Discipline makes Daring possible. – Page 109 – Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

October 28, 2019

Purpose

If there is one thing that human beings like better than making their own individual dent in the universe, it’s being part of something that promises to make an even bigger dent.

We crave purpose and meaning in our lives, and if we don’t get it from work, we look elsewhere for it.

‘Work’ becomes merely the means of achieving some of our ‘hygiene factors’ – a roof over our heads, food on the table – the things that enable us to pursue our purpose elsewhere. In which case, ‘work’ probably doesn’t get our full attention, or our best energy.

One response is to starve people into spending more and more time ‘in work’, in order to simply acquire the basics. That’s how you end up with a productivity paradox.

Much better, for everyone, to offer work with purpose.

October 25, 2019

Focus

With a deep understanding of what makes you tick, and what makes the people you serve tick, you can focus on where to find them.

That’s where demographics come in.

Empathy gives you the insight into what these people really want, and why they might like to come to you for help in getting it.

Demographics gives you an idea of where enough of these people might be. And ‘enough’ is a much smaller number than you think.

The trick is to find a demographic that is under-served by what else is out there. People who feel ignored or under-appreciated, will be happy that you focus on them.

Narrowing your focus enables you to make your message much clearer. “This is for you” is far more powerful than “This is for anyone”.

October 24, 2019

The Ideal Client

There is a better way to find out who really is your ideal client.

Simply ask the question from a different perspective:

Who am I ideal for?

That way it’s easier to focus on what they want, not what you want.

October 23, 2019

Transformation

Reflection is an excellent start for clarifying who your ‘ideal clients’ are. By getting under your own skin to discover your values and preferred behaviours, you’ll uncover some of the values and preferred behaviours of the clients you like to work with, and who like to work with you.

This enables you to take the next step – putting yourself in your client’s shoes and seeing what you do from their perspective.

This will move your thinking from ‘features’ (“we produce accurate accounting information”), to ‘benefits’ (“we make sure you have the information you need to run your business well”).

If you already have clients who love you, you can even ask them why they do, and this will uncover benefits you didn’t even know you delivered (“you listen to me”,”you really get to know me and my business”, “you find me suppliers I can trust”).

The next step is to get to the core of the relationship you create with your clients over time, and for that there is one key question:

Who do you help them to become?

Because all business is about transformation – even accountancy.

October 22, 2019

Reflection

Whoever you want as a client, to serve them well, you need to understand them. Empathy is essential.

That’s always hard. Because they are not you. They don’t know what you know, don’t believe what you believe, don’t want what you want.

But you can get a start, by looking at yourself first. What do you know? What do you believe? What do you want? Are you the only one?

Then test what you’ve found with real clients. They’ll soon show you where your assumptions are wrong.

October 21, 2019

Three strangers walked into a bar

On Friday I went to a meetup with total strangers.

Even though we had never met each other before, online or off, I knew it was worth the risk, because we are all alumni of at least one Seth Godin course, and I knew that would mean attendees would be curious about others, open to sharing ideas and information, willing to help each other and have a very interesting story behind them.

I was right. We left the bar feeling like friends. We took selfies, swapped podcasts and arranged to do it again for Christmas, and encourage others to come along too.

All we had in common was that we are customers of a particular brand, living in a particular location.

Can your brand do this?

October 18, 2019

Groupthink

It’s very hard to call out the obvious falsehood when everyone around you wants it to be true. Which is why it’s often the outsider, the uninitiated, the person of no consequence that does.

And why wise leaders keep a Fool close to them.

October 17, 2019

All models are wrong

Walmart is a planned economy the size of Sweden. It isn’t a republic or a democracy. It’s a complex, strictly controlled, bureaucratic hierarchy, with the Walton family at the top.

That isn’t what most small business owners want, so for them, hierarchy isn’t such a useful model.

One alternative is to think of a business as a system – “a group of interacting or interrelated entities that form a unified whole.”

And since “the system is what the system does”, it also helps to define what a business system is meant to do.

For most business owners I know, that is to make and keep a promise to customers, employees and community, and in the process make enough money to keep doing it well.

This model of a business is wrong. But it might be more useful for you.

October 16, 2019

It doesn’t have to be like this.

We are told all the time (in words and deeds) that ‘there is no alternative’ to the way our current global economic model works. Communism was a disaster, anarchy would be chaos, revolution would be tragic.

And yet as families, villages, schools, clubs, friends – as ordinary people we happily operate all those alternative models, all the time, without even thinking about it. We even do it inside the ultimate capitalist entity, a business. In fact, capitalism depends on us operating like this.

As David Graeber points out: “we’re all already communists when working on a common projects, all already anarchists when we solve problems without recourse to lawyers or police, all revolutionaries when we make something genuinely new.”

We’ve worked like this for at least forty thousand years, getting on for two hundred thousand years. Which begs the question. Which model is the exception?

October 15, 2019

Missing You

For over 30 years I did almost all my shopping at my local big-name supermarket.

Recently, I stopped. The trigger was the self-checkouts – they finally brought it home to me that in spite of all the personal ‘offers’, I am not a person for them, I am merely a consumer. A number on a loyalty card.

Do they miss me? I doubt it.

Now I buy from street markets, WI markets, farm shops and sail cargo. I shop around. Not for the lowest price, but for the best price/experience combination.

I want to do business with people that will miss me when I’m gone.

Don’t we all?