The Disappearing Boss – Page 16 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

June 15, 2023

Everyday genius

You might like this excellent podcast series from Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, authors of ‘Humanocracy’.

In ‘The New Human Movement‘ they tell fascinating stories of how huge companies have been able to re-invent themselves simply by giving everyone who works for them a bit more of what they really want:

Agency – to make their own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
Mastery – to learn and master (even teach) new skills.
Autonomy – to be free to choose how they make their dent.
Purpose – to do this for something bigger than themselves, that has meaning beyond the sale.
Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.
- Status – to know (and for others to know) where we stand in our communities.

Thereby unleashing the ‘everyday genius’ of everyone, instead of relying on that of a chosen few.

Imagine the impact you could have if you started from here in the first place?

June 13, 2023

Words and meanings

control (kənˈtrəʊl)

noun:

the power to influence or direct [other] people’s behaviour or the course of events.
the ability to manage a machine, vehicle, or other moving object.
the restriction of an activity, tendency, or phenomenon.
the ability to restrain one’s own emotions or actions.
a means of limiting or regulating something.

verb:

determine the behaviour or supervise the running of.
maintain influence or authority over.
limit the level, intensity, or numbers of.
remain calm and reasonable despite provocation.
regulate (a mechanical or scientific process).

hierarchy (ˈhʌɪərɑːki)

noun:

a system in which members of an organization or society are ranked according to relative status or authority.
the clergy of the Catholic Church or of an episcopal Church.
the upper echelons of a hierarchical system.
an arrangement or classification of things according to relative importance or inclusiveness.
the traditional system of orders of angels and other heavenly beings.

chaos (ˈkeɪɒs)

noun:

complete disorder and confusion.
the property of a complex system whose behaviour is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions.
the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe.
the first created being, from which came the primeval deities Gaia, Tartarus, Erebus, and Nyx.

anarchy (ˈanəki)

noun:

a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.
the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism.

The interesting thing about all of these definitions (from Oxford Languages), is that all but one are descriptions.

That odd one out is an opinion. From someone further up the hierarchy, used to being in control of people other than themselves.

Voluntary cooperation is a form of control. It’s just that each participant gets a say in in defining what it means (sometimes as they go along), and agrees to join in.

We do this all the time, mostly without noticing.

As a child, I called it play.

And it could be how we work.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

June 8, 2023

Options and Procedures

I must apologise to regular readers. I’m about to mention, yet again, one of my favourite business books.

The brilliant “Words That Change Minds”, by Shelle Rose Charvet is both a guide to the different ‘working styles’ people bring to a given context (in this case work), and a guide for using what you learn about these to communicate appropriately.

Some of the dozen dimensions she explores are familiar, such as whether people are motivated ‘towards’ a goal, or ‘away from’ a situation, but others are a bit more unusual, such as how much people are motivated by change, and what kind of change they enjoy; or how people get convinced.

Another interesting dimension is how motivated people are by having a procedure to follow (Procedures) vs making up their own way of doing things (Options).

At the extremes, both styles are difficult – an extreme ‘Procedures’ person needs something they can follow like white lines on a road, and will be completely thrown by missing steps or exceptions. An extreme ‘Options’ person will get nothing achieved, because they are forever reinventing the wheel before they use it.

As you might expect, entrepreneurs are, almost by definition, towards the ‘Options’ end of the scale. After all they’ve identified a better way of doing things, and experimented with that untill they’ve turned it into a successful business.

What they may not realise is that the people they employ aren’t necessarily the same. Which can lead to frustrations on both sides:

“Why don’t you just do it?”, “Why am I the only one that thinks of these things?”, “Why am I re-doing everyone else’s job?”

“Because you’ve never told me what it is you trying to do.”, “Because you never told me how it should be done.”, “Whatever I do, you’ll change it, so why should I bother?”.

Fortunately, most of us fall somewhere in the middle of these extremes, so it’s possible to accommodate everyone’s individual working style without having to delve too far into what they are (although I do recommend using this book to create a ‘brief’ for a role, and recruiting for the critical dimensions).

Here’s how you do that:

Create a high-level map of how your business makes and keeps its Promise to the people it serves. A Customer Experience Score, that tells people what has to happen when, but leaves the details of how to do it to them.
Document important detailed techniques separately, in a kind of ‘Enquire Within upon Everything’, so it’s available anyone who needs it, either as a day-to-day guide, or an occasional memory-refresher.
Where it’s really useful, signpost relevant techniques from the Score.

For example:

Images copyright DogKnows Ltd.

With a score like this, people know the outcome they are aiming for, and can be given full responsibility and autonomy to achieve it (or over-achieve it), in their own unique style. Or to simply follow the process, if that’s how they roll.

Discipline makes work more enjoyable for everyone. Including you.

Which is what makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

June 1, 2023

How to tame the tiger

Growing your small business from you, to a few and then a few more people can feel like riding a tiger. Unpredictable, challenging, dangerous even.

New customers, new employees, new ideas, new ways of doing things that don’t match the customer experience you carefully crafted on your own. Trying to match increased costs with an increase in income. It can feel like everything just gets wilder.

The answer isn’t to cage the tiger, or to beat her into submission.

Instead, make sure she shares the values you value, tell her what you want her to do to make and keep your promises, give her a safe enclosure to roam in, and let her get on with it.

Get off her back.

Because she’s not actually a tiger.

She’s a team of people like you, who want to do the best they can, like you, in a space that gives them agency, mastery, autonomy, purpose and a feeling of community, like you.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

May 26, 2023

Why I do what I do

You’ve probably heard of Charles Babbage as the inventor of the earliest form of computer. You probably haven’t heard of him as an analyst of manufacturing – a Taylorist long before Taylor:

“(250.) We have seen, then, that the effect of the division of labour, both in mechanical and in mental operations, is, that it enables us to purchase and apply to each process precisely that quantity of skill and knowledge which is required for it: we avoid employing any part of the time of a man who can get eight or ten shillings a day by his skill in tempering needles, in turning a wheel, which can be done for sixpence a day; and we equally avoid the loss arising from the employment of an accomplished mathematician in performing the lowest processes of arithmetic.

(251.) …there are a hundred and two distinct branches of this art [watchmaking], to each of which a boy may be put apprentice: and that he only learns his master’s department, and is unable, after his apprenticeship has expired, without subsequent instruction, to work at any other branch. The watch-finisher, whose business is to put together the scattered parts, is the only one, out of the hundred and two persons, who can work in any other department than his own.

(252.) In one of the most difficult arts, that of Mining, great improvements have resulted from the judicious distribution of the duties; and under the arrangements which have gradually been introduced, the whole system of the mine and its government is now placed under the control of the following officers.

A Manager, who has the general knowledge of all that is to be done, and who may be assisted by one or more skilful persons.
Underground Captains direct the proper mining operations, and govern the working miners.
The Purser and Book-keeper manage the accounts.
The Engineer erects the engines, and superintends the men who work them.
A chief Pitman has charge of the pumps and the apparatus of the shafts.
A Surface-captain, with assistants, receives the ores raised, and directs the dressing department, the object of which is to render them marketable.
The head Carpenter superintends many constructions.
The foreman of the Smiths regulates the ironwork and tools.
A Materials-man selects, purchases, receives and delivers all articles required.
The Roper has charge of ropes and cordage of all sorts.”

Charles Babbage, from “On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures“.

Babbage was an abolitionist. He could afford to be. He had found a way of applying some of the technologies developed to control plantation slaves (division of labour, supervision, surveillance through record keeping) to the ‘free’ workers of his native country, so that an industrialist could extract the maximum value from their work at minimum cost and minimum risk of revolt.

He was in at the beginning of a long tradition of thinking of business as machines, and trying to turn humans into robots.

In my own small way, a few amazing small businesses at a time, I’m trying to reverse this by:

Enabling a business to structure itself around the value they create for their clients, rather than the means of controlling the workforce, and to give everyone who works in it access to ‘the big picture’ of what, who for and why.
Enabling everyone inside the business to take responsibility (not necessarily the execution) for the entire end-to-end process of making and keeping promises, and gain the satisfaction of doing the whole job. And/Or to negotiate what processes or activities they perform according to their strengths, personailities and interests and those of their fellows.
Supporting people with a framework that gives them (and the business as a whole) confidence that they doing the right thing, along with the freedom to adapt it as they see fit to suit their own personality, the situation and the client in front of them.
Eliminating the need for managers and administrators. People manage processes, not other people, and admin is a side-effect of doing the job.
Replacing record-keeping with feedback, immediately and transparently shared to the people running the process, so they can use their judgement on how to deal with exceptions or improve the system.

In a nutshell, to turn an amazing business into a self-managing ecosystem, that can scale, evolve and make more impact because everyone in it is ‘the boss’.

The original boss disappears, not because they leave, but because they have blended in. And when they need to leave, they can, easily, without having to lose the business too.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

May 24, 2023

A self-managing system

This junction, near where I live, used to be managed by traffic lights. It’s a busy junction on the relief road around the town centre. It’s used by cars crossing through the town in 4 directions, buses getting into the town centre, and pedestrians heading to the shops or to catch a bus.

With traffic lights, everyone had equal priority. Queues of cars and buses would build up, while each lane took it’s turn. Pedestrians would wait for 5 minutes or so to get their turn. At rush hour, the car queues would back up a long way, making everyone grumpy and selfish, blocking the junction for everyone.

Then, several years ago, it was turned into this roundabout.

A roundabout is a pretty wonderful invention. It’s not really a thing, but a protocol, a set of rules based on responsible autonomy. A driver chooses when to use it, responsible not just for their own safety, but also the safety of other users. Busy roundabouts aren’t always great through, the entrance with the heaviest traffic ends up having a de-facto higher priority than the others, and at busy times, pedestrians barely get a look in.

For the best possible flow of traffic, the answer was to make the roundabout part of a shared space like this, where pedestrian crossing places (but not zebra crossings, which would give pedestrians priority) are clearly marked, and the painted roundabout gives drivers a clue how to use it, but not the priority a built-up roundabout with signage would give them over pedestrians.

The roundabout protocol governs the cars at busy times, and the uncertainty of the pedestrian crossings means at all times, everyone has to slow down, look at their fellow road users and negotiate their way across the space.

The difference this made was immediate and huge. It’s busy at rush hours, and that makes drivers a little less likely to stop for pedestrians, but its never been as bad as it was before.

But what I only realised the other week, when I took this photo, was that in this space, the pedestrians make the roundabout work even better.

A pedestrian crossing one arm of the junction can break a flow of car traffic and give cars on another arm a chance to get on the roundabout. So even at busy times, traffic flows more or less smoothly, because when there are more cars, there are also more pedestrians to interrupt the flow.

The best thing of all though, is that this setup enables people to see each other as people – we make eye contact, acknowledge each others’ presence and most of the time behave graciously towards each other.

It’s a self-managing system, with people at its heart.

What’s the relevance of this to a small business?

Well, a founder usually starts off as a set of traffic lights, controlling everything strictly from the centre.

When this gets too much, they might delegate the traffic lights job to a manager, a ‘traffic cop’. Which isn’t much fun for the traffic cop and doesn’t change anything for road users.

Or they install policies, rules, procedures, expecting people to follow them with the same level of strictness. Which makes things better, but still not as flexible as they could be, and certainly not as much fun. Things still get clogged up at busy times, and pedestrians (the people) often get ignored.

My answer is to put a system like this into place:

Install a protocol based on responsible autonomy (a Customer Experience Score), into a shared space of values (your Promise of Value), that’s focused on the desired outcome (Making and Keeping your Promise to customers) and gives plenty of room for gracious flexibility. To create a self-managing system, with people at its heart. No supervision required.

Discipline makes Daring possible. But only when the Discipline isn’t rigid.

Ask me how.

May 19, 2023

The point about a Score

The point about a musical score is that it tells you where you are, what comes next and where you’re trying to get to.

So when your bow breaks in the middle of your passionately executed violin solo, you can simply borrow one from the lead violinist and carry on. And so can the rest of the orchestra.

Ok, the pause breaks the illusion for a second or two, but the experience as a whole doesn’t break down. In fact, it becomes more memorable.

Not because it ‘failed’ but because of the ease with which it was got going again.

The only change you might want to make afterwards is to add a spare bow to each performance.

The point about a customer experience score is that it enables you to keep your promise, creatively, no matter what.

Discipline makes Daring possible

Ask me how.

HT to @Bev Costoya for the prompt.

May 18, 2023

Why create a Customer Experience Score?

Why write down your Customer Experience Score? I can think of at least 6 reasons:

Memory.
- Without a Customer Experience Score, some of the knowledge of “what we do here” and as importantly, “how we do things round here” and “why we do what we do” gets lost every time one of your ‘good people’ leaves. This knowledge also gets changed as new people join and bring their previous experience with them.
- This can be overcome by a founder that spends time and energy ‘policing’ the culture (think Steve Jobs), but one day even the founder will disappear.
- A Customer Experience Score gives your business a memory of its own, outside the heads of the people in it – including you.
- That memory needn’t be prescriptive. The most detailed score still leaves room for interpretation, and you can make it more improv if that’s your style, but the main thing is that if the business always remembers the “what”, “how” and “why”, your people don’t need to make it up as they go along.

Detachment.
- As Japanese businesses know well, what I call a Customer Experience Score embodies the ‘thing’ a group of people are working on – whether that’s a play, a car, a building or a service.
- This allows a certain level of separation between ‘what I am trying to achieve‘ and ‘who I am‘, which makes it much easier for everyone involved to discuss and agree improvements, because it’s ‘the thing’ that’s being judged, not ‘me’. Free from the fear of personal criticism, your good people can eagerly look for ways to make things better.

Confidence.
- Having a Customer Experience Score to follow while they learn, gives people confidence that they are doing the right thing.
- Once people are confident that they know what they are doing, they don’t wait to be made accountable – they take responsibility. With the confidence of a process behind them, your good people can pretty much manage themselves.

Emotion.
- Most modern businesses, large and small, involve interactions of some kind – with other employees, customers, and suppliers.
- These interactions require emotional labour – listening; empathising, being present to the other person as well as intellectual labour – pattern-matching, imagining potential scenarios, reviewing possible solutions etc..
- Without a Customer Experience Score these interactions become harder than they need to be, because every interaction is treated as unique, where in fact they fall into common patterns, with unique features.
- Your Customer Experience Score captures what has to happen in the common patterns, giving your people a framework to work from that doesn’t need much thinking about.
- A Score frees up intellectual and emotional energy to be spent on the unique and personal aspects of regular interactions, and on the exceptions that either prove the rule, or highlight the start of a new pattern. With their heads cleared of the routine, your good people can use their hearts to do more than keep your promises – they can confidently exceed them.

Automation.
- The hardest part of automating any process or function is specifying exactly what it is you’re trying to do. This is so hard that most people skip this step, trusting the software to do this job for them. The trouble is, off the shelf software is by necessity, targeted at a mass market, while you have your own unique way of making and keeping promises. This means either conforming to the way everyone else does things, or worse, automating the details, without understanding the process as a whole. With a Customer Experience Score, you can use automation (even off the shelf) to strengthen your uniqueness, not dilute it.

Longevity.
- Not even I would say that a Customer Experience Score can be designed to deal with every possible scenario, exception or eventuality, and without good people a Score-based business gradually fossilises and becomes irrelevant, or worse, gets completely out of step with its environment.
- Good people can handle exceptions appropriately when they occur. They can also identify when those exceptions are due to environmental changes that need to be dealt with by adjusting the Score.
- Good people spark off constraints (such as a process), they ad-lib, improvise, invent workarounds, dream up ridiculous scenarios that open up new opportunities. With a solid framework to play in, good people bring a business to life – they make it human. A Customer Experience Score enables people to keep your business alive and human for generations to come.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

May 16, 2023

Keeping it simple

“If you don’t tackle the underlying organizational complexity and bureaucracy that generate the torrent of meetings and email requests, you’re not going to make much progress–no matter how clever your personal “hack” might be.“ Michele Zanini in response to: “Workers Now Spend Two Full Days a Week on Email and in Meetings“.

No matter how ambitious you are, I bet you don’t want your small business to end up like this.

If you keep the overall structure simple and the purpose clear:

Then empower your team to manage processes rather than other people, you can make sure you never do.

And that means you can grow bigger, without growing slower.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: The Disappearing Boss

Everyday genius

Words and meanings

Options and Procedures

How to tame the tiger

Why I do what I do

A self-managing system

The point about a Score

Why create a Customer Experience Score?

Keeping it simple