You Can’t Scale Complicated

A depressed young man in a coffee shop did not greet me with “How can I help you,” but with “So like, it’s gonna take, like, a really long time for your order.

And though I instantly understood the source of his depression (and that piercing between his eyes probably wasn’t helping), I couldn’t help but think the filter through which he viewed his circumstances was at least as big a problem as getting customers what they wanted on time.

The ultimate goal of leadership and employee engagement should be to deliver the best experience possible to our customers. We have to treat people the way we want them to treat others. But that requires us to take a deep look at the role we play in other people’s behavior.

When I saw the coffee shop manager, I noticed her loyalty and drive, but they were competing with her anxiety. I had
just delivered a general session keynote at a convention, and this coffee shop was in the large hotel where it took place. My event had just taken a break at 2:45 p.m. A swarm of highly motivated, badge-wearing convention attendees descended on this coffee shop as all their morning caffeine wore off simultaneously.

It’s easy to say your belief system creates your experience, and that’s true. But sometimes your experience is created by 500 caffeine-deprived Type A personalities, five overwhelmed baristas, and a manager who looks like she’s rethinking all her life choices.

Here’s what I saw:

1. Type A customers (mostly Gen X and Boomer) with an unshakable expectation of instant, reliable service under all circumstances.
2. Five coffee shop employees facing that mob.
3. Workers who were in their early 20s and might not yet know what a good job looks like when it’s finished, or the urgency of customers who haven’t had coffee since 7 a.m.

I watched the manager transfer her stress to the employees around her. Historically, stress equals micromanagement
equals burnout. The message needed to be “We can do this.” But the expression on her face conveyed “I should have stayed in graduate school.”

Now, here’s where I’m no hero. I became one of those customers. Standing there, I decided my order was simpler and more logical than the person’s in front of me. I just needed a double shot of espresso, not the disturbing green milkshake
thing she was asking for. Surely mine should come first, right?

That’s when it hit me: You can’t scale complicated. The more elaborate the drink, the harder it is to make more of them efficiently. So the concept of what you’re building can actually create a problem for leaders that affects customer experience.

Five of something can be complex. Five thousand has to be simple; added complexity just creates stress that reduces leadership effectiveness. It’s like software updates—two times feels fine, 10 times makes me want to retire!

But my epiphany wasn’t making anyone’s coffee faster. Knowledge is not power; implementation is power.

And right then, in my moment of in-my-head inspirational pontification, I saw the leader stop. She confidently wiped the makeup-filled sweat from her cheek, looked up, and said quietly, “This is complete bullshit.” Then she smiled, took a deep breath, and started redirecting and positioning people like she’d just remembered she was in charge. She sent two employees out into the crowd to take orders on their phones.

That single change improved things by about 40 percent. But the number of orders kept climbing, so they adjusted again. They started pre-making espresso shots and drip coffee, handing them over a short glass wall to waiting customers. That solved a lot of the problems and helped them focus on the complicated dessert coffee monstrosities that required 15 ingredients and a blowtorch.

I noticed the manager’s voice and movements were more precise. Her once decaf words were now fully caffeinated by the value she placed on her team. You could feel the energy shift. She had taken control of her environment, and her team responded.

It proved a simple truth: What flies out of your mouth is the culture. That’s what it feels like to work there. The old saying “It’s not what you say, it’s what you do” is, unfortunately, not always so applicable to leadership. Your employees don’t know all the things you do, but they remember exactly what you said, and how they felt when you said it.

Leadership communication that drives operational efficiency is the foundation of customer service. And it always
has been.

Garrison Wynn is a bestselling author, speaker, and consultant (Garrisonwynn.com).

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