It’s not what you know. Even though I really love coffee, this story isn’t about coffee. I worked at a large, complex organization for many years and was fortunate to work on a variety of projects involving different parts of the organization. This came with the challenge of finding out who to talk to for information or finding different expertise to help with a task. Like they say, it’s not what you know, but who you know! I enjoyed getting to know the people I worked with, both their jobs and their lives outside the office. Over the years I discovered that the better I knew people and their jobs, the better we worked together.

Reckoning with change. Later in my career, our organization began changing. Workloads were building and people were extremely busy. The structure of the organization and roles were changing and employee turnover was also increasing. I found it harder to keep up with who I had to know. Co-workers of mine also noticed the changes. At a leadership retreat, I spoke with an attendee from another company who had a similar experience and who said something like, “Yeah, sometimes I’ll randomly message people to go have coffee.”

Reconnecting. Hmmm, I wondered, would that concept work more formally? What if I build a list of people that want to get to know others and randomly choose two at a time to meet for coffee? I began to visualize how this could work. I happened to catch this video of Margaret Heffernan, a media executive, entrepreneur, and management guru, that cemented what I already observed about the power of professional relationships and I became convinced this would work. I talked to the boss and Coffee Buddies was born!

Let’s do this! I emailed the employees within my department explaining the idea and in short order over 30 people signed up. That was 2019. The pandemic caused a temporary break in Coffee Buddies, but upon restarting, even more people signed up. I’m now retired from that organization and the same program I started is going strong. I heard many positive stories from Coffee Buddies’ participants prompting me to think that other organizations could benefit from this. So, I started my own company to bring Coffee Buddies to yours.

Thanks for reading!

Bob Peters, Coffee Buddies Founder and Owner

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