Business Lessons from The Bear, Part 2: The Basics

What can The Bear teach businesses, leaders and communicators about Value Propositions?

Well, it turns out, quite a lot.

So, as part of my series taking lessons from The Bear, let’s go back to the basics and look at Episode 1 – ‘System.’

Transposed from The Bear: Episode one

Page 5

SYDNEY

Can I just, like, ask

you a question maybe?

CARMY

Of course. Yeah.

SYDNEY

I know who you are.

CARMY

Oh, yeah?

SYDNEY

Yeah, I-I mean…
you were the most excellent CDC
at the most excellent restaurant
in the entire United States of America.

(CARMY waits)

So, what are you doing here? I guess.

CARMY

Making sandwiches.

_________________________________________________________

Strong Basics – Strong Value Propositions

Every great business is built on its ability to do the basics brilliantly. I’m not going to cite thousands of data points in this chapter, but I will talk from experience.

The Team – my business – has been delivering brands and campaigns for customers and employees for over forty years. We’ve been consistently profitable, and we’ve won awards for the work we’ve done.

Why?

Probably because everyone at The Team does the work.

We all, to use an analogy from The Bear, know how to ‘make the sandwiches.’

And when businesses fill themselves with people that do the work – people who know their craft – then the quality stays high.

In the UK, the Timpsons Group run businesses that include photo-processing, dry cleaning and key cutting. You’ll find all their businesses on most of the High Streets of UK towns.

They have a simple philosophy. It goes:

We believe the best way to give great customer service is to give freedom to the colleagues that serve customers. The management teams delegate authority but retain responsibility and we have only 2 rules: Look the part. Put the money in the till.

Looking the part is about taking pride in your appearance, pride in the quality of what you do, and taking pride in how you do it.

Putting the money in the till? That starts to happen the more you look the part.

The Team’s Applied Behavioural Scientist, Mark Hauser has written a brilliant article about James Timpson’s approach to Upside Down Management. In it he writes:

(if a business) is going to deliver value to its customers and in the supply chain then it has to be single-minded around what it is trying to achieve. Brands that try to do too much, they fail deliver exceptional value because they stretch themselves too thinly.

Too often today we’re searching for the next big thing. We’re looking to learn and move on. Progress is admirable, but in all that movement, there’s a danger that we lose sight of the basics: of our craft.

In his essay on the Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us to accept who we are and focus first on being brilliant at that. He says:

Now the other thing about the length of life: after accepting ourselves and our tools, we must discover what we are called to do. And once we discover it we should set out to do it with all the strength and all the power we have in our systems.

In brand terms, this is like fulfilling clear value propositions.

Know What Your Brand Offers

The strength of value propositions relies on the quality of the products being sold.

If you make the cheapest sandwiches available, make the best cheapest sandwiches available. If you make the fastest sandwiches available, make the best fast food available. And, if you make the freshest sandwiches available, make the best fresh sandwiches there are.

The key thing there is to focus on one thing, be the best at it. Because if you are the best at what you do, you need never be ashamed of that fact.

Statisticians are constantly asking questions about how we feel about life.

Insights from GWI found that 72.9% of us say we strive to achieve more in life and 65% say they are career oriented. 81% think it is important to continue to develop new skills throughout their life, and learning new skills is important to 61% of us. But when it comes to feeling accepted by others, that falls to just 34%

And yet feeling respected by our peers is important to 73% us. But is there a danger that we feel that respect will come through learning new skills; through occupying ground that others have yet to take; through constantly moving on.

Perhaps for many of us, the answer is more immediately in front of us.

Perhaps for businesses, getting people to love the basics of what they do will unlock the productivity gains they so eagerly seek.

As Martin Luther King Jr says:

When I was in Montgomery, Alabama, I went into a shoe shop quite often. There was a fellow in there that used to shine my shoes and it was an experience to witness this fellow. He would get that rag and he could bring music out of it. And I said to myself, “This fellow has a PhD in shoe shining.”

The Business Argument

In his book, The Peter Principle, author Laurence J. Peter makes the claim that we promote people into positions of incompetence.

Rather than letting them focus on what they are great at, we reward performance with promotions to higher ranks, often responsible for the management of large teams, where they reach a level of incompetence.

Instead, businesses that focus on technological advances and on investing in skills are the ones where we see higher levels of loyalty and productivity.

What You Can Do

• Praise people for their strengths and focus them on that. Always go out of your way to focus on the basic attributes that are satisfying the customers.
• Gallup Strengths finder focuses solely on the unique capabilities we all have. Too often performance management focuses on building on weaknesses rather than recognising strengths.
• In reviews ask people what they love doing – what makes them happy at work – get that right and the performance will follow.

Final Thoughts

Real value, and strong value propositions, come from mastering the fundamentals. Businesses thrive when they empower people to do what they do best.

Respect doesn’t have to come from new achievements alone; it can also be earned through dedication to your craft, clarity of purpose, and delivering consistent value.

So, maybe the question is: what do we already do brilliantly—and how can we do it even better?