You’re Looking Right at It. You Just Can’t See It.
In 1999, researchers at Harvard ran an experiment that changed how we understand human attention. They asked volunteers…
You Can’t Hire Better Cast. You Can Hire Better People.
A few weeks ago a colleague posted about hiring four cooks at $20 an hour. Three ghosted. One…
[Transactional Arbitrage]: The Five Bets Underneath Most Restaurants
Five levers, five closing gaps, and the model that doesn’t depend on either. Most operators don’t know they’re…
The Three-Legged Stool of Unearned Authority
It never ceases to amaze me how many people post content about how to do things they’ve never…
The Conversation About AI and Leadership Is the Same One I’ve Been Having About Road 1 and Road 2 For Decades
For decades, the AI and leadership conversation has been framed as human vs. machine. Which tasks will AI…
The Casual Full-Service Problem Isn’t the Food
Walk into any casual full-service chain and count the friction points before you’ve ordered your first drink. The…
Why Your Leadership Training Is Not Working
Plato argued he needed fifty years to develop a good leader. Most restaurant operations give it three days…
Your Current Business Design Will Eventually Fail — That Is Not A Prediction, It Is A Guarantee
Three Harvard Business School professors wrote something in 1996 that most operators have never heard and need to…
You Are Managing Your Restaurant With Tunnel Vision
In the late 1990s, John Seely Brown — chief scientist at Xerox PARC — was trying to explain…
Why Your Last Change Initiative Did Not Stick
The evidence on organizational change is consistent across decades and industries: most change initiatives fail. Not because the…