is what you intend.

Even when you’re not there.

November 25, 2019

Plumbing

Building a business is hard. From a standing start, with much stalling, and a lot of trial and error, you understand what you have to offer, who your ideal customers are and what they value most. You eventually arrive at a fair balance between the value you give out and the value you get back.

You know you’ve got it right, when you’re able to keep everything going without giving value away for nothing. You know you’ve really got it right when your customers become your allies and start to pass more business your way.

Now what? You want to take time away from it. You want to grow it. You might even want to sell it. But you can’t. You’ve built this business around yourself. You are at its heart. Even if you employ other people, everything revolves around you, and depends on you. In a real sense, the business is an extension of you. Only now it feels like a trap.

The way out is to see your business for what it really is. A system. A system for making and keeping promises. A system where value is generated by the people who work in it, flows through the business to your customer and back again to you and your team. A system where all the pipes were originally installed to flow through you.

All you have to do is reconfigure the plumbing and you’re free.

November 21, 2019

Reviews

Ideas for doing things better can come from anywhere. A question asked by a prospect or client, a suggestion from one of your team, a report from an external adviser or regulator.

A few of these will be so obviously the right thing to do, you can adopt them immediately. Most will benefit from some review time.

Why? Because its easy to get bogged down in small changes that add complexity and dilute your Promise, without actually adding real value.

“We’ll get this prospect if we add X to our offer.” Really? Is X consistent with our Promise? Is this a prospect we really want?

“This client is asking for Y. The customer is always right.” Really? Is Y consistent with our Promise? Will it add enough value to more of our clients? Does it allow us to protect or increase our prices?

“We should try this Z way of doing things, everyone else is.” Really? Is Z consistent with our Promise? How does it affect the process downstream? Does it improve how we deliver our Promise?

An easily updated and shared wish list with regular, frequent reviews is a sensible way to handle suggestions for improvement.

If everyone is crystal-clear on your Promise, you’ll quickly agree on those you should implement straight away, those you should reject, and those that need more reflection. And everyone will learn to make better suggestions.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Systems Thinking