Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: The Disappearing Boss

Who do you help your client to become?
September 13, 2022

Who do you help your client to become?

Most of the time we don’t buy to meet a simple need.   We buy to get a job done.    We don’t buy a drill, or even a hole in the wall, we buy ‘putting a picture up’, ‘fixing that broken chair’.

Even then, this isn’t what we really buy.   There’s a bigger job behind the immediate job to be done, the job of becoming a better version of ourselves, in a way that others will notice.

That means that at the heart of every Promise of Value is an unspoken promise.  A promise of transformation, that goes something like this:

“Working with us will enable you to become who you want to be, in a way that is congruent with your values, beliefs and style, so you can join the tribe that feels like home for you, with the status you seek.”

It’s clear from this that it is not just what you do that matters, but how you do it.   And if you are to be congruent with your client’s values, beliefs and style, they must in turn be congruent with at least some of yours.

It’s well worth identifying what the minimum level of congruence must be, in order to make working together satisfying for both you and your clients.   What values must your clients espouse with you?  What behaviours must they share?  What must they believe that you also believe?

Once you know this, you know what kind of people you are a good option for.  Therefore what language you need to use to speak to them so they feel seen.

Now you just need to know where to find them.

Every enterprise makes a Promise
September 12, 2022

Every enterprise makes a Promise

Every enterprise, even the smallest or shortest-lived, makes a Promise.   It can be summed up simply as “what we do for the people we serve“.

Unfortunately it’s rarely spelt out as clearly as it could be.  If you run your own business you know it’s there, because you have clients who love you, and recommend you to all their friends.

But I bet you find it difficult to articulate clearly.   And I bet your team find articulating it even harder.

It’s very hard to live something that you can’t articulate.   So if you’re feeling a bit frustrated by your team’s inability to deliver on your enterprise’s Promise as well you would like, here’s something you can do to help:

Get your whole team together and ask this simple question:

“What’s brilliant about this business?”

Get everyone to spend 10 minutes answering this question on a generous pile of sticky notes, then, one by one, starting with the newest or shyest, get each person to share what they’ve written and why they wrote it.

As they do this, listen out for gems.

When asked ‘what’s brilliant?‘, people often start with clichés like ‘quality’ or ‘service’.

If you encourage them to explain why they’ve written that, they often voice values, behaviours and specific examples that are far more reflective of the value you bring to clients.

Capture these on new sticky notes as you go, and share them with your own at the end of the session.

It’s an afternoon’s work, but you’ll be glad you did it, because by answering this question with your team, you’ll not only articulate your own values and preferred behaviours, you’ll also identify values and behaviours you share with at least some of your clients.    You’ll know exactly who they are.   They’ll be the clients you most enjoy working with, and who most appreciate what you do for them.

What’s more, you’ll have energised your team.  You’ll have discovered nuances of your Promise of Value that you didn’t know about before.   You’ll have started to articulate more clearly what makes your enterprise unique.

And perhaps most importantly, you’ll have reassured yourself that you’re all on the same side.

In your head, in the world
August 30, 2022

In your head, in the world

The reason you can wander around a new town centre without getting run over is that you don’t have to remember or even really know, how a town centre works.  The information you need to navigate and interact with it successfully is built into its design.

Pavements tell you where you can walk.  Kerbs tell you where the pavement ends.  Different paving tells you which parts are pedestrianised.  Black and white stripes tell you where you can cross the parts reserved for motor vehicles. Shopfronts and market stalls tell you where you can buy things. Litter bins tell you where to put rubbish.

Much of the knowledge of what a town centre is and how to use it is ‘in the world’, which means it doesn’t have to be in your head.  Once you’ve encountered one town centre, you have a mental model – an enabling framework – that you can apply to the next, without having to remember every detail.

Knowledge ‘in the world’ enables us to use our experience to deal with the new and unexpected safely.   When our town centre introduced ‘shared space’ – space that pedestrians and motor vehicles are meant to share nicely – they helpfully made it from patterned paving so walkers didn’t mistake it for a pedestrianised area, in black and white so that cars knew to expect pedestrians.  They also added low-level signage to tell everyone this was something new.

It’s worked brilliantly.

Knowledge ‘in the world’ saves us brain space and effort.

So why do we business owners insist on trapping all the knowledge of how our business should work inside our heads?

The revenge of Muri – a reprise
August 24, 2022

The revenge of Muri – a reprise

When times look good, or you think nobody will notice, it’s tempting to overload systems, processes and people.
A little cut here, a small increase in workload there.    A freeze on recruitment, a delay of re-equipping or upgrading.    It has no visible effect on the bottom line.    You get away with it.
So it becomes tempting to do it again.    To ‘keep it lean’, ‘cut no slack’, ask people to ‘lean in’, commit 100% 110%, 120%, 150%.
And again.
And again.
Then, when you’ve cut everything to the bone and built your entire system on just in time, lowest cost, no slack, it doesn’t take much to bring the whole thing crashing down.
It’s not rocket science.   We are part of a system.   Overloading any part of it is not sensible behaviour.  Overloading all of it at once is madness.

Freeloaders will try, of course, because it means they can extract a higher immediate return.   Blind to the fact that they will not be able to enjoy it.
It’s up to the rest of us to prevent them.   For their sakes as well as ours.

Legacies
August 23, 2022

Legacies

We all think we’re going to live forever.

We go through life making our dent in the universe without giving a thought to what might happen to it after we’ve gone.  If we think of a legacy at all, we think of it as money or assets to be left to our children.

There are other ways.

Artists leave a body of work that can remind everyone that comes after of their unique dent.   Writers or composers do even better.  They leave behind the means to re-create their work, so their unique dent can actually get wider and deeper for hundreds of years after they’ve turned to dust.

And many of us start enterprises.  Most of which will die when we do, even when they are successful.

Why?  When with a little effort, we could leave the means to continually renew and expand our dent to reach everyone who needs it for generations to come?

That’s what I’d call a legacy.

And my mission is to help business owners like you leave yours – for generations to come.

 

 

Confusions
August 22, 2022

Confusions

Stick insects confuse their predators on purpose.   They pretend to be a twig.  A predator already has a mental model of what a twig is and how it works, which doesn’t include being edible.  So it leaves the insect ‘twig’ alone.

We humans confuse people all the time.  Sometimes on purpose, most often by accident.   We assume that our mental model of the thing we’re building will be obvious to everyone who buys it, uses it or operates it.   Yet that is rarely the case.

Take a small business.  For a shareholder or investor it’s a machine for generating returns.   For founders it’s a way to make a dent in the universe or their route to a coveted lifestyle.  For their accountant it’s a set of connected accounts.  For an operations manager it’s a set of loosely related functions, one of which they probably consider to be the most important.  For some employees it’s a means to enjoy life outside work.  For others it’s a lifeline, and for others still a vocation.   For a customer it’s a solution to a problem.

Conflicting mental models pull people in different directions and make the thing you’re building confusing, less effective and ultimately unusable.

The answer?

  • Use a model that is simple, easy to communicate and effective in delivering what everyone wants.
  • Design the thing you’re building around that model, so that the way it works clearly reflects the concept behind it.
  • Share your model in your marketing materials, shareholder reports, filed accounts, operations manual, help guides and status reports, so that it becomes a joy to interact with, whatever your role.

If you’re a small business owner, you might like to use mine:

It works well, if you want to create a business that can last or that can grow.

Or both, if that’s what you want.

By accident or design?
August 18, 2022

By accident or design?

One day you will have to leave your business.    Will that be by design or by accident?

If you feel strongly about what happens to it once you’re gone, leaving by design is by far the better option.   And the best time to start is now.

After all, you never know what’s around the corner.

Are you building to sell or to last?
August 17, 2022

Are you building to sell or to last?

Are you building your business to sell or to last?

The answer makes a huge difference to what you do before you leave – even if in the end you sell it.

And if the answer’s ‘Neither‘?

Then your business dies with you.

There’s no right answer.

It just helps to be clear.

Recognised by small boys everywhere.
August 15, 2022

Recognised by small boys everywhere.

I’m pretty sure you’ll recognise what type of plane this is.

“It’s a Spitfire!”  I hear you yell.

Of course it is.

But not the one that R. J. Mitchell is famous for.   The Spitfire picture here is a Mark XVI, a variant of an earlier variant, the Mark IX.

You see, Mitchell created the Spitfire Promise of Value – a fast, high-performing plane that is easy to fly.

After Mitchell’s premature death in 1937, his colleagues continued to improve and build on Mitchell’s original design, to produce better Spitfires, adapted to different tasks, eventually creating 24 different Marks.  All still fast, high-performing and easy to fly,  and each one clearly recognisable as a Spitfire to small boys everywhere, despite their differences.

That’s what happens when you decide to become a Disappearing Boss.   You may disappear, but your vision won’t.

In fact it might just get bigger.