You Can Learn A Lot From Eating Tacos
You Can Learn A Lot From Eating Tacos
How a trip to a taco joint helped sell me on limiting work in progress.
My name is Tristan and I help people create flow in how they deliver on their commitments. In today’s Tidbit, I have a quick story that illustrates how good flow can happen everywhere, not just on software teams. In fact, these practices can change all aspects of your work and personal life, if you let them.
Learning Flow Over A Delicious Taco
I unrepentantly love tacos. Taco Tuesday is a fixture in the Hood house and from time to time we also like to venture out in search of delicious flour tortilla wrapped meat salads. On one such occasion we found ourselves at a little taco shop in Franklin, Tennessee, called Mojo’s Tacos. The very first thing I encountered on this particular visit was the exceptionally long line. I immediately recalled my wife telling me, “Anytime there are lines this long the food must be amazing.” SPOILERS: the food was delicious. The line, however, was long for a slightly different reason.
As we got closer to the registers I noticed two things. First, they only had one of two registers open. They had someone available to open the second register but, alas, they only had one open. I was flummoxed. Did they not understand that if they had multiple registers open they would be raking in cash hand over fist and I’d already be eating some delicious tacos?
That’s when I noticed the second thing; a sign on the wall that read, “Because we are optimizing for the dining experience of you, the customer, we have intentionally closed one register. We understand this causes lines and frustration, but it also helps us manage the flow of customers to tables so you have time to enjoy your meal.” In other words, they intentionally optimized the flow of new customers for allowing people to eat without feeling rushed, instead of optimizing for simply “taking people’s cash.” It was the first time I had experienced a business intentionally optimize for something other than efficiency.
Had they opened the second register they could have, theoretically, doubled their revenue in the short term. They seemed to understand, however, that having people hovering over another customer’s table could, in the long term, leave a negative lasting impression.
This optimization was a perfect example of a concept I like to refer to as intentionally limiting work in progress, or limiting WIP. (The act of reducing the amount of work in flight actually gets more work through the system. I discuss that more in the Slack/Little’s Law article.)
Why Would Anyone Limit Taking Cash?
Limiting work in progress is not exclusive to Agile or Kanban. People have written loads on the topic. Oddly enough it’s still something we are terrible at here in the United States. I actually make my living showing teams healthy ways to reduce the amount of work they have in progress and the key to success is being careful for what you optimize. In the case of the closed register, Mojo’s was so intent on optimizing for the best experience they were willing to have a cash register shut down and customers leave the restaurant, having never placed an order.
How is having only one cash register open at a time an efficient use of resources? It’s not. And that’s perfectly fine.
The normal push back is something along the lines of, “Tristan are you seriously saying we should have someone twiddling their thumbs? For any period of time? That doesn’t seem efficient!” I am indeed suggesting that and, yes, that is not very efficient. But I don’t teach optimizing for efficiency, as optimizing for efficiency actually creates gridlock.
Think about it. In the case of the cash registers, having both open would certainly have efficiently gotten people’s orders and money, but there would have been no where to sit and enjoy the meal. And that’s a critical part of the customer experience. The transaction isn’t over once you get the cash. It’s over when the customer feels they have gotten the total value for which they paid. That’s what Mojo’s understood. In order to create a sustainable cash flow over time, you may have to say no to some cash right now.
Optimize for Flow, Not Efficiency
At Mojo’s, the pressure was not on the customers to hurry and eat and get out. Optimizing for flow instead of efficiency works because it takes the pressure off of the customer and places it on Mojo’s shoulders. Mojos had to take orders in a better way. They had to cook and serve in a better way. If they did both those things, customers would get their order with enough time to eat comfortably, finish, and leave happy, just when the next customer was ready to find a place to sit and eat.
I’m not saying it was perfect, but it put the onus of improving the process on Mojo’s, not the customer. And that’s why what you optimize for is crucial. And when you limit the work in progress, you can better focus on each piece of work, which in turn affords you the opportunity to tactically improve the way you work. As you learn and improve at the slower pace, you organically speed up.
And you can totally learn all that over a plate of tacos 🌮🌮🌮.
Until next time,
Keep on learning. Keep on growing.