Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Adjusting the system 1 – Props
April 24, 2023

Adjusting the system 1 – Props

Once you’ve assessed the potential consequences of what you’re seeing in feedback, and decided what to do about it, you can start acting to adapt your system.

One of the simplest adaptations can be to add, remove, repurpose or refine a Prop – a thing a team member needs to play a Role.

It might be as simple as adding a new set of teaspoons to your kitchen area; adding a footrest to a workstation or replacing computers and laptops.

Props aren’t just physical either.  You might refine an online form you use to capture information or upgrade software, or replace that software with something new, that supports your Customer Experience Score better, or more cheaply.

And like any good theatre, or film production company, you’ll recycle and re-purpose Props – that old computer may no longer cope with the demands made on it, but perhaps it can become a backup location for important data, or perform some less onerous task, or be cannibalised to contribute to a new machine.

Thinking about everything you use in your business as a Prop – there to support your people in delivering the customer experience – means you can be more considered in how you choose what to buy, and how you use it.

Remember to be considered in how you dispose of it too.  You never know, your cast-offs could become essential Props for someone else.

Employee Ownership
April 21, 2023

Employee Ownership

You already know you want your employees to own your business.

How about getting them to run it too?

That would enable them to really take ownership.

And if you enable them to do that before you hand it over, you get to go, or stay, as and when you please.

It only takes a year.

Ask me how.

Extrapolating consequences
April 20, 2023

Extrapolating consequences

A few questions to ask about feedback of all kinds:

  1. What’s causing it?
  2. Have we seen it before?
  3. Is it a trend?
  4. What happens if we do nothing?
  5. Do we want what happens if we do nothing?
  6. What are the consequences of that?
    1. What happens if we do nothing?
    2. Do we want what happens if we do nothing?
    3. What are the consequences of that?
      1. What happens if we do nothing?
      2. Do we want what happens if we do nothing?
      3. What are the consequences of that?
        1. What happens if we do nothing?
        2. Do we want what happens if we do nothing?
        3. What are the consequences of that?
          1. What happens if we do nothing? – you get the picture.  Repeat until you are are confident to stop.

Hint: Most of us stop too soon.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

What do you do with all that feedback?
April 19, 2023

What do you do with all that feedback?

Well, you can ignore it, and carry on working according to your existing assertions about how the system works.

Or you can examine it, and decide whether your existing assertions remain valid (or maybe valid enough for now).

Or you can examine it, and decide whether you need to change those assertions, and how you work within the system.

This can be more difficult than it looks, because you need to be conscious of your assertions, and of how you currently work.

Fortunately, if you have your Promise of Value clearly defined and articulated, and a working Customer Experience Score in play,  you’ll know both well enough to be able to extrapolate the consequences of what you see in the feedback, and see where things need to be redesigned.

Discipline makes evolution possible too.

Ask me how.

The others
April 18, 2023

The others

I’ve been reading this book over the weekend, and I have found it absolutely shocking.

Not for any of the revelations around the females of various species, but for the fact that it’s taken about 100 years since Darwin for anyone to actually start looking at them!  Even longer for findings to be taken seriously.

Only 56 years ago, Desmond Morris could opine that the reason women have breasts is because men missed the ‘fleshy hemispheres’ of their bottoms once they switched to face-to-face sex.   And this is science.

Your prospects don’t know what you know, they don’t necessarily believe everything you believe, so they make assumptions.

Your team don’t know what you know, they don’t necesarily believe everything you believe, so they make assumptions.

And so do you.

Most of us are not scientists, we don’t have time to run meticulous experiments, but we could radically improve our understanding of each other by regularly asking 1 simple question:

What is it be like to be them?

Followed up by a bit of finding out.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Services
April 17, 2023

Services

One of our case studies at London Business School, involved a company that supplied rags to industry.   Rags – textiles at the absolute end of their useful life might seem to be the ultimate commodity.  Almost worthless.   How could a business supplying them ever hope to create unmissable value for it’s customers?

Simple.

By surrounding that commodity product with deep layers of service.

By getting under the skin of it’s clients; understanding where and how they used the rags and what the problems could be.  Then making sure they more than met every rags need in the way they sold, delivered, collected and disposed of them for the client.

By maintaining that intimacy with their clients through the people they interacted with – the people who delivered and collected, so that every new need could be anticipated and added to the service.

In those days, adding service meant adding people, because people are the only way to create value for other people.

That’s still true, even if nowadays your first thought would be to build an online platform.

Technology doesn’t create new value overall, it can only make it cheaper for a particular business to deliver its service – until another particular business catches up or overtakes, or undercuts (Ever wondered why hand car washes have replaced the automated ones?  Cheap (slave) labour, makes machinery unprofitable).

So if the key to profitability is service, and service means adding people to deal with people, maybe we have an answer to the climate crisis?

Stop making things, use what we already have (e.g. enough clothing for 3 times the global population), and pay people well to support other people – regenerating our environment; housing; education; health; repair and recycling; art; music, entertainment… the list is endless.

We wouldn’t be short of work, and we might well be happier.

After all, this is how we did things for most of our existence on this planet.

One day we might realise we don’t even need money to make this work.

Getting ahead
April 14, 2023

Getting ahead

Of course, if you embed your unique promise of value into the way your business works well before you decide to exit, you get all the benefits of exit, without actually having to do it.

You can even continue to grow your business at the same time.

Applied at the right time, Discipline really does make Daring possible.

Ask me how.

Sellers beware
April 13, 2023

Sellers beware

When my mother sold her architect-designed corner-plot bungalow, the buyers told her they were aiming to set up their son in it.  They quibbled over everything, nibbled away at the asking price until in the end, she sold for much less than she’d hoped.

Then they knocked it down and built 3 new executive homes on the plot.

There are many reasons why a trade buyer would want your business.

If you care about what happens to it, to your staff and to your clients after you’ve exited, it’s worth knowing what those reasons could be, because buyers are not necessarily going to tell you:

  • They want your client list, but not your staff, offices or name.
  • They want your brand, but not the effort that goes into maintaining it.
  • They want your market share, to add to theirs, so they look good to potential investors or buyers, but not your staff, or your products and services.
  • They want to take you out as a competitor.
  • They want your business as part of a portfolio.
  • They want to run it themselves as a going concern.

Whatever the reason, they’ll usually want you to stay on as a consultant, and the final price will be dependent on performance during the transition.  And all too often that transition destroys value, while you have to watch it happen.

Just as it’s easier to protect the value of your house by making sure it’s in tip-top condition with everything working like clockwork, it’s easier to protect your business’s value if you’ve systemised it.  Even easier if you’ve also documented that system in a Customer Experience Score.

Doing so also opens up other exit opportunities:

  • Pass it on to family, who already know it runs profitably without you.
  • Sell it to your employees, who already know how to run it profitably without you.
  • Sell it to one or more of your fans, who already know that your team can run it profitably without you.
  • Sell it to a like-minded entrepreneur, who wants to see your legacy carry on.
  • License it to any one of the above, on condition that is run the way you’ve designed it to run, in return for a percentage of the profits.

Build your unique promise of value into the way your business works before you sell, that way you’ll get to realise it all and leave a legacy other will recognise as yours.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

The best of both worlds
April 11, 2023

The best of both worlds

Big businesses (or perhaps just their shareholders) crave nothing more than the certainty of increasing profits.   That’s what capitalism means.

To that end, they put a hard boundary around their businesses, turning them into closed systems, where everything is rigidly controlled, organised to maximise profit and nothing else.

The trouble is that a closed system cannot learn.  So when the life around that business changes (as it certainly will) the only way for a closed-system business to deliver the certainty it promises to shareholders is first, to eat itself, generating ‘shareholder value’ by shrivelling it’s own organs, or selling them;  or, worse, to seek to impose control onto its surroundings, turning them as rigid and sterile as itself.

Good businesses, the ones that get to stay big and profitable without financial or geopolitical engineering, are those that put a border around themselves instead.

Borders are permeable.  They allow new ideas in, act as an early warning system for change, create a safe space for experimentation.  They turn a closed system into an open one, yet retain enough control to allow a business to choose which changes they adopt, on purpose.

The best businesses add a twist to this.

They create themselves as an open system for making and keeping promises – not to shareholders, but to their customers. Profits become a side-effect of the system’s purpose. And ironically, become more certain.

They stick to their promise, always learning from their customers and their team what the world outside wants, and re-package their promise to meet that demand, adjusting the way the share and keep it along the way.

Great businesses constantly balance order with openness to get the best of both worlds, a business that can thrive forever, whatever the circumstances.

 

 

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.