Discipline makes Daring possible. – Page 91 – Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

July 28, 2020

A missed opportunity

At one time, my office was in a business centre on a farm, on the outskirts of London. There was quite a community of small businesses there, so we kept the post office busy.

One day, I saw our regular postie had someone with him. I got chatting (as I inevitably do), and asked to be introduced.

“This is John, your new postman”, he said, “I’m retiring soon, so I’m showing him my route.”

“That’s interesting, why do you need to show him it?“

“Because otherwise he would never know that the entrance to Suite 19 is round the back and up the stairs.”

John meanwhile, is sketching a plan of the buildings on what appears to be the back of an envelope.

“Is this how every new postman learns their route?”

“Of course! How else?”

I get the point of walking the route. There’s no better way to be confident that you in the right place on your first day. And of course it’s a great way to familiarise yourself with the buildings and people you serve.

I also get that occupants change, buildings are pulled down and new ones put up, or changed in other ways that mean re-numbering.

But what I didn’t get then, and still don’t, is why each new postie has to create a new personal map from scratch. Or why that information goes nowhere beyond the postie’s head.

After all, since 1660, the post office has had literally daily opportunities to create a map that reflects what’s actually on the ground. Almost effortlessly, as a side-effect of providing their service.

What a resource that would have been!

July 27, 2020

Diagrams I love. No. 1.

I wonder who first drew a diagram?

According to one definition, “diagrams are simplified figures, caricatures in a way, intended to convey essential meaning”*.

That seems about right to me.

Some diagrams are so good at this, that once seen, you can’t help but assimilate the essential meaning. In an instant, it’s there, in your head forever, changing how you think from that point onwards.

This is one of my favourites:

My interpretation of a diagram from Alan Begg and Graham Williams

The explanation goes something like this. We all operate best in ‘Can Do’ mode, creative, autonomous, responsible, positive, active. But when knocked back for whatever reason, we have a tendency to slip down into one or other of the legs of the diagram.

If we go down ‘Can’t Do’, we become helpless, we freeze up, we become inactive and cautious. If we go down the ‘Won’t Do’ leg, we blame others, we feel resentful, angry, we become unco-operative, even disruptive.

The interesting thing is that all three behaviours have upsides. There are advantages to being in ‘Can’t Do’ or ‘Won’t Do’ that we may learn to exploit, and so keep ourselves there, instead of learning how to get ourselves back to ‘Can Do’, where we operate at our best.

But the key point is that these behaviours are learned. Which means we can unlearn the restricting ones, and learn to get back into ‘Can Do’ mode more quickly and easily, to the benefit of ourselves and the people around us.

I know where I go – I’m straight off down the ‘Can’t Do’ leg – but I also know how to get myself back up again quickly – and all I need to remind me how to do that is a glance at this simple diagram.

If you want to find out more, check out their book: Personal Power, How to get it… And keep it… FOR LIFE!

* Bert S. Hall (1996). “The Didactic and the Elegant: Some Thoughts on Scientific and Technological Illustrations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance”. in: B. Braigie (ed.) Picturing knowledge: historical and philosophical problems concerning the use of art in science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p.9

July 24, 2020

Ahead

“Wake up to the new workplace revolution. Build a business that outruns the future and outperforms rivals. Replace bureaucracy with humanocracy”

This article arrived in my inbox this morning, as part of a regular newsletter from London Business School. (I’m an alum don’t you know)

Nice to know I’m ahead of Gary Hamel.

Just not as influential.

July 23, 2020

Niche if you want to scale.

For a long time I misunderstood why any business owner would want to restrict their marketing to a ‘niche’. Especially when what they do can work for any kind of business.

Then I learned what real marketing is.

Real marketing isn’t selling. It isn’t transactional. It isn’t manipulative. It doesn’t persuade people to buy what isn’t good for them. Real marketing enrols people on a journey taht will help them get to where they long to be.

Real marketing takes time, effort and empathy. Empathy is easiest when you start with people like you, but it means you need to do some hard, soul searching work. You need to work out your own values, behaviours and goals, so that you can identify who you can best serve, because you share values, behaviours, and sometimes goals. This is your true niche, the psychographic, not the demographic. It describes the kind of person you want to work with, rather than their business size, location or industry.

But still this niche is too big to be useful. These ‘people like me’ are everywhere, in all walks of life. How on earth do you help them find you? Especially nowadays, when marketing means showing up day after day, giving value, demonstrating to the people you serve that they are understood, seen, recognised as human beings, laying a groundwork of trust in blogs, videos, podcast, newsletters, before you even get near a pitch.

It’s extremely hard work to pay anyone and everyone the attention they are due, in the hope of attracting the ‘right’ ones.

This is where a traditional demographic niche starts to make sense. Think of demographics as the pools you fish in because you know they are likely to hold enough of the kind of people you serve. Finding these pools takes effort of a different kind, research rather than soul searching.

Good places to start are pools that are ignored or under-served by your competitors or alternatives. Or those where the inhabitants are going through a particularly painful set of circumstances, that you are well-placed to help with. Or even a pool you have a lot of experience with.

But, counterintuitively, keep it small and specific to begin with. Narrow, but deep enough to keep you going for a while. Like flying a single route, or offering makeovers for blondes, or making jelly babies for vegans.

Because keeping your promise is the hardest part of marketing. You want to make sure you get that spot on before you take on more of it.

Once you’ve cracked that, you’re on your way to scale.

July 22, 2020

Labour

This week, work started in earnest on our new extension. I’ve spent quite a bit of time already, observing it.

Not, I hasten to add, because I’m eyeing up young, fit workmen, but because I’m fascinated by the process.

How stop-start it is. How much shuffling around of stuff is involved. How much collaborative problem-solving it involves. How many adjustments are made. How ad-hoc it seems. In other words, how Agile it is.

Of course this is just the beginning, when the team are getting to grips with the actually existing terrain, so they have a lot to find out, on the fly, before the more systematic parts of the process can kick in. Agile is completely the right approach.

It’s a privilege to watch. And the essence of why humans beat robots any day.

Despite all the hype.

July 21, 2020

Rationing

I was already thinking about rationing when I saw this tweet:

Image of a tweet from @TwistedDoodles aka Maria Boyle

Predictably for the time of year, grade inflation was in the news. It seems that universities are awarding more and more firsts and 2:1s to graduates, which some feel undermines the reputation of the sector.

If you want to make something like ‘intelligence’ scarce, how do you do it? You can’t make individuals less intelligent, obviously. The answer is a normal distribution of the evidence of intelligence (Degrees, A levels, GCSEs):

Individuals test results are placed within this distribution. Those at the top are awarded the highest grades, those at the bottom the lowest. Most people are somewhere in the middle.

This means of course that grades are dependent on relative position within a given set of individuals. Someone who would have a got a first in one year will get a 2.1 in another, and vice-versa.

In other words, high (and low) scores are rationed.

Why? Because, as all marketers know, scarcity is one way to create a perception of value.

Intelligence isn’t the only resource we ration artificially. Money is another.

The question to ask is ‘are they scarce?’

Followed by (as always) ‘Who benefits if they are?’

HT to @TwistedDoodles for the loan of her tweet.

July 20, 2020

Manifesto for a Disappearing Boss

I’ve decided to embrace my inner revolutionary and write a Manifesto.

I’d love to know what you think of it.

Whatever you think of it.

Does it work?
What do you like?
What don’t you like?
What do you want to do after reading it?
Does it help you do that?

Thank you for reading it.

July 17, 2020

Flipping

This week, the problem with my broadband connection was finally sorted. After 4 months.

On the first visit the engineer ran some tests and did something with the connection at the bottom of the pole. He also checked the socket in my house and gave our arrangement the thumbs up. The speed went up again, but the fix only lasted a day. Whenever anyone called on the landline, it went down again.

On the second visit a new engineer ran some tests and did something else with the connection at the bottom of the pole. He also replaced the socket in my house with a new one. He explained that the reason why the fix didn’t last was because the system is set up to reduce the speed to keep the connection stable. Fair enough. The speed went up again, but only lasted a day. Whenever anyone called on the landline, it went down again.

On the third visit another engineer tinkered with the connection at the bottom of the pole. He ran some more tests, which determined that the fault was somewhere between the top of the telegraph pole and the outside of my house. Nothing changed. Terrible speed, and the line kept dropping.

On the fourth visit a different engineer tested the line from my end, inside the house. He then went to the cabinet half a mile away and tested the line from there. He identified that the fault was somewhere between the top of the telegraph pole and the outside of my house. So he looked for a likely location, got his ladder out and looked at the box that connects the line to the outside of my house, near the roof.

Bingo! The box was full of water. He changed the box, replaced the connectors, and everything was fine. And stayed fine.

I am delighted of course, and have nothing to complain of regarding any of the individuals involved either from my provider or from Openreach.

But I can’t help thinking that the process could be better.

I get that in a network, you have to be systematic in your search for a fault. I’ve done it myself.

Usually, you test the connection at one end, then the other, starting with the extremes. In this case, the exchange, and my socket. Then you repeat the test, working inwards through pairs of connecting nodes until you’ve narrowed down the location of the fault to a single length of wire.

But I wonder if the application of experience could shorten the process?

Maybe the answer would be to start with the shortest length of wire – between my socket and the connection at the top of my house – and work outwards from there? After all these are the parts most exposed to the elements, and most likely to fail.

It would be just as systematic and in the worst case take no longer than working from the outside in. But it could well be better for the customer as well as being quicker and cheaper for Openreach.

Or perhaps it would be even quicker and cheaper just to replace that external box every time, because it’s the weakest point in the chain and also the most accessible? That way you’re renewing the network as you go, for pence.

I don’t know. I’m not a telephone engineer. Just a process geek, who happens to be a customer.

July 16, 2020

My kind of self-checkout

This is where I was when I should have been writing yesterday’s blog. Picking up my shopping. Olive oil, almonds and honey from Portugal, chocolate from Trinidad via Cornwall, Coffee and sugar from Colombia, sea salt from Brittany.

There was plenty more on offer – olives, tapenades, lupini beans, pinto beans and more. All more or less direct from small producers, transported under sail.

I even got to meet 50% of the supply chain: Gareth from Raybel Charters through whom I ordered, and Guillaume who captains the ship.

That’s my kind of self-checkout.

PS If you’re in Faversham or Whitstable over the next couple of days, look out for the Thames barge Dawn the ‘van’ for onward local deliveries

July 14, 2020

Give it up.

You start your own business to take back control. To be at nobody’s beck and call. To do what you think is right by your clients.

Once you get good at that, you outsource key functions, take people on to help you deliver, and suddenly, you’ve lost it. The control has gone. You’re at the beck and call of clients, or team members, or suppliers, and it seems impossible to get people to do things the way you would.

A natural reaction is to tighten your hands on the reins, supervise more, intervene more, even to redo the work.

Micromanagement doesn’t work. You only end up working harder, being a nag, and training your people to give up trying.

Instead, give control away as soon as you can.

Not by abdicating, not even by handing it over to superstar colleagues, but by installing your DNA into the way the business works, so that it works the way you want it to when you’re not in the room.

Strangely, creating this kind of control is liberating:

For your people, because they know the outcomes they are aiming for, and what needs to happen to achieve them, plus they have the freedom to do that with flair and personality.
For you, because you can relax your vigilance, and concentrate on growing and evolving your business.
For your business, because its no longer dependent on the individuals who happen to be there at any one time.

We call this writing your Score. Because once you’ve written it, the music you and your orchestra are creating now can last forever, no matter who plays it, or how.

If you want to take back control, start by giving it all away.