Discipline makes Daring possible. – Page 46 – Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

July 15, 2022

Heretical thoughts on packaging your Promise – Price

Price is about ensuring both participants profit from their time together, finding the the right balance between what you need and what represents value to the people you serve.

Questions to ask:

How much does it cost you to deliver? – Work this out on a per package basis, and remember to attribute a share of everything your accountant would normally dump in ‘overhead’. That way you can be sure of making a profit each time you Keep your Promise. Keeping your Promise enough times per year to make the living you want is a different problem.

How much do you want to earn? – Here’s a quick calculation:
- Work out how much a year you want to earn before tax.
- Divide it by 100 (=((365-(weekends, time off and bank holidays))/2) – because you need to spend half your working time running the business).
- That’s your target ‘daily earnings’
- Set yourself 2 levels – the least you want to earn, and your ideal.

How are the alternatives priced? – Price is part of the story people tell themselves when they choose, and is often used as an indication of quality. You don’t need to be cheaper than the alternatives. You don’t need to be more expensive either, unless your costs are higher or you want to earn more.

Remember:

Being in a category of one puts you in complete control of your price.
Pricing is part of the story.
Payment is part of the format.
As long as you’re charging more than it costs you to Keep your Promise you have the potential to be profitable. Keeping your Promise enough times per year to make the living you want is a different problem.
Price can be a flow control mechanism too. If you’re inundated with clients, putting your price up will slow demand. Lowering it may increase flow – but only if enough people already know what great value you offer.
If you’re not enrolling enough clients, you’re more likely to be underexplaining the value than overpricing it.
A low price can help to enrol early adopters, but make sure they know it’s a special deal for them. And make sure they will rave about it afterwards.
If you get it wrong the first time, you can always put your price up for the next new client.
You only really need enough. And enough is up to you.

July 14, 2022

‘Sorry’ is never enough

Corporations, being founded on a theory of Homo Economicus, naturally believe that when someone complains, they are merely seeking personal redress.

That’s true, but it isn’t the whole story.

Most often people want recognition of their own case AND to make sure it doesn’t happen to someone else. Sometimes people just want to make sure the mistake isn’t repeated.

That means “Sorry” is never enough, even when accompanied by compensation. What people really want to see is evidence that the mistake is being rectified. That systems and process are changed to ensure it can’t be repeated.

Otherwise, the only conclusion to be drawn is that it wasn’t a mistake, but policy. And compensation a bribe to keep your mouth shut.

Check out this Twitter thread from George Monbiot to see what I mean.

And this thread for the complaint that started it.

July 13, 2022

It’s not too late

“It’s not too late but we need to begin changing our systems. And you can’t change a system until you see it.”

https://vimeo.com/727950704

You can order a copy now from here: https://thecarbonalmanac.org/book/, or pre-order from your favourite independent bookshop. Here’s mine.

There’s even a downloadable kids book and educators guide, a photobook, podcasts and a Daily Difference email. And more extras coming soon.

All designed to get us talking to each other about climate change. Because when we talk, we connect, and when we connect we can take action big enough to make a difference.

After all it’s our future we’re talking about.

It’s not too late, but we need to start changing our systems now.

July 12, 2022

Geography and geology

No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

John Donne

“Of course, each of us is literally made of the Earth, as is all life on the planet.

The water in your body once flowed down the Nile, fell as monsoon rain onto India, and swirled around the Pacific.

The carbon in the organic molecules of your cells was mined from the air by the plants that we eat.

The salt in your sweat and tears, the calcium of your bones, and the iron in your blood all eroded out of the rocks of Earth’s crust;

and the sulphur of the protein molecules in your hair and muscles was spewed out by volcanoes.“

Lewis Dartnell, Origins.

It’s time we really learned to see ourselves as we really are.

Sawubona.

July 11, 2022

Instinct and intention

In the late 18th century it was tough to be a sailor in the Royal Navy. Discipline was harsh, pay was low, the food was terrible and battles were deadly. Especially if you were part of a gun crew.

Firing a cannon was far from simple, it took several steps and required good co-ordination and careful timing. The equivalent of a modern Formula1 pitstop. Plus of course all the time you were firing, the enemy was firing at you, shattering the hull of your own ship into lethal splinters.

The bosses expected gun crews to work by instinct. Their thinking was that in the midst of battle, when your life depended on it you would naturally do the best job you could.

A new boss changed all that. His radical idea was to look at what the best gun crews did, then train every crew to work as they did, practicing until every crew performed the best it could – consistently and on purpose.

“A waste of good ammunition” said his bosses.

Horatio Nelson insisted and got his way.

The rest as they say, is history.

Instinct can get you a long way, but if you want to go further, you need intention.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

July 8, 2022

Yet more thoughts on Packaging your Promise – Timing

The function of your Package is to enable the transformation the client desires.

Its format is about delivering that transformation effectively, in a way that suits their motivation and ability.

Timing is about how long that should take. Balancing the urgency of the need against the practicalities of learning, absorbing and doing that will actually sustain the transformation beyond the journey.

Questions to ask:

How long does it take to complete the whole thing – to get from where they are now, to where they want to be, with you?
How much time does the Client need to devote to this?
If there are natural breaks, should there be gaps between for consolidation or implementation?
What’s the right pace? Where’s the balance between having time to do it and maintaining momentum?
When does it end?
Is maintenance required once the desired transformation has been achieved?

Of course, thinking about these things inevitably sparks more ideas about the format, and possibly ideas for further Packages.

And of course the underlying questions are still:

How can you make it as easy as possible for them to do, so they don’t give up along the way?
How do you make it as easy as possible for you to deliver, so that you can scale?

July 7, 2022

More thoughts on packaging your Promise – Format

The function of your Package is to enable the transformation the client desires.

Its format is about delivering that transformation effectively, in a way that suits their motivation and ability.

Some questions to ask:

Could it be a product?
Could it be a service?
Could it be ‘self-service’, ‘on-demand’ or ‘do-it-yourself’?
Could it be live? In-person? Virtual? In a cohort or community?
Could it be a combination of any or all of these?
Could clients support each other? How?

The underlying questions for all of these are:

How can you make it as easy as possible for them to do, so they don’t give up along the way?

How do you make it as easy as possible for you to deliver, so that you can scale?

July 6, 2022

Some more thoughts on packaging – Function

What does your Packaged Promise have to do? How far does it go to help your client get from where they are now to where they want to be?

Some questions to ask:

Can I do the whole job in one go?
Is that really doable, by me and by the client?
If not, how do I break it up so that the client can see progress, without being overwhelmed by the size of the task in front of them?

And an insight from that last question:

If there is progress, there must be a process. So what is it? How do I get my client from where they are now, to where they want to be?

Can I describe that as a process in a way that makes sense to the client?
Where are the ‘natural’ breaks in that process? Can I match Packages to those?
How can I keep the client motivated to continue the journey?

Sharing the process with the client before they start their journey, helping them to locate themselves while they are on it and celebrating milestones as you go can all help.

And a final question prompted by a conversation with Adam Forbes:

How small could you make those Packages?
How could you turn each step on the journey into a tiny or atomic habit?

After all, as any pub landlord or fountain owner could tell you – those single, small denomination coins soon add up.

Hmmm.

July 5, 2022

Reinventing the wheel

Before you can Package your Promise of Value effectively, you need to know these things about the people you serve:

the situation(s) in which they find themselves
the transformation they seek – their Job to be Done, and how motivated they are by their situation to achieve it.
how your Promise of Value is likely to appeal to them
how you can help them to get their Job to be Done done better than the alternatives – even, possibly, that you are the only way they can get this Job to be Done, done
how able they are likely to be to take up your Promise

Once you know these things, you can begin to design one or more Packages to suit the needs, motivation and ability of the people you serve.

There are 4 things you need to consider when designing a Package:

Function – how far does the Package go to help your client get from where they are now to where they want to be? To get their Job to be Done, done?
Format – how will you physically get that benefit into their hands?
Timing – is the Package a one-off intervention or is it delivered over a longer time-frame? Is there an end to it?
Price – how much does the Package need to cost to profit both parties?

I’m thinking out loud here, re-inventing the wheel for myself as usual.

What do you think?

Tell me, I’d love to know.

July 4, 2022

A tender impact

Patrick Hurley takes a huge blank piece of paper, thinks about what he wants to draw – ‘It’s going to be a ring, I want it to have depth, it will be made of squares‘ – marks a few points for guidance.

Then he draws. In a single continuous line.

From a distance the result has impact. There’s a clear structure, a vision – you might almost say a purpose to it.

Up close, you feel tenderness for the humanity of it. The wobbles, the inconsistencies, the variation, the failure to keep to the ‘perfect’ alignment.

‘It’s like life,‘ says Patrick ‘You can only go forward, if you make a mistake, do better next time, or do something that atones for it.’

Yes.

Work is part of life. So why not approach it this way too? Create a framework with clear boundaries, a goal and a method for achieving it. Then let everyone add their own humanity.

Impact with tenderness.

Find Patrick and more of his work on instagram: @hurleyman03.