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Concept

Orchestration

Orchestration is Gerber's word for doing the recurring work the same way every time, eliminating discretion where it adds no value. The customer wants the same experience every visit, not the best possible one, and the same consistency is what lets the owner hand the work over.

Gerber's finding from franchises was that customers return for predictability. The Saturday loaf that is excellent one week and different the next loses the family; the clinic where the first visit depends on who is on duty loses the referral. Orchestration writes down the intake, the quote, the follow-up and the handling of a complaint so that they happen identically whoever does them. It is not the enemy of craft; it protects the parts of the work where craft matters by removing variation from the parts where it does not. Jarvis adds that consistency is also the foundation of service as marketing: a customer refers a business they can predict.

A real-life example

A clinic's week-six follow-up message used to depend on whether the physiotherapist remembered. Written into the manual as a standard for every patient, it goes out every time, and referrals rise from four a month to eleven.

How to use it

  1. 1List the moments a customer meets your business and decide which must be identical every time.
  2. 2Write those moments down and remove the discretion from them.
  3. 3Keep the craft for the parts where variation is the value.