The higher you go, the less you see the making.
Readtime: 3.5 minutes
I was in Lisbon last week and walked into a coffee shop where the guy behind the counter was putting the finishing touches to three drinks lined up in front of him. He was torching the brown sugar on top, like a creme brûlée, but in a glass.
I asked what it was. He said it was his own creation: a ‘Banana Brûlée’.
So I had one. It was delicious. And I ended up staying a while, asking him (Lucas) how he made it, what was in it, and where the idea had come from.
A couple of days later, in a bar in Lisbon, I watched a guy called Tomás make my friend a Bloody Mary. Lots of proper care and attention. And then in went something I've never seen in a Bloody Mary before: HP sauce.
I asked him about that too.
The special ingredient
Two small things, a couple of days apart. I keep coming back to them (and will be making both).
In both cases the person had made something that was theirs. Lucas had only come up with it a couple of weeks earlier. And Tomás’ addition of the HP sauce made it taste fantastic. They were little marks left by the person doing the making – a sort of fingerprint on something most people would just order and drink.
Most people don't ask, though. They take the drink and they leave. Which means the person making it has probably got used to their craft going unnoticed. They still put in the same care and attention, they've just stopped expecting anyone to clock it.
So when you do ask, it lands more than you'd think. Not because you've done anything clever, but because the bar is so low. Most of us walk past the making all day.
Almost everyone is making something
Once you start looking for it, you see it everywhere. There's nearly always a small space, even in a narrow job, where a person makes something theirs. The HP sauce is proof. Someone, at some point, decided a standard Bloody Mary could be a bit more interesting, and did something about it.
The same is true of pretty much everything that gets handed to you at work.
The deck someone built, the analysis they pulled together, the doc that landed in your inbox this morning – every one of those was made by a person who took a hundred small decisions along the way and cared about at least a few of them.
But we don't usually receive it that way. We receive the output, ask "is this any good?", and move on.
A more interesting question is "what did they actually decide here?" Because that's the one that sees the person, not just the thing.
The higher you go, the less you see it being made
I think this gets harder the more senior you become. Because the higher you go, the more is made for you, and you see less of the making. You get the finished deck, not the late night that produced it. You're surrounded by makers and slowly going blind to the making.
There's a knock-on effect to noticing, which is that people tend to go a bit further for you when they feel their decisions have been seen. Later that same day at the bar, when a friend's phone had died, Tomás disappeared twice to find the right charger until he came back with one that fit. I don't think that was unrelated to the conversation we'd had earlier.
Mostly though, I just think noticing people’s decisions is a small and rare kindness. Many people go a whole day without it.
The barista, the bartender, the analyst three rungs down – they all made decisions today about things they care about, and almost nobody told them they noticed.
So maybe this week the thing to look out for is the HP sauce. The small place where someone near you has made something theirs. And ask them about it.
I'd love to hear if you spot one.
Or if you're the maker no one's noticed in a while – tell me what your HP sauce is.
Thanks for reading.
Mostyn
P.S. If you’ve enjoyed this, please let me know. And even better, forward it on to someone else who might enjoy it too.