Simplification

One of the best parts of visiting Tokyo is exploring the back streets and alleyways to discover new gems. During one visit, I found my favorite coffee shop of all time, Turret Coffee, located on a back street near the Tsukiji fish market. Turret is home to the Turret Latte, quite possibly the best latte in the world. The entire shop holds about eight people. There aren’t many other options than the latte. What’s always impressed me with Japanese culture is the dedication to excelling at one thing. The goal is often to be the best, not the biggest. Turret could easily expand, but the owners choose instead to remain small and take the time to make one latte at a time themselves. Turret has the “rule of the 1 drink.”

You’ll find enterprises like Turret all over Japan, seemingly oblivious to the market pressures to only focus on growth. It’s a different way of thinking, and I find a lot to admire about it. Growth comes at a cost, often to the quality of the product or service. It’s very hard to continue to grow and not sacrifice, to some degree, quality. But another hidden growth cost comes in complication. The more you do, the more chaotic the environment becomes. This chaos is familiar to anyone who has been part of moderately quick growing companies. The growing pains are often felt across the organization, as most new initiatives require ad hoc teams to get them up and running before a dedicated team can be put in place.

The end result of this common approach is that many people have four or five part-time jobs in addition to their full-time job. Many company leaders don’t see, or ignore, the cost of this fire-drill approach to growth. When I read the many stories on “burnout” at media companies, I find myself coming back to a few structural issues that, to my mind, are at the heart of the discontent. The pandemic caused most people to take stock of their lives, and many didn’t like what they found. Many companies reacted to the pandemic by piling more work on a slimmed down workforce. The stress compounds as people are continuously asked to do more with less. Some in the Boss Class see this as malcontents, but in truth I believe most people want to do their jobs well, free of distractions.

That’s why for all the talk of “diversification” and “making money in many ways” – I plead guilty to glibly preaching this – there isn’t enough focus on the internal costs of adding more business lines. more projects, more commercial offerings. More often than not, adding in new ways of making money – a new event, a new awards program, a new whatever – takes organizational focus away from the most important thing: the content. It would be as if Turret decided to expand to four locations, add breakfast, teas, record label and an experiential agency. Safe to say, the latte quality would likely suffer. Simplification is powerful leverage in a business.