Tag: expectations

What We Can Learn From Ten Bullets

Tom Sachs is an artist living in NYC – he does some really interesting stuff, and he and I share a perhaps unhealthy obsession with outer space. ‘Ten Bullets’ is a trip through the rules that employees and visitors to his work space have to follow. Take a look:

Here’s what we in hospitality can learn from Tom and his Ten Bullets; whether or not you would ever want to work for Tom, it is totally transparent as to how you would work. His expectations are laid out clearly and without ambiguity – not just expectations but also how to make amends when expectations are not met – you pay the box!

I think as leaders, we can do a much better job setting expectations with our employees. When something goes wrong at your place of work, your first reflection should be back on your own expectations. If we do not clearly communicate what we want done and how we want it done, then we can’t reasonably be irritated when those expectations aren’t met.

Tom communicates his basic expectations in twenty minutes. I have worked places for months without anything like as clear a picture as he provides here. There is a certain duality to his phrase ‘working to code’ – while his code is a code of conduct, clearly stated and ready to be followed, many managers in hospitality really do encode their expectations: their real desires are hidden behind a complicated network of miscues and secret rules. This is bad for the manager, bad for the employee, and bad for the customer.

The Ten Bullets show you how to work, and how to make it right when you work incorrectly. Every business should have a video like this.

Innovating Context


“Men don’t like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives.”  –  Saul Alinsky

 

At Camp Pull-a-Shot East, during one of the group discussions, a point was made that has resonated with me. That point was this; we have gotten very, very good at innovating our products. From superior sourcing and buying methods, to Grainpro, to data-logging roasts, to ever-new espresso machines and protocols to use them. Coffee today is better than it has ever been. What we are not good at is innovating the context in which we sell our new, improved products. To start thinking about innovating context, I’m going to dedicate some posts to just that topic – I don’t know how many, but hopefully more than one!

As humans, we have developed a remarkable ability to recognize patterns. We are able to intake data, interpret it, create correlations, and project those correlations onto the future, letting us create predictions from our past experience. It is easy to see how this kind of mental processing is evolutionarily advantageous. The more we experience a pattern, the stronger our association of that pattern and its correlations become. Every time you see lightning, you expect thunder to follow – it would be strange if it didn’t! By and large, these patterns are useful and informative and don’t really present many problems.

What the problem is, is that we as coffee retailers, are working against human psychology in the way that we sell our products. We are, most of us, trying to sell a unique, lovely, different product within the same context as folks selling lower-quality, less passionate, brew. It is totally reasonable for our customers to be surprised when their cup takes four minutes for a Chemex – their experience up to that moment with that pattern of experience is simple; wait in line, look at overhead menu, order coffee, immediately receive coffee. It is easy to see how this same pattern of experience extends across the spectrum; when a customer is in a grocery store, perusing the coffee offerings, what do they have to justify the higher price point of your whole bean? Their grocery store pattern (as mine, as yours) involves mostly low-cost-hunting, and a hope that you can get home before 7.

I think that the most important thing we can do is to start finding ways to break these patterns. Watch this space!

Subway Violinists and Context

This happened in DC in 2007. The long story is here: http://goo.gl/bEQvk

The short story: a violin virtuoso (not the grinder) who had played a sold-out concert not long before, played a 45 minute set in a DC metro stop. Only one person recognized him, most folks simply carried on through their day. The folks putting this on were mostly concerned about our ability to appreciate art in our lives, etc etc.

It strikes me as a relevant metaphor for much of our progressive coffee industry; we’re trying to make something lovely within an existing context, where expectations are already set up. The music is excellent and superbly performed, but it needs to be presented in a context in which people are prepared to appreciate it.

We make good coffee. What we need to do now is make good contexts..