Every day is a new day

Each day I am faced with new challenges, new situations, new problems and new opportunities.  In that respect I am truly blessed as not many folk out there can likely chime that they love their job and love the day-to-day challenges.

Take for example this new project I am currently working on.  I am in the process of interviewing each and every staff member that currently works for Transcend.  We have grown quite substantially over the past year, and now we are adding 8 new baristas into the mix.  In order to maintain some semblance of stability and team cohesiveness, we thought it best for me to interview everyone so we could identify gaps and overlap in our organization.  I have never done this before.  I am not a structure guy, I have chaffed at structure my whole life.  As a result I have not been very good at creating, yet along implementing structure into the organizational ethos of Transcend.  Yet, what is becoming apparent to us, is that we need some basic structure at Transcend, in order to minimize role confusion and expectation anxiety.  So this is what I am busy with for the next couple of weeks.

What is totally amazing to me as I work through the list, is being reminded each day how amazing the people are who work for me.  I can't say it enough.  The folk who have decided to journey with me into the world of specialty coffee are truly amazing people, who all contribute unique parts which when added together total something pretty astounding.

I want to take this opportunity to publically welcome to team Transcend the new crew who are gearing up to work at T2:  Melanie, Mark, David, Justina, Justin, Conner, Deanna.

So as we launch a new website, and approach the launch of a new coffee bar, and anticipate the launch of new packaging, and welcome the arrival of new staff, I am excited, and at the same time, quite honestly, a bit overwhelmed.  It is a lot of newness to take in, and while it is all good, please be patient with us as we try to get our corporate self together.  Transcend right now, is a bit like a gangly teenager, who has just experienced a massive growth spurt.  We are excited about our ability to do new things, but at the same time, we are finding out that we are a bit clumsy and uncoordinated.  This will pass in time, but until we get our legs under us, we may drop and break a few cups.