Donald Burns discusses tools for restaurant owners, including the book Unreasonable Hospitality and a 56-card values deck used to help teams identify core values. He recommends keeping core values to 4-6 items so staff can actually remember and live them.
56 cards.
4 blank cards.
Four to six core values.
What's one book, a podcast, or just a piece of content that just kind of hit you like a sledgehammer and made you kind of maybe rethink the way you live and the way you lead?
Well, it's old, but I liked.
I love those ones.
Those are the best ones. Unreasonable hospitality was. Was good. It had some moments that were over the top, but it was good. I enjoyed it. I. You know, being in the industry, it's always fun to read the passion of people in the industry. This is a piece of content that's on my desk that I like.
Oh, very cool.
Yeah. I don't know if you've seen these, but they're very cool. So it's 56 cards, 52 of them alphabetical. It's all just words, right? And it's a cool little personal values deal, and it can change. So it's just got like all these words, like alphabetically.
Oh, very cool.
You go through and you pick five.
And that's going to be my focus for this week. These are going to be the values that I try to exemplify this week and show down.
And then it's got four blank cards.
That you can write, you know, your own adjective on it. It's a fun thing to do with.
Your team, I think, and I use.
It in group exercises when I'm trying to get a business to understand their core values are.
And the funny thing about core values.
And I know you know this well because you do a lot of it.
But I'm constantly trying to get people like four to six. Four to six core values is the magic number. And the reason why is because any value proposition creates accountability. So if you pick 10 words like loyal, honesty, integrity, kindness, thoughtfulness, you get into all these words and it just a. It starts to sound kind of just like contrived, non.
Intentional, and it's over.
Overwhelming. I can't memorize 10 things. You give me three things, I can do it. Four? Yeah. Six if they're really good. You're pushing it, but I'll get there. But the biggest part, it's not just memory, it's the accountability. Those 10 things that you said you are. You have to demonstrate every single day. And when you don't, you're a hypocrite. People unplug from the machine and they stop believing in any of them because.
You didn't demonstrate one of them or two of them.
So as human beings, we can do three to four things, maybe five.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
