Quantifying The Unquantifiable. Are Growing Organizations Doomed To Be Watered-Down Versions Of What They Used To Be?
Without a doubt, the heart and soul of a thriving enterprise is the irrational pursuit of becoming irresistible.
-Seth Godin
Businesses that carve out a special place in our hearts are bathed in intention and inspiration. Nothing you experience at these places happens by accident. It goes beyond product quality. Someone told me I was in the coffee business yesterday. They were only half right. The real business we’re in is eliciting emotions and creating memories.
How does it feel to be in our space?
Did we create a positive memory?
Do our guests feel compelled to tell my friends about it?
Even though there are dozens of Specialty Coffee options in town, would people miss us dearly if we were gone?
Small is an asset when you’re trying to create these feelings. The smaller and tighter-knit the organization is, the easier it is to communicate what the perfect experience should feel like.
We opened in 2016 with one shop, the roastery attached, and a team of eight people. My business partners and I were in the space every day, working behind the counter alongside our team. Aside from a very robust orientation to communicate our vision, mission, and values, we had few systems. It worked well, but wasn’t scalable.
Scale requires systems. Usually, when we think of systems, we think of SOP’s, spreadsheets, and checklists. Things that feel almost devoid of feeling by nature. Howard Shultz, former CEO of Starbucks, addressed this conflict on the Acquired Podcast.
Shultz: Scale and ubiquity creates complexity. Complexity demands efficiency… Starbucks demands nurturance. It’s a company that has to be nurtured like a young child. That is an anomaly, inconsistent with scale.
Interviewer: Have you ever figured out a way to measure these things in a way that, as long as these numbers are a direct tie to our values are good, we can actually put a KPI against them, we know that the core is solid?
Shultz: I haven’t been smart enough to figure that out.
(It's worth noting I don't believe him.)
This is the big challenge for any experience-driven business of scale: How to quantify the seemingly unquantifiable? I don’t think there’s a one-dimensional answer. There are several key ingredients I'd throw in the pot to make a good run at it. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:
Strong founder-led vision.
Great experiences don’t happen by accident. They’re born from the minds of the obsessed. These don’t have to be high-power CEOs in the traditional sense, but every organization that creates an outsized impact is created by someone who consistently and unapologetically pursues and shares their vision despite how crazy anyone else says it is. I started working in Specialty Coffee in 2002, competed in my first barista competition in 2005, then went on a 20-year coffee-obsessed bender. I’ve got opinions.
A well-articulated mission, vision, and values. A cultural northstar.
This is tied to the above. Think of an elevator pitch for why your organization exists. If you believe in something with all your might but can’t communicate it clearly and in a way that inspires people to take action on it, it’s dead. My favorite way to think of vision, mission, and values is in the context of Simon Sinek's Golden Circle. Why. How. What. This cleanly connects ideas to actions.
Enrollment.
Curating a team that embraces the journey on offer. You need to be surrounded by people who believe in the vision that you believe. They’re excited to show up and do the work because of how it makes them feel. Timing and life situation are also key. You might have someone who’s a cultural fit, but the compensation or career path doesn’t line up with their life situation. The team member/organization relationship is a puzzle—it’s better to find the right fits rather than burning time and energy trying to reshape the wrong pieces.
Local Leadership.
A local, boots-on-the-ground stakeholder of the founder's vision. This person is constantly communicating what perfect looks like and how team members can contribute to it through their actions. It’s a role shift from what most people consider a “manager”. A manager is responsible for making sure people follow rules, regulations, and systems. This leader does that as well, but they also spend a huge amount of energy connecting people to why their contribution matters, how they can grow, and the impact they're having on guests and team members.
Role Clarity.
People understanding what they’re actually paid to do. Our mission is to inspire connection by creating memorable experiences. Our team isn’t here to simply make coffee. Our team is here to create memorable moments for our guests. Making coffee is part of that and certainly impacts how the experience is perceived—you can’t create a high-level experience with a subpar product, but just because your product is amazing doesn’t mean your experience is dialed.
Systems.
Finally, you need the systems. If you have robust systems and still aren’t getting the results you want, it’s worth noting that systems aren’t the problem—the problem is thinking they will solve all your problems. Starbucks has well-developed systems, but all the other stuff is fuzzy, and you can feel it when you walk into their stores.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
- William Bruce Cameron
Does Size Matter?
Can smaller, tight-knit, founder-led organizations elicit emotions in a way that larger organizations simply can’t? My gut says yes. I’m obsessed with the small. Most of my favorite experiences are from homegrown, independent businesses that ooze a sense of place and occasion, but there are examples of businesses doing it well at scale. Disney comes to mind. Patagonia. Some of my go-to local restaurants are part of a larger restaurant group. I’m sure there are players in the high-end hotel space who are doing it well (in fact, I’ve sworn off boutique hotels because while the design and ambiance feel special, the service and attention to detail are often lacking).
Cat & Cloud currently sits in this strange middle ground. We’ve grown from that team of eight to over one hundred. Compared to the big corporate players in our industry, we’re minuscule, but compared to a mom-and-pop shop, we’re huge. We don’t cleanly fit in either bucket.
So small vs. big, or independent vs. corporate, might not be the best way to frame this. The takeaway here is: regardless of scale, if we pay more attention to and nurture the cultural components of our organizations, we can’t help but get better.
I’m a business owner, but I'm also a customer. I’d like to go to businesses, big and small, that do their best to create worlds of magic. With inflation, cost of living, and cost of goods steadily increasing, the organizations that fail to provide a compelling experience will no longer get my money. While I understand and resonate with the challenges they're facing, it’s too painful to shell out more and more for subpar experiences. I’d rather cook dinner for my friends at home than suffer through a painful restaurant experience for five times the cost.
Building a compelling business is not easy. Everything that makes an organization special is a pain in the ass. But perhaps it’s worth the effort.