Developing and Maintaining a Coffee Training Program
Presented at Coffee Fest, Seattle, WA
Friday 30 Sep, 2022
By Adam S. Carpenter
Founder & Lead AST
ROCC Coffee Co.
Greeting & Invitation
Thank you for attending this session!
I’m excited to work on this topic together with you today. I intentionally use that phrase, “work on this topic” because we are all learning and growing to develop better coffee training programs and methods to maintain them well. Thank you.
This is one of three sessions that I am presenting at Coffee Fest PNW, 2022.
The first is Developing and Maintaining a Coffee Training Program.
The second is How to Get the Best from Your Beans: from Sample, to Profile to Production Roasting.
The third is Cupping Controversial Coffees.
If you’re able to attend any of the other sessions or connect after the show, I would be happy to dialogue.
This session will be shared with attendees by PDF and email in addition to special discount codes to join my SCA certified courses online and to enjoy savings at www.sca.training and www.rocc.coffee.
With your name and email address, I’ll also be giving away free prizes at the end of this session.
Introduction
First, my caveat.
Every speaker has a desire to be well received and to impress the crowd. Leading up to this show, I certainly felt those emotions, so I admit and lay them aside to approach our time with humility. That’s the best path for us all.
Let’s start with an overview of our time together. We need a few definitions for a baseline of expectations. Bear with me, while we move fast to lay a foundation on several books and theories, so that we have time at the end to get some work done together. We should either:
Work out a training plan for you, or specifically how to start developing a training program.
Or to work on a specific objective that you are prepared to add into your training program.
First, let’s consider what brought you here today?
I enjoy interactive learning and sharing, so if I don’t call you out, please feel free to speak up and share your comments. Most often if you are feeling or sensing something, others in the room are on the same page. We all just need a nudge sometimes. How many of you, carried in the room today, a specific training PROBLEM, NEED or PAIN POINT?
We are in pain with training problems that need to be solved
My name is Adam and I love helping people grow to Make Life Better. That’s our vision at ROCC and we use coffee training and tools to build Community and Provide a Playground.
I grew up on a small farm in Michigan drinking Folgers instant coffee with my dad and grandpa. They worked hard and I wanted to be like them. In university I had the chance to stay at a Costa Rican coffee farm. Picking coffee cherries by day and playing futbol at night changed my life.
My wife and I married, went to China as English teachers and then in 2012, I opened Central China’s first artisan coffee roastery - ROCC. We roasted for wholesale coffees and had two retail outlets. One coffee window and one full Coffee Discovery Bar. In 2015 I started training as a fully certified AST with the SCAE running courses in both English and Mandarin Chinese all over China. Today I lead certified SCA courses online and offline in the Coffee Skills Program while supplying training tools and coaching for clients - especially roasters & labs.
I would be honored to work with you or your team to grow your business.
Part 1 in Leadership Series on YouTube
Developing and Maintaining Training Programs
Our demographic or business position doesn’t really matter for this topic.
You may be in a Roastery, a Cafe, in Sales and Business Development.
If you care about training, you are a leader.
How do we start as leaders?
How do we complete our training plan or program once we begin?
How do we ensure we are helping our people to grow so that they can train others in the future?
I am pulling ideas and theories for our training framework from several authors and mentors.
My college chaplain would always advise the student leaders:
“If you fail to define the moment, the moment will define itself.”
I encourage the concept of The Great Formula by “the coffee boys” for creating your first playbook or for writing the first pages of your first training binders.
Build a page day by day and week by week. Like building a wall you successfully lay one brick at a time. Laid properly it supports the bricks placed on top.
Use The Great Formula to ask, “does my business have…”
Low sales
Failure
Frustration
Low Results
Stress
Low Profit
The right hand column shows us the problems, emotions or stressors most often hitting us on a “bad day.” From that list, which would you identify as the most urgent one or two items that you need to address?
Would it be people or systems or sales? Either way, we need a model to work with. We need to be able to build on that model. And our goal for today is that each of us can Plan - Do - Check - or Act after considering various theories and applications.
So we will come back to The Great Formula and the PDCA cycle.
These are tools that we can use for our staff and employees.
But, first we must apply the theories and models to ourselves!
Strategy Maps
Don’t leave (or kick me) when you see that header “Long-Term Shareholder Value” This is from my old MBA textbook and was published by Harvard Business School in 2004.
Believe it or not, it still works and holds true, but it’s not a complete picture in isolation. A business or a brand is a living creature - it has both a head and a heart. No one would advise that you only follow your head. A good, growing and rich life requires that we also follow our heart. Together we meld our hearts and minds.
We’ll address the head to lead us into the heart: Culture and Leadership.
In our limited time, we will only concern ourselves with the bottom strata; our foundational learning and growth perspective. Specifically we will emphasize Human Capital.
For those who wish to go further with this model, you may do so with Kaplan and Norton’s “Strategy Maps” from the Harvard Business School. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=15760
Learning and Growth Perspective
Learning and Growth are at the heart of growing our human capital - another word for your team and the value they provide your business. “Capital” is a term for wealth or asset.
Our people are our greatest asset.
What words would you use to describe your team?
If you don’t have a team, write down 2-3 key words that you wish would describe them.
Culture is when you walk in the door to a business and you feel: “oh… this place is…something…” or “oh… these people are…really…what?”
The importance of culture cannot be overstated. It should be hired when you spot good cultured people. And, it should enfuse the workspace like atmosphere and aroma… or it will linger like stink and decay.
Culture is caught. It is imbued in the atmosphere.
This leads us into “The Advantage” by Patrick Lencioni. Our strategy map models structures, like bones in our bodies, it is the skeleton. But when we layer on culture, it becomes the muscles and nerves to help us move and to keep us safe.
What is your team playing for?
Does your team have an actionable Mission?
Is there a captivating vision that people can really see?
What authentic values do you and your team feel and believe in collectively?
This is the game that we repeat over and again. We play the same game on and off the field. In and out of the office or roastery or cafe. This is who we are!
Does our team feel like everyone has a part to play?
Do they know how they can contribute in large and small ways to help us win the game?
Leadership and Alignment.
Leadership is the WHO. It’s all about people. Ultimately someone is going to ensure that the job gets done, or that all of the jobs get done.
Did you ever have an employee (or a friend) who always made sure things got done? You never had to worry about the business, you never had the nagging “what if” in the back of your mind. If so, good for you. If not, it sure sounds amazing! Right?
I have 2 employees now and they are both like that. It is such a blessing to know that they care and they are on top of things. I don’t have to - and I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO - micromanage either of them.
Using our Great Formula matrix, ask yourself: “Who is ultimately responsible for…
Keeping PASSION alive?”
Ensuring that TASTE is on point?”
Monitoring our POSITION in the market?”
Helping get the right PEOPLE on the bus and with the team?”
Sharing and creating value through MARKETING?”
Building and overseeing our SYSTEMS?”
Managing and directing our MONEY?”
Name the people and tasks individually. Can you play a matching game with your team by name and task or do you find that it is YOU for a majority or all. This is most likely a reason that you may feel stress.
Ask yourself WHY IS IT ME and then deal with the answer truthfully.
The popularized concept of “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink might help you (like it did me) come to the point of saying “If I am the boss, then everything is my fault!”
Let’s say it together so that no one feels alone, “It’s my fault.”
Opening the cafe went poorly, “it’s my fault for not ensuring we had the supplies ordered last week.” But you may say, “it’s my manager's fault for not ordering.” Then we come back to ask, “why is it my fault that the manager did not order last week?” Admit, “it’s my fault that I didn’t provide training or checklists or time or accountability or a clear system and process for my manager to ensure that they ordered last week.”
This SYSTEMS ties back perfectly to ALIGNMENT.
We must be perfectly clear. This is what we do, and this is why we do it, and this is how it helps us win, grow, succeed together. Our team needs to know (and be reminded daily) THIS IS HOW WE WIN. Emphasis on the “we” because if they lose, you lose. If you lose, they lose. We are a team.
When I (Adam) was a Shift Manager at Starbucks we had a stack of binders with checklists and detailed instructions from warming pastries to reconciling bank deposits to ensuring bathrooms were clean and temperatures in the freezer were on point. Everything could be measured, checked and marked complete.
A personal anecdote.
When I was a boy, people would tell me something or I would hear something and then I would interpret it.
Beware if your team and people are interpreting what you say and do, rather than receiving it with clarity. I would listen to a history lesson at school and contextualize the concept. I would listen to a song or a speech and interpret it into my own words or way of speaking. I thought I was being creative and integrating something into my own personality or learning modality - but in fact I was altering the truth. Details matter. I would call myself a “big picture” person or a “macro-thinker” but in fact, I was lazy and I didn’t appreciate details like I ought.
Details matter!
Seek clarity - always.
Practice what my (Adam’s) children do at home and at school every day. You ask them, “can you tell back what you just heard?” Ask your team, your friend, your staff to repeat back with precision. It’s not demeaning and it’s not offensive. It’s just a test of accuracy. We stop to listen to customer complaints, no matter how we view the situation. We repeat back exactly what they said and acknowledge that we are sorry for the mistake and misunderstanding. We take action. We tell them how we plan to resolve the problem. We encourage them to come back and help us next time with gratitude for bringing the situation to our attention.
“Can you tell back what you just heard?”
It’s amazing how often our words and training is not received the way we think it is. We say something - they hear something else. If you feel you are going crazy, it’s because you are crazy. You are saying one thing, expecting another while they hear a 3rd and do a 4th… this is the cycle we must break as we put into place our Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle.
Our goal is to Plan - Do - Check - Act.
Let's create, beg, borrow or steal a one page action plan like this beautiful Customer Service Recovery method from Starbucks and Howard Schultz called: LATTE. This page is a copy from our ROCC Coffee Discovery Bar Training manual which had 30 Competencies. One of them was LATTE for problem resolution.
Every ROCC barista would work through our 30 competencies from green coffee to espresso grinders to customer service and safety. Some required skills demonstration or role play. Of course there were more than 30 skills required to be a good barista, but we found that 30 was more than enough to give them (and us) confidence that the rest would be caught through good culture.
You may want to try LATTE role play with your team.
Now, let’s plug in the LATTE framework into our PDCA cycle.
What would happen if we didn’t have a feedback loop for customer problems?
What if we never made a plan to fix that faulty drink or product service?
What would our employees think about our business?
What would happen to the business as a result of guest experiences?
These are all BRICKS IN THE WALL as we plan, do, check and act.
And thus over time we apply and reapply the PDCA - Plan Do Check Act. The goal is to then help them to become HABITS that take little or no effort to perform. They become culture!
The Employee Review
Let’s look at another one, the Employee Review. Show it to new applicants when they apply for the job. Warn them with advance notice - we will check up on all of these items and work through them together monthly.
See if that excites or demotivates them. This is a culture test before they ever gain access to the team.
Give applicants aspirations and goals before they evey enter the team and face work challenges. Some forms like this are easy to download, borrow and adopt for your own. Many procedures and forms like this are better JUST TO BE DONE than to WAIT for perfection.
A job done is better than one that never began.
You can even ask the employee, “would you please write down 5-10 things you want me to follow up on after 30 days?” This is a great place to start building alignment and checking for clarity.
Another essential training (and maintaining) tool is the task list and checklist.
This is something your team members can easily build and grow. Ask them on a weekly basis (when you review them) “was anything missing?” Ask them to write things down when they are doing it so that next time they have the talking points right in front of them.
IMPORTANT : If you make a list and ask the employees to work it, then you are held accountable for reviewing those lists and documents.
Take Extreme Ownership.
I can’t recommend enough adopting the one page Playbook as Patrick Lencioni promotes in The Advantage.
He walks us through items to include: who we are, what we do and how we do it.
Bonus: consider what “we don’t do… we refuse to… etc.”
Sometimes the “we fight against” statement can be confused with “we fight for” statements… take care of the negative effects in a company. It is critical that we monitor what our culture is. Culture's definition is much more clear than the non-culture definition. As humans we have “mirror neurons” which help us to become like our atmosphere and community.
Where do our mirror neurons point?
If you want your team to move in a certain direction: you should strive to be that kind of person.
If they should save money, you should save money and celebrate it with them.
We adopt things that are celebrated by our community and culture.
If they should be more detailed with numbers, then we should lead by celebrating numbers.
If they should be more accountable to timely reporting, then let’s provide them timely reports.
It’s easy to lead a culture when we own it and celebrate the toil and work!
One page to rule them all.
Not one ring - borrowed from my favorite author J.R.R. Tolkien.
If our team gets this right, then they will be aligned with culture and mission. Can you name that ONE THING or that ONE PAGE? It is absolutely critical!
You may think, “one page, that’s not enough to lead a team and a business!” Don’t worry, it will come with time. There will be things left unsaid… they can come after. We had 30 competencies which followed the 1 page we called MVV - Mission Vision Values.
It’s a document that is birthed from your soul (or the business soul) so don’t overthink it. This is a time to let the mirror shine on what is within. We cannot copy/paste another company or team. We can borrow their employee review forms and LATTE service recovery steps, but the One-Pager must be birthed from heart and culture.
Our One-Page Company Culture Must Be Authentic!
This one page document (as outlined by Patrick Lencioni) provides our team a 5-word summary, an elevator pitch and quick sales reply for what we do and why we make the world a better place by existing.
It may even boil down to one word like “Wow!”
Resist the temptation to make 7 plans. That’s my (Adam’s) style. I want to try to do everything at once, rather than sequentially knocking down the dominoes and building momentum. Lay your plans out on your desk and ask yourself honestly, which ONE will I do first?
Share in the comments or with the group if you know the answer to: THIS is my one thing!
It may be the easiest one. Pick the low hanging fruit to get some wins and feel the momentum of progress.
It may be the most important one. The one you DREAD the most. Get it done for the satisfaction of doing a hard thing.
Let’s Get to Work!
It’s question and answer time. There is no stupid question, except the time when a girl asked me (while driving her to LAX airport) if she should have brought some chopsticks with her on her trip to China for the summer.
That was the one dumb question!
Any others?
It’s an open field now.
Thank you for your great contribution to our time together!
Be sure to check out my other presentations and here is our drawing for winners of cupping spoons, sample coffees, roasting trays and more fun items on display from www.rocc.coffee and www.sca.training.
I’ll be around the show presenting other sessions and would love to connect with you!
Join my email list at: http://eepurl.com/cZU5R1
And connect with me on Instagram @asc.coffee
I am happy to share this presentation with you by PDF and offer you special discounts on certified SCA courses at www.HowToCoffeePro.com as well as training tools and equipment from The Labs at ROCC and SCA.Training. Have a great day and Make Life Better my friends!