Discipline makes Daring possible. – Page 110 – Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

October 14, 2019

Security vs Sovereignty

A supermarket gives me courgette security. I can buy courgettes all year round, any day of the week. They’ll always be the same size, ripeness and quality. This comes at a cost of course. Supermarket courgettes are always priced at the out-of-season level, even when there is a glut in my allotment.

My allotment gives me courgette sovereignty. I can grow as few or as many as I like. I can grow whatever varieties I choose, provided I can give them the conditions they need. This comes at a cost of course. I have to spend time preparing the soil, weeding and watering to give them the conditions they need.

Which option you choose depends on how much you value their side-effects.

The supermarket option is convenient, freeing up time to do other things. On the other hand, those all-year-round courgettes are grown under plastic which ends up in the soil; in an arid part of Spain, which depletes the local water supply; and are picked by migrants, who live in virtual slavery.

The allotment option involves exercise, fresh air, and the satisfaction of doing it yourself. On the other hand, I have to pay rent, keep it looking neat, and after all my hard work, I may not get any courgettes.

But when I do, I’ll really enjoy them.

October 11, 2019

Day of the Girl

Today is the International Day of the Girl Child.

That might be an understatement.

Go girls!

October 10, 2019

Laughter

“Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression.” ― Margaret Mead

The laughter of children is one of the most joyful sounds we know. It often comes with discovery – seeing a pigeon for the first time, chasing bubbles, being rained on. It arises from sheer enjoyment of being alive, exercising our faculties, making a new discovery.

Occasionally you’ll hear this kind of laugh from an adult, hardly ever at work.

Which means to my mind, that there’s something wrong with work.

Have a great weekend.

October 9, 2019

Shopping

Yesterday evening I picked up my second ever online grocery order from Greenwich Pier. It was more expensive than buying the same stuff from Ocado, but not eye-wateringly so.

What I bought:

Coffee beans, chocolate, olives with lemon, olives with garlic, almonds and honey.
A contribution to the restoration of the Raybel – a historic Thames barge that will be used in future drop-offs along the Thames.
Support for small, organic growers and producers across Europe and in South America, so they can carry on treating their land, their crops and their people right.
A contribution to another income stream for the schooner Gallant and other ships like her, so that more people can enjoy sailing in her, and more people can buy goods shipped by her.
Support for New Dawn Traders and the Sail Cargo Alliance they are part of.
A contribution to another way of doing things.

We waited, in the open air for a good 10 minutes before my shopping arrived – far longer than I’ve ever waited at my favourite bugbear, the supermarket checkout – but I didn’t mind. Funny that.

We never buy ‘just stuff’. We buy what we think it means for us. Sometimes what we think it means and what it actually does are the same thing.

And that makes us ‘consumers’ more powerful than we realise.

October 8, 2019

Juggling

Jugglers make life difficult for themselves on purpose. For our entertainment. So we can marvel at their coordination and dexterity.

Business owners juggle because they haven’t realised yet that the balls can be self-powered and self-organising.

Or that enabling this is an even more impressive act.

October 7, 2019

Ups and Downs

Quiet weeks, when nothing much happens, drag by while we’re in them. Afterwards, they almost disappear from our memories. We tend to remember the last interesting event before that quiet week as if it was only yesterday.

This is understandable. We are constantly bombarded with information, and most of the time what this information is telling us is boring – its OK, everything is normal, no need to worry. The unusual or extreme is what we need to take note of. Up or down, good or bad, high or low.

So while of course we should constantly measure what matters to our business, it makes no sense to report it if everything is normal. Let’s save our energy for dealing with the highs and lows.

October 4, 2019

Unscripted

Too often we think that treating customers the same way means putting them through the same mechanical process. In doing so we mistake customers for widgets. We also mistake our staff for widgets.

Much better to exploit the possibilities offered by human beings to create processes that are consistent without being mechanical.

The trick is to think about what must be covered as part of the process, then find a way to help the human being running that process to remember that, while giving them freedom as to how they cover it.

Take a phone call for example. Rather than scripting a sales or customer service call, why not create a simple prompt sheet, that lets the person making the call remember what must be covered, while letting them cover it as part of a natural conversation with whoever is on the other end of the phone. I’ve written an e-book showing you how.

Both sides of the conversation will feel more natural, and that makes both sides much happier to make and receive your calls.

October 3, 2019

Consistency

Good Services principle number 9: A good service is consistent. I like this principle particularly, because consistent doesn’t mean uniform. Your services

October 2, 2019

Resonance

There is a whole family of stringed musical instruments that capitalise on resonance.

These instruments have additional ‘sympathetic’ strings, that are never touched, but are tuned to resonate in harmony with the normal strings. So when the instrument is played, a richer, more complex harmony of sound is made – almost as if the player has been given an extra hand.

Your Promise of Value is how your business is tuned. Everything you do, for customers; staff; suppliers, shareholders and the community around you needs to resonate with it.

That way, they become ‘sympathetic strings’ for your Promise, extending your reach and helping to make it truly believable.

October 1, 2019

Not just for customers

Your Promise of Value encompasses how you behave as a business, the benefits you offer prospects and deliver to customers, and the relationships you create with customers over time. In a way, it represents “what the business is here to do”.

As such, it is isn’t only for prospects and customers. A Promise of Value also describes how the founders and their team have decided to fulfill some of their own needs for agency, mastery, autonomy, purpose and community. And as such, it creates a framework around which people who work in it as employees can fit their own fulfillment of those needs.

The ideal for a business is to kill two birds with one stone – so that making and keeping it’s promises to customers simultaneously delivers fulfillment for the people who work in it. But that is hard to achieve (and may not be desirable – where would change come from?)

So as a business you have to accept that not all employees will want the same thing. Some employees will want all these needs fulfilled by work. Others will use what work gives them (perhaps money, mastery) to fulfill other needs (perhaps purpose, community, agency) outside work. That means that offering multiple opportunities for fulfillment that are consistent with your Promise of Value is the key to creating an engaged workforce.

In other words, your Promise of Value is not just for your customers, it’s for your employees too. And both promises need to be kept if you want to succeed as a business.