Wednesday, December 26, 2012

The new coffee shop

How many of us have their preferred coffee shop nowadays? May it be location, crowd or the special barista, that attracts you - it's your coffee shop.

Mine was and is the coffee shop down at Merewether beach surf club.

One morning a few month ago I came down for the first cap of the day just to get told the shop's lease won't be renewed and a stranger might take over the location. A shiver ran down my spine. There's no way the new crew could be as good as the current and why change anyway? It runs well, people flock here for the coffee and the view. That's a ridiculous decision.
My day was ruined.

I don't think it took more than a fortnight after the new coffee shop had opened that people came back in big numbers testing it out. Still there were established behaviours that seemed not been noticed by the new crew that people missed but the coffee was great. Another fortnight later and the shop had readjusted to what people were used and liked to and better. I still think the white umbrellas looked much better than the new blue ones but I guess I can live with that :) Congrats to the crew of the @JuicyBeansCafe on the beach, great job!

When I realised that what happened here was a typical behaviour that I always criticize in my job - people getting stuck in what they know and don't want to give new ideas a chance. We should not let the fear of loosing a good thing stop other people investigating different ways of doing it. Just by giving new ideas a chance we will get the best solution. Bad ideas will be rejected one or the other way.

The Merewether ocean bath has been said to get an overhaul of several million dollars - Here we go again, I can't see why it needs improvement, I just started enjoying it. What's wrong with it? Why change?
This might be just another case of unnecessary fear of change, just as it was with the coffee shop. Change is good and I'm sure we'll enjoy the outcome once again!

What is it you don't want to change or are afraid to loose? Have you had a negative experience where change went wrong?

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