Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: The Disappearing Boss

Contribution
January 25, 2023

Contribution

As a musical instrument, the triangle is often regarded as a bit of a joke.  A bit ridiculous.  Not to be taken seriously.

Yet a composer includes it in their orchestration for a reason – because it’s unique sound contributes to the experience they wish to convey.  Without it the composer’s promise couldn’t be kept.

When times are hard, it’s tempting to strip back on our offer.  To cut down on the details of our customer experience.

Just remember, it’s your promise you’re really stripping back.  Eventually it will show.

Use your natural ingenuity to find a better way to keep it instead.

Lifestyle
January 17, 2023

Lifestyle

Lifestyle businesses get a bad rap. As if they are not serious. As if they are not real businesses.

In a ‘lifestyle’ business, people make things, or offer their services, for money, that they then use to buy other things which support and enhance their lifestyle – including keeping the business going.

In a ‘proper’ (i.e. capitalist) business, people put money into ventures that will make them more money, that they then use to put into either the same venture or others, that will make them more money. Sometimes the venture is making things that enhance lifestyles, but it doesn’t really matter what it is (smoking, sugary food, addictive medicines) as long as it turns money into more money. Capitalist business is how we’ve got to the mess we’re in.

But it’s lifestyle businesses that get a bad rap.

When in fact they are the original (and best) business type.

They don’t even have to be small. A lifestyle business can support hundreds of people, maybe even thousands.

The point is that they are about life, not money.

Let’s have more lifestyle businesses, I say.

And let’s make them even easier to run for their owners, so they can get bigger and last longer without turning capitalist.

Ask me how.

Reproduction
January 16, 2023

Reproduction

The reason why voter ID is such a bad idea, is that any physical object capable of serving as a ‘unique identifier’ can by definition be forged.  If the technology exists to create it, the technology exists to forge it.

The same is true of a physical product or service.   Almost anything about it that you can consider as ‘unique’ can be copied, reverse-engineered or reproduced by someone else.

And will be if you are successful.

The processes around your product are harder to copy, but not impossible.  Otherwise franchises wouldn’t exist.

But the values, emotional labour and personality you put into making and keeping the promises around your product or service are uncopiable.  Especially if you allow everyone in your team to bring their own self to bear too.

Consistency, not uniformity, is what you’re after.

That’s what makes scaling safe.

Ask me how.

Bottom up, inside out
January 12, 2023

Bottom up, inside out

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently.” David Graeber.

Somewhere back in the 15th century, probably unintentionally, we remade our world, creating a system we now call capitalism.

This system is so good at reproducing itself  it now includes everyone and everything on Earth – and even beyond. Whether they like it or not.

We’ve trapped ourselves inside a system that is good for some, very bad for others and terrible for our planet.

It wasn’t always this way.   It doesn’t have to stay this way.    We can change the system.

But how?  Especially when the people at the top are those that benefit most?

Our small businesses are worlds we make and can easily remake.

Why not start there?   Build a tiny version of the kind of world you’d like to see:  democratic, participatory, responsibly autonomous, humane, non-extractive.   Liberating.

Bottom up, inside out.

Until one day, we are the new system.

A disappearing act
January 11, 2023

A disappearing act

You don’t have to lose your business to be able to leave it.

You just have to take yourself out of the day-to-day.

To do this, make everyone a boss.   Get the music that’s in your head written down so that other people can play it.  Give your people the responsibility and the autonomy to deliver your business’s unique customer experience consistently, in their own style.

The sooner you do this, the sooner you get to choose how much time you want to spend in your business, the sooner you free the business to grow and the sooner you’ll free your people to grow too.

Best of all, you get to keep everything that makes your business uniquely yours.

In the end, you’ll have built a community, not just a business.  A community centred around the promises you make and keep for the people you serve.  A community that becomes your legacy.

Ask me how.

The irony is that all this makes it an even more attractive buy.

But of course by then you won’t want to sell.

What do you really want?
January 9, 2023

What do you really want?

What do you really want?

I’m willing to bet that it’s something like this:

  • Agency – to make your own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
  • Mastery – to learn and master (even teach) new capabilities and skills.  So you can grow as a human being.
  • Autonomy – to be free to choose how you make your dent.  To do it your way.
  • Purpose – to do this for something bigger than yourself.  Otherwise it doesn’t feel like much of a dent.
  • Community – to do all this with ‘people like me’.
  • Status – to know (and for others to know) where you stand in your communities.   That doesn’t by any means have to be at the top.  What you really want is recognition.

 

You can build a successful business by delivering this for your clients through what you give them and the way you do it.

You can build a sustainable business by delivering this for your people through the way that you enable them to deliver to clients on your behalf.

Do both, and you’ve sorted yourself out too.

Lessons from a project with no managers, no boss and where everyone’s a leader.
December 16, 2022

Lessons from a project with no managers, no boss and where everyone’s a leader.

“In six months, 300 volunteers from 41 countries worked asynchronously to produce a best-selling book. The Carbon Almanac is now in ten languages. The almanac for kids, Generation Carbon is in 17 languages. There are more than 88 podcasts, a photobook, and a daily e-newsletter.”  From Fast Company: “Lessons from a project with no managers, no boss, and everyone’s a leader.“

And dozens more spin-offs too.  The enterprise is still going strong, and still growing.

The Carbon Almanac was created this way.

With no managers, no boss.  Everyone’s a leader.

Maybe that’s also how Stonehenge was built?  And Çatalhöyük or Knossos?

Maybe that’s naturally how we build worthwhile things?

Maybe you could take the load off your own shoulders and reframe your small business into something longer-lasting that way?

Making everyone a boss unleashes amazing energy.  Especially when you also give them a lovely firm but springy floor to bounce off.*

Discipline makes Daring possible.

 

*That’s where I can help.

Supported Display
December 7, 2022

Supported Display

I took a lot of photos on my visit to the Museum of London at the weekend.  Some, because I liked the thing I was looking at, this one because I liked the way the display system worked.

It’s a very simple system.  A regular grid of holes at the back allows supports to be positioned in a variety of ways to suit what’s being displayed, from a single bronze shield found in the Thames, to a mix of bronxe daggers and swords, to these flint hand tools.  It’s highly structured, yet flexible and very effective.

But what I really liked about it was the way it’s been designed to foreground the objects, providing each one with reliable support, allowing them to seem to float; putting each one in the spotlight, so that you can appreciate the differences between them as well as the similarities.

You know where I’m going with this.

With the almost invisible support of a Customer Experience Score, your people too can shine in the spotlight – both as individuals and as part of the whole that is your business.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

A medieval carved head of a smiling woman in a wimple.

This I just liked, because it reminded me of Geraldine McEwan.

Hoarding
December 6, 2022

Hoarding

Around 2,000 years ago, someone buried their cash. Did it do them any good that way? Almost certainly not. Could … Read More “Hoarding”

Ephemeral, permanent
December 2, 2022

Ephemeral, permanent

There is something glorious about ephemeral art – elaborate and carefully worked sandcastles, pavement art, papier-mâché effigies. 

All the love and care that goes into creating them, just to be burnt or washed away.    As if we are celebrating our unique human ability to imagine and build a new world within our world every day.

We don’t necessarily think of our businesses as temporary.  We build the version of the world we’d like to see, assuming that we will be around tomorrow to repair or tweak.  Until suddenly, we’re gone.  And all too often our creations die with us, or not long after.

We forget that we too are ephemeral.

Maybe this is how it should be.  But it takes more than one lifetime to change the world.  So if that’s what you’re trying to achieve, you need to build your business around something more permanent than you.

Luckily, it’s possible to retro-fit the framework you need.

Discipline makes permanence possible.

Ask me how.