Today, more than ever, we are consumed by hacks, shortcuts, tips and advice to make our lives easier. When it comes to running a coffee shop and being a leader this might be helpful when dealing with things, but not necessarily helpful when dealing with people.
I recently aired a Shift Break on the way we tend to unfairly prioritize and hold up as an example baristas that learn quick and make our lives easier, all the while looking at baristas who take longer to learn the same things with contempt because they make more work for us. We think more work in training is a sign we hired wrong and subconsciously are nurturing a resentment toward people who require work. In reality…that is most people. They require work.
The quest for optimization is good in its proper place but taken too far and we start to falsely think “If it is efficient it is easy”. Instead we should seek optimization for the sake of specificity and aiming at the right things. Which things are we going to work hard on? not, “How can I make all hard things easy.”
The attitude of getting out of work creates an inattention to the lessons learned in hard work. One of which is discovering your own optimization tools and specific needs based on first hand experience. We miss out on the rewards of hard work and inconvenient tasks when we are obsessed with escaping them.
In the cafe there are many opportunities to develop maturity, even if you are older, in the role you occupy. When we seek to run away from hard work by constantly search ing for hacks and shortcuts we inhibit our ability to effectively lead and will artificially inflate our accomplishments. On the back of this, we will not be able to operate the business well because we did not collect lessons, we collected tools and tricks. When hard times come we will dive deeper into the tools and tricks and not take an honest look at ourselves and the core structures that may be lacking.
So my encouragement to you is that you would reject the idea that the difficulties that come with leading  and developing people are aberrations in your business that can be vanquished with the right formula, tip, or trick.
Seek to embrace the work of leading, training, and coaching people as an exciting and ever-present part of the job you are meant to do and let the lessons in that work create a more healthy dynamic that prioritizes good work over the subconscious drive to avoid it.
-Chris
Contact me at : Chris@keystotheshop.com
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