Sometimes, less is more.
I just had a wonderful experience which reminded me that in order to add value to your customers, you don’t always need to find new things to add and new features for everything.
It is human nature to try and solve problems by adding more, rather than focusing on less.
But we were just at a little family restaurant which showed that this is not the only way.
It was a little hole-in-the-wall Turkish restaurant with a brother and sister behind the counter.
The food is prepared by their mother in the morning. She decides which 8 dishes to cook that day, always different, so there is no set menu.
And the food was amazing!
And when the dishes are sold out for the day, they are sold out.
That means that this family had set themselves a maximum limit as to how much this business could possibly earn per day.
As a management consultant, I was instantly thinking of ways this business could expand, grow and become more profitable.
But then I realised, this was exactly the opposite of the point.
The business seems to be working extremely well for that small family, and they all looked extremely happy. They were even generous.
If they were to try and expand, it would no longer be the same business which they are happy with now. And there is only so much food one mother can cook every day.
They proved, there is more than one way to make a business “better“.
Sometimes, it is about innovating a product and scaling it as fast as it can go.
Other times, it is about figuring out what you want from the business, and doing that as well as you can while it still makes you happy.
What is your strategy?
Nick Skillicorn
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