The Autonomous Enterprise – Page 17 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

October 14, 2019

Security vs Sovereignty

A supermarket gives me courgette security. I can buy courgettes all year round, any day of the week. They’ll always be the same size, ripeness and quality. This comes at a cost of course. Supermarket courgettes are always priced at the out-of-season level, even when there is a glut in my allotment.

My allotment gives me courgette sovereignty. I can grow as few or as many as I like. I can grow whatever varieties I choose, provided I can give them the conditions they need. This comes at a cost of course. I have to spend time preparing the soil, weeding and watering to give them the conditions they need.

Which option you choose depends on how much you value their side-effects.

The supermarket option is convenient, freeing up time to do other things. On the other hand, those all-year-round courgettes are grown under plastic which ends up in the soil; in an arid part of Spain, which depletes the local water supply; and are picked by migrants, who live in virtual slavery.

The allotment option involves exercise, fresh air, and the satisfaction of doing it yourself. On the other hand, I have to pay rent, keep it looking neat, and after all my hard work, I may not get any courgettes.

But when I do, I’ll really enjoy them.

October 10, 2019

Laughter

“Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression.” ― Margaret Mead

The laughter of children is one of the most joyful sounds we know. It often comes with discovery – seeing a pigeon for the first time, chasing bubbles, being rained on. It arises from sheer enjoyment of being alive, exercising our faculties, making a new discovery.

Occasionally you’ll hear this kind of laugh from an adult, hardly ever at work.

Which means to my mind, that there’s something wrong with work.

Have a great weekend.

October 7, 2019

Ups and Downs

Quiet weeks, when nothing much happens, drag by while we’re in them. Afterwards, they almost disappear from our memories. We tend to remember the last interesting event before that quiet week as if it was only yesterday.

This is understandable. We are constantly bombarded with information, and most of the time what this information is telling us is boring – its OK, everything is normal, no need to worry. The unusual or extreme is what we need to take note of. Up or down, good or bad, high or low.

So while of course we should constantly measure what matters to our business, it makes no sense to report it if everything is normal. Let’s save our energy for dealing with the highs and lows.

October 4, 2019

Unscripted

Too often we think that treating customers the same way means putting them through the same mechanical process. In doing so we mistake customers for widgets. We also mistake our staff for widgets.

Much better to exploit the possibilities offered by human beings to create processes that are consistent without being mechanical.

The trick is to think about what must be covered as part of the process, then find a way to help the human being running that process to remember that, while giving them freedom as to how they cover it.

Take a phone call for example. Rather than scripting a sales or customer service call, why not create a simple prompt sheet, that lets the person making the call remember what must be covered, while letting them cover it as part of a natural conversation with whoever is on the other end of the phone. I’ve written an e-book showing you how.

Both sides of the conversation will feel more natural, and that makes both sides much happier to make and receive your calls.

October 2, 2019

Resonance

There is a whole family of stringed musical instruments that capitalise on resonance.

These instruments have additional ‘sympathetic’ strings, that are never touched, but are tuned to resonate in harmony with the normal strings. So when the instrument is played, a richer, more complex harmony of sound is made – almost as if the player has been given an extra hand.

Your Promise of Value is how your business is tuned. Everything you do, for customers; staff; suppliers, shareholders and the community around you needs to resonate with it.

That way, they become ‘sympathetic strings’ for your Promise, extending your reach and helping to make it truly believable.

September 27, 2019

Commuting

Get a bunch of small business owners together where I live and they’ll wax lyrical about no longer having to commute to London to work. For some it means as much as 15 hours a week to spend on something else – family; sleep; self-care or productive business.

There are good reasons why teams sometimes need to get together to work, but to me at least it seems odd to see bigger and bigger white collar factories go up in London, when most people would be more productive working from home. After all F International cracked how to do this successfully way back in the ’70s – long before the technology we have now made remote working easy.

In which case the need to commute must be about something else. A need for community perhaps? Cross-pollination? Status? Control?

I don’t know the answer, but it might be worth asking the question for your business.

September 25, 2019

Asking for help

We’re not trained to ask for help. We’re meant to be knowledgeable enough and competent enough to manage everything ourselves. We like to present as swans, serene on top, paddling madly underneath.

Independence is overrated.

Sometimes the quickest and best solution is to ask for help. And your accountant can be a good place to start.

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.

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.

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.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: The Autonomous Enterprise