Head Of Nothing

In true Donald Rumsfeld fashion!

My business, as it stands, woks in a way that means that I know a significant amount about the way it operates, the people that it helps, its target market, its marketing and sales strategy, its ways of working and its processes. Of course, I should. It is after all my business.

If I impose those things on others then those very things constrain others from opening the doors to the very “Rumsfeld-ian” matters of the “unknown unknowns”.

Someone who is truly unconstrained will inevitably think of alternative strategies, alternative marketing, alternative routes to market, different target markets, different products, different services, different ways of working, and different approaches to most aspects of the business internally. That is what I want.

I concluded that it could constrain, but in general it was simply seeking the outcome. I decided to resolve that particular dichotomy later. It might after all be dependent on the individual I found for the role, rather than on the description of the role itself.

So, I have concluded that I wish to invest a reasonable sum of money in my business in order to help it grow. One way that I can do that is to find someone to fulfil a role with no constraints but to pay them for undertaking that role. The search is on….

I had determined that I did not intend to employ a Head of Nothing; rather I sought a collaborator, an associate, someone who would see “Head of Nothing” as a part of their portfolio and not their “job”. It wouldn’t be all that they did, and the other things they did would allow them to continue to innovate and develop and think about their role in my organisation in more depth. That seemed to fit, it enabled them to be unconstrained by the need to focus on one organisation so one significant constraint already was removed.

I also knew that I wasn’t in a position to invest enough in my business to provide an income for an individual working on a full time basis. However, some of what they deliver should of course develop and grow the business. I was, however, prepared to make an investment in the business in order to help the business to grow.

Immediately, I have a problem, I have constrained the role by defining it as a role which is intended to “help the business grow”. My question, to myself, became one of is that a constraint or is it a desired outcome?

I thought for some time about the nature of a role that was truly without constraints and for a long time struggled to identify how such a role could be defined. Of course, I eventually realised that by trying to define such a role I was indeed constraining it.

A role without constraints is a role which does not define its purpose. A role without constraints does not require an individual to be working on strategy, or marketing, or sales, or product development, or operational improvement, or any other particular role within an organisation. Perhaps, from time to time, there would work on each, or some, of those roles but to predefine them would be to constrain them.

At that moment the concept of, and search for a “Head of Nothing” was born.