Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Timesheets
September 28, 2021

Timesheets

There’s a very interesting article by Alistair Barlow on AccountingWeb today, about timesheets.

Not as a tool for calculating prices, but as a tool for measuring performance.

As I discovered a couple of years ago, ‘time spent’* is a pretty accurate proxy for all costs.

That means that a relatively easy way to get an accurate picture of how much a process is costing to run, is to measure how much time is spent on running it.  And this can be measured straightforwardly, by simple observation.

Timesheets are one way to observe how much a process is costing to run.  But they are a pain to fill in, cost time to complete, and feel intrusive.

Much better to let each process tell you as a side-effect.

I’m working on that.

*”Duration-Based Costing: Utilizing Time in Assigning Costs” Anne-Marie Lelkes, Ph.D., CPA, Management Accounting Quarterly, Summer 2017.

Let’s make the world a different place.
September 27, 2021

Let’s make the world a different place.

‘Better’ is a tweak; a change, a slight adjustment.

‘Better’ focuses on detail and ignores the bigger picture.

‘Better’ says ‘mental health is a problem, let’s sell mental health first aid‘.

‘Better’ says ‘plastic is a problem, let’s make people pay for plastic bags’.

‘Better’ is a tranquiliser ad captioned: “You can’t change her life, but you can change her mood.”

‘Better’ says ‘here’s another app/product/brand to add to the dozens, hundreds even, already in that category’.

‘Better’ says ‘we can keep doing what we’re doing only greener’.

‘Better’ accepts the status quo.  Supports it.   Allows us to feel good about ourselves, without actually changing anything.

The world doesn’t need us to make it a better place.

It needs us to make it different.

Jumping off a cliff
September 24, 2021

Jumping off a cliff

“An entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.” Reed Hoffman.

What if there was a basic outline of that airplane you could have in your back pocket before you jumped?   An outline you could customise on the way down instead of starting from scratch?  Not the corporate model you don’t want to be, but something light, flexible, adaptable yet also reliable?   That you can flesh out around your Promise of Value as you discover it?

 

There is, and it looks like this:

 

 

 

Not so much an airplane, as a parachute perhaps.

The Emperor’s new clothes
September 23, 2021

The Emperor’s new clothes

When is a market not a market?

When the companies behind every ‘brand’, turn out to be the same one, two or few.

Prepare to feel the cold.

Joining the dots
September 22, 2021

Joining the dots

Before the European invasion, the only use the people of the Americas had for wheels, was for pull-along toys.   They used headstraps and pack-animals for carrying things, and made their clay pots by hand-building.   Messages were carried by runners.

Perhaps because there were no suitable native draught animals, or because the terrain was too difficult, the possibilities of the wheel were seen, but never applied, except in play.    Until of course, the Spanish introduced horses and cattle.

We tend to think of innovation as the creation of new things by a single individual.   Actually, much innovation arises from joining the dots.   And that only happens once the dots are in place.

Where are the dots being created in your industry?   Could you join them to create something new?

Cattus Economicus
September 21, 2021

Cattus Economicus

I love my cat.   She doesn’t love me back.

All she’s really interested in is food and sleep.  And every now and then, a bit of attention – on her terms, when and where she wants it, never when I do.    She’s lazy, greedy and selfish.  She is ‘Cattus Economicus’.

She can’t help it, cats, like most mammals, have evolved that way.

But not us humans.   Somewhere in our distant past, we evolved new instincts of collaboration, co-operation, altruism.  Because we needed those traits to survive.

‘Homo Economicus’ is a convenient fiction, that tells us more about the economists and politicians who use it than the people they like to apply it to.  In their eyes, you and I and most of the people we know are less than human, to be treated is if all we care about is food and sleep.

We know better.  We know that we collaborate, co-operate and help each other out all the time.   We know that we need to exercise these pro-social instincts more than ever if we are to solve the pressing problems our species faces.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”  Margaret Mead.

We’re no pussycats.

700
September 20, 2021

700

This is my 700th blog post. The idea of writing it was a little daunting, I have to say, although … Read More “700”

Start from where they are

Start from where they are

Decades ago, I rescued my mother from a tiny rock, in a shallow sea.   No big deal you might think, but she had poor eyesight, vertigo, and couldn’t swim.  She was used to staying on the sand.  She was panicking, hiding it because she’s our mum, and supposed to be in charge.

I might have been tempted to shout from my place halfway up the beach: “Just step in, it’s not deep, you’ll be fine!”

But I didn’t.   I paddled out to her, took her by the hand, and helped her to put one foot down and the water and see just how shallow it was.  I got her to put her next foot down, letting her lean on me until she felt steady on her feet.

Then I let her walk by herself the rest of the way.

When what you offer is new, it is also scary.   It doesn’t matter that you know the rock is tiny and the sea is shallow.   Your prospect doesn’t know that, not emotionally, where it matters.

Don’t just shout from a distance, move to where they are, accompany them on the first steps of their journey.   Then let them move forward with dignity.

They’ll remember that for the rest of their life.

Why I read fiction
September 16, 2021

Why I read fiction

“The only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings, is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring human creatures.” George Eliot.

Middlemarch is my favourite work of fiction precisely because George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) succeeds so well in this endeavour.

Not everyone in the book is good, or beautiful, or admirable or likeable, but by the end you feel they are all worthy of the investment of your attention.  Even the ‘villains’.   You may not approve of everything they do, but you at least understand how they got there.  Not through being ‘good’ or ‘evil’, but through being human, by the choices they take at each little fork in the road, how they justify those choices to themselves and how that leads to the route taken at the next fork, and the next.

Reading fiction is one of the most effective ways I know to expand my horizons.  I’ve ‘met’ far more people through fiction than I could ever hope to meet in the flesh, from all sorts of backgrounds, times and places.  Practising empathy for these characters, written by and about people outside my comfort zone is great practice towards doing it for real.

I know quite a few businesses who keep a library of business books for their team.   Perhaps its time to add some fiction.