Discipline makes Daring possible. – Page 121 – Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

May 8, 2019

What do small business owners want?

You’ve guessed it.

Agency – to make their own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
Mastery – to learn and master new skills.
Autonomy – to be free to choose how they make their dent.
Purpose – to do this for something bigger than themselves, that has meaning beyond the sale.
Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.

The question I, and business advisers like me, need to be asking ourselves is then:

What can I do to help them achieve these things?

The side-effect of delivering that is likely to be scalability.

May 7, 2019

Us and Them

Nothing says ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ quite like a wall. Whichever side you’re on.

Except of course that isn’t how people work.

In practice, each fort along the wall becomes the nucleus of a community, a vicus or neighbourhood, made up of the garrison and the local people who service it; adopting each others’ fashions, assimilating aspects of each others culture.

As a business, it pays to be really clear who your Promise is for; to put a metaphorical wall around ‘Us’, so that a prospect can easily tell which side they are on.

But it shouldn’t be set in stone. Walk your boundaries regularly, see where new neighbourhoods are forming and adjust accordingly.

PS my friend Lisa Settle is trekking the other Wall to raise funds for more research into Type 1 Diabetes.

May 3, 2019

Potting

It’s very satisfying to try out your idea for a pot, refining with each attempt until you come up with a version you are happy with. But what about reproducing that time after time exactly, in the quantities required to make profit?

To make a living, potters have to choose between two poles – to be an ‘artist’ commanding high prices for one-off pieces, or become a ‘manufacturer’, getting other people to churn out copies of their original by the thousand, competing with even bigger manufacturers to reach a mass market.

Studio potteries are the mid-point many have found.

Small runs of standard wares in standard glazes are produced by the potter and their team, with enough variation in the form and glazes to satisfy maker and purchaser. One-off pieces can behave more like art and give scope for exploration of ideas that keep the pottery style current.

That seems like a sweet spot in which to sit, and it doesn’t have to be small.

May 2, 2019

Network effects

I first became interested in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at school. I read everything I could about them, gradually expanding my reading to encompass their associates, friends and family, then widened further to include adjacent or overlapping art styles such as Symbolism and Art Nouveau.

Years later, I’m still surprised by finding new connections between artist craftspeople of this era and people who designed and things I actually own.

The most interesting thing about this is how organic it is – a furniture maker’s nephew becomes a glass designer, a family friend gets roped in to help with embroidery and ends up founding a needlework school.

It took longer than we would like today, but gradually, these people changed the world around them, and continue to do so.

Something worth remembering in the rush for exit.

May 1, 2019

Work/Life Balance

Too often, it seems, people have to look outside their work to achieve the things that matter to them – agency, mastery, autonomy, purpose and community.

What if the thing we call ‘work’ enabled this too?

Owners who offer this to the people who work with them, find themselves able to achieve more of these things outside the workplace.

There’s no need to balance anything. It’s all life.

April 30, 2019

Art and Craft

When people are given responsibility for a job, and the autonomy and resources to complete it, they impart a kind of delight to the thing they create, a delight shared with anyone who uses it.

We know this, which is why we love farmer’s markets, indy coffee shops, craftspeople and artists of all kinds.

It works for intangible creations too.

April 29, 2019

User-centric

The Shakers knew that people wouldn’t be able to resist chair-tilting, so they invented a mechanism that would make it safe for the chair and for the person.

They also made their chairs beautiful.

That’s what I call user-centric design.

April 26, 2019

Rocks in the road

When a big change comes along, imposed from outside, we tend to view it as a problem. A rock thrown in our path – unnecessarily, we think.

But its possible to view it as a welcome opportunity, a chance to pause on the road and reflect on what we’re doing, why we are doing it and who for.

If I was an accountant, now that the first part of MTD is out of the way, I’d be asking myself:

What is the job of an accountant?
Who can I best serve?
What do they really want?
How does MTD and its ramifications help me put the answers to these questions in place?

That rock might just be a signpost to a better path.

April 25, 2019

Distance

At home, if I burn my hand on the handle of the grill pan on my cooker (because I’ve forgotten that when the oven is on, the grill also gets hot), I don’t have to report that to my boss, who’ll report it to her boss, along with all the other mishaps of the kitchen. I don’t have to wait for a decision from them on how best to avoid that next time.

Of course not. I’m a grown-up. I say to myself “stupid woman, of course that would be hot!”, and remind myself to use an oven-glove next time. And I do. I don’t need a notice on my grill pan handle saying “Caution – may get hot”.

If I keep burning my hands, then I need to find out why. Are my oven gloves getting lost? Am I rushing things too much? Should I buy different oven gloves that are easier to use? Should I invest in a different cooking arrangement?

Of course this is fine for me, I don’t share my kitchen with other cooks. But I think the principle is the same.

Given the responsibility and the means, the people in the kitchen are probably best placed to solve most kitchen problems.

April 24, 2019

Reporting

Nobody likes reporting. It gets in the way of doing the job.

Because it feels like an extra task, it gets pushed back to the last minute, and possibly even made up. Worse, it can be very tempting to request more information in a report, because ‘they’re reporting anyway’.

On the other hand, feedback is essential if a business is to thrive and evolve.

So how best to get feedback you can rely on?

Firstly, keep it simple. What is the least you need to know whether are not things are going well?

Secondly, make collecting that information a side-effect of doing the job. The trick here is to find a step in your process that creates its own trail. A step that either gives you the data you need or can act as a proxy for it. If that’s not possible, sample instead of monitoring continuously.

Of course, reporting as we know it only happens because the person doing the job is not the person making decisions about how best to do the job.

That’s where the real problem lies, and the solution to that is responsible autonomy.