Discipline makes Daring possible. – Page 79 – Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

February 9, 2021

Beyond startup

I’m a big fan of ‘The Lean Startup’, which I’d sum up as follows:

“The job of a startup is not to make money. It’s to find out what the market really wants.”

In other words, starting a business is about testing, refining and re-testing until you find what delivers real value, and so makes you money.

The trouble is, this can take years. There’s no shame in that. It’s just that most of us do this in an undocumented and somewhat unconscious way, internalising our findings as we go.

This means that when the time comes to expand our capacity, to meet the demand we’ve identified and finally start making the money, we struggle to communicate this vital information – who we are for, what we promise them, and how we deliver on that – to the people we need to work with, and that can lead to stunted growth.

The first step to remedying that is consciousness, which is why The Lean Startup is such a help. But what about after startup?

Here’s my solution:

Purposely design your business as a system for making and keeping promises, and improving how you do that:

That way, everyone involved in your business can stay conscious. Even after you’ve gone.

February 8, 2021

Not necessarily in the same order

What do small business owners want?

Agency – to make their own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
Mastery – to learn and master new skills.
Autonomy – to be free to choose how they make their dent.
Purpose – to do this for something bigger than themselves, that has meaning beyond the sale.
Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.
Status – to know (and for others to know) where we stand in our communities.

What do small business clients want?

Agency – to make their own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
Mastery – to learn and master new skills.
Autonomy – to be free to choose how they make their dent.
Purpose – to do this for something bigger than themselves, that has meaning beyond the sale.
Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.
Status – to know (and for others to know) where we stand in our communities.

What do small business employees want?

Agency – to make their own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
Mastery – to learn and master new skills.
Autonomy – to be free to choose how they make their dent.
Purpose – to do this for something bigger than themselves, that has meaning beyond the sale.
Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.
Status – to know (and for others to know) where we stand in our communities.

We all want the same things, but the weight we give them and how we look to achieve them may vary according to the role we’re playing.

As a small business owner, you’ve probably decided that agency, autonomy and purpose are more likely to be achieved by setting up on your own, and that these things are more important to you than a regular income. Your employees may feel that mastery matters more to them, while autonomy and agency are only possible outside work, with a steady income. Your clients may gain status by spending on the things they can buy from you, or by supporting their local business community, or through the discernment they display to their peers by choosing you.

A successful business knows exactly what it delivers to all its stakeholders, and ensures that it does so consistently.

Success starts with awareness that while we all want the same things, they’re not necessarily in the same order.

February 5, 2021

Synthesis

I spent quite a bit of my early career being called an analyst – someone who resolves or separates things into its elements or constituent parts.

In reality, like all of us, I’m mostly a synthesist. Putting thoughts, information, ideas, anecdotes, experiences together to make a whole – a model of the world that is coherent, at least to me, hopefully to others too.

When it comes to work, here are some of the ideas (axioms? premises? prejudices?) I grapple with, trying to synthesise a useful model of what it means to scale successfully as a business:

Making things (not necessarily tangible) that will be appreciated by other people is a fundamental human need.
Everyone needs agency, mastery, autonomy, purpose, community and status.
Being human is difficult, valuable, not to be wasted.
Nobody has a right to control another person (with rare exceptions that are to do with the other person’s safety).
Nobody ever achieves anything alone.
Most small business owners care about the impact they are making on their customers, their team and their community. Increasingly they care about the impact they make on the planet.
Most employees work in order to live.
Most employees want to do their best work.
Most people want to be able to bring their whole self to everything they do, including work.
Most employees want clarity about what they are there to do.
Most employees don’t want to be told how to do their job.
Most small business owners never set out to be in charge of other people.
Most people want to do things for themselves, until they can’t. When they can’t they want to be helped to get back to doing it for themselves.
Most small business owners aren’t capitalists.
There is plenty of business to be done to enrich people and planet. Small business owners don’t need to be capitalist.
Processes are for people. Procedures and work instructions are for machines.

I’m not there yet with my coherent model, but I feel like I am getting there, and I’m enjoying the process.

What would you add to/remove from my list?

February 4, 2021

Money for Nothing

You may have heard about Doughnut Economics. You may even be wondering what you can do about it as a business.

Here’s an introduction worth watching.

It struck me yesterday that ‘Money for Nothing’ is quite a nice example.

You don’t have to be big. You just have to be regenerative and distributive, by design.

February 3, 2021

News

So, the thing about the news (including social media) is that it isn’t really about keeping people informed. It’s about … Read More “News”

February 2, 2021

Hegemonic Narratives

I learned a new concept today: ‘hegemonic narrative’. In plain English, a ‘dominant story’ about why things are the way they are.

Dominant because more or less everyone subscribes to it.

Story because it’s made up.

In fact human history could be said to be one long sequence of hegemonic narratives, each one displacing the previous one, not necessarily for the better. Often benefiting one group of people over others. Beneficiaries therefore have an incentive to keep their story dominant.

They are psychologically useful, because they help us live with contradictions. But they are nevertheless made up.

Much better to try and resolve the contradictions, and create a story that works well for everyone.

The good news is that inside your company at least, you are free to do just that.

For a long, but very interesting article on how such stories work, check out this article: “Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality: The Work–family Narrative as a Social Defense against the 24/7 Work Culture“. It’s a fascinating read.

February 1, 2021

The Disappearing Boss

I’ve met hundreds of small business owners, but I’ve yet to meet one who set out to be a Boss. Or at least a Boss of more than one person.

We embrace the challenge of starting a business, of finding customers, but we become Bosses reluctantly, sometimes half-heartedly, not always effectively.

Sometimes the experience of being the Boss of other people is so painful we joyfully go back to being the Boss of just ourself.

The trouble with that of course, is that the potential to create ever more value disappears along with the role we dislike so much.

There is another way to disappear as a Boss.

Instead of walking away, make yourself blend in. Enable your people to act more like Bosses, more like you.

After that it’s the more the merrier.

If you’d like to learn more about how, there’s a little welcome treat from me: Sign up for The Disappearing Boss Newsletter

January 29, 2021

Swarms

Swarms look like an attractive option for decentralisation. After all, “Social insects work without supervision. In fact, their teamwork is largely self-organized, and coordination arises from the different interactions among individuals in the colony. Although these interactions might be primitive (one ant merely following the trail left by another, for instance), taken together they result in efficient solutions to difficult problems (such as finding the shortest route to a food source among myriad possible paths). The collective behavior that emerges from a group of social insects has been dubbed ‘swarm intelligence.'” (Corporate Rebels blog ‘Reinventing work‘)

As you know, I’m all for self-organisation, but for me it has to emerge from autonomy and a shared purpose. Ant colonies work through programming. Individual ants don’t get much say. I’d rather be a goose.

A different kind of swarming showed up this week around GameStop shares. Bottom-up collaboration between individuals.

The queen ants of Wall St. didn’t like it at all.

January 28, 2021

Here’s your welcome treat

“Here’s your welcome treat” says the email. Inside, a code for a 10% discount on my first purchase, as a reward for signing up to the mailing list. Lovely.

Except that I’ve already made my first (hefty) purchase, which is how I signed up to the mailing list in the first place.

Now I’ve been given a discount code I’m unlikely to use. I don’t feel special, or welcomed, I feel cheated.

If you have more than one way for people to end up on your mailing list, make sure the reward for doing so works properly in every case.

It’s not rocket science. Just meaning it.

January 26, 2021

How to capture a business process: Step 3

Now you know what your business process is aiming to achieve (Step 1), and you know where it really starts and ends (Step 2), you’re ready to describe it.

I’ve always found the best way to do this is to literally talk someone through it. Imagine that you are telling the story of this process to a listener, who is going to make notes. Ideally your listener would be another person, but if push comes to shove you can play both roles.

The conversation goes something like this:

As Storyteller, you start at the beginning, thinking of how it usually works. You simply tell the Listener the first thing that happens.
As Listener, you write that down, then ask: “What happens next?” , or “Then what happens?”
The Storyteller describes what happens next.
The Listener, notes it down, and asks again “What happens next?”
Repeat until the Storyteller answers “Nothing, that’s the end. We’ve got to the outcome.”

That’s it. For now. The next step is to work out the order things really need to happen in.