The solo leader

When watching Kitchen Nightmares I often find myself thinking the owner should fire their staff. The chef is a diva threatening to walk out when criticized. The servers goof around in front of customers. And the manager watches this all while standing in a corner rolling napkins around the silverware. “Just fire them!” I yell.

But Ramsey rarely tells the owner to fire anyone, because the problem isn’t the people. It’s the environment that has shaped them into divas, goofs, and pushovers. The systems have broken down and everyone has checked out. The chef wants to leave badly, so he’s holding nothing back just daring the owner to fire him. The servers are bored and just trying to struggle through another shift where nothing happens and nobody cares what they do. And the manager has no confidence that anything they do will matter.

There’s a lack of standards and that’s because the owner lacks a strategy. The strategy dictates the system, and the boundaries of that system dictate the standards. A good leader focuses on the strategy so the rest of the staff can focus on their limited role.

The solo operator, though, has to wear all of the hats: the strategist, the standard bearer, and the staff. This leads to two problems. First, context from one role bleeds into another. I sit down to work, but high-level strategic thought intrudes and I start wondering if I’m working on the right thing. The second problem is comfort seeking. I avoid doing tasks I’m less competent with and seek more comfortable tasks. This is why we see that advice again and again to switch between hats.

The solo operator has to lead themselves, but that leadership really shouldn’t stop at the sidewalk. I’m always surprised when watching Kitchen Nightmares how rarely the owners think of going out into their own neighborhoods. But Ramsey will almost always put together an event to drum up business. A business like a restaurant has a metabolism. It’s not just an isolated system. If customers aren’t walking through the door, someone needs to go out into the neighborhood and make contact with the real world.

Of course, I say that as someone who struggles with this myself. I’m much more comfortable standing in a corner rolling the silverware into napkins.