Concept
Orchestration
Orchestration is Michael Gerber's word for the elimination of discretion, or choice, at the operating level of a business: the recurring work is done the same way every time. Customers want the same experience on every visit, and that consistency is also what lets the owner hand the work over.
Gerber's argument, drawn from franchising, is 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. This connects to the idea of service as marketing: a customer can only recommend a business whose service they can predict.
A real-life example
A three-chair barber shop in Kayseri hears that a haircut depends on who is free. The owner writes down the first two minutes of every appointment: the same questions about length, a photo shown on the phone, the finish checked in the mirror. The cutting stays each barber's craft. Within two months, customers stop asking to wait for one particular chair.
How to use it
- 1List the moments a customer meets your business and decide which must be identical every time.
- 2Write those moments down and remove the discretion from them.
- 3Keep the craft for the parts where variation is the value.