Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: The Autonomous Enterprise

Where, Who, When and What.
October 16, 2020

Where, Who, When and What.

We’ve already seen that motivation isn’t enough to lead to action.   It needs to be combined with ability.  But motivation plus ability alone is still not enough.  We also need prompts, says B J Fogg, behaviour designer and author of ‘Tiny Habits‘ .

We need to be triggered into doing things we are motivated and able to do.

That means that Sharing your Promise is all about finding the motivated and able, and prompting them to take action.

So, some questions that might help here are:

  • Where do the motivated and able people you seek to serve hang out?
  • Who do they hang out with?
  • Where do they go for help and advice?
  • Who do they trust?
  • Who do they look up to?
  • When are they most receptive to a prompt?
  • What makes an effective prompt?

Prompting someone to do what they already want to do feels much better than ‘selling’ doesn’t it?   Especially if you’ve already worked out how to make it easier for them too.

Making maps
October 13, 2020

Making maps

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.  We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.  But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. .. it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”  Donald Rumsfeld

Part of any consultant’s job is to formalise the known knowns and the known unknowns.   To map out the worldview a business owner is working within so that they can share it with their teams, giving them routes to follow.

In doing that, we achieve something even more important – we surface the unknown unknowns – the areas of the map that have up to now been blank, or worse, have become the abode of monsters signalling ‘Don’t go there‘.  And by turning the ‘unknown unknown’ into a ‘known unknown’, we break through to new territories for the business to explore and expand into.

For me, the brilliant thing is that all it takes to achieve all this is questions.  So this week I’m going to share some of the best mapmaker questions I know, organised around my map of a business:

I hope you’ll join me on the journey.

I’d lose control
October 8, 2020

I’d lose control

The only way to scale a business that is built around you is to embed the ‘you’ into the way the business works, so that everything about it reminds your prospects and clients of you, even when you are not in the room.

That means enabling and empowering other people to do what you do, as well as or better than you do it.  That isn’t losing control, it’s just putting the control in a different place – into the fabric of the business, instead of one or more people’s heads.

Perhaps what’s really behind the worry of ‘losing control’ is the fear of becoming less important to the business.  After all, if it can get on perfectly well without you, where does that leave you, the founder, the originator of the vision?  The irony is of course, that the more you dig your actual self into the business, the less able it will be to survive without you.   All too often, an amazing little business fizzles out with the life of its founder.   To my mind, it’s almost criminal to let that happen.

Done well, composing your Customer Experience Score puts you right where you belong – embedded into the heart and soul of the business, without actually having to be present day to day.   It’s not just your prospects and clients that will be reminded of you every time they interact with your business, your people will be reminded too.  Even those who haven’t joined yet.

Dale Carnegie has been dead a long while, but the business he founded carries on as world-wide empire, with his vision and philosophy firmly ensconced at its heart.

Isn’t that something worth giving up hands-on control for?

No one else is doing it
October 7, 2020

No one else is doing it

Of course ‘Nobody else is doing it‘, is really an observation about risk, not isolation.   Most of us don’t like to go first, for fear of looking stupid.   Unlike my beloved, who, faced with a marquee-full of Cornish pasties and cream teas at the grand opening of the Eden Project, boldly stepped forwards with the words “My mum would expect it of me” – and broke the ice for everyone else, hesitating hungrily on the periphery.

So the real answer to ‘Nobody else is doing it‘ is ‘What’s the worst that can happen?‘.   The best that can happen is that you get results that the waiting others couldn’t dream of, and you get them first.

If you do what everyone else does, you’ll get what everyone else gets, maybe less.   Provided the downside isn’t too damaging, it’s worth taking the leap.   Then the very best that can happen is that you break the ice for the others, and everyone benefits from your lead.

 

I have really good people
October 6, 2020

I have really good people

Of course, you’ve surrounded yourself with really good people.

How are they actually spending their efforts?  Delighting clients, or dreaming up new, better ways to deliver on your Promise of Value?

Or are they re-inventing the wheel?  Teaching new recruits the ropes?  Trying to remember what they did the last time that rare, but surprisingly regular occurrence cropped up?  Finding ways to get around the software system that actually makes their job harder? Looking for another job?

Every member of an orchestra knows how to play their instrument.  They don’t need to be told where to put their fingers.  But they do appreciate having a score to follow.   A score means they don’t have to think too hard about 80% of the job, freeing up energy and imagination to deal with the 20% that makes all the difference to performance.   That 20% is what keeps clients happy, loyal, willing to pay extra and eager to tell their friends about you.

But the real power of a score is that it enables your team to bring their whole selves to bear – time after time, performance after performance.

And that’s what keeps your team engaged, aligned and proactively taking responsibility.

Really good people can be even better with a score.

It would take too long
October 5, 2020

It would take too long

We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that changes have to be big, hairy, audacious, and fast.   Sometimes that is what’s needed.   But most often it’s not.  Long-term change takes a different kind of energy.   A crash diet is disruptive and hard to stick to, and if you’re not careful leads to the loss of more muscle than fat.  Much better to lose half a kilo a week for a year, changing your eating habits along the way, so you live better for longer.

On average, a business has around 50 business processes that make up its Customer Experience Score, depending on how many different services are on offer.  It’s tempting to make that a big deal, to throw everything up in the air while change is going on.   To disrupt the status quo before you have anything to put in its place.  A ‘big bang’ is dramatic, but as we all know, it rarely leads to real change.

It would be possible to re-engineer a business in 6 months, but I’ve always found it better to go for a steady ‘one-process-a-week’ approach.

I usually start with the simple, uncontested, but often forgotten process of opening and closing for business each day.   It’s a good warm-up to get everyone used to working together, an introduction to the notation, and a gentle way to get thinking about how much what happens every day can contribute to the process of making and keeping promises to clients:

When does the day really start?  When does it really end?  Who opens up?  Who closes up?  When are the phones tested?  When is the internet tested?  What happens if they fail?  Where do the kitchen provisions come from?  How do we make sure we don’t run out before a client meeting?   How do you set the scene for visitors?  How are they welcomed?

Each week, my job is to ask the stupid questions, get people thinking about the things they take for granted, hold the processes to account against the business’s Promise of Value.  In essence to get the business delighting its clients on purpose, systematically, repeatedly.

Once we’ve started there’s a rhythm to it.  Review last week’s captured process (always wrong the first time round), then start the next most important process.  We move forwards steadily, with the simple aim of making the business work the way you really want it to.  The way you would want it to work if you were a client.

Like dieting, the benefits accrue right from the beginning.  The change in lifestyle is gradual and relatively painless, relatively easy to stick to.   Until suddenly, by the end of a year, you realise you’ve made a radical change.   You’re a new business, more confident, more energetic, more fun to be around and able to look forward to the expected lifetime of a Galapagos tortoise, rather than a hare.  And looking back, it didn’t seem to take long at all.

Making deep, lasting change is a marathon, not a sprint.   And even marathons go more quickly than you think.

Despotism
September 29, 2020

Despotism

You might feel that writing down the Customer Experience Score for the business you founded is a bit, well, dictatorial, despotic even.

But I can tell you, having a score I can consult myself, whenever I need to is more liberating than whatever is currently locked inside your head, expressed only as “I can’t exactly explain it to you, but I know it when I see it, and right now I see you’re getting it wrong.”

Especially when you add that the first, prescriptive draft is just the beginning.  Once defined and shareable, the Customer Experience Score belongs to the business, not you.   It becomes open to critique, discussion, improvement by everyone.

A long time ago, we worked with a shop owner.   He was adamant about the way customers should be treated when they came into his shop, lavishing attention on them to make them feel welcome and supported.   Until we demonstrated that by treating one customer this way, he was actually being extremely rude and unwelcoming to whoever came in next.

Whatever it looks like, your Customer Experience Score is much better for your business outside your head.

Getting started
September 21, 2020

Getting started

How do you start building an archive and library of ordinary peoples’ diaries?   By taking in one box of diaries.

How do you start a hot-air balloon festival?  By getting two hot-air balloons together.

How do you start a sail-cargo business?  With one hold of cargo.

How do you start writing your Customer Experience Score?   By writing down one business process.

By starting.  Small.   By not worrying about what will be needed to make the big thing a success.   Most of all, by moving from “Someone really ought to do something about this.”  to “I’d better do something about this.”

Once you start, other people will join in.

Hat tip to Irving Finkel for inspiring this one.

The givens
September 18, 2020

The givens

Axioms are the foundations of ‘grammars’.  They are the givens, things we don’t have to question, that we can take for granted, that are (at least to us) self-evident.  Otherwise it would be nigh-on impossible to get anything done.  Imagine a whole orchestra having to agree what ‘C’ means before they start playing, or having to define exactly what you mean by a ‘metre’ on every page of a set of building drawings.

For a business it’s different.   Remember,  “When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws.  This is your utopia”(Derek Sivers).

That means you define your own business axioms – how many times it’s acceptable to let the phone ring before you answer it, who is most important, the boss or the customer, how much it’s legitimate to care about the environment in relation to how your busines makes money.

If the grammar of your business can be written down as what I call a Customer Experience Score, the axioms that govern what that score looks, sounds and feels like are what I call your Promise of Value.

Both are unique to your business.   Together, explicit or otherwise, they are the reason your best clients buy from you, stay loyal to you, and tell their friends about you.  Both are worth writing down.

Interference
September 14, 2020

Interference

Last Friday, the materials for our new roof were delivered.  Tiles, ridge tiles, clips, battens, everything the roofers would need to start the job the following day.

Except, I spotted, the membrane that goes between joists and tiles.   Without that the job couldn’t even start.   To be honest, we’re relaxed about the schedule, but I knew our building company prides itself on being ahead, rather than behind, and our choice of tiles had taken time to source, so they were only just ‘on track’.

I could see the delivery driver had a pallet-load of it on his truck, so I asked the question, just in case.   It wasn’t on his delivery sheet, so he called the office.  They didn’t have it in the order either.

“Well I’ve got a pallet load here, so I’ll take a roll off and we can sort out the order with our client back in the office.  That saves me coming back later if it is missing.”

When I told our project manager, she said that’s why they always use that building supply company, because they focus first on foremost on taking care of their clients and end-users, rather than sticking rigidly to procedure.

I’d interfered in the process wrongly, as it happened.    The membrane wasn’t missing.   When the roofers turned up next day, they brought a big roll of it with them, and put it back in their van once they saw it wasn’t needed.

Obviously what was really missing was a clear understanding of who’s responsible for what, apart from inside the project manager’s head.  Does it always work this way?  Or does that depend on the roofer?   If everyone (including the client?) knows it’s always the supplier’s job to supply everything, this sort of mix-up wouldn’t happen.

What could remedy that?   A Customer Experience Score.

Not a procedures manual to consult every five minutes and follow slavishly.  Rather, a high-level picture of ‘what happens when’ that can be quickly and easily learnt by each new person or business that comes on board.  Something that says “This is how we do things, so if you join us, you need to understand this too”.  That way everyone is empowered to make sure things happen as they should, even if they don’t actually work for you.

In this case the mix-up happened the right way round.   The roofers finished at 10pm on Sunday, having worked their socks off for two days.   Our build is back on schedule, and I’m happy to recommend our building company to anyone.

But I’m also going to suggest a little composition.