Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Measuring what matters
April 23, 2019

Measuring what matters

Years ago, on my way to work, I’d call in to the Benjy’s sandwich bar next to Cannon Street Station to pick up breakfast. It was always full of other City workers doing the same thing.

In those days, the hot sandwiches and toast were freshly made, and there were only 2 kinds of coffee – with or without milk. You ordered at the counter, waited for your food, and paid at the till.

So far, the same as every other Benjy’s.

But here’s where it changed, because the manager of this Benjy’s had a system.

He took your hot food order, shouted it to the team in the kitchen behind him, wrote it on a paper bag and stacked that bag on top of the one before. That was it. You mooched around the shop (picking up an extra snack or two), until he called out your order. You picked it up along with a tea or coffee from the ready-made batch at the counter, then paid at lightning speed at the till.

The wait for food was never that long – he had clearly parallelised that, so that bacon, eggs and baguettes were always ready, and the stock of teas and coffees was constantly topped up, at least during the busiest times of breakfast and lunch.

All in all it probably took less time to happen than it’s taken me to write down.

What this manager had realised was that what mattered to his clients was not the wait for hot food, it was the wait to place an order. So he built his system around minimising that.

Once you saw that paper bag go down, you knew you were taken care of and could relax. Once you knew your order was in, you weren’t going to walk out without it. In fact you were likely to spend more, to fill in time while you waited.

I never visited another Benjy’s that worked like this one.

I’m guessing that central management assumed that the volume of business this manager handled was simply down to being next to a busy commuter railway station, so never thought to come and look at how he did it, so they could pass that system on to other franchisees.

I don’t know what they were measuring, but it wasn’t what mattered. Which may be why the chain failed.

Rest
April 18, 2019

Rest

For at least the last 189 years, we’ve known that overburdening people, equipment and systems leads to mistakes, wasted effort and sometimes, tragedy. We know that people, systems and even equipment need rest. Time out to repair, recharge and recalibrate.

In the past, days off work were imposed by law – admittedly not so people could rest, but so they could observe religious holy days, but at least they were guaranteed non-working days for almost everyone.

That is no longer the case. Now that consumerism is the national religion and online shopping never stops, we are individually responsible for making sure we take rest days. And the vestiges of our national holidays make that a bit easier to achieve.

So, this is my reminder to have a break. From work, from shopping, from the day-to-day.

Enjoy the long weekend.

See you Tuesday.

Wasted effort
April 17, 2019

Wasted effort

It’s easy to get very excited about increasing efficiency through digitalisation, automation and AI.

But in the excitement we can forget that by ‘increasing efficiency’ what we are really trying to do is reduce ‘waste’, or to put it better, ‘wasted effort’.

In Lean, ‘wasted effort’ falls under 3 categories:

  1. ‘Mura’ or wasted effort due to variation
  2. ‘Muri’ or wasted effort due to overburdening or stressing the people, equipment or system.
  3. ‘Muda’ also known as the “seven forms of wasted effort”

Muri seems like the kind of wasted effort we should always try to eliminate (and interestingly, is the least talked about).

Otherwise, what makes effort wasted?

Quite simply that the customer is not willing to pay for it.

This seems blindingly obvious. Less obvious is the necessary implication – that if a customer is willing to pay for effort, it is not wasted.

So if a certain type of customer is happy to pay extra to be treated differently, this is not Mura. If a customer is willing to pay to have their papers picked up in person, this is not Muda.

The customer’s perception of value is your source of profit. Don’t throw it out with the bathwater.

Reconstruction
April 16, 2019

Reconstruction

It will be rebuilt.

It’s a disaster, but it’s also an opportunity to create a story worth remembering about community, craftmanship and caring. One more layer in this palimpsest of Parisian, French and human culture.

If only we felt the same for every building that burns.

Passive Income
April 15, 2019

Passive Income

Everyone, it seems, is looking for ‘passive income’ – money you don’t have to work hard for, that simply flows from the ownership of an asset.

The most popular asset of this kind is property – land or the buildings on it.   The problem with this is that the underlying resource is finite, and the more people want these assets, the higher the price.

Next comes intellectual property – patents, design rights, licenses.  These take deep pockets to defend, and ultimately expire.

Then there is debt.  This too is limited as a passive income stream because ultimately it kills the source.

There is a type of asset that has none of these limitations.   The autonomous enterprise.   A business that runs without you, generating income by continuously creating new value for the people it serves, and continually finding new ways to create that value.

Paradoxically, this kind of asset is only possible when you fully devolve management and reward to the people who work in it.   That’s not easy to do, it takes courage and a long-view.   But those are the only factors that make it scarce.

Given a framework it can thrive in, there is no limit to human ingenuity.

P.S. I discovered writing this that the word ‘asset’ actually comes from the French for ‘enough’.   That’s an interesting fact worth remembering.

Second Nature
April 11, 2019

Second Nature

Do you remember your first driving lesson?

I do.   At the end of it I wondered how on earth I was going to be able to remember everything – never mind watch out for pedestrians and other traffic!

But after several lessons I got the hang of it, and eventually of course driving became second nature.   To a point where some nights I got home from work almost without realising it.

We humans are able to make a lot of things second nature.  Walking, driving, playing the cello, or rugby, or chess.

We do this by repeating certain combinations of actions until they become habit.   We no longer need to think about them.    That frees us up to to concentrate on the exceptions – those things outside the habitual that are going to prove interesting or dangerous.

But too much reliance on pure habit can also be dangerous.   I bet you’ve had to go back to your car after half an hour of shopping because you can’t remember locking it, even though you’re sure you did.

That’s why pilots have checklists.   To make a habit of the actions that must be done, and then to make sure they perform those actions consciously every time.

What’s the relevance of this for business?   Well, you need to actively create this interesting tension between habit and consciousness:

  • If you want people to develop a particular set of habits (rather than their own), you need to specify what those desired habits are, and get people to practice them.
  • If you want to ensure that certain key actions are always done, you have to find a way to make people aware they are doing them.

Then you can happily let them play with the exceptions.

Discipline makes daring possible.

Delegation
April 10, 2019

Delegation

A quick trawl of the internet found me these definitions of the verb “to delegate”:

  • to give (part of one’s work, power, etc) to someone else.
  • to send or name someone as a representative, as the one to do a job, etc.
  • to entrust to another.
  • to appoint as one’s representative.
  • to authorize and send (another person) as one’s representative.
  • to commit or entrust to another.
  • to entrust (a task or responsibility) to another person, typically one who is less senior than oneself.
  • send or authorize (someone) to do something as a representative.
  • to give or commit (duties, powers, etc) to another as agent or representative; depute.
  • to send, authorize, or elect (a person) as agent or representative.

In most cases the meaning is not ‘doing your work for you’, but ‘acting on your behalf’.

In other words, the key relationship is not between you and the person you delegate to, but between you and the clients they serve as if they were you.

Not employees. Agents. Or ambassadors.

People you can trust to do the right thing.

Outside In
April 9, 2019

Outside In

“The most successful forms start with identifying what is on the outside that they need to interact with and then working their way back into finding the form that best suits their external purpose.”*

For a business the key ‘outside’ thing that ‘they need to interact with’ is the customer. The interaction is making and keeping the business’s Promise.

So to me, it makes sense to build a supporting framework that reflects this. That way, everyone knows what the business is there to do.

*herman wagter & jean m. russell, cultivating flows.

Best Practice
April 8, 2019

Best Practice

One of the challenges in any business, particularly one with a written score, is how to share best practice.

People will continually find better ways to do things and new things to do. And as long as they are congruent with the promise we make, that’s exactly what we want.

But at the same time this is a kind of entropy – a gradual divergence from the original score for the ‘way we do things round here’ that eventually leads to a completely different piece being played – and an irrelevant score.

Not having a score at all doesn’t resolve this issue – it just makes it invisible. On the other hand, updating the score can end up as one of those jobs nobody has time or inclination to do.

How to overcome this challenge?

I think one answer at least might be regular group practice, where everyone gets together and plays out improvements they want to share – backed up by evidence of improved performance.

A ‘scribe’ takes notes and incorporates agreed improvements into the existing score – perhaps based on a vote, or even as alternative options.

Group practice reminds us that we are custodians of a Promise, collaborating to produce an experience that embodies that Promise for our audience – an experience built on the efforts of those who’ve gone before us, enhanced by those we work with, and most importantly, to be carried on by those who come after.

That sounds like a culture doesn’t it?