You Can’t Run a Fast Food Kitchen Like a Michelin Star Restaurant

The kitchen only works when it matches the chaos out front.

This is one of those philosophies that didn’t come from a book or some LinkedIn “thought leader.” It’s been built over years of watching, working, leading, and—let’s be honest—making mistakes.

If everything around you is fixed, you can afford to be flexible. If everything around you is variable, you must be fixed.

Sounds simple, but it’s where a lot of teams go sideways.

Think of it like running a restaurant. If you’ve got one menu, no substitutions, and everyone orders at the counter? The kitchen can be a little loose. A dash of this, a little chaos back there—it works. You don’t need a laminated playbook for how to toast a bun.

But now imagine people are ordering in-store, online, through an app. Someone wants it delivered. Someone else wants it vegan, gluten-free, wrapped in lettuce, and blessed by a crystal.

That kitchen better be tight. Labeled stations. Clear roles. Systems. Consistency. Everything fixed. Because now, the outside world is variable.

The problems show up when people get this backward.

When a team insists on being rigid in a rigid world, they get in their own way. They build process for the sake of process. They over-engineer instead of flexing where they could. That’s how you end up with bloated roadmaps and 12-step workflows to send a tweet.

On the flip side, when the world is chaotic and your team decides to “just feel it out,” you’re in trouble. You can’t free-jazz your way through high variability. That’s how balls get dropped, customers get confused, and your culture starts to rot from within.

So take a beat. Look around. Is the environment fixed or variable? Then choose accordingly.

That one decision makes everything else a little bit easier.