Discipline makes Daring possible. – Page 128 – Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

January 29, 2019

Who’d ‘a thought it?

“Labor can and will become its own employer through co-operative association.” — Leland Stanford.

Yes, that Stanford.

I learn something new every day.

January 28, 2019

Years ago, a coffee shop – an offshoot of a well-known brand – opened in the middle of my local shopping centre. It had a nice old-fashioned feel, reminiscent of a cafe from the ‘30s, with wait staff and a long bar where coffee etc. was prepared. Of course I tried it out.

It used a very clever, but simple process. You waited at the entrance. When there was a table ready, you were ushered over to it and given a copy of the menu. Someone came and took your order, taking the menu away once they had delivered it.

It worked beautifully. Nobody was seated at a dirty table and the staff could easily tell who was waiting to give or receive their order.

Except, if you wanted another coffee, or a friend joined you halfway through, there was no way to re-order, except by trying to catch someone’s eye. But they weren’t looking for you, they were looking for menus.

So either it wasn’t meant for spending much time in, or they hadn’t thought it through.

It’s a great idea to design a process for the 80% of cases. But you do need to make sure you can handle the exceptions in a way that still fulfills your promise.

January 25, 2019

Ownership

“How do I get my people to think like an owner?”

Make them an owner.

January 24, 2019

Seeing it through

Seeing a case or project through from beginning to end is very satisfying – both for the person doing it, and for the client on the other side.

But how do you achieve that when you need to be flexible in how you assign resources?

By having a clear, high-level process for handling cases, then making sure everyone knows how to run it, and that all the information needed to move that case forward is accessible to anyone who needs it at any time.

Most of the time, one person can handle the whole thing. But when that isn’t possible (due to holidays or illness, or scheduling constraints), the client needn’t feel the difference.

And you’ve just created a more empowering division of labour.

January 23, 2019

Top-down, bottom-up

I get the feeling that top-down thinking is very unfashionable at the moment. It smacks too much of command-and-control, over-complicated buraeucracy, and having things ‘done to you’ instead of ‘done with you’ – or even ‘done by you’.

Bottom-up thinking is great for quick wins, incremental change and emergent consensus, but top-down can uncover opportunities for radical change that bottom-up thinking will miss, because you’re asking higher-level questions – “How should we keep our promise?”, rather than “How do we open the office?”.

And often, by answering these high-level questions, we can remove whole chunks of low-level procedure that would otherwise go unquestioned.

We shouldn’t let our thinking get trapped in our organisational structure.

January 22, 2019

Keeping it simple

When creating a checklist like the one I described yesterday, it’s tempting to dive into lots of detail and try … Read More “Keeping it simple”

January 21, 2019

Serialisation

Years ago, I worked with a client who wanted to streamline and automate how clients were onboarded and offboarded (if that is a word). They didn’t have much time to spend with me, so they gave me a copy of the checklist they used so I could get a handle on how it worked.

This checklist would get created whenever a new client signed up, and would travel around the client’s office from one person to the next, with each person doing, then ticking off the task they were responsible for.

If you have something like this (and it might be an electronic ‘checklist’), here’s a useful question to ask yourself:

“Does the next person really need to wait for me to complete my task before they can start theirs?”

If not, they probably shouldn’t be on the same checklist.

January 18, 2019

An eye-opener

I was introduced to this book a few years ago by the people at Matte Black Systems.

It was an eye-opener.

The way we’ve always done things isn’t the only way.

Take a look.

January 17, 2019

Marketing

‘Marketing’ used to mean shopping – going out to the market and buying what you couldn’t produce yourself.

That’s still quite a useful way of looking at it if you have something to sell.

January 16, 2019

“People will always need [insert ancient profession here]”

Being in an industry that’s driven by compliance seems like a safe option.

But when the compliance part can be automated, outsourced or down-skilled (and it will be the compliance part that goes first), you have to offer more if you want to stay in profitable business.

There will be many incumbents who decide to step out when this happens.

That’s a great opportunity for those who want to step up.