The Disappearing Boss – Page 26 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

July 5, 2022

Reinventing the wheel

Before you can Package your Promise of Value effectively, you need to know these things about the people you serve:

the situation(s) in which they find themselves
the transformation they seek – their Job to be Done, and how motivated they are by their situation to achieve it.
how your Promise of Value is likely to appeal to them
how you can help them to get their Job to be Done done better than the alternatives – even, possibly, that you are the only way they can get this Job to be Done, done
how able they are likely to be to take up your Promise

Once you know these things, you can begin to design one or more Packages to suit the needs, motivation and ability of the people you serve.

There are 4 things you need to consider when designing a Package:

Function – how far does the Package go to help your client get from where they are now to where they want to be? To get their Job to be Done, done?
Format – how will you physically get that benefit into their hands?
Timing – is the Package a one-off intervention or is it delivered over a longer time-frame? Is there an end to it?
Price – how much does the Package need to cost to profit both parties?

I’m thinking out loud here, re-inventing the wheel for myself as usual.

What do you think?

Tell me, I’d love to know.

July 4, 2022

Patrick Hurley takes a huge blank piece of paper, thinks about what he wants to draw – ‘It’s going to be a ring, I want it to have depth, it will be made of squares‘ – marks a few points for guidance.

Then he draws. In a single continuous line.

From a distance the result has impact. There’s a clear structure, a vision – you might almost say a purpose to it.

Up close, you feel tenderness for the humanity of it. The wobbles, the inconsistencies, the variation, the failure to keep to the ‘perfect’ alignment.

‘It’s like life,‘ says Patrick ‘You can only go forward, if you make a mistake, do better next time, or do something that atones for it.’

Yes.

Work is part of life. So why not approach it this way too? Create a framework with clear boundaries, a goal and a method for achieving it. Then let everyone add their own humanity.

Impact with tenderness.

Find Patrick and more of his work on instagram: @hurleyman03.

June 30, 2022

Love/Hate

There is much about being in charge of a company that every owner loves:

being part of a team,
working towards a common purpose
camaraderie
feeling that you’re not on your own
seeing ideas come up from others – better than any you could have dreamed up
seeing people grow and develop as a result of working with you – not just at work
Seeing your vision come to life.
The feeling of ‘I made this’.

There is also much about being in charge of a company that every owner seems to hate:

telling people what to do
making sure that they are doing it
worrying about whether they will do it properly
checking that they have done it properly
doing it again yourself when they haven’t
telling them they didn’t do it properly
telling them (again) how you want it done
dealing with disappointed clients
performance reviews
finding and hiring the right people
seeing them go
being the last to leave
being the last to have a holiday
being the last to be paid
not getting to do any of the ‘real’ work

What if you could have the bits you love, without the bits you hate?

You can, if you think about where the bits you hate come from.

If you were building an office block, or putting on a play, or making a film, you would have something that told people exactly what it is you’re trying to create. You’d have plans, a script and stage directions, a storyboard. If you were writing a symphony you’d have a score.

These things don’t just describe the outcome, they document how it is arrived at.

It’s not the bricklaying or the carpentry you’re worried about, you know your team know how to do that. What you’re worried about as an owner is the look and feel of the thing, the experience the audience – your client – will have of the finished article.

When you started your business you lovingly and painstakingly handcrafted the client experience yourself, in collaboration with the people who ‘got’ what you can do for them.

You expanded your business first by freeing up more of your own time – by handing over specific jobs that require specialist skills – bricklaying, joinery, accountancy, hr, phone answering. These are generic jobs, with their own rules that specialists learn. But there comes a point where you have to hand over parts of the customer experience itself, whether that’s sales or delivery.

This is where the problems start.

The solution is startlingly simple.

Create a description of the customer experience and how to deliver it, that ensures everyone starts from the same level of understanding as you.

That way everyone gets what they love.

June 28, 2022

5 principles for composing your Customer Experience Score

Principle 1: Remember why you’re doing it.

Everything you do in your business is done in service of making and keeping Promises to the people you serve.

This is the bigger picture:

You need to remember that when you compose your Score, and you need to ensure that your people will remember it every time they play it.

Principle 2: Not how it is now, but how you really want it to be.

As soon as you’ve written it down, your Score becomes your new ‘As-is’. Until you improve it again. You’ll never get to ‘To-be’.

Principle 3: The person playing this will be a human being like you.

You’re not composing for a robot, or a computer. You’re composing for a human, who can fill in any gaps from their experience, knowledge and skill. They need prompts, not instructions. They’ll probably suggest improvements.

Principle 4: Have a golden rule for dealing with the unexpected, and a recovery process for when things go wrong

You can’t predict every eventuality. Things change. So it pays to have a ‘golden rule’ that allows anyone to deal with them in line with your Promise.

Similarly, mistakes are bound to happen. The way you deal with them is part of your Promise. And there is a way to make errors work for you and actually strengthen your Promise: Be human.

Principle 5: Admin is a side-effect of doing the job

You want to spend as much time as possible on the thing that pays – making and keeping Promises to the people you serve. Everything else is a side-effect. But you have to design your business to work that way.

The first piece of admin to treat like this, is getting paid. Make it part of the process – even if it’s the final note of your Score. That way you can make sure it happens, on time, every time. Especially if you also make it part of the customer experience.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

And if you dare, I can bring the discipline.

June 22, 2022

Subjects, Consumers, Citizens

If humans are naturally empathetic, flexible and co-operative, how come it feels like we’ve lost that?

Because we fall for stories. Stories where our empathy and flexibility can be used against us.

I’m into the last of my 4 new books: ‘Citizens‘ by Jon Alexander and Ariane Conrad, and I’m so glad I’m reading it after Sarah Hrdy’s one.

According to Jon and Ariane, we’ve trapped ourselves in certain stories – stories that we didn’t create, but which had enough advantages for us in them to be accepted.

The first is the Subject story – one man at the top of our tribe has the right to tell everyone else what to do. The rest of us are subject to his will, whether we like it or not. The deal is meant to be that in return, the man at the top will take care of us, make sure we are fed and housed and can live our little lives. The downside of this story is that there’s not much room for movement. Your place is fixed and you know it. The upside is that you can sneak in quite a private life on the side. For an interesting exploration on how this story might have come about, I recommend ‘On Kings‘ by David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins.

The second is the Consumer story – we are not a subject, we are a free person! Free, that is, to choose between whatever options are given. The deal here is that we can be whoever we want to be, as long as it involves buying stuff. The more, the better. We aren’t encouraged to think about how that stuff is made, by whom, or what effect it might be having on other people and the planet. We aren’t encouraged to think at all. Our job is simply to consume. The Consumer story likes community, likes tribes. Tribes encourage people to compete with each other in buying stuff. The upside of this story is that as a Consumer we can fully express our indivduality in a myriad of ways. The downside of this story is that we feel disconnected, lonely, unfulfilled somehow, and there’s only so much stuff you can fit into one lifetime.

The third story is the Citizen story. In this story we are empathetic, co-operative, flexible. We recognise that we are part of something more than a community or a tribe, that we are individuals who are also part of a society. A society we make, and could just as easily make differently. In this story we make and re-make society from the bottom up, collaboratively, deliberately, consciously. The downside of this story is that it takes a lot of effort, it means taking responsibility not just for ourselves, but for others, and it means participating with others in a messy process. The upside is that this is our natural story, and the more we practice it, the better we get at it.

How do these stories play out in your business?

Are your clients or customers simply Consumers? Or are they Citizens, helping to shape the little society that is your business?

Are your people Subjects? Knowing their place. Living their ‘real life’ outside the workplace, doing just enough to keep you happy? Or are they Citizens, helping to shape the little society that is your business?

And you? Are you a King, worrying about who’s after the top spot? Or are you a Citizen, building a little society that will both outlast you and remember you as its founder?

Citizenship makes Daring possible.

June 15, 2022

Catching on

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

For many of us, this is exactly why we start a business. To build our own little utopia, where we make the rules, and get to decide how our world within a world should work.

But if we want to make a bigger impact, our model of how the world should work has to catch on. With clients, with team members, with suppliers, investors, our families and friends, our competitors.

That can only happen once the model is outside of our heads.

The good news is that getting it out of your head makes it easier for it to catch on.

June 9, 2022

Writing it down

Sometimes, it seems we business owners have a problem with writing things down.

On the one hand we think we have to pin down every last detail; dot every i; cross every t and cover every eventuality, so that absolutely nothing can go wrong. On the other hand, we fear that writing down anything at all will somehow stop our people thinking for themselves.

The answer is to sketch. Make a picture, not a document.

We humans are very good at working out what’s going on from sketches, outlines and broad strokes. We can follow the basics, and use our imaginations to fill in the rest.

If your ‘business imaginations’ are bounded by a clear and comprehensive Promise of Value, a sketch of what has to happen to make and keep that Promise is usually enough to be helpful without stifling imagination. You can always elaborate further where needed.

A sketch is much better than an excruciatingly detailed tome that we’d never have time to read.

And way better than a blank sheet of paper.

It’s discipline that makes daring possible.

June 8, 2022

Handshake overhead

“Handshake overhead is the result of the simple law of more people. n*(n – 1)/2. Two people need one handshake to be introduced. On the other hand, 9 people need 36 handshakes. More people involve more meetings, more approvals, more coordination.” Seth Godin, from this post.

Only if you’ve designed your business so that everyone needs someone else’s approval to get things done.

The great thing about designing your business to be more like an orchestra than a pin-factory, is that if you want to make more noise you simply add more players.

Give each new player a copy of the Customer Experience Score to follow, a bit of time to practise, then simply let them get on with it.

If everyone in your business knows how to make and keep your Promise from beginning to end, there’s no need for them to get anyone’s approval first.

Least of all yours.

June 7, 2022

Archaeology

I’ve been reading a book on ‘Women in Prehistory’, in which the author quite rightly expresses caution about inferring social structures from archeological finds.

That reminded me an episode of ‘The Goodies‘, in which Bill Oddie attempts to reconstruct a prehistoric creature from a fragment of fossilised bone. The resulting creature is preposterous, because Bill’s assumptions about what the bone was and where it came from in the original animal are completely wrong.

It isn’t only ancient history that can be misinterpreted in this way.

If an archaeologist discovered your abandoned business tomorrow, what could they infer about how it works from the artefacts left behind?

What do today’s new joiners and new customers have to infer from the systems, people and processes they encounter when they arrive?

The advantage of writing down your Customer Experience Score is that nobody has to guess, or reconstruct the symphony from a single note.

There’s room for different interpretations of course, but they are very unlikely to be preposterous.

June 6, 2022

What if you were wrong?

It’s June 2340. You’re about to retire.

You haven’t sold your business. That doesn’t worry you. No, not at all. Because over the last 30 years of running your business, every decision you’ve ever made; every view you’ve ever held; every comment you’ve ever uttered and every single idea you’ve ever had, has been recorded in a database, along with full details of the circumstances in which you made, held, uttered or had them.

The database will run your business for you. You’ll still be the Boss, you just won’t be there.

That’s probably just as well.

What if the circumstances never repeat?

What if your decisions, views and ideas could have been better?

What if you were just plain wrong?

A business is not an algorithm.

It’s an ecosystem of actions driven by values and emotions. For making and keeping promises. By humans to humans. More than the sum of its parts.

Far too precious to hold on to for the sake of it. And much more robust than you think it is.

Especially if you plan your disappearance beforehand.

HT to Bev Costoya for inspiring this.