When my three boys were little and my dad — Big Wade, as the world knows him — was in town, there was one non-negotiable on the schedule:
Breakfast at Waffle House.
It didn’t matter what else was going on.
House a mess? Schedules full? Total chaos?
Didn’t matter. We went. We piled into the booth. We ordered big.
And to the boys, it felt like freedom:
A place where you could get whatever you wanted.
All the bacon. Eggs your way. Syrup on everything.
It was comfort. It was ritual.
And it was a break from the noise of growing up.
But behind the counter, it was something else:
A system that made the chaos run like clockwork.
At Waffle House, cooks don’t just hear the order:
“All-Star! Eggs over medium! Grits on the plate! Wheat toast with jelly! Waffle golden! Coffee hot!”
They read the plate like a code.
Where the jelly packet sits, how the butter is placed, what gets stacked where—it’s all part of a visual shorthand that keeps the whole thing humming.
So What’s the Business Lesson Here?
Chaos isn’t the enemy.
But you’ve got to have a system that makes it navigable.
At WITH, our version of jelly-at-3-o’clock isn’t butter packets or waffle stacks.
It’s Monday.com.
Because for us, Monday is the flattop.
It’s where everything gets cooked, tracked, sorted, flipped, and plated.
Campaigns, deliverables, timelines, feedback—it all hits the surface there.
But here’s the thing: the tool alone isn’t the magic.
The system came from the team — through creativity, culture, and necessity.
We had to give things names.
We had to decide what a “clean ticket” looks like.
We had to agree on what’s “on the burner” and what’s already “off the line.”
That’s when it started to work.
Now, we can glance at a Monday board and know—what’s hot, what’s next, what’s stuck.
Just like a Waffle House cook reading a plate.
The Takeaway
- You don’t need a perfect system—you need a shared one.
- Tools are just surfaces. Culture is the heat.
- When your team shares a language, a rhythm, a way of seeing the work — chaos becomes clarity, and the work flows.
To this day, when my boys pass that yellow-and-black sign, they light up.
“Remember when Big Wade took us to Waffle House?”
They remember the freedom. The chaos. The syrup.
And with high school graduation coming up for my oldest—and Big Wade heading back to town—I wouldn’t be surprised if someone asks for one more breakfast booth, one more waffle, and all the syrup they can pour.
Because that’s what we’re all building, isn’t it?
A space where the chaos makes sense—and the people feel seen.
This story is part of a series of weekly emails by the author, which blend personal reflection and professional perspective. Subscribe for free.