Pursue Poetry Over Process

Process is wonderful for business.

Process ensures a business reliably delivers the same product or service to as many people as possible. Process enables a business to scale.

Go into a McDonald’s, anywhere in the world, and order a Big Mac. When you bite into the world-famous burger, the taste and experience will be the same in Sydney as it is in Santiago. That’s due to a successful and tested process.

An easily repeated (and patented) series of steps (and ingredients) guarantees the Golden Arches will sell 2.5 million Big Macs every day.

Process is king when you must build a burger or shovel fries, but it stifles creativity. If you’re a creative person, you’ll bristle under the expectation of process. It’s not for you because you have the soul of a poet. Your value is that of an outstanding gourmet restaurant, not a fast food outlet.

People want to eat at your establishment because it’s unlike McDonald’s. This puts you in a bind. Conventional ‘wisdom’ is to replicate what you do and ‘open as many gourmet restaurants’ as you can.

Do this and the quality of your work will drop. The exquisite dishes that come forth from your kitchen, fingertips, paint brush, keyboard or camera will become as safe and reliable as a Big Mac.

Don’t be a burger builder. The robots are almost here, and they do process better than anyone. Robots and creativity though… not so much.

Be you, be different. Pursue poetry over process.

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