Discipline makes Daring possible. – Page 33 – Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

March 6, 2023

Next step

The more people who know how to do what up to now only you could do, the better.

So, once you’ve got your first section of Score written down, get the person who helped you to teach everyone else how to play it too.

Then, once everyone is familiar with it, get them to take turns performing it for real.

Collect their suggestions for improvement. After week or so, discuss them with your team, and apply only those that enhance your Promise of Value for the people your business serves.

That might mean automating some piece of drudgery that enables the team to spend more time with clients. It might mean un-automating something to make a client/team experience more human for both of them.

Repeat until you have a section of your Customer Experience Score that truly lives up to your Promise and that anyone can run as well as or better than you.

You don’t have to do this alone.

Once your team are running the business alongside you, it’s time for them to own it alongside you too.

Discipline makes Daring and Longevity possible.

Ask me how.

March 3, 2023

Baby step

What’s the smallest step you could take to get started on your Customer Experience Score?

Try this:

Choose a job you shouldn’t be doing.
Find someone to help you – ideally the person you wish to delegate the job to.*
You tell them what needs to happen to complete the job, they write it down.
They have a go at doing it, following their notes.
You observe, and where it goes wrong, between you, you modify the instructions to get the outcomes you want.
- You clarify what really happens (not what you think happens).
- They suggest ways to make it easy for them to do.
They write up the improved version.
Save the latest version where everyone can get at it.

Repeat until you have a section of your Customer Experience Score that can be run reliably by anyone who needs to.

*If you plan to outsource the job to another business, get a friend/fellow business owner to help you do this, then hand over the finished Score as part of your specification for the supplier.

Tips:

Assume competence.
Start with the (usually positive) 80% case. You can capture major exceptions later.
Think ‘Get Outcome’ – what’s true at the end of the process that wasn’t true before? So it’s easy to tell when you’ve succeeded (or not).
Start at the very beginning and carry on right to the end. You’re trying to capture a transformation that is meaningful to your client and therefore your business.
The quicker you test it, the quicker you can improve it.
If it feels like you’re trying to fit too much in, you probably are.
It’s a prompt, not a novel.
Practice makes perfect.
Remember, it’s about the process not the people.

And for the visually minded:

Even a little bit of Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

March 2, 2023

Start here

Years ago, after a holiday in the North East, where we saw the Great North Run kick off, I decided I wanted to join in. I’ve never been a runner, and had no clue how to begin training or where to even start.

After a bit of searching I found a handy spreadsheet online (yes it was that long ago), that would take me from 0 to 5k in about 12 weeks.

The first step was to go out, run for 30 seconds, walk for 90 seconds, run for 30 seconds, walk for 90 seconds – and repeat till 20 minutes was up.

Gradually, the proportion of running to walking stepped up, until by the end we were running for the full 20 minutes, and eventually, for forty minutes. I could run 5k without stopping.

If contemplating 40 minutes of non-stop running when I couldn’t run a step was daunting, imagine the thought of getting everything about your Ideal Customer Experience written down as a score. Paralysing.

Luckily, you can just get going with with a tiny part of it. Here are some ideas of where you could begin:

With something really simple, almost ‘trivial’, like how you open for business each working day, and how you close. You’ll be amazed what a difference a clear, shared routine makes for everyone.
With the most painful part of your Customer Experience. Where you get most questions from clients or team members, where you have to intervene most often to put things right.
With the easiest part of your Customer Experience. Where writing it down will enable you to delegate the process to others quickly, so you get the headspace to think about the more painful parts.

Like learning to run, it gets easier as you practice, especially if you have a coach alongside you correcting your stance and your style.

But the most important thing is to start. Here. Now.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

March 1, 2023

Handmade

The Forth Bridge was built by hand. Because of its cantilever design and the restrictions of the site, it had to be constructed from relatively small components, each weighing no more than a ton. So the structure was created from a patchwork of steel plates riveted together, by hand, by teams of men and boys from the shipyards. That meant it took 7 years to complete.

It’s been standing for 133.

When we contemplate building something bigger than ourselves, we often get overwhelmed by the difficulties of the job and the effort it will take. And so we miss out on the big payoff.

Imagine your business still standing after more than a century.

It could if you engineered it that way.

Ask me how.

February 27, 2023

Transforming knowledge into know-how

“Once you publish something, the convention is that whatever you wrote was what you thought before you wrote it. These were your ideas, and now you’ve expressed them.

But you know this isn’t true. You know that putting your ideas into words changed them.

And not just the ideas you published. Presumably there were others that turned out to be too broken to fix, and those you discarded instead.” Paul Graham

This is why composing your Customer Experience Score matters, and why it works.

You aren’t simply transferring your ideal Customer Experience onto paper, you’re (re-)defining it. And then sharing it. And what you create can be further refined and honed – re-designed if necessary if it doesn’t work or when circumstances change.

That thing you currently carry around in your head can become a tool you and all the people you employ can use to make your business 100 times better than it is now.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Ask me how.

February 24, 2023

The System

Most of the 7 billion humans on this earth simply want to make a living. The system pushes us to … Read More “The System”

February 22, 2023

Avoiding infection

I spotted this from Michele Zanini (co-author of ‘Humanocracy’) back in 2021:

“Our research suggests that the longest-lasting competitive advantages come from innovation in management systems and practices, not from business or operating model innovation. So diligently pursuing management innovation pays off handsomely.”

It’s still worth thinking about.

Especially if you’re a small business that hasn’t yet been infected with old-style management structures.

What if you could grow your business without adding overhead?

And take as much time away from it as you wished?

A different way of managing makes it possible.

Ask me how.

February 21, 2023

Dust

Imagine discovering not only that the universe is absolutely full of dust, but also that there is more of the universe than was previously thought, all of it hidden behind that very dust.

Just by changing the wavelength of the light you’re using to see by.

HT to Hayley Gomez and The Life Scientific for ths one.

February 20, 2023

Off the shelf

When you buy off the shelf, you’re buying from someone who’s producing for people who do what everyone else does, the way everyone else does it. That’s what ‘mass-market’ means.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy off the shelf. Just that when you do, you should be clear that whatever you’re buying really does serve what you do, the way that you do it.

Otherwise you’ll end up having to act like everyone else.

A shame when there are other options available.