This week's The Bottleneck newsletter hit different.
Michael, their new partnerships manager, wrote about mise en place—the kitchen principle of everything in its place before you start cooking. He's a chef turned COO. His argument: with AI tools now accessing your files directly, your documentation is the mise en place. Your folder structure is the bottleneck.
It unlocked a memory.
Years ago I worked as a catering chef for a studio. Thought I wanted culinary school. Worked in the industry first to be sure. Good decision—I didn't. But the lessons stayed.
One day we had Japanese tourists coming through for lunch. Prime rib.
I checked the patio before service. The servers had done beautiful work. Plates, silverware, water pitchers staged perfectly. Bread and butter. Horseradish cream for the beef. Salad dressing. Chocolate mousse already portioned and waiting.
Then guests sat down.
I watched someone dress their salad with the horseradish.
Then someone spread the chocolate mousse on their bread.
Perfectly cooked prime rib. Ruined.
The servers had mise en place. Everything ready. But ready isn't the same as ready in sequence.
And the harder lesson: that horseradish was excellent. Sharp. Bright. Made to cut through rich beef. With prime rib, it's expected. On a salad, it's a what-the-hell-is-this moment.
Same ingredient. Same quality. Different context. Total failure.
Context is part of the product.
I've seen this play out in operations a hundred times.
The follow-up sequence that feels like service to a ready buyer feels like harassment to someone still shopping. The detailed disclosure that reassures a sophisticated borrower overwhelms a first-timer. The automation that delights one customer alienates another.
Same workflow. Same quality. Different context. Different outcome.
We spend so much energy getting the recipe right. The process documented. The automation built. The content polished. Then we deploy it the same way to everyone and wonder why results are inconsistent.
The problem isn't the horseradish. It's that we're serving it with the salad.
Building systems that scale means building systems that read the room. That sequence information to the customer's journey, not your internal checklist. That understand timing and context aren't nice-to-haves—they're the product.
The servers did their jobs. Everything was ready. And it still failed.
That's the lesson I keep relearning.