Donald Burns delivers a direct leadership message for restaurant managers: be willing to remove underperforming or toxic team members, hold people accountable to your plan, and protect your culture. He warns that failing to act harms the brand, undermines culture, and slowly destroys the restaurant from within.
You must be willing to get rid of the dead weight. If you have people on your team right now who do not follow your plan, who you do not hold accountable, then you are letting them down as a leader. Actually, you're not really a leader. You're just a liability. If you have people in your team right now who have poor skills and they're not doing the job, then they're hurting your brand. And if you don't get rid of these people, you're going to destroy your restaurant slowly from the inside. If you have people on your team who have poor character and are not a positive influence on your culture, you got to get rid of them. If you don't, you're going to lose the culture war that's happening right now inside your restaurant.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
