10% Better

or brew on 11

For a long time now I’ve been thinking about the difference between excellence and average, and I have come to the conclusion that what separates the two is really very little.

When I was a teenager, I was hired by Santa Fe Motors to fill in for a parking lot attendant who was on vacation for two weeks. Basically the job entailed sitting in a booth watching over a parking lot full of new Chevys. I used that time to read books. One day a supervisor came by while I was engrossed in a novel and said, “Why don’t you clean the cars, or do something to make yourself useful?” I didn’t understand this concept and the lesson I missed was truly earth-shaking. By doing just a wee bit more than is expected of you, you move past mediocrity and towards excellence. I did learn this lesson later on by just working a little faster and becoming the best busboy known to mankind.

In the book, The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson, the author say’s, “The whole of life is the sum of its parts”. In other words, where you are today is the culmination of thousands of tiny decisions on a day-to-day basis that can determine your own excellence or mediocrity. This gets me to the point of this article: Always try to go 10% better.

Is this you? You have brewed your pale ale recipe over a thousand times and nothing ever changes, so you stop doing yeast cell counts, you stop checking the pH of your mash, or even the temperature of the wet grain and you don’t do gravity checks while your beer is fermenting. You have slipped into mediocrity and haven’t even realized it because your customers still love your beer. But those little steps really do make a difference in your beer and its consistency. Each one of those steps may take one minute, but that is the essence of 10% better. People who are truly exceptional do not skip steps.

The idea is that when you are about to do a task, you develop the habit of asking yourself, “How can I do this just a little bit better?” The truth is most people will do the bare minimum that is required of themselves, not just in their job, but in everyday functions of life. However, just by doing things only slightly better, you begin to stand out.

I’ve seen it first hand. If an employee was just a bit better than the other employees, I either gave them the best schedules, gave them a raise, or asked if they would like to be a manager. Our first busboy in our first restaurant, Eric Segura, was just such a person. We made him a partner in our pizzeria, IL Vicino.

Jon Gordon has a good explanation in his book, Training Camp. He says “Interestingly enough, for all their greatness, the best aren’t that much better than others. They are simply a little better at a lot of things. Everyone thinks success is complicated, but it’s really simple. In fact, the best don’t do anything different. They just do ordinary things better.” I don’t think it could be stated any simpler.

I harp on brewery owners to adhere to a good business system that involves such mundane activities as monthly inventories, tracking sales and labor, and having everything put on a checklist. Each one of these things take very little time, but the aggregate is really the difference between a successful business and one that may struggle to just get by. It fits into the 10% better philosophy.

In the movie Spinal Tap, the guitarist, Nigel, tries to explain that he is better because his amplifier volume doesn’t stop at 10, but goes to 11. The interviewer tries to explain that he could just recalibrate the amp so that 11 equals 10, but Nigel looks bewildered at that concept and finally say’s “But this one goes to 11”. That is supposed to show how dumb Nigel is, but I believe he may be the smartest of all, because no matter how he did it, he was trying to go to 11. In everything you do today, ask yourself how you too can turn it up to 11 and you will be amazed at the results.

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The rough draft was done on a 1955 Hermes Rocket. What a sweet typewriter!