Discipline makes Daring possible. – Page 27 – Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

June 13, 2023

Words and meanings

control (kənˈtrəʊl)

noun:

the power to influence or direct [other] people’s behaviour or the course of events.
the ability to manage a machine, vehicle, or other moving object.
the restriction of an activity, tendency, or phenomenon.
the ability to restrain one’s own emotions or actions.
a means of limiting or regulating something.

verb:

determine the behaviour or supervise the running of.
maintain influence or authority over.
limit the level, intensity, or numbers of.
remain calm and reasonable despite provocation.
regulate (a mechanical or scientific process).

hierarchy (ˈhʌɪərɑːki)

noun:

a system in which members of an organization or society are ranked according to relative status or authority.
the clergy of the Catholic Church or of an episcopal Church.
the upper echelons of a hierarchical system.
an arrangement or classification of things according to relative importance or inclusiveness.
the traditional system of orders of angels and other heavenly beings.

chaos (ˈkeɪɒs)

noun:

complete disorder and confusion.
the property of a complex system whose behaviour is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions.
the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe.
the first created being, from which came the primeval deities Gaia, Tartarus, Erebus, and Nyx.

anarchy (ˈanəki)

noun:

a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.
the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism.

The interesting thing about all of these definitions (from Oxford Languages), is that all but one are descriptions.

That odd one out is an opinion. From someone further up the hierarchy, used to being in control of people other than themselves.

Voluntary cooperation is a form of control. It’s just that each participant gets a say in in defining what it means (sometimes as they go along), and agrees to join in.

We do this all the time, mostly without noticing.

As a child, I called it play.

And it could be how we work.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

June 12, 2023

Small is beautiful

I wish I’d read this book 50 years ago.

Although, to be fair, I probably wouldn’t have understood that much of it back then.

Still I do wish I’d read it 20 or 30 years ago.

It explains where we are so clearly and simply.

We’ve been living off our capital. And now it’s running out, fast.

There is still time to change our spending habits, but we need to start now.

If you haven’t already read it, do.

Then remember that we were warned 50 years ago.

It’s not our fault nothing’s changed.

@just.stopoil are right.

June 8, 2023

Options and Procedures

I must apologise to regular readers. I’m about to mention, yet again, one of my favourite business books.

The brilliant “Words That Change Minds”, by Shelle Rose Charvet is both a guide to the different ‘working styles’ people bring to a given context (in this case work), and a guide for using what you learn about these to communicate appropriately.

Some of the dozen dimensions she explores are familiar, such as whether people are motivated ‘towards’ a goal, or ‘away from’ a situation, but others are a bit more unusual, such as how much people are motivated by change, and what kind of change they enjoy; or how people get convinced.

Another interesting dimension is how motivated people are by having a procedure to follow (Procedures) vs making up their own way of doing things (Options).

At the extremes, both styles are difficult – an extreme ‘Procedures’ person needs something they can follow like white lines on a road, and will be completely thrown by missing steps or exceptions. An extreme ‘Options’ person will get nothing achieved, because they are forever reinventing the wheel before they use it.

As you might expect, entrepreneurs are, almost by definition, towards the ‘Options’ end of the scale. After all they’ve identified a better way of doing things, and experimented with that untill they’ve turned it into a successful business.

What they may not realise is that the people they employ aren’t necessarily the same. Which can lead to frustrations on both sides:

“Why don’t you just do it?”, “Why am I the only one that thinks of these things?”, “Why am I re-doing everyone else’s job?”

“Because you’ve never told me what it is you trying to do.”, “Because you never told me how it should be done.”, “Whatever I do, you’ll change it, so why should I bother?”.

Fortunately, most of us fall somewhere in the middle of these extremes, so it’s possible to accommodate everyone’s individual working style without having to delve too far into what they are (although I do recommend using this book to create a ‘brief’ for a role, and recruiting for the critical dimensions).

Here’s how you do that:

Create a high-level map of how your business makes and keeps its Promise to the people it serves. A Customer Experience Score, that tells people what has to happen when, but leaves the details of how to do it to them.
Document important detailed techniques separately, in a kind of ‘Enquire Within upon Everything’, so it’s available anyone who needs it, either as a day-to-day guide, or an occasional memory-refresher.
Where it’s really useful, signpost relevant techniques from the Score.

For example:

Images copyright DogKnows Ltd.

With a score like this, people know the outcome they are aiming for, and can be given full responsibility and autonomy to achieve it (or over-achieve it), in their own unique style. Or to simply follow the process, if that’s how they roll.

Discipline makes work more enjoyable for everyone. Including you.

Which is what makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

June 6, 2023

Jumping to conclusions

We humans are apt to shout ‘Eureka!’ at our first inkling of understanding.

And then rush to apply our new bit of knowledge, without thinking about what else might be true, or what the consequences might be.

We grow our understanding literally bit by bit, and fail to see the systems those bits are part of.

In our farms, we miss that microbes, plants and fungi have evolved to work together over aeons. That animals evolved to work with microbes, plants and fungi over aeons.

So we see a thing like artificial fertiliser, or ploughing, or pesticides, or herbicides, and say “That’s the answer, let’s apply more if it. Now! More! Faster!”

Soon we’ve destroyed the finely balanced systems that were there before. And made ourselves more dependent on our crude and artificial methods than before.

In industry, we miss that humans have evolved to care for, play and work together over millenia.

So we come up with a theory that people are selfish and lazy and say “That’s the answer, let’s apply more if it. Now! More! Faster!”. By force if necessary.

Soon we’ve destroyed the finely balanced systems that were there before. And made life miserable for billions.

The good news for our soils is that microbe generations are short, so with the right treatment, our soil microbiome can recover within just a few years.

The good news for our people is that human generations are long, so we haven’t forgetten any of our co-operative, playful and caring traits. They are there already, just waiting to be released.

It’s not too late.

The way to regenerate our soils is through many more smaller farms, growing a wide variety of high-value vegetable crops, with no-digging, plenty of organic matter and lots of rotation.

The way to regenerate our industry is through many more smaller firms, offering a wide-variety of high-value services, with employee ownership, responsible autonomy, plenty of human interaction and lots of rotation.

I can’t help with farming, but business? That’s what I’m here to do.

June 5, 2023

One system to rule them all

It seems to me that our besetting sin as human beings is that we are always looking for silver bullets, the simple solution, the one true answer to everything.

We blind ourselves to the systems that surround us, and in so doing, destroy them.

Why?

Because it’s impossible to monopolise complexity.

So we reduce the world to silver bullets, and destroy the systems that actually enable our lives and others, to maintain a system we created and imposed upon the world.

A system we imagined and could easily re-imagine.

Capitalism.

Not markets, or making and selling things, or money.

Capitalism – ever-increasing profit for profit’s sake, regardless of the damage done along the way.

It’s not too late to change things.

But we’d better start soon.

June 2, 2023

Structure, help or hindrance?

The people ‘growing on’ these corals don’t know what the reefs they end up will look like.

The corals will decide that.

What they do know is that they are aiming to restore as many coral reefs as they can, and that coral can grow, more safely and reliably when it is supported by an appropriate structure, that leaves it free to grow its own way, until its ready to be ‘transplanted’.

Man-made structure can be incredibly helpful when you’re trying to grow for a visionary outcome.

It just needs to be the right kind of structure.

Designed to amplify the outcome, not control it.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

June 1, 2023

How to tame the tiger

Growing your small business from you, to a few and then a few more people can feel like riding a tiger. Unpredictable, challenging, dangerous even.

New customers, new employees, new ideas, new ways of doing things that don’t match the customer experience you carefully crafted on your own. Trying to match increased costs with an increase in income. It can feel like everything just gets wilder.

The answer isn’t to cage the tiger, or to beat her into submission.

Instead, make sure she shares the values you value, tell her what you want her to do to make and keep your promises, give her a safe enclosure to roam in, and let her get on with it.

Get off her back.

Because she’s not actually a tiger.

She’s a team of people like you, who want to do the best they can, like you, in a space that gives them agency, mastery, autonomy, purpose and a feeling of community, like you.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

May 31, 2023

How to help the climate anxious

How do you help the climate anxious (terrified!), overwhelmed by the enormity of what they see coming?

Here’s one way:

– Help them to see the system they are in.
– Enable them to find their own way into an examination of it’s structure.
– Connect the dots, so they can find their best place to take action.
– Show them where others are already making a difference.
– Enrol them into a growing web of actors changing the system.

In other words, give them an opportunity to exercise the agency, mastery and autonomy they crave, for a mighty purpose, in a growing community of like-minded, like-hearted people.

Connect the Carbon Dots is a fine project to be part of.

May 30, 2023

Pour encourager nous autres

On reflection, I’d add one more thing to Ari Weinzweig’s definition of Good Profit:

“Good Profit, I will now say, appears when multiple ecosystems are all benefited at the same time:

Our inner ecosystem
Our client’s inner ecosystem
The ecosystem of the organization in which the profit is produced
The ecosystem of the community of which that organization is a part
The greater ecology of the planet”

That makes some Bad Profits easy to spot: sell addictive and harmful substances, wrapped in plastic, powered by lithium and destined to litter the streets, to people who are desperate, or bored. Vapes, alcohol, gambling, ultra-processed food, toxic social media.

These industries are clearly making Bad Profits at all levels except perhaps one: “The ecosystem of the organization in which the profit is produced”. Even this is questionable – how must it feel to work for one of them?

Business making Good Profits are not as easy to spot, perhaps because one aspect of Good Profits is that they tend to be lower (which is also Good, because too much money in the hands of too few people distorts the system). So it’s important that we share them when we find them, so they can grow.

Here are a couple of examples I know:

New Dawn Traders:
- An alliance of regenerative producers, sailing ships, allies at small ports and like-minded customers. Customers buy from port allies near them . The port allies place orders with the broker. The sailing ship collects cargo from the producers, cares for it at sea, and delivers it to the various small ports. Everyone gains – producers are paid better, access new markets, ships earn extra income, broker and port allies get their share and customers get top quality at fair prices. Nobody’s exploited, the earth is cared for, almost no carbon is released. Every ecosystem is nurtured.
Earth Runs and the 1% club:
- People get active, trees get planted. The right kind, where needed. Carbon is captured, jobs created. So far they’ve “planted over 130,000 trees, got over 1,750 people active, provided 1,900 days of fairly paid work for our tree-planting communities and kept the equivalent of 783kg of unwanted medals out of landfill.” Every ecosystem is nurtured.

You know some small businesses making Good Profits.

Please share – “pour encourager nous autres”.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

May 26, 2023

Why I do what I do

You’ve probably heard of Charles Babbage as the inventor of the earliest form of computer. You probably haven’t heard of him as an analyst of manufacturing – a Taylorist long before Taylor:

“(250.) We have seen, then, that the effect of the division of labour, both in mechanical and in mental operations, is, that it enables us to purchase and apply to each process precisely that quantity of skill and knowledge which is required for it: we avoid employing any part of the time of a man who can get eight or ten shillings a day by his skill in tempering needles, in turning a wheel, which can be done for sixpence a day; and we equally avoid the loss arising from the employment of an accomplished mathematician in performing the lowest processes of arithmetic.

(251.) …there are a hundred and two distinct branches of this art [watchmaking], to each of which a boy may be put apprentice: and that he only learns his master’s department, and is unable, after his apprenticeship has expired, without subsequent instruction, to work at any other branch. The watch-finisher, whose business is to put together the scattered parts, is the only one, out of the hundred and two persons, who can work in any other department than his own.

(252.) In one of the most difficult arts, that of Mining, great improvements have resulted from the judicious distribution of the duties; and under the arrangements which have gradually been introduced, the whole system of the mine and its government is now placed under the control of the following officers.

A Manager, who has the general knowledge of all that is to be done, and who may be assisted by one or more skilful persons.
Underground Captains direct the proper mining operations, and govern the working miners.
The Purser and Book-keeper manage the accounts.
The Engineer erects the engines, and superintends the men who work them.
A chief Pitman has charge of the pumps and the apparatus of the shafts.
A Surface-captain, with assistants, receives the ores raised, and directs the dressing department, the object of which is to render them marketable.
The head Carpenter superintends many constructions.
The foreman of the Smiths regulates the ironwork and tools.
A Materials-man selects, purchases, receives and delivers all articles required.
The Roper has charge of ropes and cordage of all sorts.”

Charles Babbage, from “On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures“.

Babbage was an abolitionist. He could afford to be. He had found a way of applying some of the technologies developed to control plantation slaves (division of labour, supervision, surveillance through record keeping) to the ‘free’ workers of his native country, so that an industrialist could extract the maximum value from their work at minimum cost and minimum risk of revolt.

He was in at the beginning of a long tradition of thinking of business as machines, and trying to turn humans into robots.

In my own small way, a few amazing small businesses at a time, I’m trying to reverse this by:

Enabling a business to structure itself around the value they create for their clients, rather than the means of controlling the workforce, and to give everyone who works in it access to ‘the big picture’ of what, who for and why.
Enabling everyone inside the business to take responsibility (not necessarily the execution) for the entire end-to-end process of making and keeping promises, and gain the satisfaction of doing the whole job. And/Or to negotiate what processes or activities they perform according to their strengths, personailities and interests and those of their fellows.
Supporting people with a framework that gives them (and the business as a whole) confidence that they doing the right thing, along with the freedom to adapt it as they see fit to suit their own personality, the situation and the client in front of them.
Eliminating the need for managers and administrators. People manage processes, not other people, and admin is a side-effect of doing the job.
Replacing record-keeping with feedback, immediately and transparently shared to the people running the process, so they can use their judgement on how to deal with exceptions or improve the system.

In a nutshell, to turn an amazing business into a self-managing ecosystem, that can scale, evolve and make more impact because everyone in it is ‘the boss’.

The original boss disappears, not because they leave, but because they have blended in. And when they need to leave, they can, easily, without having to lose the business too.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.