Discipline makes Daring possible. – Page 123 – Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

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.

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?

April 5, 2019

Exit

Investors and business angels have a clear exit strategy – grow fast for 3-5 years, sell up and crystallise the gains. Happily, this strategy often coincides with that of the entrepreneur, who wants to get this business idea going, and then move on to the next.

Most small business owners don’t have an exit strategy, or certainly don’t start with one.

Thinking about exit often only happens when some event reminds us of our mortality. If that doesn’t happen, the business simply winds down to nothing alongside its owner.

Partly this is due to our natural tendency to think short-term; partly because we simply can’t imagine ourselves without our business, and partly because we don’t believe our business could survive without us.

Perhaps then, rather than focus on our own exit, we could focus instead on the future life of our business as we would focus on the future life of our child – with the aim of making it independent?

If a business was a child, we would nurture it through the early years, then start giving it more responsibility and autonomy, so that when the time is right, the child leaves us, ready, willing and able to make its own dent in the universe.

This doesn’t mean you exit your business with nothing, it just changes who you might sell it to.

Who better than the people who helped you raise it?

April 4, 2019

Perspective

I’ve been having a problem with “employee engagement” for a while now. It’s a similar problem to the one I have with “customer experience”.

I’ve been thinking about why this is is, and I’ve realised that its because both these phrases speak from the same perspective. They’re really about ‘me the employer’ or ‘me the seller’. Actually, they are most often used by corporates, so are often really about ‘me the shareholder’.

As a result they feel (to me at least), manipulative, even extractive. They are about what I can get from you the employee, or you the customer.

Employees don’t want to be ‘engaged’, they want the same things you do:

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 we 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’.

And the only experience the customer wants is one that gives them at least some of the same things you want:

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 we 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’.

Perhaps if more businesses thought from this perspective, and tried to give their employees and customers what they really want, we’d have a happier, more productive world.

April 3, 2019

Beyond Automation

It’s hard to imagine a more old-fashioned business than shipping goods around the world under sail, yet that’s exactly what’s beginning to flourish right now, thanks to 21st century technology.

The internet, and some clever (open source) platform software connects a global community of producers, consumers and small ports with merchants like New Dawn Traders, enabling sailing ship enthusiasts to voyage ‘for real’, carrying profitable cargo as well as people who’ve bought into the experience; bringing the theatre of a ship coming in to small ports – turning ‘online shopping’ into a community event.

What’s more, these cargos may travel under sail, but the ships use the latest navigational and forecasting technology to stay on course, and avoid being taken by surprise by the weather.

What’s fascinating is what doesn’t get automated. Hauling ropes, for example is done old-school, by hand, by the crew.

“You can get motorised winches, that would do all this at the touch of a button,” Alex Geldenhuys of New Dawn Traders tells me, “but doing it by hand and voice is great exercise, fantastic team-building and very good for morale. Why would you want to get rid of that?”

For this group of people, automation isn’t the end game, it’s the means to a completely new game, that creates space for the very best of what it means to be human – curiosity, connection, community, and care for the planet.

That’s a future I’d like to see more of.

April 2, 2019

Dismantling the E-myth

In his E-myth books, Michael Gerber identifies three key roles in a business: the entrepreneur, who drives the vision for the business; the technician, who does the work, and the manager who acts as a bridge between them, planning and organising the work of technicians to achieve the entrepreneur’s vision.

If the vision is shared by everyone, do you then need managers?

I don’t think so, but you do still need management – a way for the technicians to know what they have to do, and how well they are achieving the vision, so they can work out for themselves how best to move forwards.

This is great news for small business owners, because I’ve only ever met one person who wanted to be a manager.

If the vision is explicit and shared, and technicians manage themselves, do you then need an entrepreneur?

No, but you do need entrepreneurship – a way for technicians to see new ways to deliver the vision profitably.

So, if you can push both management and entrepreneurship down to the people who actually do the work, what happens to the entrepreneurs who founded it?

Their baby will have grown up, to be independent, autonomous with their original vision still in its DNA.

They get to choose what they do next.

April 1, 2019

Virtual Reality

The right metaphor can get to the heart of your promise faster than a speeding bullet, creating an instant bond between you and the people you want to serve.

Metaphors work because they are simple, direct and emotional.

A good metaphor paints a picture worth a thousand words: “Longcroft Luxury Cat Hotel”.

The best metaphors conjure up an ongoing relationship: “Let us be Houston to your space mission”, “Welcome to our loving family”.

A metaphor that truly captures your promise acts as a compass for everyone involved in the business – your team, your collaborators, your suppliers and your clients. Whatever the situation, people will always know the right way to go.

But you can take it even further, by using your metaphor to actively design the way your business works, creating your own virtual world, where people take on different roles to play out what that metaphor means for your clients. If you get the metaphor right, it won’t even feel like work.

And that means you can make your business autonomous.

If everyone knows their part, has access to all the right props, and has a compass for when things go astray, they don’t need you to watch over them do they?

March 29, 2019

Go Blunt

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I had clothes to wash. I was in Brussels, and the place I was staying had no washing machine, so I headed off for the nearest launderette.

What’s stuck in my mind all these years later is the instructions on the washing machine. On one side of the door they were in French, on the other, Flemish.

The French instructions took up 4 times the space, and talked about “making coins to be introduced into” the machine.

The Flemish on the other hand was blunt – “stick your penny in the slot”.

The point of this story? If you are struggling to explain what your promise is, try blunt.

March 28, 2019

Leverage

“Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the Earth”.

We tend to focus on the lever, but the ‘place to stand’ is just as important.

Without sure footing, the lever can’t get purchase.

When you know the essentials are being done consistently, you can experiment at the edges to make things better.

Discipline makes daring possible.

March 27, 2019

Constraints

No composer would present his orchestra with a blank scoresheet and expect them to play – not even John Cage.*

Creativity requires constraints. The blank sheet of paper numbs imagination.

“Thinking outside the box”
“Pushing the envelope”
“Pushing boundaries”
“Bending/stretching/breaking/re-writing the rules”

If you want the creativity, you have to create constraints people can work from.

Discipline makes daring possible.

*Cage’s box was for the audience, not the orchestra.