Better Before Bigger

We all love Chick-Fil-A. For all intent and purposes, it is undefeated in the fast-food industry. No other restaurant chain has the type of raving fans that Chick-Fil-A has.

But while Chick-Fil-A has gotten big and become the most popular and fastest growing restaurant in the United States, it started first by getting BETTER. In the 1990’s, when the company was taking off and trying to figure out how to win over its competitors in the industry, the Chick-Fil-A executives were all gathered in a room to talk about strategies and approaches. Many of the leaders in the room threw out grand ideas of how to get bigger and bigger in order to keep up. After quietly listening to much debate and conversation, Chick-Fil-A’s founder, Truett Cathy, finally stepped in. Banging his fist on the table (which was very unlike his personality), he got the attention of all the leaders in the room. He told them, “We must get better before we get bigger. If we continue to get better then eventually our customers will demand we get bigger.” Here we are about 30 years later, and Mr. Cathy certainly had it right.

This story has always stood out to me and has been even more impactful lately as a company owner myself. Many times in life, we get ahead of ourselves and we are always focused on bigger, bigger, bigger whether it is in our personal life, career, materially, etc. I think it would serve us all well to focus on getting better before bigger.

Become really good at what you do and like Truett Cathy said, then they will demand you get bigger. Many times when people or companies fail, it is because they get too big too fast without mastering their craft/process.

If you are a leader in the construction industry, instead of focusing on getting your company to the highest annual revenue you can building any type of job, what if you focused on making sure that every project you built created raving fans from the clients, subcontractors, and developers. If you are a Project Manager, what if you focused on understanding the ins and outs of the whole construction process and becoming really great at that before trying to jump to that bigger position that you may not be quite ready for.

“Better before bigger.” Let’s all focus on this idea as we wrap up 2024 and look ahead to 2025. Becoming the best versions of ourselves and serving others with excellence.