Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: The Disappearing Boss

Start here
March 2, 2023

Start here

Years ago, after a holiday in the North East, where we saw the Great North Run kick off, I decided I wanted to join in.   I’ve never been a runner, and had no clue how to begin training or where to even start.

After a bit of searching I found a handy spreadsheet online (yes it was that long ago), that would take me from 0 to 5k in about 12 weeks.

The first step was to go out, run for 30 seconds, walk for 90 seconds, run for 30 seconds, walk for 90 seconds – and repeat till 20 minutes was up.

Gradually, the proportion of running to walking stepped up, until by the end we were running for the full 20 minutes, and eventually, for forty minutes.  I could run 5k without stopping.

If contemplating 40 minutes of non-stop running when I couldn’t run a step was daunting, imagine the thought of getting everything about your Ideal Customer Experience written down as a score.  Paralysing.

Luckily, you can just get going with with a tiny part of it.   Here are some ideas of where you could begin:

  • With something really simple, almost ‘trivial’, like how you open for business each working day, and how you close.  You’ll be amazed what a difference a clear, shared routine makes for everyone.
  • With the most painful part of your Customer Experience.  Where you get most questions from clients or team members, where you have to intervene most often to put things right.
  • With the easiest part of your Customer Experience.  Where writing it down will enable you to delegate the process to others quickly, so you get the headspace to think about the more painful parts.

Like learning to run, it gets easier as you practice, especially if you have a coach alongside you correcting your stance and your style.

But the most important thing is to start.   Here.  Now.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Avoiding infection
February 22, 2023

Avoiding infection

I spotted this from Michele Zanini (co-author of ‘Humanocracy’) back in 2021:

“Our research suggests that the longest-lasting competitive advantages come from innovation in management systems and practices, not from business or operating model innovation.  So diligently pursuing management innovation pays off handsomely.” 

It’s still worth thinking about.

Especially if you’re a small business that hasn’t yet been infected with old-style management structures.

What if you could grow your business without adding overhead?

And take as much time away from it as you wished?

A different way of managing makes it possible.

Ask me how.

Off the shelf
February 20, 2023

Off the shelf

When you buy off the shelf, you’re buying from someone who’s producing for people who do what everyone else does, the way everyone else does it.  That’s what ‘mass-market’ means.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy off the shelf.  Just that when you do, you should be clear that whatever you’re buying really does serve what you do, the way that you do it.

Otherwise you’ll end up having to act like everyone else.

A shame when there are other options available.

Impacting Earth
February 17, 2023

Impacting Earth

Of course your business doesn’t just impact the people immediately involved in it.

It also impacts Earth, therefore other inhabitants too.   Possibly in ways you can’t currently see.

You may not be responsible for the entirety of the impact, but perhaps you contribute.

Just as, by outsourcing my accounting to an accountant, I don’t employ someone directly, but contribute to the employment of the people who work for my accountant, so, by using a laptop and mobile for my work, I contribute to the pollution and oppression created by a lithium mine.

The point is to be aware.  Then to ramp up the positives and minimise the negatives.

That might mean changing how you do business, or even what you do, to play your part in creating a safe and just space for humanity here on our planet:

 

One thing’s for certain, you won’t be short of work.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Entropy

Entropy

“Entropy: Spontaneous increase in disorder of a carefully arranged system.   An irreversible process, except with the input of energy.”

The energy needed to prevent entropy in your carefully arranged business system doesn’t have to only come from you.

In fact it’s better if it doesn’t.

That way a useful level of emergence is possible.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Impacting people
February 16, 2023

Impacting people

If what everyone really wants is something like this:

  • 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.

Then your impact on people is about how much you help or hinder them in their quest to achieve it.

Do you enable people to earn enough to rise above meeting basic needs?  Do you free their time to focus on finding and following their purpose?  Do you help them to master skills and capabilities that will increase their agency and autonomy?  Do you help them connect to a community that values them?

How could you measure these things?

A good place to start might be to look at what changes when it works.   What are the symptoms of that change?  How few of them could you measure to tell you the effect your business has had?

Of course you’ll want to measure these things for your clients.

Remember to measure them for your team and yourself too.   You’re all involved.

Measuring impact
February 14, 2023

Measuring impact

The final component of feedback that matters for your business, is the impact it makes.  On your clients, your team, your family, your friends, your community and your planet.

Impact is probably also the hardest kind of feedback to measure.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

What ripples is your business pebble responsible for?

Make everyone a Boss
February 9, 2023

Make everyone a Boss

Once you’re all working beautifully from the same Score, there’s no real need for one of you to bear all the responsibility for the performance.   That heavy load, shared among many, becomes lighter for everyone.

Especially you.

There’s more than one way to become a Disappearing Boss.  Maybe the best way is simply to blend yourself in?

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Now share the work
February 8, 2023

Now share the work

Your second job as ‘composer’ of your Customer Experience Score is to enable your ‘orchestra’ to play your lovely music as well as they possibly can.

To help them surface all their habits, and consciously choose to keep the excellent ones, improve the ‘good-enough’ ones and ditch the bad ones.    To show them how you can all do even more for your clients, or do what you do 10 times or a 100 times better.    To help them make sure that your music truly reflects your Promise of Value.

Your Score is a great tool for helping you to achieve this.  But your team will also need plenty of practice and rehearsal before they will feel confident enough to do it by themselves.

And it’s in performance that you’ll find the flaws in your Score.

Nevertheless, have confidence that it will all come together and it will, sooner than you think.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

“Having the framework of Share Promise, Keep Promise in particular has helped me stay on target and be confident that there is a destination.”

It’s always been there
February 7, 2023

It’s always been there

When you’re composing your Customer Experience Score, it’s important to remember that your customer experience music has always been there.

If it wasn’t your business wouldn’t be doing as well as it is.   You have clients who love what you do for them.  You have employees and suppliers who love working with you.   The music is there and it appeals to others.  You’re an expert at playing it.

When we become experts, we turn things we used to have to think about into habits we unconsciously perform.   Some of those habits are excellent.   Some are not so good.   They’re simply the habit we got into that made things ‘good enough’ at the time.

Some habits are downright bad, but we keep using them because to do otherwise takes conscious effort, and when you’re busy looking after clients and teams, that’s hard to do.

Your first job as ‘composer’ of your Customer Experience Score is to make the music as good as it can possibly be.   To surface all your habits, and consciously choose to keep the excellent ones, improve the ‘good-enough’ ones and ditch the bad ones.

It’s an opportunity to deliberately assess whether you could do even more for your clients, or do what you do 10 times or a 100 times better.   To make sure that your music truly reflects your Promise of Value, and to re-shape it so that it does.

This is not straightforward.  Dredging stuff up from your subconscious is hard work.  So it helps to have a framework to build on, and a critical friend to encourage you, push you, suggest solutions and hold you to account.

That’s where I come in.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

“The changes and processes you recommended are coming together nicely. But it all takes so much time!   Slowly but surely I’m disappearing as a boss though :).“