Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Systems Thinking

Growing up
September 18, 2019

Growing up

The thing my mum hated most about her role in our family was that she was the one who nagged us.  To tidy our rooms, do our homework or put our clothes in for washing.

Because, as all grown-ups know, getting things in good order doesn’t happen by accident.   There is no ‘housework fairy’ that does it all by magic.

There isn’t a book-keeping fairy either.   Although many small business owners seem to think there is.   There’s only your poor accountant trying to drag the information out of you in time for the deadline, or ploughing through that jumbled bag of receipts you’ve handed in, trying to make sense of them for your tax return.

One of the best things my mum did for us was to go on strike.  It helped us grow up and take responsibility for keeping our own order.

Perhaps its time accountants did the same.   Because keeping your business in order is far more important than housework.  It’s the foundation for growing up.

Taking chances
September 16, 2019

Taking chances

It’s impossible to predict every possible scenario.   So instead of trying to plan for every eventuality, it’s much better to simply keep your options open.

The trick is to minimise the possible downside, while allowing the upside to take care of itself.   So, if you can protect your restaurant from the worst effects of a storm, you can stay open, when others around you don’t.  If everyone is evacuated (including you), you’re no worse off than if you had closed anyway.  If they aren’t, you’re going to be popular.

This is what it means to be antifragile – the downside won’t kill you, while the upside benefits you significantly.

The beauty of this idea is that it makes dealing with risk much simpler.  All you really need is to understand what might kill you, and mitigate the effects of that – creating a floor, below which nothing can go, while leaving the ceiling open to the sky.

You can do this with business processes too.  Specify “the least that should happen”, and let humans beings find new ways to add the delight.

Then ratchet up the floor.

Infrastructure
September 13, 2019

Infrastructure

Those country lanes we love to drive down in summer were mostly built back in the 1920s and 1930s.

They were an investment in the future, both as physical infrastructure that opened up the countryside to new markets and as employment for men and their families who would have otherwise starved.

They have lasted much better than most canals and railways, because they are less prescriptive about what can travel on them, or for what purpose, which means they can cope with all kinds of traffic, from milk-cart, to ramblers to country commuters.

They form a network, combining direction and connection with flexibility.  They enable autonomy.

Pretty good characteristics to aim for in a business infrastructure too.  Expensive to build, but well worth the investment.

Relics
September 10, 2019

Relics

Yesterday, I drove across the Peak District, along the Derwent Valley and up through Glossop to Calderdale.

Almost the whole way, wherever there was a river below, the valley was thick with old mill buildings, built to last.  Some famous, like Arkwright’s Cromford and Masson Mills, now world heritage sites.   Most forgotten, derelict, or hidden in the core of industrial estates, or turned into housing.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, there were well over 100 cotton mills in this area, their owners rushing to embrace the new business model pioneered by Arkwright – a factory powered by water.

Within 30 years, many of them were out of business.   A new technology shift had taken place, from water power to steam, which meant independence from rivers, and freedom from the size constraints imposed by valleys.   Small factory owners, unable to justify the investment could no longer compete and went under.

Now of course, very little cotton is spun or woven in the UK.  Yet more technology shifts meant that even large factories drifted slowly into obsolescence.

To us now, this is history.  But technology is always shifting, increasingly in people-based service industries like accounting, consulting and law.

You can embrace the latest business model, or make a virtue of keeping to the old.  The trick is to do it consciously, keeping an eye out for whats next.

Embracing variation
September 9, 2019

Embracing variation

Nature loves variation.

Small errors, mishaps  and mistakes make a species stronger, not weaker.  They make the system antifragile.

Fine china does not love variation.  Even the smallest of mishaps can cause irrecoverable damage.

If you want a business that lasts, its better to design it to be more of a system than a dinner service.   But that doesn’t mean formless.

Build a strong core of values, purpose and ethos, embodied in simple high-level processes that describe ‘what’ not ‘how’, and you too can get to love variation.

And variation is what leads to evolution.

Buying Customers
September 4, 2019

Buying Customers

Acquisition is a common form of expansion.  Especially where customers buy regularly and repeatedly.  As the buyer, you add a whole bunch of new customers in one go, in bulk.  As the seller you get to cash in on all those years of hard work.

So far, so good.

For employees, takeover or merger often leads to culture shock, as two distinct (and probably inarticulate) Promises of Value clash in the new business.  This is a recognised issue that gets attention and effort from the buyer.

But what about customers?

Often, they don’t even know until after the event, when they call for support and find the rules have changed on them, or see the size of their next bill.

What do you think they feel when they find out?

Perhaps they don’t care, as long as there is no difference in the service they get or the fees they have to pay.  They didn’t have a relationship with the previous company and they don’t with the new one either.   These customers will stay until a significantly better offer comes along, as sooner or later it will.

Perhaps they are delighted – because the new rules make things easier for them, and efficiencies or economies of scale make their bills lower.  These customers will stay, and tell everyone why.

Or perhaps they feel belittled, betrayed and angry.   They had a relationship with the previous company.  They had chosen it because of its values and ethos.  They had bought in to its Promise of Value.  This company and the way it worked had become part of their life, and now you’ve taken that away.  Worse still, you’ve treated them as a commodity.  These customers will leave, and tell everyone why.

What’s the answer?

Aim for delighted, every time.

 

Gassaku
September 3, 2019

Gassaku

Gassaku, or ‘joint work’, is, unsurprisingly, a Japanese concept, where each collaborator’s contribution is celebrated and acknowledged, while recognising that the completed work transcends all of them.

In the west, we’ve become so used to the idea of the lone artist, the single originator, the star founder, that we are almost blind to joint work.   Except perhaps, when we watch a film, and see at the end the enormous numbers of people that helped to make it.

Yet all work is joint work.  We achieve nothing alone.

Everything we do is built on the work of others – not just those around us now, but those who have gone before.  Not just work that directly contributes to our achievements, but the work (not always paid) that built and continues to build and maintain all the infrastructures that enable them.

Time we acknowledged their contributions.

Good Design makes a product understandable
September 2, 2019

Good Design makes a product understandable

It clarifies the product’s structure.  Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition.  At best, it is self-explanatory.   Dieter Rams, Design Principle number 4.

How many times have you pulled at a door that was meant to be pushed?  Or pushed a door that was meant to be pulled?

There are 4 simple design solutions that would prevent that tiny but all too frequent source of wasted energy and frustration:

  1. Put a flat plate on the ‘push’ side and a handle on the ‘pull’ side.
  2. Allow the door to swing both ways, and have a flat plate on both sides (because both are now ‘push’).
  3. Allow the door to swing both ways, and have a handle on both sides (because both are now ‘pull’).
  4. Have the door open automatically as someone approaches it.

1, 2 and 3 make the door understandable, 4 makes it self-explanatory.

 

We live and work among millions of designed products every day, from doors to roundabouts and office blocks to business processes, organisational structures and governments, many of which provide all too frequent sources of wasted energy and frustration.

How would you re-design them?

Stakeholders
August 30, 2019

Stakeholders

I found this on the Corporate Accountability Network‘s site the other day: “The Corporate Accountability Network thinks that every company, … Read More “Stakeholders”