Going beyond instruction to build leaders, lessons in burger franchising, and efficient resilience

Teaching judgement, lessons in burger franchising, and efficient resilience. These are a few of the stories we’re talking about this week. Whether it be in the office or on the airplane headed to our next program, we’re always talking about the issues and trends that are shaping the way we learn as well as what interests each of us on the team. Read more below. 

Teach judgment, not answers

This week, Harvard Business School professor George Serafeim laid out his teaching philosophy and it’s deceptively simple: the purpose of education isn’t to transfer information but to develop judgment. He structures his learning to go beyond memorization, so that student can exercise judgment when the answer is unclear, the data incomplete, and smart people in the room disagree. To get there, he suggests embracing debate and differing points of view, while contextualizing lessons to account for learner backgrounds, and encouraging physical engagement among other things. Serafeim elucidates the gap between training people to execute and developing people to lead. Is your own organization teaching manuals, or building leaders?

A tale of two franchises

In an illuminating episode of the podcast Cautionary Tales, host Tim Harford tells the story of two burger franchises, both started by brothers. The first brothers invented a brilliantly efficient fast-food model in San Bernardino but had no ambition to expand. The second brothers in Indianapolis stumbled into the restaurant business while showcasing their food equipment and built a rival chain which at its peak produced the first kid’s meal and landed the first major movie tie-in with Star Wars. But the loose franchise structure of the second proved fatal, and the brand Burger Chef owned by the Thomas brothers collapsed by 1996. Meanwhile, a workaholic salesman named Ray Kroc convinced the McDonald brothers to let him franchise their concept, eventually taking over entirely and building a global empire on one key insight: consistency is the product.

Achieving resilient efficiency at 30000 feet

On its face, we may assume operational resilience and efficiency must be opposing goals, but this article from MIT suggests otherwise. The authors use an analysis of the airline industry as a primary case study to illustrate how organizations can achieve both. Their key takeaways? Measure what matters: rather than only focusing on one metric, pair metrics like efficiency and customer experience (or travel time in this example). Use buffers strategically rather than uniformly, employing predictive analysis to see where they are most needed, and where they’re not. Finally, remove extra options from the customer, especially the high-risk ones (like connecting flights with very tight layovers), increasing the rates of success and satisfaction. Success lies in proactive design rather than reactive fixes. Using smarter data and system design, and focusing on the customer, organizations can build systems that are both fast and robust.

Management would like another order of tomatoes

In an experiment in Sweden, a tech startup called Andon Labs, let Google’s Gemini run a cafe staffed by human workers. Aside from pouring coffee, the AI handled everything from staffing decisions to inventory management. While HR meetings may have been short, the AI nicknamed “Mona” struggled with inventory management. Mona ordered canned tomatoes for a cafe with no tomato items on the menu and may have planned too far ahead when it came to napkin and glove purchases. Starting in April, the cafe is not profitable yet, with only $5,000 left from an initial budget of $21000. Andon believes this is due to setup costs and will come more in line with time. What’s more, Mona displayed a high level of autonomy, obtaining utilities and food permits, hiring on LinkedIn, and messaging baristas on Slack, even during off work hours. Will it be easier to turn on Do Not Disturb when AI is the manager?