Chapter 6: Pursuing a True Partnership

“My dad has always said: Run toward what you want, as opposed to away from what you don’t want. So he asked me straight-out: “What’s your dream job?

Invite Your Team Along

There’s a fascinating and possibly overlooked advantage that businesses with strong cultures have: when an employee comes up in the organization, any other way of doing things just feels wrong.

And wrong is how EMP felt when I walked in on my first day.

In retrospect, I can now name everything that was going sideways and tell you what I did by way of correction. In the heroic version of this story, I struck a masterful pose and enumerated a number of inspirational management tenets, all of which transformed the restaurant within the week.

But the truth is, Danny’s way of doing things—the way he treated his employees and guests—was so baked into my consciousness that for the first few months I was acting on instinct alone.

Mostly, the team needed to be brought along. They needed to feel seen and appreciated. They needed expectations to be clearly laid out and explained. They needed discipline to be consistent. They needed to feel like vital and important parts of an exciting sea change, not obstacles to making it happen.

From a management perspective, we needed to return to first principles, and at Union Square Hospitality Group, the first principle is to take care of one another. The fine-dining squad hadn’t come from within USHG—and even if they had been able to absorb this crucial, employee-centered aspect of the culture, they’d been so focused on making their mark on the restaurant that they’d let this central principle fall by the wayside. That’s why Danny had insisted the next GM come from within the company; for him, that aspect of the culture was not negotiable.

To bridge the gap between the two factions, improving communication was going to be key. At the same time, we needed systems, so everybody would know what they were supposed to be doing and how they were supposed to be doing it.

It was my hope that both fixes would make the team feel safer—and inspire them to come along on our mission. There was a lot to be done to make the restaurant better, but there would be no point to doing any of it if the people who worked there didn’t love coming to work. If I couldn’t succeed in getting hearts and minds on board for the bigger project, then the grand vision of a push toward excellence would be dead on arrival.

It’s a cliché that culture can’t be taught; it has to be caught. And what better way to appreciate the exquisite nature of Daniel’s food than to spend six months ferrying plates from the kitchen to the table? More important, while we were teaching people the technical points a little bit at a time, it would give them the opportunity to fully absorb the culture we were building, long before they became point person with a guest. And how we chose which people to invite onto the team became central to our success.

Chapter 9: Working with Purpose, on Purpose

“We were satisfied with our mission statement—to be the four-star restaurant for the next generation—but that was the what.

We needed the how.

When you spend this much time encouraging your team to contribute, you’d better make sure your team knows that your doors are always open to ideas. There’s a better way to do everything, and I made it clear: if you had an idea for how we could improve, I wanted to hear it. The first time someone comes to you with an idea, listen closely, because how you handle it will dictate how they choose to contribute in the future. Dismiss them that first time, and you’ll extinguish a flame that’s difficult to rekindle.