I started with a strong opinion when I took this photo.
The long green Starbucks coffee stopper felt like obvious waste. Five inches of plastic to plug a small hole? As a customer, my reaction was pretty clear: this should be shorter, like the ones used by other coffee shops near me.
It felt like an easy Lean judgment call.
My First Reaction: This Looked Like Obvious Waste
From a Lean perspective, it was tempting to label the longer coffee stopper as overproduction or unnecessary material. It seemed like a design choice that had not been questioned in a long time.
It seemed like they could save money by using less plastic, accomplishing the same result: plugging the hole.
I have seen plenty of cases where small, repeated items quietly add up to a lot of cost and waste. When something is handed out millions or billions of times a year, even small design assumptions matter.
But quick judgments can get us into trouble.
Slowing Down to Ask Why the Design Existed
When I slowed down and did some reading online, the story changed.
The longer stopper was not originally just a plug. By extending deeper into the cup, it helped reduce sloshing back through the lid opening–helping somebody who might be walking with a very full hot beverage. Earlier hot cup lids had larger openings and far less effective splash guards. In that system, the extra length actually added value.
That does not mean the stopper is still the right answer today. But it does suggest the original decision was reasonable within its context.
When the Rest of the System Changes
What changed was not the stopper. What changed was the rest of the system.
Modern coffee cup lids now do much more of the anti-splash work themselves. They are designed to manage flow and spills in ways earlier lids did not. That raises a more interesting question than whether the stopper is too long:
Is the design keeping up with the rest of the system, or is it solving yesterday's problem?
This is a familiar pattern in organizations. Decisions that once made sense become artifacts. Nobody owns them anymore. Nobody remembers why they exist. They just persist.
Not All Customers Want the Same Thing
The discussion around this photo reinforced another Lean lesson.
Some people value the longer stopper because it doubles as a stir stick. Others pointed out that if it gets dislodged, the extra length makes it less likely to fall out. At the same time, some customers prefer a shorter stopper, or none at all. Others are concerned about microplastics in hot beverages. Some use reusable mugs and see the stopper as unnecessary from the start.
All of those perspectives are valid. They simply reflect different needs and preferences.
This is why slogans like “the customer is always right” are not very helpful. The harder reality is that customers are not all the same.
From Strong Opinion to System Awareness
This experience shifted my thinking.
Waste is not an inherent property of an object. It is contextual. Something that adds value in one system can become unnecessary when the system evolves. The mistake is not the original design choice. The mistake is failing to revisit it.
This is a tiny design decision. But when something like a coffee stopper is used billions of times a year, small assumptions get amplified.
I started with a strong opinion. Now my view is less certain and more curious.
It makes me wonder what other artifacts exist in our organizations because they once solved a real problem, but no one has paused to ask whether they still belong.
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I agree! At first glance, the longer stopper did look a lot like a waste. It is so easy to apply lean at a very surface level and label something as overproduction that is far from it. By pausing and thinking deeper into it and asking why the design is that way, we can avoid labeling things that arent as such. Something that seems so wasteful when compared to similar examples like the Starbucks coffee stopper, actually has so many uses. Not only does it stop the coffee from sloshing around, but it could easily be used as a coffee mixer if needed. The customer is the most important part of lean, and why we do it, and so if we were to be taking away this value from the customer, we would not be performing lean practices correctly.