STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 21 of, factors can't be organized, unless you have a mental model to begin with," said Goran Carstedt Ph.D, past President of IKEA, among other firms, in the 1992 book by Charles Hampden-Turner, Cre- ating Corporate Culture: From Discord to Harmony. "That theory does not have to be the right one, because you can alter it along the way as information comes in. But you can't begin to learn without some concept that gives you expectations or hypotheses." Then, there is the wisdom of looking at proven business models and learning from them. For example, coffee import- ing in North America is a business with a lot of turnover. This is due in part to the extreme capital requirements of running a firm which may have a 180-day cash conversion cycle, and partly due to the way many small importers are founded: an individual with a drive to help coffee producers sell their product asks some variation of the question, "How hard could it be?" and then sets out to dis- cover exactly, in excruciating detail, how hard it can be. If those would-be founders took some time to interview current and past leaders of coffee importing companies and to read between the lines on the news in the sector, they may, at a minimum, learn how to protect their company from the massive financial risk it will incur ev- ery harvest. Maybe some education on the ever-changing needs of specialty cof- It may be difficult for creative thinkers to follow a structure, but often, business frameworks free up more time for creativity. Coffee and tea businesses should study their industry leaders while also looking at successful companies in other fields. fee buyers and how to reach them could be shared. Staffing would be less of a mystery. Some planning and research in the beginning can save thousands, and even millions, of dollars down the road. Other benefits of using proven models include setting markers on how well the business is doing when sometimes industry intelligence is hard to come by. It also increases bankability and attractiveness to investors and can highlight opportunities that wouldn't be obvious without these external frameworks in which to place them. Which Are the Right Structures for Coffee and Tea? There are more structures to use than are needed, as humans have attempted since the dawn of the industrial age to figure out how to properly build the strange amalgam of corporations, which have only been seriously studied for the last hundred years or so. EOS is a commonly-cited methodology, as well as its slightly less-prescriptive com- petitor, Scaling Up. The Scaling Up Methodology along with its Rockefeller Habits checklist can be used to systematically improve a business over the course of a two- year stretch using quarterly increments. Even implementing the Meeting Rhythms can be powerful when it comes to efficiency and culture management. More to the point than which methodology should be used is the business owner's approach to choosing it. An open mind, an awareness that in spite of their specialized products, coffee and tea businesses are just like other businesses, and that learnings can be applied from many other fields. The personality and backgrounds of the owners and staff—the culture in the busi- ness—should also be considered: perhaps pulling critical pieces from different meth- odologies and trialing them in an iterative feedback loop would be better than slavishly adopting a single mental model. The Freedom of Structure When considering whether to use EOS in his "pandemic baby startup", M-Cultivo, David Papparelli says, "We need all this stuff done anyway. We might as well follow a system to get it done and not reinvent it ourselves." While implementing the system in the business for an international team, he found that his former experience with EOS—at coffee and tea social enterprise Thrive Farmers—didn't apply in a 1:1 fash- ion. "For us, it's become our way to have a disciplined approach to building remote company culture." Chris Poh, COO of Onyx Coffee, adds, "What I really appreciate about EOS is it gives a shared operating system and language for the organization to use to be on the same page and ensure we are rowing in the same direction." Entrepreneurs tend to chafe at the structure, but without some kind of a box to color in, or around, they will waste their effort and experience disappointing results. Utilizing a business growth methodology has virtue in itself and will open the doors to better business and ultimately, to Good Growth.

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