The Disappearing Boss – Page 57 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

January 15, 2019

Professionals

“A critical characteristic of a profession is the need to cultivate and exercise professional discretion – that is, the ability to make case by case judgements that cannot be determined by an absolute rule or instruction” [*]

So, how do you get professionals to do things the right way?

Not by expecting them to work like fast-food operatives, or a production line.

First, work with them to build a shared vision of what ‘the right way’ means for your clients – what I call your Promise of Value.

Then create a supporting framework of high-level, end to end business processes that operates at the right level of abstraction – delivering guidance rather than absolute rule. Something like a professional musician’s score, that tells them what to play, but not how.

The two things together make a powerful combination that encourages consistency, yet leaves plenty of room for judgement on the exceptions, plus plenty of scope to evolve the system in the light of experience.

In other words, you’ll free your people up to be professional.

January 10, 2019

Queues

Despite my frequent rants about self-checkouts, there is one good reason to have them.

If you only have one or two things, you don’t want to wait behind an enormous weekly shop. A self-checkout or basket-only lane is a good solution here.

Similarly, its a good idea to split the bakery queue into ‘sandwiches’ and ‘bread’, so bread buyers aren’t waiting behind the office lunch order.

Sorting a big queue into separate, differently handled sub-queues reduces queueing overall, and makes handling the different types of order easier, because you’re not switching between them all the time.

Better for everyone then.

Forcing everyone into the self-checkout queue defeats the object though.

Consistency

Whatever you’re promising your prospects, it isn’t just about the technicals of what you do, it’s also about how you do it, and that needs to be carried through into every experience

January 8, 2019

Stressors are information

As Nassim Taleb says in his excellent book ‘Antifragile’, ‘stressors are information’.

That means that rather than just get stressed by them, you can use them to direct improvement.

For example, when ‘exceptions’ start to become common, it’s a sign that something in your system needs to change in line with the environment.

A good place to start is by asking “How could I pre-empt this situation?”.

January 6, 2019

Optimalism

It sometimes seems to me that the world is divided into two ways of dealing with uncertainty.

You can expect the worst, and try to protect yourself from that possibility by tightly specifying and controlling everything down to the last detail.

Or you can expect the best, and leave everything to chance.

Neither response is optimal. The first closes off opportunities to do better than expected. The second leads to drift.

A more constructive approach is to set direction, leaving latitude for serendipity, obliquity and creativity, measuring effects as you go.

That way, whatever your natural bias, the worst that happens is that things get better.

January 2, 2019

Automating computers

This fact is not as well-known as I think it should be:

The world’s first business computer was developed for J Lyons & Co. Ltd., to streamline and automate the analysis of the masses of data they collected every day, through which they could accurately predict demand in their chain of tea shops.

What is even less well known, is that the machine, installed in 1951, was the culmination of 20 years of business design by John Simmons and his team.

In other words, they didn’t just throw new technology at the business. They worked out what was the best way to do things, put those processes in place, tested and tweaked them and only then used LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) to automate parts of them.

It’s an approach worth reviving.

PS. If you’d like to find out more – “A computer called LEO” is a good read.

PPS. The ‘computers’ were the chains of female clerks who cumulatively added up the daily numbers received from tea shops. One of Simmons’ ambitions was to release people from this kind of mental drudgery.

December 13, 2018

Doing it ourselves

Mozart could carry an entire opera in his head. But he didn’t expect his orchestra to read his mind. He wrote them a score.

A jazz composer like Art Blakey didn’t expect his band members to read his mind either.

He also wrote them a score. But he left gaps in it for them to improvise in – within the framework of the piece. The piece was different every time, and yet also the same. You can tell when its Art Blakey.

Its tempting to do it all yourself when you want to control the experience your audience has.

But better to work on creating a framework that supports your team in doing it ourselves.

December 12, 2018

Not doing it yourself

Small business owners like us can easily become control freaks.

Not because we need to be in control of other people, but because we care about making sure our clients get the experience they deserve, the one we promised them.

Sometimes we think its easier to do it ourselves rather than delegate the job to someone else, because we’re under pressure and properly getting someone else into a position where they can do it as well as (or better) than we could takes time, energy and intellectual effort.

So we take the easy route (again) and do it ourselves ‘because it’s quicker’.

That’s a trap.

It’s much better to take the hit of time and energy now, because this will make growth easier in the long run.

More importantly, doing everything ourselves means we never make the space to dream up new, better ways of delighting the people we serve, to dare more, give more and strengthen the bonds we have with them. That’s what really builds a business that will outlast us.

If you need more convincing, work through the exercise illustrated above, and work out the true opportunity cost of doing everything yourself – not just in monetary terms, but also in terms of your own fulfilment.

Why do it yourself if someone else can do it better and more joyfully?

December 11, 2018

Doing it Yourself (again)

One of the interesting things I noticed about Gothenburg was an absence of what you might call ‘flunky’ jobs.

In the numerous coffee bars, bakeries and lunchtime restaurants I visited (in the interests of research of course), I saw no wait staff, nobody clearing tables. Instead, customers picked up their own orders, and cleared away their own mess as they left – in one restaurant we even cleared our plates and sorted our dishes into trays ready for the dishwasher.

It was as if nobody felt they had to increase their own status by having someone else adopt an unnecessarily menial one (even as a paid role). How very grown-up.

The sincerest service takes place between equals.

December 10, 2018

Do it yourself!

I recently flew back from Sweden. At Gothenburg airport, I got my luggage label and boarding pass from the self-service machine, and waited in front of the designated check-in stations to drop my luggage. There were 4 stations, so 4 queues formed.

After about 30 minutes 3 airline staff members appeared. One sat at one check-in and proceeded to handle a customer. Another opened 2 other check-ins and hovered nearby. The third hovered at the front of the queues.

After another minute or so, while we hesitated, waiting for something to happen, the person managing the queues signalled the passenger at the front of my queue over to the open check-ins, and the passenger at the front of another queue over to the one next door. The next passenger in my queue was sent back to the self-check-in machines behind us to start again, because he didn’t have a boarding pass and luggage label.

It wasn’t clear what was happening at the stations, but when it was my turn I realised I had to take the scanner, scan my luggage label and put my suitcase on the belt. If it was within the weight restriction it would be accepted, otherwise not. I didn’t get to scan my label, because the staff member took the scanner off me and did it herself, as I was going too slowly.

The whole thing raised some questions for me.

If there was effectively only one queue, why have more than one lane?

If the idea was to do it ourselves, why did we have to wait before we could start?

If you want me to learn how to do it myself, why do it for me?

Most of all, what was the point of this arrangement – who was supposed to benefit?

The airline was still employing 3 people. It wasn’t quicker or easier for passengers.

In fact, the only outcome I could see was that everyone was left feeling slightly bemused and a little grumpier than they were before – the passengers because they’d been queue-jumped and made to feel stupid; the airline staff because they were being asked to manage a process that made things worse.

So, what was the point?

It would have been much better to have the 3 staff members running 3 stations, with the fourth open as a self-service. Frequent flyers who know the drill, or people who are happy to have a go at doing it themselves could have used the self-service station, everyone else would have got the benefit of the staff members’ familiarity with the procedure and the equipment, with the added bonus of some positive human interaction.

I suspect that this clumsiness came about in response to an earlier attempt to go completely do-it-yourself, which had failed miserably because the system couldn’t handle exceptions (what happens when someone’s luggage is rejected and there’s nobody there to see?), or took a lot longer (because most passengers just don’t do this every day).

Or maybe it was simply that in order to justify charging for normal service, they had to create an alternative that was not just self-service, but anti-service?

Instead of re-thinking the process, the airline was simply trying to force the new one to stick, dissatisfying everyone along the way.

I see the same thing happening all the time in banks, shops and supermarkets – some lucky staff member now has the job of ‘managing’ a process that effectively tells a customer:

“Don’t expect any service, don’t try and talk to us, don’t try and ask a question, don’t be old, or naive, or need help. We just want your money, and we don’t care if takes you twice as long to do what you came in for, as long as we still get it. Let’s face it, you don’t really have a choice do you?”

There is just one question to ask if you’re thinking about introducing DIY into your business.

Who is it really for?

Customers aren’t stupid. They can tell when it isn’t done for them. That means they’ll be open to an alternative when it comes.

They might even make their own.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: The Disappearing Boss